“Well, that doesn’t sound very sporting,” Peter said. “It’s never a fair fight because we have the guns. But shooting an old codger like that? I don’t know…”
“You want a raging bull, do you?” Charlie asked the agent. “We can do that, too. But my days of wanting to take down some elephant in the prime of his life? They’re over. I cried the first time I collected one like that. I got a little teary two years ago when I finished off what I supposed was my last one. And I only shot him because…never mind.”
“Because your guest dropped his gun and ran,” said Carmen.
After a long pause, the hunter confessed, “No. But he wasn’t squeezing the trigger, either.”
Felix looked at Peter, wondering how the agent would respond to the idea that another guest had frozen. Finally, Peter said, “An old dog can break my heart. The white whiskers, the milky eyes. The weak back legs. The only time I saw my father cry was when a dog of ours died. The dog was so old he could barely walk, and so my dad used to pick him up and carry him outside so he could do his business. And he was a black lab, and so even at the end he probably weighed sixty or seventy pounds. He was deaf, he was blind. An old elephant must be even worse. Sadder.”
“I agree. But why do you think that is?” Reggie asked, not directing his question at anyone in particular. “Because it’s so smart?”
“Perhaps,” said Peter. But then everyone turned toward Charlie Patton and waited like schoolchildren for him to weigh in.
“First of all, it is smart. But that’s not what I was getting at. It’s because if you don’t kill it, eventually it’s going to die alone and be eaten,” Charlie told them. “And, most likely, eaten alive. That’s certainly the case with old lions. When I took an old lion, I was saving it from that sort of fate.”
“Hyenas?” Felix asked.
“Precisely. I remember one old fellow who had once been very regal. You could tell. Earned his crown. But those days were behind him. Long kicked from the pride by a younger, tougher male. Still had a gorgeous mane, but he was all ribs and you could see the scars on his hide. A road map. His roar was more of a cough, and he had a hobble to his gait that was painful to watch. For all I know, he had a broken bone in a foot or one of his rear legs. And, yes, the hyenas were circling.”
The safari had seen three spotted hyenas their very first day. They had heard some last night while they were tucked in their tents. “Hyenas are ugly,” Carmen said.
Charlie nodded. “They are. Why Noah grabbed a pair for the ark is beyond me. Damn things have a canine snout and a koala’s ears. And they’re so slow that practically everything they want to eat is faster than they are, so they pick on the very old and the very young—and, of course, the very dead. The Maasai have a great name for them.”
“For hyenas?” Carmen asked.
“Yes. Sometimes they call the bastards ‘limpers’ because their walk is so odd. There’s a great fable. A crow tells a bunch of them to stand on each other’s shoulders so they can stretch tall enough to reach the top of a tree where some tribesmen have stored their meat. But the crow was just tricking them. Knew they would try to steal something that wasn’t theirs, because they’re such loathsome creatures. There was no meat at the top of the tree. Not a scrap. Anyway, the hyena at the bottom couldn’t hold the ones above him, and so he struggled out from beneath them without warning them. They all fell, of course, and the species was left lame for eternity.”
“That old lion you were thinking of,” Felix mused. “Did he know the hyenas were near?”
“Absolutely. Hyenas are anything but subtle. I’m sure he smelled them and then he heard them and then he saw them. And, if the time had come, he would have put up a good fight. He would have lost. But he was proud. He would not have gone gently into that good night. He would have burned and raged. Nevertheless, in the end he was going to be their dinner—and he would have been breathing when they started to dine.”
“Was it an easy shot?” Peter wondered.
“Technically, yes. Emotionally, no.”
Carmen dabbed at her lips with one of the cloth napkins the porters had set out on the blanket. Then she looked at the hunter and asked, “Did you consider shooting the hyenas instead?”
“Heavens, no. The hyenas were just being hyenas. If those ones didn’t finish off the lion that morning, three or four would have the next day. Or the day after.”