West with the Night

Markham describes the way her father took 1,500 acres near the community of Njoro and turned it into a farm. He also made it a sawmill that provided wood all over the region and a gristmill that produced grain for workers on the Uganda railway.

The author describes the economic development of the area as railways and telegraphs begin to make their way through British East Africa. Charles and Markham are neighbors to the famous Lord Delamere, one of the powerful forces guiding the development of British East Africa.

The author describes getting up one morning early with her half-bull terrier, half-sheep dog, Buller, taking her Masai spear, and sneaking out of the compound so she can avoid her morning classes in grammar and arithmetic. She arrives at the hut of a Nandi Murani (warrior) whom she will follow on a wild boar hunt.

The hunting party consists of Markham, Arab Maina, Arab Kosky, Buller, and several other trained dogs. Prior to leaving the village, they partake in a ritual for Nandi warriors. One of the Nandi young women, Jebbta, points out how unusual it is for a woman to go hunting. Describing Nandi women, the author writes, “They were shy and they were feminine and they did the things that women are meant to do, and they never hunted” (77).

As they walk along, Buller moves from the back of the party to the front and stops. Recognizing that game is near, the hunters wait. A reed buck leaps up 50 yards ahead of them, and Maina kills it instantly with his spear. They butcher the buck and give it to the dogs. When they come to an often-used salt lick, they are surprised to see that there are no animals. Quickly, they realize that a lion is at the gathering place. Determining the lion’s mood, the three hunters move down the trail without disturbing the lion and without the lion following them.

Eventually, they come to a place where they encounter wild pigs. When Maina spears a wild boar, it takes off with the spear still lodged in it, and Maina must follow. A second boar charges out of its lair and tangles with Kosky and Buller. Kosky receives a deep gash on his thigh. The boar runs away with Buller in hot pursuit. After evaluating his wound, Kosky and Markham decide that he must return to his home for medical treatment.

Markham follows the boar and her dog through the brush, sometimes hearing them and often seeing the trail of blood they leave. When she finally comes upon them, both Buller and the boar are terribly injured. The boar tries to attack Markham, only for Markham to dispatch it with her spear. Fearing that Buller might die, Markham sits with him as the sun goes down. After dark, Maina finds them. Maina grows upset with Kosky, saying that since Kosky is also a warrior, he should have remained with Markham and taken her to safety. Maina says that Buller will live and that they must wait until after the moon is high in the sky to return home. As they wait, Maina tells Markham a fable about a cunning hare.

Markham writes that, on the world stage, an assassination in Europe results in the commencement of a World War. Many Africans from different tribes serve in the war, including Maina, the father of Markham’s childhood friend Kibii. Though he was a wonderful hunter in the brush, Maina dies from a gunshot wound on the battlefield. Kibii promises that, once he has taken the rites of manhood, he will kill the man who shot his father.

Markham describes how she and Kibii admire the traditional customs of other tribal groups, such as the ingomas (ritual dances) of the young Kikuyu people. Kibii tells Markham the creation legend in which God gives competing messages to a chameleon and an egret. The chameleon is to tell humanity that there is no death, and the egret is to say that there is death. Since the chameleon is lazy, the egret spreads the word first, allowing death to come to human beings.

Among the horses that Markham trains for her father is a bay thoroughbred stallion named Camciscan. Arrogant and given to angry mood swings, the horse throws Markham, injuring her head. When she returns to her work, she pits her will against his. On one occasion, their struggle causes him to end up on the ground. She whips him with her crop and begins to pet him everywhere she struck him. After this, she is able to work around him without fear that he will attack her. Once, she sleeps in his stall during a thunderstorm while he stands above her.

The author describes an Abyssinian filly named Coquette that her father purchases surreptitiously. She is the only horse of this breed in East Africa since, as she writes, “Abyssinians do not permit good native mares to leave their country” (117).

Markham oversees the care and breeding of Coquette. Along with two syces (stable hands), Otieno and Toombo, she tracks the gestation of the horse until it is time for her foal to be born. Markham does not realize, as she delivers the horse, that her father has been watching from the shadows. When he observes the quality of care she gives to Coquette, he decides to give the foal to her, and she names the colt after the winged horse of Greek mythology, Pegasus. She writes, “Who doesn’t look upward when searching for a name? Was there a horse named Pegasus that flew? Was there a horse with wings? Yes, once there was—once, long ago, there was. And now there is again” (127).