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Issue Number 26
Slowly I creep up on my quarry. I resist the urge to glance at the slim piece of old technology in my hand as I wonder again if this is carrying “fair chase” too far. Too late now, it’s the only thing I have with me as I enter his lair. I am good with it but now I need all my other skills to execute the stalk in silence. I move with the sounds from the watering hole to cover any noise I make. He has made a mistake today, lazing about after feeding with his back to the entrance to this place that he has made his home. I raise my arms, get the sight picture right and slowly squeeze...
“I say, Barry” my quarry chuckles, “will your readers really want to see a flat photo of the back of my head?
Crestfallen, I shake my head. I don’t know how he could have done it. The noise from the bar of the Club Zambezi should have covered my approach even with a bare tile floor. Peter Corbett-Bell smiles broadly as he gestures to the empty place across the table. I sink into the padded wicker and fix him with my best steely glare.
“How?” I ask, my disappointment dripping off the single word question like rain off a forest canopy.
“Silver teapot, old boy,” Bell says with a gesture at the shining flask in front of him. “Ever since ‘One Shot’ Harris told me how he took the One Ton Tusker on Thornhill I’ve had a silver teapot at all my camps.”
Oh dear reader I knew the dangers of my next act but the master hunter had me ensnared. All I could do was settle comfortably, help myself to the tea and fall into his trap.
“And how does the largest bogwhump tusk in history and a presumed reprobate named ‘One Shot’ Harris lead to a silver teapot on your table?” I asked.
“I’m glad you asked,” Bell said with a smile on his seamed face.
“It all starts with the Thornhill Flowers of Spring Festival. The swamps that circle the main city gave rise to some of the most beautiful orchids and annuals to be found in the Marches. Every year thousands of horticulturists descend on Thornhill and just by happenstance spend enough to keep the city going until the bogwhump rut starts in the fall drawing the next influx of cash cows, oh excuse me, I meant off planet visitors.
“The year this happened though, the winter had been harsher than usual and several bogwhumps had drifted closer to town than is comfortable with multi-ton predators. The local Fish and Wildlife boys had good success hunting out the more pushy ‘whumps and announced the Festival was safe. This is where TriDs would put in the ominous music.
“It seems that all was well until the city council sent out the boat to do a final bloom count and something turned fifteen meters of steel and glass into a bad post modernist sculpture about hubris. A series of meter wide tusk shaped holes sent the F&W troops back out. They used the tried and true TNT toss method of discouraging big nibbling things with tusks.
“Unfortunately, concussion doesn’t work on old, deaf bogwhumps with stiff swimming pods. Another boat becomes much flatter and the sole survivor tells of the beast heaving itself along hundreds of meters out of the water to get the crew. Bogwhumps don’t do that unless they’re starving. And since a starving bull Greater Bogwhump would change the theme of the Festival to ‘come to Thornhill and go home in an envelope’, the good burghers were a tad upset.
“It turns out that at the same time a well known PH (Professional Hunter) was enjoying a serene vacation as a guest of the city after celebrating a bit too boisterously. Donald Harris and a band of his cronies had been toasting the memory of those tusk hunters who had not quite outrun the bogwhumps in the season just past. Apparently there were enough ‘matchbox funerals’ to endanger the livers of the remaining tusk hunters and the furniture of their favorite bar, Swamper’s. Evidently in their casual leave taking Harris had become entangled with some city employees and had a misunderstanding.
“Donald was offered both the time and damages forgiven if he would be so kind as to remove the largest bogwhump in living memory from the environs of Thornhill in time for the Festival. Still under the effects of his mourning he said yes. Years later he told me the prospects of dealing with his hangover were more terrifying than facing a predator listed in ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’. Harris took his crew, camp and boat out to hummock between both attack sites and set up to start hunting in the morning. Donald was just drinking a cup of tea and thinking about how his options were limited to taking the beast by rifle when he noticed a hill in the sunset’s reflection of his teapot.
“He was on the highest point in the swamp for miles."
“Harris had just enough time to shoulder his Four Bore Gauss rifle when the massive animal charged his camp. Just as the ‘whump threw back his head for the tusking strike Harris took the only shot available, the frontal hindbrain shot made famous by ‘Tousonga’ Smith. Even as he aimed Donald remembered all the weekend bwanas that got short trying Smith’s famous ‘Let them close’ hunting strategy. The hypersonic crack slapped around the swamp and the bogwhump froze, then collapsed, driving the enormous killing tooth into the ground at the hunter’s feet.”
“You mean to tell me he was so sure the bogwhump was dead he didn’t put a finisher into the monster?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh no,” Bell answered sipping his tea. “Harris just couldn’t see how he could climb the carcass with it rippling in it’s death throes to get the right angle for the shot into the second ear membrane. As he finished his tea the bogwhump went still and emptied it’s lungs in the bogwhump’s mournful death wheeze. The legend of ‘One Shot’ Harris was born.”
I’m taken by surprise as Bell stands up to greet some guests at the door of his club. He’s escaped me for now, but one day I’ll have his stories, including the one about the broken tusk in the lobby that’s half again as wide as the One Ton Tusk.
The hunt is on.