n Cape, too, or Kenyarobi. Damned silly, this business of
being a white hunter, when there was nothing left to hunt.

But somehow he'd stayed on, since Dad died. There were a few
compensations. At least here in the forests a man could still move
about a bit, taste privacy and solitude and the strange, exotic
tropical fruit called loneliness. Even _that_ was vanishing today.

It was compensation enough, perhaps, for lugging this damned Jeffrey.
Mike tried to remember the last time he'd fired it at a living target.
A year, two years? Yes, almost two. That gorilla up in Ruwenzori
country. At least the boys swore it was _ingagi_. He hadn't hit it,
anyway. Got away in the darkness. Probably he'd been shooting at a
shadow. There were no more gorillas--maybe _they_ had been taking the
shots, too. Perhaps they'd all turned into rhesus monkeys.

Mike watched the boy run towards him. It was a good five hundred yards
from the river bank, and the short brown legs couldn't move very
swiftly. He wondered what it felt like to be small. One's sense of
proportion must be different. And that, in turn, would affect one's
sense of values. What values applied to the world about you when you
were only three feet high?

Mike wouldn't know. He was a big man--almost five feet seven.

Sometimes Mike reflected on what things might be like if he'd been
born, say, twenty years later. By that time almost everyone would be a
product of Leff shots, and he'd be no exception. He might stay with
people his own age in Kenyarobi without feeling self-conscious,
clumsy, conspicuous. Pressed, he had to admit that was part of the
reason he preferred to remain out here at Dad's old place now. He
could tolerate the stares of the natives, but whenever he ventured
into a city he felt awkward under the scrutiny of the young people.
The way those teen-agers looked up at him made him feel a monster,
rather.

Better to endure the monotony, the emptiness out here. Yes, and wait
for a chance to hunt. Even though, nine times out of ten, it turned
out to be a wild goose-chase. During the past year or so Mike had
hunted nothing but legends and rumors, spent his time stalking
shadows.

Then the villagers had come to him, three days ago, with their wild
story. Even when he heard it, he realized it must be pure fable. And
the more they insisted, the more they protested, the more he realized
it simply couldn't be.

Still, he'd come. Anything to experience some action