Still Glahn made no answer. Instead, he showed his childishness once
more, shooting the dead leopard again, this time through the head. I
looked at him in utter astonishment.
“Well, you know,” he explains, “I shouldn't like to have it said that I
shot a leopard in the flank.”
“You are very amiable this evening,” I said.
It was too much for his vanity to have made such a poor shot; he must
always be first. What a fool he was! But it was no business of mine,
anyway. I was not going to show him up.
In the evening, when we came back to the village with the dead leopard,
a lot of the natives came out to look at it. Glahn simply said we had
shot it that morning, and made no sort of fuss about it himself at the
time. Maggie came up too.
“Who shot it?” she asked.
And Glahn answered:
“You can see for yourself--twice hit. We shot it this morning when we
went out.” And he turned the beast over and showed her the two bullet
wounds, both that in the flank and that in the head. “That's where mine
went,” he said, pointing to the side--in his idiotic fashion he wanted
me to have the credit of having shot it in the head. I did not trouble
to correct him; I said nothing. After that, Glahn began treating the
natives with rice beer--gave them any amount of it, as many as cared to
drink.
“Both shot it,” said Maggie to herself; but she was looking at Glahn all
the time.