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AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
leisurely style^ and with scant regard to the animal itself. 
Moreover we did not intend to kill any rhino unless its 
horns were out of the common. I first stalked and shot a 
buck Roberts’ gazelle with a good head. Then we off-sad¬ 
dled the horses and sat down to lunch under a huge thorn- 
tree, which stood by itself, lonely and beautiful, and offered 
a shelter from the blazing sun. The game was grazing 
on every side; and I kept thinking of all the life of the 
wilderness, and of its many tragedies, which the great tree 
must have witnessed during the centuries since it was a 
seedling. 
Lunch over, I looked to the loading of the heavy rifle, 
and we started toward the rhinos, well to leeward. But 
the wind shifted every which way; and suddenly my gun- 
bearers called my attention to the rhinos, a quarter of a 
mile off, saying, ‘‘He charging, he charging.” Sure enough, 
they had caught our wind, and were rushing toward us. I 
jumped off the horse and studied the oncoming beasts 
through my field-glass; but head on it was hard to tell 
about the horns. However, the wind shifted again, and 
when two hundred yards off they lost our scent, and turned 
to one side, tails in the air, heads tossing, evidently much 
wrought up. They were a large cow and a young heifer, 
nearly two-thirds grown. As they trotted sideways I could 
see the cow’s horns, and her doom was sealed; for they were 
of good length, and the hind one (it proved to be two feet 
long) was slightly longer than the stouter front one; it was 
a specimen which the museum needed. 
So after them we trudged over the brown plain. But 
they were uneasy, and kept trotting and walking. They 
never saw us with their dull eyes; but a herd of wildebeest 
