Every one of the
group carried the sharply inturned points to the horns: they were
all cows!
An instant after I had made out this fact, they stampeded across
our face. The whole band thundered and crashed away.
Desperately we sprang after them, our guns atrail, our bodies
stooped low to keep down in the shadow of the earth. And
suddenly, without the slightest warning we plumped around a bush
square on top of the entire herd. It had stopped and was staring
back in our direction. I could see nothing but the wild toss of a
hundred pair of horns silhouetted against such of the irregular
saffron afterglow as had not been blocked off by the twigs and
branches of the thicket. All below was indistinguishable
blackness.
They stood in a long compact semicircular line thirty yards away,
quite still, evidently staring intently into the dusk to find out
what had alarmed them. At any moment they were likely to make
another rush; and if they did so in the direction they were
facing, they would most certainly run over us and trample us
down.
Remembering the dusk I thought it likely that the unexpected
vivid flash of the gun might turn them off before they got
started. Therefore I raised the big double Holland, aimed below
the line of heads, and was just about to pull trigger when my eye
caught the silhouette of a pair of horns whose tips spread out
instead of turning in.
