Horns 



miring him, even whilst being fully aware that on 

 the pressure of a trigger your life may in all proba- 

 bility hang. Coal-black is he, and standing well 

 over seventeen hands, with a tremendously high 

 wither and spinal arch on the back. As he stands 

 with head thrown up, with the high, whitish yellow, 

 hair-covered frontal bone, massive dull yellow or 

 yellow-black horns (blunted at the points, much 

 crinkled and corrugated at their bases, with the 

 tips far apart — the sign of old age), coal-black 

 body with the skin shining like satin, and four 

 clean white stockings from the knee downwards, 

 is he not a perfect picture and one the like of 

 which you will see nowhere else ? Here he stands, 

 in his native wilds, and yet one would dare swear 

 that he had just received such a grooming from 

 the hands of adoring worshippers, as the Great 

 Bulls of Memphis must have been given in the 

 days of the ancient Egyptians — so clean and sleek 

 and well-tended does he look. 



An old solitary bull is he. He has done with 

 philanderings with the softer sex, with a harem 

 of cows ever about him to worry and bother, 

 eat all the titbits, and perpetually set him 

 galloping over rocky hills in the glare of the hot 

 sun on false alarms. Quite able is he to maintain 

 an adequate qui vive by himself without others 

 to do it for him ; for warier by far than the cow is 

 the old solitary bull. 



He it is that one is ever on the look out for 



103 



