Having resolved to try conclusions with this bull, I sent my caravan round the base of a peaked mountain called Hambeileh Weina, by a good camel track, with orders to the men in charge to make two marches to Garbadir, and camp at Armáleh water. Armáleh to the east and Massleh to the west were two of several valleys which joined to form the district called Garbadir. The grazing grounds of Garbadir, filling a semicircle of about six miles’ radius, formed a bay in Gólis Range, under Daar Ass Bluff, which is about six thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Garbadir was beautifully wooded with very large gudá thorn forest, plenty of grass growing in the glades, and the ground was covered with fresh tracks of the Esa Musa flocks. It was at Armáleh Garbadir that I had formed my first shooting camp in 1885.
From my Henweina camp into Garbadir there was a short cut over the mountains which was impassable for camels, and this path I took with my two gunbearers and an Esa Musa guide, ascending and descending about a thousand feet over the neck between the Hambeileh Weina pointed peak and the top of Daar Ass. At a height of about five thousand feet above the sea we found several Esa Musa cattle karias, perched on the mountains, with splendid flat stretches of open green pasture. The Esa Musa herds showed me the tracks of a very large koodoo, which I knew to be those of a well-known bull which I had hunted once or twice during the last few days, and which we had called the Darei-Hosei koodoo, after the name of the gully in which he was generally seen by the shepherds in the early mornings; but as he had passed by at dawn, several hours before, I held on for the Armáleh camp, leaving Massleh Valley two miles behind us on my right.
I resolved not to disturb Massleh gorge till we should hear news of the well-known Massleh koodoo. Arriving at Armáleh a little after noon, I sent some Esa Musa shepherds up to Massleh with orders to sit on points of vantage and watch the gorge for the appearance of the koodoo when he should get up from his sleep in the afternoon; and if they should see him, to run and let me know; meanwhile I sat down and waited for the caravan to come round by the long road.
At about four o’clock, acting on the information of an old woman who was collecting firewood, I went after pig, and came to the Massleh water; we here found several women and girls filling their bark water-vessels preparatory to carrying them on their backs to their huts; and they told us they had just seen a large wart-hog boar come to drink, and then run away again without drinking. Following on the tracks, we came suddenly on him twenty yards away on the top of a rise in a goat path, and I raised my rifle and covered his shoulder; but finding I could not see his tusks, and as I never shoot a boar unless they are abnormally large, I let him off. He walked round the bend of the path and I followed, but coming to the corner we found he had managed to go quietly away without leaving a track to show his whereabouts.
My gunbearer said he must be a shaitan, or devil, and we were just preparing to drink and go home when two Esa Musa ran up to say they had seen the lame koodoo of Massleh Wein, and they could show him to me at once! This was great luck! We started off at a trot up the Lower Massleh Valley, and came to where there was a stretch of about half a mile, before it branched out in the form of a Y into two gorges running up steeply into Daar Ass Mountain. The natives had just seen him coming out of the mass of jungle which filled the point of junction of the two gorges where they joined to form the main valley, or stalk of the Y, lower down.
Géli and I, keeping to the right, ascended the side of the valley and sat down under the shade of a black poison-bush on a pile of rocks, commanding the nearest of the two small gorges above the junction, that is, the western one; while I stopped the eastern gorge by sending an Esa Musa across to its head, to drive back the koodoo should he attempt to retreat up it. We knew he was somewhere in the jungle below the junction of the gorges, and I had ordered Hassan and the other Esa Musa to sit under cover down in the lower valley long enough to give us all time to take up our appointed positions; and then, when they saw us posted, to walk slowly up through the jungle, looking for the fresh tracks.
I had been sitting some twenty minutes at my post, when Hassan and the Esa Musa shouted across from the jungle to the men at the head of the eastern gorge to look out, and we saw the koodoo, the finest I have ever set eyes on, go cantering heavily upwards along the bank of the torrent-bed which occupied the centre of the eastern gorge. The men whom I had posted there shouted back, and the koodoo, as I expected, made for the western gorge which was commanded by my rifle.
On the opposite side of this gully, on a level with the bush under which I was sitting, was a very large gudá tree, and the range to this tree I judged to be about two hundred yards across the gorge. If I allowed him to pass this tree I knew that my chances of bagging him would become very slender, as the gorge widened, and there was a way by which he could get out of it, over a shoulder of the mountain, without again coming within range.
It became very exciting listening to the shouts from the jungle below and the answering shouts from the other gorge, and more so as, warned by the rattle of displaced stones and the crashing of bushes, I turned my eyes and saw the koodoo at the point of intersection of the two gorges, and heading straight for the one which I commanded. I had in my hands a long military Martini-Henry, and pushing forward the sliding-leaf to two hundred yards I marked the gudá tree opposite and watched. There was suspense for a moment or two, and then with another crash he emerged from the jungle and galloped along the opposite hillside, straight for the gudá tree. I held for the front of his shoulder, just clear of his body, and as he neared the tree I fired. Looking under the smoke I observed him still galloping on, and felt in my pocket for another cartridge; but after passing the tree he suddenly plunged forward and went rolling over and over down the hill, till his body was arrested about thirty feet below by a bush, and then he lay motionless. We made very short time across the rocky gorge, and coming up I found him dead, the Martini picket having passed through his heart—a wonderfully lucky shot at the distance.
