“Must make him stop that racket,” Wilson said. “You get in front. The Memsahib can sit back here with me.”
They climbed into the motor car and, in the gray first daylight, moved off up the river through the trees. Macomber opened the breech of his rifle and saw he had metal-cased bullets, shut the bolt and put the rifle on safety. He saw his hand was trembling. He felt in his pocket for more cartridges and moved his fingers over the cartridges in the loops of his tunic front. He turned back to where Wilson sat in the rear seat of the doorless, box-bodied motor car beside his wife, them both grinning with excitement, and Wilson leaned forward and whispered,
“See the birds dropping. Means the old boy has left his kill.”
On the far bank of the stream Macomber could see, above the trees, vultures circling and plummeting down.
“Chances are he’ll come to drink along here,” Wilson whispered. “Before he goes to lay up. Keep an eye out.”
They were driving slowly along the high bank of the stream which here cut deeply to its boulder-filled bed, and they wound in and out through big trees as they drove. Macomber was watching the opposite bank when he felt Wilson take hold of his arm. The car stopped.
“There he is,” he heard the whisper. “Ahead and to the right. Get out and take him. He’s a marvellous lion.”
Macomber saw the lion now. He was standing almost broadside, his great head up and turned toward them. The early morning breeze that blew toward them was just stirring his dark mane, and the lion looked huge, silhouetted on the rise of bank in the gray morning light, his shoulders heavy, his barrel of a body bulking smoothly.
“How far is he?” asked Macomber, raising his rifle.
“About seventy-five. Get out and take him.”
“Why not shoot from where I am?”
“You don’t shoot them from cars,” he heard Wilson saying in his ear. “Get out. He’s not going to stay there all day.”
Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side of
