“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.
“I suppose I could,” she said, “since you put it so prettily.” “Tonight we’ll have champagne for the lion,” Wilson said. “It’s a bit too hot at noon.”
“Oh, the lion,” Margot said. “I’d forgotten the lion!” So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a ride, isn’t she? Or do you suppose that’s her idea of putting up a good show? How should a woman act when she discovers her husband is a bloody coward? She’s damn cruel but they’re all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has to be cruel sometimes. Still, I’ve seen enough of their damn terrorism.
“Have some more eland,” he said to her politely.
That afternoon, late, Wilson and Macomber went out in the motor car with the native driver and the two gun-bearers. Mrs. Macomber stayed in the camp. It was too hot to go out, she said, and she was going with them in the early morning. As they drove off Wilson saw her standing under the big tree, looking pretty rather than beautiful in her faintly rosy khaki, her dark hair drawn back off her forehead and gathered in a knot low on her neck, her face as fresh, he thought, as though she were in England. She waved to them as the car went off through the swale of high grass and curved around through the trees into the small hills of orchard bush.
In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and leaving the car they stalked one old ram with long, wide-spread horns and Macomber killed it with a very creditable shot that knocked the buck down at a good two hundred yards and sent the herd off bounding wildly and leaping over one another’s backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable and as floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams.
“That was a good shot,” Wilson said. “They’re a small target.”
“Is it a worth-while head?” Macomber asked.
