Free The Setting Sun by Bart Moore-Gilbert

his field glasses, before signalling Hamisi up beside him .
    The boy sees the black spot between the target’s eyes before he hears the deafening report. There’s a cacophony of protest as every bird within half a mile takes wing. The elephant settles itself a moment before slipping gracefully to its knees, then keels over in slow motion. The trunk’s the last thing to hit the ground, as if it wants one last draw of savannah air. The boy’s awestruck .
    ‘Keep your eyes peeled,’ his father calls back, breaking the dead silence which eventually ensues, ‘the mother may still be around.’
    The boy looks warily along the inscrutable scrub. But white egrets are already returning to sit amongst the thorn branches, at a respectful distance. If they all suddenly flap up again, it’s time to worry. Yet he’s trembling violently when they advance to examine the animal. Its foreleg’s in terrible condition. In trying to free itself, the elephant has tightened the noose and the wire has cut to the bone. The iron picket to which the noose is attached is hammered down below ground level, protected by barbed wire to prevent the elephant pulling it out. Even had she succeeded, which sometimes happens, the injury would soon have finished her off. Maggots are already swarming in the raw flesh, flies settling on the clouding long-lashed eyes. In its death-throe, the elephant has expelled a last massive pat of dung, which smells sweet as cut meadow .
    The boy’s father gives orders to the scouts and tracker, who disappear towards the east. Hamisi follows behind. With his easy loping stride, which can swallow forty miles in a day, he can afford them a head start .
    ‘They’ll probably have heard the shot and be miles away by the time we find their camp.’
    ‘Why did the mother leave her?’ the boy asks, focused entirely on the elephant .
    ‘Maybe they killed her first. This one’s tusks are so small they perhaps couldn’t be bothered, and she wandered over here. Or they’re coming back later to check the trap.’
    His father’s subdued for the rest of the day. The episode has cast a shadow over what, for the boy, has been the happiest three weeks he can remember. On returning to camp, the game ranger dispatches more scouts with the driver, to dig up the noose as evidence, hack out the tusks and cut up the carcase to be distributed to the fishermen. It’s a way of keeping them onside, they’re a vital source of information. Late afternoon, they drive the Bedford truck down to the marshes. The fishermen are pleased to see them and even happier with the elephant meat, strips of raw, red, rubbery flesh which turn the boy’s stomach as they slither across the tarpaulin. More and more poachers are coming across from the Congo side, the fishermen complain. They, too, suffer from the trespassers, who often demand food and sometimes take their catches by force .
    While the adults discuss, the boy wanders off. He’s fascinated by these temporary wet-season settlements. The fishermen make platforms of reeds to sleep on, within a scaffolding of branches, lashed together with strips of bark, on which they dry their harvest. Mainly it’s catfish, with flat, wide heads and long whiskers. In the broiling sun they shrink, turning and leather-brown, like stinking sandals. Around their camps, the reeds stretch for miles in ankle-deep water from the flooding Ugalla. The boy loves to slosh through them in his new gumboots, replacements for the ones stolen from outside his tent on the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater. His father hadn’t believed him when the boy claimed to have heard snuffling during the night. Only when they continued the hyena cull the following day and one gumboot was found in an elderly female’s stomach did his father apologise. The next time he went to Arusha, he bought the best replacements he could find .
    Later, the fishermen take them to see the latest wave of migratory birds. Crouching behind a tussocked ridge