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fifty yards. Then she ran back, but Kermit crumpled her 
up with his first bullet. He then put another bullet in her, 
and as she seemed disabled walked up within fifty yards, 
and took some photos. By this time she was recovering, 
and, switching her tail she gathered her hind quarters 
under her for a charge; but he stopped her with another 
bullet, and killed her outright with a fourth. 
We heard that Mearns and Loring, whom we had left 
ten days before, had also killed a lioness. A Masai brought 
in word to them that he had marked her down taking her 
noonday rest near a kongoni she had killed; and they rode 
out, and Loring shot her. She charged him savagely; he 
shot her straight through the heart, and she fell literally 
at his feet. The three naturalists were all good shots, and 
were used to all the mishaps and adventures of life in the 
wilderness. Not only would it have been indeed difficult 
to find three better men for their particular work—Heller’s 
work, for instance, with Cuninghame’s help, gave the 
chief point to our big-game shooting—but it would have 
been equally difficult to find three better men for any 
emergency. I could not speak too highly of them; nor in¬ 
deed of our two other companions, Cuninghame and Tarl- 
ton, whose mastery of their own field was as noteworthy 
as the pre-eminence of the naturalists in their field. 
The following morning the headmen asked that we 
get the porters some meat; Tarlton, Kermit, and I sallied 
forth accordingly. The country was very dry, and the 
game in our immediate neighborhood was not plentiful 
and was rather shy. I killed three kongoni out of a herd, 
at from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and ninety 
paces; one topi at three hundred and thirty paces, and a 
