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 



