We saw a very immature gerenük standing on his hind legs to feed on the young tops of a thorn bush. It went off at a crouching trot, stopping after a short run to turn and stare. It even returned a few paces, with unparalleled impudence, to gaze. It was a youngster of last season. The gerenük mother is not the highest type of jungle matron, frequently abandoning a little one to fend for itself weeks before it has been taught the ways of the jungle. And so it is that gerenük fawns are a great mainstay in the lion dietary.
We let our youthful friend investigate us to his liking, after which he trotted off. Gerenük seldom or never gallop, and get up nothing like the speed of an oryx for instance.
We paused for lunch, and some surprised Midgans were located beneath a guda tree. Round about them were many fierce and vengeful-looking dogs. They had a fire over which they were roasting bits of flesh. A few dogs fought and wrangled over mangled remnants of bone, skin, and entrails. The horns and shield of an oryx hung on a khansa bush. The horns were not large, and were those of a cow oryx, killed to make a Midgan holiday, by the aid of the trained dogs, and with a coup-de-grâce of arrows. I have never seen the actual hunting, but I understand that these pariah dogs are bred by the Midgans to hunt the oryx, and going out in a pack make straight for the prey on being shown the antelope.
The music of the chase is noteless. The dogs hunt in silence, until they bring the antelope to his last stand, when they give tongue, guiding the tracking Midgans, who steal up, as concealed as may be, and let fly a flight of arrows which either settles the oryx there and then, or paves the way for an easy pull down later. Very often the antelope makes such a glorious stand that a couple of dogs are left on the field of battle for the hyænas. Though the dogs fasten on to their prey and are fierce beyond relief an oryx at bay is something to be afraid of. His swift forward rush, head down, with horns just fixed at the right angle for impaling an enemy, and sideway strike render him a formidable foe at close quarters.
The Midgans were very friendly. They were very ragged, and the quivers full of poisoned arrows hung on quite bare shoulders. They kindly showed us a track to our betterment, for the going now was stony and difficult. In and out among rocky nullahs were week-old pugs of lion, and farther, where rain had fallen, well defined spoor of more lion, together with massed tracks of oryx and aoul. The spoor of the former is broad in the forefoot, somewhat resembling two pears set together, and the hind foot makes a much longer, narrower impress. We followed the rough track for a mile or more being led to an open “bun,” not extensive, where some few bunches of aoul grazed and an odd bull oryx also. We got off our ponies, and making the hunters into syces pro tem. did a stalk on all fours. Cover there was not, and the centre of the “bun” was the centre of attraction to all the buck, the best grass probably growing there. It was completely out of reasonable range. A crackle, a rustle, or possibly a vision gave the alarm, and away went the oryx, out of sight instantly. The aoul fled affrightedly for a hundred yards or so, then brought up in a thick bunch to stare. One, inquisitive beyond belief, trotted towards us, advancing in short bounds in his anxiety to solve the mystery of these new squirming creatures. Head on, the aoul presented the position for the most reliable shot possible. A child would have brought it off. Cecily dropped the inquirer dead in his tracks.
We were very glad of the meat, and the horns were not amiss. The men would not be able to look forward to a resulting feast, as the “hallal” was left out. However, they had any amount of sun-dried meat to go on with. One pony had to carry the buck, which, after being cleaned, probably weighed less than the Somali who had occupied the saddle previously. Then we made tracks for the rendezvous. Looking behind us we saw a large jackal making off with the left-behind bits of aoul. Another and another came up, and then a set-to fight began as to who should eat the spoils. Whilst the battle raged with fang and claw a tiny jackal stealing up made off at best pace with most of the bone of contention.
At the arranged place of meeting we found no hospitably waiting tents, no cook trying to cook, no camels, no anything, but an arid waste of sand, sparsely dotted with adad bushes and a couple of very stunted guda trees. From the adad comes the gum arabic of Somali trading, a useless commodity to us. But we could see it for ourselves in amber lumps, in the crannies of the thorn.