LEOPARDS AND RHINOS 95 
two days I began to think ill of the man who origi- 
nally started the story about their stupidity. 
With the difficulties of the chase firmly in mind I 
set out early on the third day to see if I could get a 
specimen. Concluding that the smaller the party 
the better the opportunity, I took only a mule and 
my pony boy. When only a half mile from camp I 
met an old hyena who was loafing along after a night 
out. He looked like a good specimen, but after I 
shot him, one look at his dead carcass was enough 
to satisfy me that he was not as desirable as I had 
thought, for his skin was badly diseased. I had very 
good reason to think of this very hard later in the 
day. A little farther along I shot a good wart hog 
for our scientific collection. Leaving the specimen 
where it lay, I marked the spot and continued in 
search of the plume-bearers. 
Soon after this I climbed to the top of a termite 
hill about eight feet high to look the country over 
with field glasses. As I held the glasses to my eyes 
while adjusting the focus, I suddenly realized that 
the letter S that I was focussing on was the head and 
neck of an ostrich and that there was a second letter 
S beside it. The birds remained perfectly motionless 
watching and I did likewise, locating their position 
meanwhile by the termite hills which were nearly in 
line between us. Suddenly the heads ducked and 
disappeared behind the bush. I dropped from my 
perch and ran rapidly to where they had been, but 
found only their trail in the sand. 
When I had given up tracking them and was about 
