They approached the three from behind with hunched shoulders, stealthily placing one leg before the other, keeping their heads low.

Their friend, one with feet almost as dark as coal, trailed from a distance of about seventy yards. His soles made almost no sound as they came into contact with the ground.

Their targets, focused and oblivious, were fixated on the elephants in the distance. As if acting on a choreographed work they practiced to perfection, they raised their arms with a bow and poisoned arrow in hand, in unison.

The cats sprung.

Startled and dumbfounded, the men did not release. They barely made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn before large canines and claws tore at flesh and bone.

The afflicted caught a glimpse of a silhouetted figure in the not too far off distance. He watched them scream until their cries could be heard no more.

The dark fellow, with the sun to his back, and beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, calmly advanced while a fourth man, a stone’s throw and forty degrees to the west, trembled concealed behind a large rock.

The dark one, Nyeusi was his name, sat under a nearby tree for shade while the cats ate.

He leaned back, rested against its trunk, and closed his eyes. A cool wind swept through his mane of hair and dried the sweat on his brow.

The witness, a certain Daniel Salah, was sure to keep as still as he could.

He waited some twenty minutes after watching Nyeusi rise and walk away from what was left of the carnage. The cats trailed closely behind.

Daniel, having noticed there was no sign of anyone else around, got up and hastily departed.