‘Two more turns!’ Again Manyoro stooped and cranked the handle.

‘Carb primed! Power on!’ Leon turned the selector on the dashboard to ‘battery’ and looked to the heavens. ‘Manyoro, hit her again!’ Manyoro spat on his right palm, gripped the crank handle and swung it.

There was an explosion like a cannon shot and a spurt of blue smoke flew from the exhaust pipe. The crank handle kicked back viciously and knocked Manyoro off his feet. The two skinners were taken aback. They had not been expecting anything nearly as spectacular. They howled with fright and scuttled for the bushes beyond the camp. There was a shouted oath from Percy’s thatched bungalow on the first slope of the hill at the perimeter of the camp and he stumbled out on to the stoep in his pyjama bottoms, beard in disarray, eyes unfocused with sleep. He stared in momentary confusion at Leon, who was beaming with triumph behind the steering-wheel. The engine rumbled, shook and backfired, then settled down into a loud, clattering beat.

Percy laughed. ‘Let me get my trousers on, then you can drive me to the club. I’m going to buy you as much beer as you can drink. Then you can go out and find that elephant. I don’t want you back in this camp until you have him.’

Leon stood below the familiar massif of Lonsonyo Mountain. He pushed his slouch hat to the back of his head and moved the heavy rifle from one shoulder to the other. He gazed up at the crest of the mountain. It took his sharp young eye to pick out the single lonely figure on the skyline. ‘She’s waiting for us,’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘How did she know we were coming?’

‘Lusima Mama knows everything,’ Manyoro reminded him, and started up the steep path towards the summit. He carried the waterbottles, the canvas haversack, Leon’s light .303 Lee-Enfield rifle and four bandoliers of ammunition. Leon followed him, and Ishmael brought up the rear, the skirts of his long white kanza flapping around his legs. An enormous bundle was balanced on his head. Before they had left Tandala Camp Leon had weighed it. It had come in at sixty-two pounds and contained Ishmael’s kitchen supplies, everything from pots and pans to pepper, salt and his own secret mixture of spices. With Leon providing a daily supply of tender young Tommy buck chops and steaks and Ishmael’s culinary skills they had eaten like princes since they had left the railway line at Naro Moru siding.

When they reached the mountaintop Lusima was waiting for them in the shade of a giant flowering seringa tree. She rose to her feet, tall and statuesque as a queen, and greeted them. ‘I see you, my sons, and my eyes are gladdened.’

‘Mama, we come for your blessing on our weapons and your guidance in our hunting,’ Manyoro told her, as he knelt before her.

The next morning the entire village gathered in a circle around the wild fig tree, the council tree, in the cattle pen to witness the blessing of the weapons. Leon and Manyoro squatted with them. Ishmael had refused to join in such a pagan ritual, and he clattered his pots ostentatiously over the cooking fire behind the nearest hut. Leon’s two rifles were laid side by side on a tanned lionskin. Beside them stood calabash gourds filled with fresh cow’s blood and milk, and baked-clay bowls of salt, snuff and glittering glass trade beads. At last Lusima emerged from the low door of her hut. The congregation clapped and began to sing her praises.

‘She is the great black cow who feeds us with the milk of her udders. She is the watcher who sees all things. She is the wise one who knows all things. She is the mother of the tribe.’ Lusima wore her full ceremonial regalia. On her forehead hung an ivory pendant carved with mystical animal figures. Her shuka was thickly embroidered with a shimmering curtain of beads and cowrie shells. Heavy coils of bead necklace hung down to her chest. Her skin was oiled and polished with red ochre, shining in the sunlight, and she carried a fly switch made from the tail of a giraffe. Her steps were stately as she circled the display of rifles and sacrificial offerings.

‘Let not the quarry escape the warrior who wields these weapons,’ she intoned, as she sprinkled a pinch of snuff over them. ‘Let blood flow copiously from the wounds they inflict.’ She dipped the switch into the gourds and splashed blood and milk on to the rifles. Then she went to Leon and flicked the mixture over his head and shoulders. ‘Give him strength and determination to follow the quarry. Make his hunter’s eyes bright to see the quarry from great distance. Let no creature resist his power. Let the mightiest elephant fall to the voice of his bunduki, his rifle.’

The watchers clapped in rhythm and she continued her exhortations: ‘Let him be the king among hunters. Grant him the power of the hunter.’

She began to dance in a tight circle, pirouetting faster and faster, until sweat and red ochre ran in a rivulet between her naked breasts. When she threw herself flat on the lionskin in front of Leon her eyes rolled back and white froth bubbled from the corners of her mouth. Her entire body began to tremble and twitch and her legs kicked spasmodically. She ground her teeth and her breath rasped painfully in her throat.

‘The spirit has entered her body,’ Manyoro whispered. ‘She is ready to speak with its voice. Put the question to her.’

‘Lusima, favourite of the Great Spirit, your sons seek a chief among the elephants. Where shall we find him? Show us the way to the great bull.’

Lusima’s head rolled from side to side and her breathing became more laboured until at last she spoke through gritted teeth, in a hoarse unnatural voice: ‘Follow the wind and listen for the voice of the sweet singer. He will point the way.’ She gave a deep gasp and sat up. Her eyes cleared and refocused and she looked at Leon as though she was seeing him for the first time.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘There is no more,’ she replied.

‘I don’t understand,’ Leon persisted. ‘Who is the sweet singer?’

‘That is all the message I have for you,’ she said. ‘If the gods favour your hunt, then in time the meaning will become clear to you.’

Since Leon’s arrival on the mountain Loikot had followed him around at a discreet distance. Now as he sat beside the campfire with a dozen of the village elders, Loikot was in the shadows behind him, listening attentively to the conversation, his head turning from face to face of the men who were speaking.

‘I wish to know the movements of men and animals throughout Masailand and down the full length of the Rift Valley, even in the land beyond the great mountains of Kilimanjaro and Meru. I want this information gathered and sent to me as swiftly as possible.’

The village elders listened to his request, then discussed it animatedly among themselves, everyone coming up with a different opinion. Leon’s grasp of the Maa language was not yet strong enough to follow the rapid fire of argument and counter-assertion. In a whisper Manyoro translated for him: ‘There are many men in Masailand. Do you want to know about every single one of them?’ the old men asked.

‘I don’t need to know about your people, the Masai. I want to know only about the strangers, the white men and especially the Bula Matari.’ They were the Germans. The name meant ‘breakers of rock’, for the earliest German settlers had been geologists who chipped away at the surface mineral formations with their hammers. ‘I want to know about the movements of the Bula Matari and their askari soldiers. I want to know where they build walls or dig ditches in which they place their bunduki mkuba, their great guns.’

The discussion went on late into the night with little decided. Finally the self-appointed spokesman of the group, a toothless ancient, closed the council with the fateful words, ‘We will think on all these things.’ They rose and filed away to their huts.