228 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
Of course it was of no use concealing ourselves now, so we got 
up and walked to the spot where the koodoo had been standing ; 
and here, to our disgust, we met three men and two women of 
the Esa Musa, who had come from the Mandeira karias to pick 
gum. They had been walking along a torrent-bed and had come 
close up to the koodoo before they saw him ; and one of the Esa 
Musa had thrown his spear and missed, sending the koodoo off 
as we had seen. We enlisted these people in our service by a 
promise of meat if successful, and then slowly took up the 
tracks. But we soon lost them again in the rocky ground, and 
extending into line and moving over the ridge where he had 
disappeared, we resolved ourselves into couples and searched 
independently for further tracks. 
We must have spent over an hour doing this, and traversed 
about a mile of very steep, stony hills covered with dense thorn- 
bush, with occasional deep cajions and gullies in the limestone, 
when one of the gum-pickers ran up and motioned to me to 
follow him. Scrambling over another half-mile of steep ground 
we came upon the tracks of a koodoo, which by their size I con- 
cluded to be those of the bull we had lately lost. He had slowed 
down into a walk, the tracks leading up to a high ridge, and we 
took them over the top with great caution, hoping that we might 
come upon him somewhere in the next valley. 
We were soon scrambling along the sides of the valley when 
Hassan pointed downwards, and I saw the koodoo rounding a 
spur a hundred and fifty yards away, and about a hundred feet 
below us ; and throwing up the rifle I fired just before he dis- 
appeared, the bullet telling loudly, and my men calling out that 
he was hit. We got down to where he had been in a few seconds, 
and rounding the corner found him lying in a bush which had 
stopped his body as it rolled down the hill. The ‘577 bullet, 
entering behind the withers, had driven nearly through him, 
breaking the spine and killing him almost instantaneously. 
This was a splendid old bull, his massive neck being covered 
with scars received in fights with rivals, scratches from the thorn- 
bushes through which he had forced his way, and abrasions from 
the rocks where he had fallen. The horns measured 344 inches 
between tips, 37 inches in a straight line from base to tip, and 
49 inches round the spiral. 
It was getting late, and a heavy thunderstorm was coming 
up from the south,—always a disagreeable experience in these 
hills, and especially so in this instance, because I had nothing 
