MY FIRST LION 95 
We had not gone over a hundred yards, when Dooda 
touched my arm and pointed out the lion, a three-quarters 
grown male, lying not quite facing me, under a bush, 
looking sick, but with head still up. He growled, and I, 
so close was he, shot for his neck. To my amazement he 
got up and instead of collapsing, walked away, when I 
killed him immediately. That shot was a lesson to me. 
I found I had cut a groove in his mane and just drawn blood. 
I measured the distance. It was a scanty fourteen yards. 
How I missed I am sure I don’t know. We never came 
up again with the band. ‘They ran out of the cover, where 
I had been among them, over a ridge into an open bit of 
country, and we gave them up. There were nine in this 
lot, and we never saw a big male among them, though, 
of course, there may have been one of these in front of 
the band. 
The very next day at about the same distance from camp, 
in another direction, Brownie and I, who were at this time 
alone, came on a fresh lion sign beside a puddle of rain 
water. The tracking was most difficult, the ground rocky, 
and hard. We took more than an hour going a mile. 
Things then improved. The ground was grassier, and 
softer, and another lion came to company; then another 
and another. Once more we were after a band. It was a 
glorious fresh morning in June, not nearly as hot as the day 
before, and I could see how keen my boy was to show me 
that I needed no other guide than he. We hadn’t gone 
more than a mile farther, when I saw with my Zeiss an old 
gray-headed lioness’s nose just sticking out over an anthill 
about 500 yards in our front. As I looked she drew her 
head down, and slipped quietly into the grass. When 
we came to the place four or five different grass tracks 
ran away from the mound, the chiefest and broadest made 
by several of them travelling together. So it was evident 
there was another large gang on the move. I fear one lion 
