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that I could no longer live in this country. Not in the open, at least.
    I made a sentimental gesture. I waved my rifle at the ashes of the village and then at those hidden in the forest. It was the only goodbye I could give, and doubtless no one saw it.
    Then I turned and began to trot across the savanna, towards the hills to the west.
    My destination was the mountain range that lay far beyond the hills, approximately a hundred and fifty miles away, and twenty miles into Uganda. I trotted all night. The false dawn, the wolf’s tail, was graying the savanna when I began to think about holing up for part of the day. The acacia trees in the distance looked like black cutouts of the monsters of Bandili myth. Then the sun leaned against the night and swung it away, and day padded in. A lion roared in the distance. The air was cool, moving gently from the mountains in the west. A wart hog trotted out of the tall grass, his tail held stiffly up. The sun gleamed on a yellow tusk.
    I ran along easily with the savanna on my left and a clump of hills to my right. I carried the rifle in my right hand. I stopped for a moment because I saw the grasses move against the wind. Something big enough to be a lion or a man was approaching through the cover about thirty yards away.
    The rifle soared up out of my hand, torn away by a blow like that from a crocodile’s tail. It spun off, and then the sound of the shot came from the hills.

7
    My arm was paralyzed by the transmission of shock through the rifle, but I did not find that out immediately I dived towards the tall grass and rolled towards it. Dirt and grass flew up so close they fell over me. There were four gouts of earth and flocks of tiny pieces of grass, each followed by a shot ringing across the savanna.
    I jumped up, and, zigzagging and bending low, ran. There was a growl, and a big yellowish brown body moved away from me. I smelled a lioness. She was gone, and I had the grass to myself except for the brief company of two bullets which cropped stalks only a few inches from me. I dived once more, and I stayed where I was.
    Several minutes passed. My arm lost its numbness. More shots. More stalks cut in half, falling on me. The bugger had superb vision. I started crawling, though slowly. It was impossible to keep the grass from signaling my progress. More bullets slashed the grass.
    When I had crossed about thirty-five yards, I was at theedge of the grass. I leaped up and ran away, still crouching. There were no more shots. Not for a second had I thought that the sharpshooter was a member of the Kenyans or of the band of the Albanian, Noli. A third party had dealt himself in.
    I heard a roar behind and looked over my shoulder. A male lion was charging after me. I did not know how he could be in this neighborhood or why he was chasing me. He must have been very near but somehow hidden from me. The stimulus of seeing me run away from him had evoked the reaction of running after me. I knew every lion for forty miles in any direction from my plantation. This one was a stranger and should not have been here out of his own territory.
    He was the largest lion I’d ever seen. He weighed 650 or more pounds, and his mane was so thick that I knew at once that he had not been in the bush for long. He looked as if he had been bred for the purpose of eating me. He also looked as if he had not eaten lately; his ribs were getting close to the outside air.
    I’m not often amazed, but this was one of the times. In my seventy-nine years, I’ve fought at most twelve lions, considerably less than my biographer records. Usually, a male lion is as eager to avoid a battle as I am. But I have killed them with only a knife, as my biographer records, though there have never been any of the face-to-face encounters shown in those very bad and lying movies. If I got into the situations those actors did, my bowels would have been scooped out or my back muscles plucked out or my head bitten off.
    I crouched,