African Game Trails 
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'backs being visible. The leader was the 
biggest, and at it I fired when it was sixty- 
yards away, and nearly broadside on, but 
heading slightly toward me. I had pre¬ 
viously warned every one to kneel. The 
recoil of the heavy rifle made me rock, as I 
stood unsteadily on my perch, and I failed 
to hit the brain. But the bullet, only miss¬ 
ing the brain by an inch or two, brought the 
elephant to its knees; as it rose I floored it 
with the second barrel. The blast of the 
big rifle, by the way, was none too pleasant 
for the other men on the log and made 
Cuninghame’s nose bleed. Reloading, I 
fired twice at the next animal, which was 
now turning. It stumbled and nearly fell, 
but at the same moment the first one rose 
again, and I fired both barrels into its head, 
bringing it once more to the ground. Once 
again it rose—an elephant’s brain is not an 
easy mark to hit under such conditions— 
but as it moved slowly off, half stunned, I 
snatched the little Springfield rifle, and this 
time shot true, sending the bullet into its 
brain. As it fell I took another shot at the 
wounded elephant, now disappearing in the 
forest, but without effect. 
On walking up to our prize it proved to 
be not a cow, but a good-sized adult (but 
not old) herd bull, with thick, short tusks, 
weighing about forty pounds apiece. Or¬ 
dinarily, of course, a bull, and not a cow, 
is what one desires, although on this occa¬ 
sion I needed a cow to complete the group 
for the Museum. However, Heller and 
Cuninghame spent the next few days in 
preserving the skin, and I was too much 
pleased with our luck to feel inclined to 
grumble. We were back in camp five hours 
after leaving it. Our gun-bearers usually 
felt it incumbent on them to keep a digni¬ 
fied bearing while in our company. But 
the death of an elephant is always a great 
event; and one of the gun-bearers, as they 
walked ahead of us campward, soon began 
to improvise a song, reciting the success of 
the hunt, the death of the elephant, and the 
power of the rifles; and gradually, as they 
got further ahead, the more light-hearted 
among them began to give way to their spir¬ 
its, and they came into camp frolicking, gam¬ 
bolling, and dancing as if they were still the 
naked savages that they had been before 
they became the white man’s followers. 
Two days later Kermit got his bull. He 
and Tarlton had camped about ten miles off 
in a magnificent forest, and late the first 
afternoon received news that a herd of ele¬ 
phants was in the neighborhood. They 
were off by dawn, and in a few hours came 
on the herd. It consisted chiefly of cows 
and calves, but there was one big master 
bull, with fair tusks. It was open forest 
with long grass. By careful stalking they 
got within thirty yards of the bull, behind 
whom was a line of cows. Kermit put 
both barrels of his heavy double .450 into 
the tusker’s head, but without even stag¬ 
gering him; and as he walked off Tarlton 
also fired both barrels into him, with no 
more effect; then, as he slowly turned, Ker¬ 
mit killed him with a shot in the brain from 
the .405 Winchester. Immediately the cows 
lifted their ears, and began trumpeting and 
threatening; if they had come on in a body 
at that distance, there was not much chance 
of turning them or of escaping from them; 
and after standing stock still for a minute 
or two, Kermit and Tarlton stole quietly off 
for a hundred yards, and waited until the 
anger of the cows cooled and they had 
moved away, before going up to the dead 
bull. Then they followed the herd again, 
and Kermit got some photos which, as far 
as I know, are at least as good as any that 
have ever been taken of wild elephant. He 
took them close up, at imminent risk of a 
charge. 
The following day the two hunters rode 
back to Meru, making a long circle. The 
elephants they saw were not worth shooting, 
but they killed the finest rhinoceros we had 
yet seen. They saw it in an open space of 
tall grass, surrounded by lantana brush, a 
flowering shrub with close-growing stems, 
perhaps twenty feet high and no thicker 
than a man’s thumb; it forms a favorite 
cover for elephant and rhinoceros, and is 
well-nigh impenetrable to hunters. Fort¬ 
unately this particular rhino was outside 
it, and Kermit and Tarlton got up to about 
twenty-five yards from him. Kermit then 
put one bullet behind his shoulders, and as 
he whipped round to charge, another bullet 
on the point of his shoulders; although 
mortally wounded, he showed no signs 
whatever of being hurt, and came at the 
hunters with great speed and savage desire 
to do harm. Then an extraordinary thing 
happened. Tarlton fired, inflicting merely 
a flesh wound in one shoulder, and the big, 
fearsome brute, which had utterly disre- 
