Talbot Mundy

“ We could see their mules, like brown insects, tied under a tree, and the cattle dotted here and there, some lying down, some feeding.
“At last!” said Brown. “Boys, they’re our meat! There’s a tree to hang the Greeks and the Goa to! When we’ve done that, if you’ll all come back with me I’ll send to Nairobi for an extra jar of Irish whisky, and we’ll have a spree at Lumbwa that’ll make the fall of Rome sound like a Sunday-school picnic! We’re in German territory now, all right. There’s not a white man for a hundred miles in any direction—except your friend that’s coming along behind. ”

“ Our troubles were not all over, for we passed through a country where buck were fairly plentiful, and that meant lions. They did no damage, but they kept us awake; and one night near the first village we came to, where our porters all quartered themselves with the villagers for sake of the change from their crowded tents, the fires that we made went out, and five lions (we counted their foot-prints afterward) came and sniffed around the pegs of the tent in which Fred and I lay, we lying still and shamming dead. To have lifted a rifle in the darkness and tried to shoot would have been suicide. ”

“ As it was, one seized me by the knees and we went over together, rolling down the ant-hill, he slashing at me with his great broad-bladed spear, I hold of his wrist with one hand, and with the other fist belaboring him in the face. He was stronger than I—greasier—sweatier—harder to hold. He slipped from under me, rolled on top, wrenched his wrist free, and in another second grinned in my face as, with both knees in my stomach, be raised the spear to kill. ”

“ And it was evident that unless they chose to leave me in camp where I was they would have to abandon all thought of pursuing Masai for the present. Even Brown saw the force of that, and he was the first to refuse flatly to leave me there.
For a while they hunted through the grass for more wounded men, but found none. There must have been several, but they probably feared the sort of mercy from us that they habitually gave to their own enemies, and crawled away—in all likelihood to die of thirst and hunger, unless some beast of prey should smell them out and make an earlier end. ”

“ Fred and I saw the humor of the thing, and that enabled us to save Will from disaster. There never was a man more respectful of women than Will. He would even get off the sidewalk for a black woman, and would neither tell nor laugh at the sort of stories that pass current about women in some smoking-rooms. His hair bristled. His ears stuck out on either side of his head. He leaned forward—laid one strong brown hand on the desk—and shook his left fist under the collector’s nose. ”

“ I detected no sign of recognition on Schillingschen’s face.
The boys reached the tent with his breakfast, and one of them dragged a chair from inside the tent for me. I sat down on it without waiting for the professor to invite me.
“I’m tired,” I said, untruthfully, minded to refuse an invitation to eat, but interested to see whether he would invite me or not.
“Have you any friends at the hotel?” he asked, looking up at me darkly under the bushiest eyebrows I ever saw.
“I’ve got friends wherever I go,” I answered. “I make friends.” ”

“ When I had wiped off that mess with Kazimoto’s help I saw Fred and Will and Brown pursuing the retreating Masai, kneeling to shoot every few yards, at every other shot or so bringing down a victim, but being rapidly out-distanced. Cattle are all the Masai care about. They had the cattle. They had hold of tails and were making the whole herd scamper due east, where they no doubt knew of a trail not in maps. They made no attempt to defend themselves—left their dead lying—and ran. ”

“ We lay on the top of the hill and watched for two or three hours, but although we heard rifle firing repeatedly we did not once catch sight of smoke or men. We marched into camp late that night with a feeling of foreboding that we could not explain but that troubled us both equally.
Once or twice in the night we heard firing again, as if somebody’s camp not very far away was invaded by leopards, or perhaps lions. Yet at dawn there were no signs of tents. And when that night we arrived at Brown’s homestead we seemed to have the whole world to ourselves. ”

“ He sprang back, and made another lunge at me, but Fred’s rifle barked at the same second and he fell over sidewise, driving the spear into my leg in his death spasm.
The twenty minutes following that are the worst in memory. Kazimoto broke the gruesome news that the spear-blade was almost surely poisoned—dipped in gangrene. The Masai are no believers in wounded enemies, or mercy on the battlefield. ”

“ The Masai, in accordance with time-honored custom, had come from British East to raid the lake-shore villages of German territory, and were driving back the plundered cattle. None can drive cattle as Masai can. They can take leg-weary beasts by the tail and make them gallop, one beast encouraging the next until they all go like the wind. For food they drink hot blood, opening a vein in a beast’s neck and closing it again when they have had their fill. Their only luggage is a spear. Their only speed-limit the maximum the cattle can be stung to. ”

“ There isn’t a village in that part of Africa that is not proud to be a host to anybody’s cattle, if only because the ownership of so much living wealth casts glory on all who come in contact with it.
There was no means of telling whether or not we were over the German border. The boundary line had not been surveyed yet, and on the map the part where we were was set down as “unexplored,” although that was scarcely accurate; the route was well enough known to Greeks and Arabs, and other had characters bent on smuggling or in some other way defeating the ends of justice. ”

“ Nobody had a better plan to propose, so we emptied our pockets of all but fifty rounds of ammunition each, and gave the rest to Kazimoto to carry, with orders to keep in hiding and watch, and run with cartridges to whoever should first need them.
Then, because instead of corralling their cattle the Masai were already dividing themselves into two parties, one of which drove the cattle forward and the other diverged to study the attack, we ducked down under a ridge and ran toward the Greeks. The sooner we could get the first stage of the fighting off our hands the better. ”

“ I said, still standing on the ant-hill, “the Masai are following the cattle! They’re smoking this way in two single columns of about twenty spears in each. The remainder are driving their own cattle about due eastward so as to be out of the way of trouble.”
“All right,” said Brown, growing suddenly cheerful again. “Then it’ll be a rear-guard action. Let the cattle through, and open fire behind ’em! Send that Kazimoto o’ yours to warn our boys to round ’em up and drive ’em slow and steady northward!” ”

“ We did not believe that. Even Brown did not believe it. There was no time to spare, but Brown out of curiosity agreed, so we took the absurd canoe and poled down to investigate. As we came nearer the solid white broke up into a myriad dots, and Fred’s tale stood confirmed.
They were as long as two hens’ eggs laid end to end, or longer. They lay in the sun in batches in every stage of incubation, and from almost every batch there were little crocodiles emerging, that made straight for the water. ”

“ I was useless now, as far as fighting was concerned, for the butt of my rifle was broken clean off at the grip, but I ran on, and heard Brown shout: “Shoot cattle! Don’t let the brutes get away with them all!”
He was shooting cows himself when I came up, but it was Fred who stopped him.
“Never mind that, old man. We’ll follow ’em up! Our time’s our own. We’ll get your cattle back, never fear. Dead ones are no use.” ”

“ When we awoke the morning mist would scatter slowly and betray sleepy herds of antelope, that would rise leisurely, stand staring at us, suddenly become suspicious, and then gallop off until the whole plain was a panorama of wheeling herds, reminding one of the cavalry maneuvers at Aldershot when the Guards regiments were pitted against the regular cavalry—all riding and no wits. ”

“ The boy went away.
“The last man who went shooting near Nairobi without a license,” he said, “tried to excuse himself before the magistrate by claiming ignorance of the law. He was fined a thousand rupees and sentenced to six months in jail!”
“Very severe!” I said.
“They are altogether too severe,” he answered. “I hope you have killed nothing. It is good you came first to me. You would better stand that rifle over here in the corner of my tent. To walk back to the hotel with it over your shoulder would be dangerous.” ”

“ We hurried up-hill, but for many minutes could see nothing except a plain of waving grass higher than a man’s head and almost as impenetrable as bamboo-country that carried small hope in it for man or beast, that would be a holocaust in the dry season when the heat set fire to the grass, and was an insect-haunted marsh at most other times. ”

“ The right-hand column continued to attack, but changed its tactics. The left-hand party made a circuit at top speed, outflanked us, and pursued the cattle.
Supposing my count was right, we had laid out, either wounded or dead, seven of the crowd attacking us. This left perhaps fourteen against us, to be dealt with before the others could come back with the cattle and take us in the rear.
Will brought another man down; I saw the blood splash on his forehead as the bullet drilled the skull cleanly. ”

“ One glimpse of the owner of a title that stands written in the Doomsday Book would have outshone the halo of Schillingschen’s culture.
I rattled off what I had to say, telling the story from th moment I started to follow Hassan from the hotel down to the end, omitting nothing.
“Schillingschen is worse than a spy. He’s a black-hearted, schemer. He’s planning to upset British rule in this Protectorate and make it easy for the Germans to usurp!”
“This is nonsense!” the collector interrupted. “Professor Schillingschen is the honored friend of the British government. ”

“ Partly by dint of carelessness that brought no ill results, and partly from observation we learned that where game is plentiful lions are more curious than dangerous, and that unless something should happen to enrage them, or the game has gone away and they are hungry, they are likely to let well alone.
If there are dogs in camp—and we bought three terrier pups that morning from a settler at Kikuyu—leopards are likely to be more troublesome than lions. The leopards seemed to yearn for dog-meat much as Brown of Lumbwa yearned for whisky. ”

“ Will chose a Malindi boy named Tengeneza (and that means arrange in order, fix, make over, manage, mend—no end of an ominous name!) . They were both outclassed from the start by Kazimoto, but to add to the handicap he insisted that since he was a headman he would need some one to help look after Fred at times when other duties would monopolize his attention. He himself picked out an imp of mischief whose tribe I never ascertained, but who called himself Simba (lion) , and there and then Simba departed up-stairs to steal for Fred whatever was left of value among Will’s effects and mine. ”

“ I had tied it to the tent pole, but the stout cord snapped like a hair and the darkness swallowed both leopard and its prey before I could as much as reach my rifle to get a shot.
“Splendid country for farmin” Brown remarked, “Splendid. Only you can’t keep sheep because the leopards take ’em. You can’t keep hens for the same reason. Nor yet cows, because the leopards get the calves—leastways, that’s to say unless you watch out awful cautious. Nor yet you can’t keep pigeons, ’cause the leopards take them too. ”

“ If they once get over the border with all those cattle, the Germans’ll never hand ’em over until every head o’ cattle’s gone. They’ll fine ’em, an’ arrest ’em, an’ trick ’em, an’ fine ’em again until the Germans own the herd all legal an’ proper—an’ then they’ll chase the Greeks back to British East for punishment same as they always do. ”

“ We were few when the paleface people came—scattered and few and afraid.
Fewer were they, but they brought the law, and the dark-skin men obeyed.
The paleface people drew a line that none by dark or day
Might cross with fell intent to hunt—capture or drive or slay. ”

“ It does not pay to wax enthusiastic over natives, even when one suspects they bring good news. We took the letter from him, told him to wait, and went on in. Once out of the man’s hearing Fred tore the letter open and read it aloud to us.
“Herewith my Kazimoto,” it ran. “Be good to him. It occurred to me that you might not care after all to linger in Nairobi, and it seemed hardly fair to keep the boy from getting a good job simply because be could make me comfortable for the remainder of a week. ”

“ Before us was the pass through which the railway threaded over the wide high table-land before dipping downward to Victoria Nyanza. On our left front was all Kikuyu country, and after that Lumbwa, and native reserves, and forest, and swamp, and desert, and the German boundary.
We made a long march of it that first day, and camped after dark within two miles of Kikuyu station. Most of the scrub thereabouts was castor oil plant, that makes very poor fuel; yet there were lions in plenty that roared and scouted around us even before the tents were pitched. ”

“ There’s nothing in life for a drunkard like me with all his money gone and nothing to do but take a mean white’s job. You chaps just wait here and watch while I ‘tend to my own affairs.”
“Exactly!” Will answered dryly. “I’ve a hundred rounds in my pockets. That ought to be enough.”
While we made ready, leaving our loads and porters in a safe place and giving the boys orders, I saw two things happen. First, the Masai became aware of the little Greek encampment and the two hundred head of cattle waiting at their mercy; and second, the Greeks grew aware of the Masai.
The Greeks had boys with them ”