“All right. But what if it’s cold in the morning when we find the lion?”

“I only want to see how you shoot without it. To see what difference it makes.”

“Everybody’s always experimenting with me. Why can’t I just go out and shoot and kill cleanly?”

“You can, honey. You’re going to now.”

We rode out past the airstrip. Ahead on our right was the broken park country and in one meadow I saw two groups of wildebeest feeding and an old bull lying down not far from a clump of trees. I nodded at him to Mthuka, who had already seen him, and motioned with my hand for us to circle widely to the left and then back where we could not be seen behind the trees.

I signaled to Mthuka to stop the car and Mary got out and Charo after her carrying a pair of field glasses. Mary had her 6.5 Mannlicher and when she was on the ground she lifted the bolt, pulled it back, shoved it forward and saw that the cartridge went into the chamber, turned it down and then moved the safety lever over.

“Now what am I to do?”

“You saw the old bull lying down?”

“Yes. I saw two other bulls in the bunches.”

“You and Charo see how close you can get to that old bull. The wind is right and you ought to be able to get up to the trees. Do you see the patch?”

The old bull wildebeest lay there, black and strange looking with his huge head, down-curved, widespread horns and savage-looking mane. Charo and Mary were getting closer to the clump of trees now and the wildebeest stood up. He looked even stranger now and in the light he looked very black. He had not seen Mary and Charo and he stood broadside to them and looking toward us. I thought what a fine and strange-looking animal he was and that we took them too much for granted because we saw them every day. He was not a noble-looking animal but he was a most extraordinary looking beast and I was delighted to watch him and watch the slow, bent double approach of Charo and Mary.

Mary was at the edge of the trees where she could shoot now and we watched Charo kneel and Mary raise her rifle and lower her head. We heard the shot and the sound of the bullet striking bone almost at the same time and saw the black form of the old bull raise up in the air and fall heavily on his side. The other wildebeest burst into a bounding gallop and we roared toward Mary and Charo and the black hump in the meadow. Mary and Charo were standing close to the wildebeest when we all piled out of the hunting car. Charo was very happy and had his knife out. Everyone was saying, “Piga mzuri. Piga mzuri sana, Memsahib. Mzuri, mzuri, sana.”

I put my arm around her and said, “It was a beautiful shot, kitten, and a fine stalk. Now shoot him just at the base of the left ear for kindness.”

“Shouldn’t I shoot him in the forehead?”

“No, please. Just at the base of the ear.”

She waved everyone back, turned the safety bolt over, raised the rifle, checked it properly, took a deep breath, expelled it, put her weight on her left front foot and fired a shot that made a small hole at the exact juncture of the base of the left ear and the skull. The wildebeest’s front legs relaxed slowly and his head turned very gently. He had a certain dignity in death and I put my arm around Mary and turned her away so she would not see Charo slip the knife into the sticking place which would make the old bull legal meat for all Mohammedans.

“Aren’t you happy I got so close to him and killed him clean and good and just how I was supposed to? Aren’t you a little bit proud of your kitten?”

“You were wonderful. You got up to him beautifully and you killed him dead with one shot and he never knew what happened nor suffered at all.”

“I must say he looked awfully big and, honey, he even looked fierce.”

“Kitten, you go and sit in the car and have a drink from the Jinny flask. I’ll help them load him in the back.”

“Come and have a drink with me. I’ve just fed eighteen people with my rifle and I love you and I want to have a drink. Didn’t Charo and I get up close?”

“You got up beautifully. You couldn’t have done better.”

The Jinny flask was in one pocket of the old Spanish double cartridge pouches. It was a pint bottle of Gordon’s we had bought at Sultan Hamud and it was named after another old famous silver flask that had finally opened its seams at too many thousand feet during a war and had caused me to believe for a moment that I had been hit in the buttocks. The old Jinny flask had never repaired properly but we had named this squat pint bottle for the old tall hip-fitting flask that bore the name of a girl on its silver screw top and bore no names of the fights where it had been present nor any names of those who had drunk from it and now were dead. The battles and the names would have covered both sides of the old Jinny flask if they had been engraved in modest size. But this new and unspectacular Jinny flask had close to tribal status.

Mary drank from it and I drank from it and Mary said, “You know, Africa is the only place where straight gin doesn’t taste any stronger than water.”

“A little bit.”

“Oh, I meant it figuratively. I’ll take another one if I may.”

The gin did taste very good and clean and pleasantly warming and happy making and to me, not like water at all. I handed the water bag to Mary and she took a long drink and said, “Water’s lovely too. It isn’t fair to compare them.”

I left her holding the Jinny flask and went to the back of the car where the tailgate was down to help hoist the wildebeest in. We hoisted him in entire to save time and so that those that liked tripe could take their pieces when he would be dressed out at camp. Hoisted and pushed in he had no dignity and lay there glassy eyed and big bellied, his head at an absurd angle, his gray tongue protruding, like a hanged man. Ngui, who with Mthuka had done the heaviest lifting, put his finger in the bullet hole which was just above the shoulder. I nodded and we pushed the tailgate up and made it fast and I borrowed the water bag from Mary to wash my hands.

“Please take a drink, Papa,” she said. “What are you looking gloomy about?”

“I’m not gloomy. But let me have a drink. Do you want to shoot next? We have to get a Tommy or an impala for Keiti, Charo, Mwindi, you and me.”

“I’d like to get an impala. But I don’t want to shoot anymore today. Please, I’d rather not. I don’t want to spoil it. I’m shooting just where I want to now.”

“Where did you hold on him, kitten?” I said, hating to ask the question. I was taking a drink while I asked it to make it very easy and not too casual.

“Right on the center of his shoulder. Dead in the center. You saw the hole.”

There had been a big drop of blood that had rolled down from the tiny hole high in the spine, that had rolled down to the center of the shoulder and stopped there. I had seen it when the strange, black antelope lay there in the grass with the front part of him still alive, but quiet, and the after part quite dead.

“Good, kitten,” I said.

“I’ll take the Jinny flask,” Mary said. “I don’t have to shoot anymore. I’m so happy that I shot him so that it pleased you. I wish Pop had been here too.”

But Pop was not here and, at point-blank range, she had shot fourteen inches higher than she had aimed, killing the beast with a perfect high spinal shot. So a certain problem still existed.

We were going up through the park country now straight into the wind and the sun at our back. Ahead I saw the square white patches on the buttocks of the Grant’s gazelles and the flicking tails of the Thomson’s gazelles as they grazed ahead of us, bounding off as the car came close. Ngui knew what it was all about and so did Charo. Ngui turned back to Charo and said, “Jinny flask.”