AHC#3 Selling my Double | african-hunter

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Selling my Double

By Tanganhamo

I remember long ago, as a teenager, reading the red blooded adventure writers of our time; Wilbur Smith, Louis L'Amour, John Gordon Davis – I remember deciding that one day, I would have my own masculine office. My own “Sean Courtney” office - books, leather, old solid wood, shotguns, brandy, cigars, magnificent original oil paintings, massive stone fireplace. My dog lying there. Veteran of many cold misty mornings out in duck country. I would have a beautiful wife who only came into this office hesitantly, and only after knocking politely. That's what I decided, nearly forty years ago.

Well now I have that office, or something close to it anyway. I look out my window and I can see the Ngudwini River snaking along almost two thousand feet down in the valley below. Blue mountains march across the horizon and thick bush clads the hills across the river. I frequently hear bushbuck barking down there, near the river. Every now and then a Black Eagle planes across the gorge beneath my window, gliding with the currents. Looking, being perfect. My fireplace is beautiful, and big. My dog, a handsome animal who is terrified of guns and hunting, excels in his one and only job – to be my friend. He lies there on the thick carpet, dreaming of I know not what. Definitely not the wild calls of ducks in the marsh. I know that much. I did manage to find a beautiful wife. But she comes in and out of the office as she wishes. No knocking. She also has a desk in here, so I suppose it would be foolish to ask her to knock. But it's an office not that far off what I dreamed of so long ago.

So many years have raced by between that time and now. How did it happen? Once, not long ago, I was young, and keen, and full of the vinegar and juice of life. I was strong and the whole world was open before me. Now, suddenly, I am “middle aged”. I am the age of people who, not long ago, I branded contemptuously as “old farts”. Of course I have seen many things. And many places too. I have walked in the thrill and the horror of war; I have seen death, and life, in many forms. I have helped bring two beautiful children to adulthood. Certainly I have lived, and continue to live, a life which can never be described as “normal”. I have been a hunter all my life, so I have seen things and done things and walked in places that most “normal” people never dream of.

But now something important, something earth shaking, for me, has changed.

I am selling my double.

It's coming on for evening now. The whole valley has cooled down and nearby a big old grey turtle dove, who the Ndebele call “vugutu”, hoots out his infinite question – “Who's that, with a two-two? Who's that with a two-two?”

Sitting here at this heavy old teak desk I stare at my favourite books as long as I want to. There they stand, jammed tightly against one another. But they are not leather bound like I had promised myself. Some are tattered. All in their original covers, paperback and hardback, cheek to jowl. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry – my favourite, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, a handful of the early Wilbur Smiths before he went “soap opera” – When the Lion Feeds, The Sunbird, and Sound of Thunder – great books all. A thin one hides there smothered by the others – The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway – the only one of his books I really liked.

My gaze shifts over to the beautiful oil painting above the fi replace. Two huge sullen old buffalo bulls stand next to a greasy pool in a lost swamp somewhere. They're surrounded by impenetrable papyrus and several white egrets stand on their backs. I love that painting. It reminds me that there are still a few places, way out there, far away from civilisation off the beaten track where a man can find something from an earlier world, something unspoiled and raw. A place where he can prod and release that primitive vibration that lives inside of some of us, that tingling anticipation which pumps from the heart when we close with our prey.

Finally, resigned, my gaze comes to rest on my desk in front of me. On my double. My beautiful companion. My partner in uncountable triumphs and mishaps and wild adventures. This double rifle of mine was built by Westley Richards, and was completed on the 25th day of July in 1912. It is scarred and burnished and scratched a bit now, but it's a simple thing to see that this rifle is one of Westley Richards' best. It's a 450/400, with a hand-detachable lock action. The 26 inch barrels are handsomely crowned with perfect folding leaf iron sights which give an impractical promise all the way out to 500 yards.

A few minutes ago I was reading, for the umpteenth time, my copy of the original Westley Richards ledger. It lies there now next to the rifle. This ledger tells me that my companion started out into the old game lands via delivery to the offices of the Great Indian Trading Company “Lyon and Lyon of Calcutta” – in London. How I would love to know what the next step was. Was it with some gin-soaked old Lord Ponsomby-Hamilton-Walker who needed the rifle for his first tiger drive? Did this old beauty (young, then) blood itself on a magnificent charging tiger? Or a rogue Indian elephant maybe? Or perhaps it started gently, with a gaur, or maybe a man-eating leopard. Who knows? What I do know is that the rifle resurfaced in Kenya (British East Africa back then) in 1953, during the Mau Mau uprising – it was owned by a captain Thomas Ellenborough. It's an interesting tale, perhaps a tale for another time, on how the rifle ended up at Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia and finally into my hands.

I reach forward, and raise that perfectly crafted blend of wood and steel. I snuggle it into my shoulder one more time. How many times have I done this? Once more I swing it over to the left, in a fluid flat motion that feels like we are machinery together. I stop on the two old buffalo. I have killed them here in my office many many times before.

But now I see that the problem, the curse, is still there. My middle-aged eyes can no longer focus on the sights and the target at the same time. The beautiful rifle, now 96 years old, is unchanged. But I, at 48 years old, am changed. Last month, my eyes could do the job. This month, they can not. Last year I had to purchase my first pair of reading glasses. I put them on now, but they do not help.

“Put a scope on” someone told me. “Buy one of those new fangled Trijicon sighting systems”. I cradle the old gun and my gaze shifts to the rear sights. A scope? On my double? Would you bolt a roof rack onto your Lamborghini? How about onto your Porsche? Why not? You're going away; you need somewhere to put your luggage! I shudder at the thought of a scope screwed into the top of this magnificent rifle.

Many years ago, when I started carrying a .460 Weatherby as a back-up rifle, I felt a bit guilty, almost as if I was betraying my old beauty in some way. But I had to face the fact that as much as I loved that rifle, it was not the rifle for all circumstances. But when the blood of a client's gut-shot lion drew us into the thick stuff and I knew the shot was going to be close, then the .460 would go into the hands of my number two tracker and my double and I would once more face the fury together. I suppose I could put a gadget onto my .460. No problem. But I will not put any gadget onto my double.

Once, long ago, I remember driving west along the old “security road” in the Zambezi Valley, the hazy purple ridge of the escarpment way off to my right, - or south. I turned to my client “Jack, you see that ridge? That's the escarpment. It's rugged and broken, its wild country. There are gorges, and valleys, and small plateaus, and there are secret hidden springs up there. There are buffalo bulls up there who have never seen a man. We will backpack into that mess and that's where we'll find your bull.” Being young, and brash, and full of all the knowledge that young people think they have, I wisecracked “You know the difference between a good keen hunter and a tired useless hunter Jack?”

“No” he answered, “What?”

“A good hunter looks at those hills and he tells you about the water and the buffalos that could be up there. A tired useless hunter tells you – See those hills up there? Those hills are dry and rugged. There's no water. No game lives up there; - we'll be hunting the river valleys and grasslands down here”. Jack laughed politely.

Jack and I did march into those hills, and after four days we did find a giant buffalo who had probably never seen a human-being before. But I sit here now and wonder. Am I now the hunter who would pretend that the escarpment is barren? Just so I don't have to walk up there? Or would I still be enticed up there, drawn by the secrets and promise of unspoiled far away places? Would I still go for it, bad back and all, just so my client can get the best I can give him? I like to believe I would.

But I have become friends with a young man. A young man whose muscles are still tight and who does not think or care about tomorrow. He is full of the vinegar and juice of life and grey hairs for him are still a long way off. And his eyes are perfect. And he loves this double. But this young man has no money. He seems to have enough for beer, and pretty young girls, but he doesn't have enough to buy this rifle. But as I said, he loves it. Every time he comes into my office and we sit swapping hunting stories, he also kills these two old bulls in my painting. Swinging the old gun like he and it are welded together.

So now I've drawn up a payment plan for him. Perhaps he can pay for it in ten years. Maybe with some really good tips he can do it in five or six. He's a man who looks at the escarpment and can't wait to get up into it, and I so want this old gun to visit those secret places again. I sign off on the proposed payment plan on my desk in front of me, and then I pick up the gun, caress it, feel its balance, and swing it smoothly over to the bulls for the last time.