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__THE LAST OF THE GREAT WHITE HUNTERS .|. PAGE 2 OF 2

Protecting safari clients from themselves and the wildlife was the white hunter's biggest worry. An oil man from Big Springs, Texas, and his country-club wife weren't necessarily experts in bush lore or handy with guns. If someone failed to make a clean shot and only wounded their quarry, it was Bunny, with his savvy Kipsigi gun bearers Kikunyu and Tabe, who had to track and finish it -- "though, if possible, I brought the hunter on at the last to take the final shot," he says. Trailing a wounded buffalo or lion across rough country can be risky.

This was how Bunny's nose was so beautifully broken. "I took a young woman out for leopard. Women always wanted a leopard, while men wanted lion and elephant. This girl was a fine shot, but on this morning she only wounded the animal and completely missed her second shot. The leopard went down through a crack in some rocks and disappeared into a cave. When I went in, he was on a shelf of rock five feet above me. I was knocked flat when he pounced. He swiped a paw across my face and broke my nose. I was pinned, the leopard's muzzle snuggled into the hollow of my neck. I must say, I was frightened for a moment, but he didn't actually bite me. What I mistook for blood was only saliva. I remember his eyes, amber they were. Golden-amber. We gazed at one another, just inches apart, and I thought only of the beauty of those eyes."

David gazes affectionately at his father. "I've never known Bunny to be frightened of anything."

"Well, I was very lucky," says Bunny, "because suddenly the animal moved off and was gone. Only badly scratched, I was, and my nose broken. Lucky indeed."

The 1950s were a time when African adventure yarns were part of the regular fare in neighborhood movie palaces. Bunny worked on several films, among them "King Solomon's Mines," "Mogambo" and "Nor the Moon by Night." This last film made Bunny's reputation as master of the elephant charge. "The first day Anton and I got what Hollywood wanted, a single bull to charge within 20 feet of the camera where, standing in for the hero, I shot it. The cameras were on automatic, the director and crew safely behind an outcropping of rocks."

The director, who seemed to believe wild animals were ordered like extras from Central Casting, then asked Bunny to maneuver a herd of 35 elephants so that they would pass just yards in front of the cameras. "Just be certain they charge from right to left!" Bunny says, mimicking the man from Hollywood. "'Won't from left to right do?' I asked. My warped humor sailed right over his head. 'No,' the man said, 'better be right to left, that's where our hero's standing.'"

Bunny and Anton moved the elephants to where they might be driven within camera range -- right to left. While Anton did the driving, Bunny, wearing the hero's hat and vest and carrying his beloved Rigby .470, stood before the cameras. "Well, the elephants started to move beautifully and correctly ... then they abruptly stopped. They'd caught our foul odor and fanned out to face us. They muttered together a few minutes, then came straight at the cameras, the crew, the director and me. Thirty-five trunks were raised. There were screams, bellows and roars, the cracking of trees. They came on and on until I shouted over my shoulder at the crew, 'Scram, you chaps!' They ran, but the cameras ground faithfully on. At 20 yards I knocked the leader down. The rest pulled up, muttered again, then an enormous old cow filled the rank and on they came."

When I saw this movie as a boy, I thought the elephant charge was tricky camera work or animals borrowed from Barnum and Bailey's Circus that were really quite tame. Seeing a clip of this charge today, I realize how horrifying it was. While the crew, led by the director, fled in terror, Bunny was left alone. "We'd killed one elephant so that the film's hero could pose with his trophy, and now this second bull. We had no license for a third -- so I placed a shot two inches over the old cow's head. That stopped her and the elephants milled about, thinking it over." Drawn up in his garden chair, Bunny swings his head from side to side in a telling impersonation of a contemplative elephant. "At last they decided to steer clear and went back the way they'd come." Bunny laughs softly. "When Anton and I saw the film in Nairobi a few months later, I must say we were amazed how well it all turned out."

Bunny's legend doesn't rest on his hunting laurels alone -- he was also a notorious man with the ladies. "Bunny cut a terrible swath among the women," says his wife, Jeri, pretty, petite and 10 years Bunny's junior. "A safari wasn't a safari unless Bunny had an affair. You could usually tell when the clients gathered around the campfire the first evening which it would be."

Bunny blushes, glances shyly around, rustles his feet in the acacia leaves, looking more like a contemplative elephant than ever.

"Once he took a beautiful American woman, her husband and their gorgeous 20-year-old daughter on safari," says Jeri, her sweet voice edged with fluting laughter. "The girl took a fancy to Bunny, and the first night slipped into Bunny's tent and his bed. A half-hour later, mother did the same."

"Well, there have been stories," Bunny says. "But I always came home."

"I cut him a lot of rope," says Jeri, "but when he'd gone far enough, I reeled him in."

"I've an eye for beauty, I believe," says Bunny, a dedicated amateur painter. "Not just a beautiful girl, but a beautiful landscape or a beautiful animal. But a beautiful girl, certainly."

Bunny played an integral role in the biggest safari in East African history, which moved out of Nairobi and made camp on the Kagera River, where Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda meet, to film MGM's. "Mogambo," directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner. It would be "a big picture -- we're big!" Sam Goldwyn had assured Bunny when they met in Hollywood. Goldwyn hired Bunny to run the safari -- which required feeding and bedding 500 people under canvas 300 miles from Nairobi, the source of all supplies. Bunny also acted as white hunter and Gable's stand-in. Bunny's longtime hunter-companion played Gable's gun bearer.

Gardner was married to Frank Sinatra at the time, and things weren't going well in their marriage. Sinatra hung around camp with nothing to do -- he couldn't stay and he couldn't go. "A petty chap, I thought," says Bunny. "He looked so unhappy. Though I can't say I disliked him. He was quite wonderful at Christmas, crooning carols. He began with 'Noel' and all the Africans, quite spontaneously, joined in the chorus, singing mightily in their native languages. Sinatra was stunned and quite moved. He helped make it a splendid Christmas."

Though he found Ford "a difficult old man to deal with -- a real bully," Bunny got on well with the stars, bringing Gable in on a scheme to rid the camp of troublesome lions and, of course, he found Kelly and Gardner irresistible.

Was it true Bunny had a love affair with Gardner during the filming? For the first time all afternoon, Bunny leaves us, sliding into some deep and mysterious drawer in his memory. When he speaks, it's to himself and to someone far inside. "Ava Gardner was a lovely girl. A beautiful body, a beautiful character. I loved her. A fine, fine girl -- she will always be in my mind and in my heart. A sweet girl."

As if on cue, the house man, Samuel Katana, who has been with Bunny and Jeri for years, brings a tray of drinks. We help ourselves while Bunny slowly comes back to the party.

David nods as Katana leaves. "It's because of people like Katana, wonderful Africans, that life here is not only possible, but full. If my father hadn't had Kikunyu and Tabe, he could never have done what he did -- all his success was predicated on them. Some people call them 'gun bearers,' but I find that inadequate. I prefer 'hunter-companions.'"

"I depended on them entirely," says Bunny, back from his solo voyage with Ava Gardner. "When Kikunyu went on to better things after 'Mogambo,' Tabe became my head bearer. He was a superb rider and, when I had several horses, helped me train them. He was wonderful company, ran my camps, tracked game, read the bush, was there to put in the killing shot when it was needed. A half-dozen times he saved my life by steering me around wounded buffalo in the bush. When we were separated out there, I tell you, I was lonely and uncertain. He knew everything. He was a fine man."

When Jeri and Bunny came to Lamu, Tabe followed them to the coast and lived nearby. "He came to me one night," Bunny says, moving into private memory once more, "complaining of stomach cramp. I massaged him with lion fat -- always keep lion fat for the purpose -- and he felt a bit better. In the morning his wife came to say he was improved. A quarter hour later, as I was finishing breakfast and getting ready to go over to see him, she was back. 'Tabe died,' she said." Tears mist Bunny's eyes as he looks back on that morning. "I can tell you, we were pretty broken up around here."

Late afternoon and monsoon clouds pile up across the water at Ras Kitau. A hundred yards beyond the sprawling house Bunny began building 35 years ago and has never quite finished, I climb through the village and up a low hill to a small cemetery. Here, in the shade of casurina trees, stands the headstone Bunny erected to honor his companion of so many hunts -- whom someday, one supposes, Bunny will join on this Shella hilltop for their last safari:

Tabe Arap Tilmet
1920-1983
A Fine Man.

Don Meredith is Wanderlust's Africa correspondent. He lives in Lamu, Kenya.