BILL 141 
second was still in his possession. According to the 
laws of the land he should have turned in the two 
tusks to the government officials, who would have 
paid him a nominal price for the ivory, and I, having 
filed a claim with the Government, would have come 
into possession of the tusks; but the native had 
evidently thought that he could get more out of them 
by selling them one at a time, and had taken a chance. 
But he made a mistake in leaving Bill out of his cal- 
culations. Bill followed up the case with the final 
result that the remaining tusk was taken and sent 
to me, and the Government confiscated a certain 
number of cattle belonging to the native as penalty 
for the one he had sold. Thus, to both Bill and me, 
the final results from that particular elephant hunt 
were satisfactory. 
One time in Uganda I was using Bill as a gun-bearer 
in preference to the regular gun-bearers, because I 
had by that time realized that Bill was the best 
tracker as well as the most keen and alert hunter, 
black or white, that I had ever known. We had 
followed a small band of elephants into some dense 
forest, and for a long time had been crouching be- 
neath some undergrowth where we could get an 
occasional glimpse of the elephants’ legs, but nothing 
more. They had been quietly feeding during this 
time, but at last they moved away and crossed a trail 
down which we had a vista of a hundred yards or so. 
When we thought the last one had passed, we went 
down this trail quickly and quietly to the point where 
they had crossed, and there we stopped, listening, 
