06 African Adventure (13 page)

Now it was bull versus fender. Which would prove the stronger? The fender danced and buckled and groaned. If the fender went, Hal’s seat which was strapped to it would go too. The seat bounced up and down like a yoyo, and Hal bounced with it.

The Powerwagon was coming. Hal waved it on. Mali speeded up, and the big cage in the back of the Land-Rover rattled and banged as the car crashed over stones and holes.

Roger stared wide-eyed at this most unusual sight, a bull-headed truck. The Greeks had told stories of a centaur, half man and half horse. What would they think of this monster with an animal head, metal body, and wheels?

He saw the desperate efforts the buffalo was making to back out of the trap in which he found himself. If the rope snapped, he would be lost.

‘Step on it, Mali!’ he urged.

He saw Hal waving to him, directing him to the other side of the Ford. In a flash he caught his brother’s idea.

He called back to the men in the rear around the cage.

‘Open the cage door!’ Then to Mali, ‘Swing round and back up.’

Now they were close enough to hear the thrashing and crashing as the big bull turned the fittings of the cab into mincemeat in his fight to get loose. A lot of repairs would be necessary. This was taking ‘em alive the expensive way. It was hard on the car and it was also hard on the animal.

Mali turned out, then backed up until the open cage door was against the open door of the Ford.

‘Slack away!’ Roger shouted. Hal loosed the catching-rope from the fender. The bull, with the strain on his neck relieved, promptly drew down his head and began to back out of the car.

He could not see where he was going for a buffalo’s eyes are planted at the front of his head, not on the sides.

Before he could realize what was happening to him, he had backed into the cage.

Mali pulled forward a few feet so that the cage door would have room to swing shut, and Hal, who had already left his seat and run round to the back of the Powerwagon, closed the heavy iron door.

The animal bellowed with rage and frustration, rushed from side to side, striking the iron bars with his bony helmet and making the heavy Powerwagon rock. He might break his horns on the bars, and certainly he would bruise his flesh even through that thick hide. He must be quieted or he would destroy both himself and his cage.

Hal got out the curare gun. He watched for his chance to pump a shot into this red-eyed, foaming bunch of fury.

Before he could do so, the bull’s rage suddenly simmered down. He stood with legs braced apart, dripping with sweat, blood, and foam, head hanging. He was a picture of weariness and despair. Then his legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed on the steel floor.

Heart attack, Hal thought. Even a bull buffalo cannot go on for ever. This bull had been one of the leaders in the attack upon the camp, and he had probably been well battered when he had collided head-on with the trucks. Then he had been chased until he was tired by an engine that never got tired, he had undergone the unusual experience of climbing into the driver’s seat and pursuing a man through a hole in the roof, he had been noosed, he had fought for liberty, and then he had tested his strength against iron bars. Now he was broken in spirit as well as in body. And Hal knew that unless he acted promptly he would have nothing but a dead animal for all his pains.

This was no job for a curare gun. The animal did not need quieting, but reviving.

Hal leaped back into the cab and got the coramine syringe.

Coramine is a heart stimulant used by catchers when an animal shows signs of dying from exhaustion, fear, or shock.

To inject the drug, the syringe must be placed against the hide. But the bull lay in the middle of the, cage and Hal could not reach any part of him through the bars. There was no help for it - he must join the dangerous beast inside the cage.

He opened the cage door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. The bull snorted angrily and struggled to his feet. Here was his enemy just where he wanted him. He feared the thing in the man’s hand. It had a sharp end like a horn. But if he could get one of his own horns into the man first and push it home, he would be rid of this pest for good and all.

He threw his ton at Hal, but the acrobatic naturalist was no longer there and the horns went harmlessly through the bars. The bull drew back and charged again, and again Hal side-stepped.

This time Hal was not so lucky. He found himself pinned between the animal’s right hip and the iron grating. If enough of the animal’s weight was used against him, he could be minced between those iron bars like flesh in a meat-grinder.

He was smeared with the sweat of the overstrained animal and blood from its bruises. The pressure on his body was tremendous, but his arm was free and he had the presence of mind to jab the syringe into the bull’s thigh and inject the stimulant. At the same instant the bull fell to the floor, his last spark of energy gone.

It would take twenty minutes or half an hour for die stimulant to act. Perhaps it had been given too late and the bull was already dead.

‘Better get out of there,’ Roger called. ‘He’s apt to rear up again any minute.’

‘No,’ Hal said. ‘He’s pooped. I just hope we won’t lose him altogether.’

Hal hovered over the beast like an anxious mother. He placed his hand over the nostrils. He felt nothing and his anxiety increased.

Then there was a pulse of warmth against his hand. It -was very weak, but it showed that breathing and heart action had not stopped.

Hal looked over the hide for wounds and made a mental note of them. They must be treated later - if the animal lived.

It was a big ‘if. The sweat on the beast’s flanks had chilled. The great eyes that had glared so savagely were closed. Hal’s father would not think much of him if he lost his first buffalo.

He could imagine him saying, as he had so often said before, ‘Remember, you’re here to take animals alive, not dead.’

He felt a sort of tenderness towards this helpless, heartsick beast. From creases in the skin he plucked out ticks that the egrets had overlooked. His placed his hand again over the nostrils, but though he held it there for a long time he felt nothing.

Roger was peering in through the bars.

‘How does it feel to be a baby-sitter to a buffalo?’ he laughed.

Hal was not amused.

‘I only hope I’m not attending a funeral. What’s the matter with that coramine? It should have acted by this time.’

Had the heart stopped? Hal was no fool as a naturalist, but he was still learning, and that was one thing he had forgotten to ask his father - how do you take a buffalo’s pulse?

Another ten minutes of anxious waiting, and Hal again tested for breath. Was it just imagination, or did he feel a slight come-and-go of warm and cool? Yes, there was no doubt about it. His own heart leaped.

‘He’s coming through!’ he shouted.

The bull came through fast. His breathing grew steadily stronger. His eyes opened and the first thing they lit upon was Hal. But in those eyes there was not the same hate as before.

Perhaps the buffalo, being a highly intelligent animal, understood that this man could have killed him but had not Possibly he was not so bad after all. He could even be a friend. He felt Hal’s fingers plucking out the painful ticks from his hide. And he could even look at the syringe with appreciation. He had been stabbed by it, and now he felt better.

He was just tired. Convinced that he did not need to fear this human, he closed his eyes and slept. Hal quietly left the cage.

Take him to camp,’ he told Mali. ‘Go easy - don’t shake him up any more than necessary. You’ll have to give the Ford a tow. That bull dancing a jig in the cab didn’t do it any more good than a bull in a china-shop.’

In half an hour the boys were after their second buffalo.

The Ford had been left in camp with a mechanic hard at work repairing or replacing the battered controls. The Powerwagon had also been left, rather than disturb the buffalo by removing the cage.

Hal had strapped his seat to the fender of a Chev catcher driven by Joro, while Mali and Roger followed in a Powerwagon bearing another cage.

The herd was grazing quietly about a mile from camp. Hal picked out a splendid bull which was wandering a little apart from the rest of the herd.

Joro drove the car alongside, and Hal neatly slipped the noose over the bull’s head.

It had all been very easy up to this point. Now it began to be difficult The bull did not take kindly to his new necklace. He tried to shake it off.

When this did not work, he went plunging away and might have broken the line if Hal had not let it out bit by bit, as a fisherman plays a fish.

Changing his tactics, the bull wheeled about, bellowed, then came on the run straight for the truck.

‘Face him!’ Hal shouted. ‘Take him on the bumper/

Joro didn’t need to be told. He had had enough experience to know that when a buffalo, rhino or elephant charges, the car must be turned to face the charge. It cannot easily be overturned if struck in front But if the beast manages to give it a blow on the side it may spin upside-down.

There was another good reason why Joro did not allow a flank attack. It would expose Hal to the ^greatest possible danger, for his small seat strapped to the fender was on the side towards the bull.

‘Swing round!’ Hal yelled, and accompanied the order with a swing of his hand.

Joro seemed to be trying, but there were many stones and hummocks in the way.

Then suddenly the engine went dead. Hal’s heart sank. Whether the motor had stopped by accident or Joro had deliberately stalled it, Hal would never know.

But he did know that he stood a very good chance of being killed. He worked feverishly to unfasten the lifebelt that held him to his seat. The buckle was stubborn. He shouted again to Joro. Joro stepped on the starter, the engine roared, then stalled again. Joro waved his hands as if to say he cOuld do nothing more.

A column of dust rose from the flying heels of the bull. The head was lowered, the tough forehead was ready for the crash. Joro was leaping out of the car now and placing himself at a safe distance. Hal at last pulled open the buckle and threw off the belt.

He scrambled up on to the hood just as the bull struck the very spot where he had been sitting. The chair was smashed into a pulp. The fender behind it was crushed. The heavy car toppled over on to its side. Hal slid off the hood and leaped clear.

He had not forgotten his job and was still hanging on to the catching-pole. Hot with anger, he turned upon Joro:

‘Did you want to get me killed?’

‘No, bwana,’ Joro said, but the savage eyes seemed to say yes.

‘I noticed you took good care to save yourself,’ Hal said bitterly.

‘All the men did,’ Joro reminded him. ‘Why not? It was the thing to do.’

It was so. The men in the back of the truck had jumped clear, and Hal had to admit it was the thing to do. Still, be suspected Joro.

The bull gave him no time to think about this. He was making one rush after another, trying to escape the pull of the rope. The men heaved the car back into an upright position. The Powerwagon carrying the cage had come up, and the men from both cars now undertook the dangerous job of catching and hobbling the frantic animal.

Hal had looped the end of the line round the car bumper, for a thirteen-stone man could not hold a one-ton bull.

Toto started the risky game. He dashed in and grabbed the buffalo by the tail. The bull turned sharply and tried to get at him.

But a buffalo is no cat. He cannot reach his tail. And he is no mule. He has not acquired the habit of kicking with his hind hooves. He will stamp upon his victim if he gets a chance, but kicking is not part of his act. So long as Toto could hang on, he was comparatively safe.

The bull, whirling to get at Toto, was not paying enough attention to the other men. They sneaked up on his flanks and tried to get nooses round his feet. When the bull chased them, they skipped just far enough away so that he was brought up short by the rope and could not reach them.

This worked well enough until the rope broke. It snapped close to the bumper, and the bull, trailing a hundred feet of line, went after the men in earnest.

Now there was nothing to stop him. Dragging Toto behind him, he chose to single out an African called Kenyono, who promptly made for a tree and scrambled up just one hot breath ahead of the bull.

He did not quite succeed in climbing clear. He hung from a branch and his dangling legs were within reach of the brute’s teeth.

But the bull did not attack with his teeth. He had another weapon even more dangerous - his tongue. That tongue is as rough as a coarse file or wood-rasp. It will scrape off the bark of a tree or grind up thorns, twigs, sharp-edged elephant grass and tough stalks of papyrus.

The bull began licking the dangling legs. The skin came off like tissue-paper, and gobs of flesh down to the bone.

In a moment both legs were streaming with blood and the African was screaming for help.

Roger did some quick thinking. He had one of the foot-nooses in his hand. He slipped it over the bull’s muzzle and pulled it tight. That made him close his mouth at once.

‘Hope he bit his tongue,’ Roger said.

Kenyono dropped from the tree and two men helped him to a truck. The other men continued their efforts to noose the animal’s feet. Time and again they barely escaped being gored by the sweeping horns.

They got a noose over the front hooves and drew it tight.

The bull stumbled, fell on his right shoulder, and threw his hind feet in the air.

Toto, the tail-hanger, had been watching for this, and as the feet went up he grabbed a noose from the man next to him and flipped it in place.

Bound both fore and aft, the bull lay on his side, snorting and blowing like a porpoise.

The Powerwagon rolled up with Mali at the wheel. In the back of the truck was the buffalo-size cage. The Chev took its position in front of the Land-Rover, and a cable was played back through the cage and looped round the helpless animal just behind the shoulders and forelegs.