It is noon. Francis Macomber is on an African safari; Macomber is thirty-five years old, a trim, fit man who holds a number of big-game fishing records. However, at the moment, he has just demonstrated that he is a coward. However, members of the safari are acting as though “nothing had happened.” The natives at camp carried Macomber into camp triumphantly, but the gun-bearers who witnessed Macomber’s cowardice do not participate in the celebration.
In a flashback, the reader realizes that Macomber and his beautiful wife, Margot, are wealthy Americans, and that this jaunt is their first safari—and that Macomber, when faced with his first lion, bolted and fled, earning the contempt of his wife. Of course, though, she has been contemptuous of him for some time; Francis’ running from the lion like a scared rabbit has only increased her dislike for her unmanly husband. She makes no secret of this as she slips off in the middle of the night for a rendezvous with the safari guide, Robert Wilson.
Next day, as she observes Francis gaining a measure of courage as he engages in a standoff with a charging water buffalo, she realizes that if Francis continues to prove himself strong and willful and courageous, he might leave her and rid himself forever of her sharp-tongued ridicule.
As the standoff with the second water buffalo becomes more intense as the water buffalo’s horns inch closer and closer to goring Francis, Margot takes aim at the water buffalo, shooting Francis in the back of the head, and he dies at the most courageous moment of his “short happy life.”
