236 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
away on the top of a rise in a goat-path, and I raised my rifle 
and covered his shoulder ; but finding I could not see his tusks, 
and as I never shoot a boar unless they are abnormally large, 
I let him off. He walked round the bend of the path and I 
followed, but coming to the corner we found he had managed to 
go quietly away without leaving a track to show his where- 
abouts. 
My gunbearer said he must be a shaztan, or devil, and we 
were just preparing to drink and go home when two Esa Musa 
ran up to say they had seen the lame koodoo of Massleh Wein, 
and they could show him to me at once! We started at a trot 
up the Lower Massleh Valley, and came to where there was a 
stretch of about half a mile, before it branched out in the form 
of a Y into two gorges running up steeply into Daar Ass 
Mountain. The natives had seen him coming out of the mass 
of jungle which filled the point of junction of the two gorges 
where they joined to form the main valley, or stalk of the Y, 
lower down. 
Géli and I, keeping to the right, ascended the side of the 
valley and sat down under the shade of a black poison-bush on 
a pile of rocks, commanding the nearest of the two small gorges 
above the junction, that is, the western one; while I stopped the 
eastern gorge by sending an Esa Musa across to its head, to 
drive back the koodoo should he attempt to retreat up it. We 
knew he was somewhere in the jungle below the junction of the 
gorges, and I had ordered Hassan and the other Esa Musa to 
sit under cover in the lower valley long enough to give us time 
to take up our appointed positions ; and then, when they saw 
us posted, to walk slowly up through the jungle, looking for the 
fresh tracks. 
I had been some twenty minutes at my post, when Hassan 
and the Esa Musa shouted across from the jungle to 
the men at the head of the eastern gorge to look out, and we 
saw the koodoo cantering heavily upwards along the bank of 
the torrent-bed which occupied the centre of the eastern gorge. 
The men whom I had posted there shouted back, and the 
koodoo, as I expected, made for the western gorge which was 
commanded by my rifle. 
On the opposite side of this gully, on a level with the bush 
under which I was sitting, was a large gudd tree, the range to 
which I judged to be about two hundred yards across the gorge. 
If I allowed him to pass this tree I knew my chances of 
