Stories from Everybody's Magazine

by Various

The night had already fallen black and cold when the special train crested the top of the divide and coasted down grade into Kijabe. The most imposing structure in the place is the railroad station, with its red wooden building propped up on piles, its tin guest-house alongside, and the neat gravel platform growing a clump of trees. The rest of Kijabe is composed of four other houses, the goods-shed, an open-faced Indian booth, the post-office, and the water-tank. Ulvate met us with a lantern, for the station lights are dim, and we detrained in the face of the high wind that always blows there from sunset to dawn, and picketed the horses among the trees of the station platform. Because a large part of the revenue of the country is derived from the visiting hunters, a safari is accorded privileges out of the ordinary. So, as a matter of course, we took possession of the station and camped in the tin guest-house for the night.

The morning came clear and hot and still. The railroad at Kijabe runs along the face of the hills, so that the land drops down abruptly to the plains below, and you can look away for miles over the Kedong and Rift valleys, with the two sentinel extinct volcanoes rising black against the heat-blurred sky;

The floors of the valleys are laid with volcanic ash. But on first appearances the land looks much the same as the regulation veldt or certain parts of our own Western plains. It is only by the fineness of the dust that hangs about the horses' feet, and the peculiar quality of the thirst that dries in the throat, that you know this is no ordinary soil.

The sun was high in the heavens before we finally started from Kijabe and descended the rough road to the level ground, with the brakes on the ox-wagons squealing harshly and the horses treading silently in the dust.

We had planned to camp at Sewell's farm that night. It was only about four hours away, but a short trek the first day is always a good rule to follow. It gives every one a chance, so to speak, to shake down well into the saddle. We had gone but a short distance, however, when one thing became strikingly apparent: Gobbet did not know how to ride! He was mounted on a white African pony that we had found it necessary to add to our string. The pony was stolid, lazy, and easy-gaited, but Gobbet's unfamiliar attitude toward his mount was unmistakable.

Now it is a delicate matter in any country to broach the question of a man's horsemanship, but presently Gobbet introduced the subject of his own accord.

"Of course I can't ride a horse," he said. "Have never been on one before. When Mr. Kearton spoke to me about coming out here with him, he just asked me if I could ride, and I told him surely I could ride—but I didn't tell him I meant a bicycle."

After all, the matter was of no great importance. Gobbet was young and thin and active, with sharp black eyes, and the work that lay ahead of us would probably teach him to ride in short order—and it did.

We had little expectation of finding either a lion or a rhino on that first day's trip. We were traveling on a regular road, making a kind of initial march. The fringe of scrub at the beginning of the valley had been left behind some three or four miles when Ulyate suddenly reined in his horse and pointed to three black dots on the veldt about half a mile away.

The black dots proved to he only wart-hogs, but we wanted them, and, so long as there was little chance of our finding any of the more important species of game, we took the opportunity that offered. The Colonel and the two cowboys tightened their cinches and then rode out to the westward to round up the beasts.