The Leopard Woman Part 9

And they, racing eagerly forward, their faces illuminated with one of the strongest joys the native knows, shouted back:

"_Nyama! nyama!_"

For another two days the provisioning was a.s.sured.

CHAPTER VIII

THE THIRST

The little safari made the distance to Simba's guarded water in a trifle over the four hours. Camp was made high up on the kopje whence the eye could carry to immense distances. The wall of mountains was now nearer. Through his gla.s.ses Kingozi could distinguish rounded foothills. He tried to make out whether certain dark patches were groves or patches of bush--they might have been either--but was unable to determine. Relative sizes did not exist. The mountains might be five thousand feet tall or only a fifth of that. And by exactly that proportion they might be a day's or a five days' journey distant!

Carefully Kingozi examined the length of the range. At length his attention was arrested. A thread of smoke, barely distinguishable against the gray of distance, rose within the shadow of the hills.

"Simba!" Kingozi summoned. Then, on the gun bearer's approach: "Look through the gla.s.ses and tell me whether that smoke is a house or a fire in the gra.s.s."

Simba accepted the gla.s.ses, but first took a good look with the naked eye. He caught the location of the smoke almost at once. Then for a full two minutes he stared through the lenses.

"It is a house, _bwana_," he decided.

As though the words had been a magic spell the mountains seemed in Kingozi's imagination to diminish in size and to move forward. They had a.s.sured a definite proportion, a definite position. Their distance could be estimated.

"And how far?" he asked.

"Very far, _bwana_," replied Simba gravely, "eleven hours; twelve hours."

Kingozi reflected. The safari of the Leopard Woman had pa.s.sed the kopje not over a mile away; indeed Kingozi had left her trail only a short distance back. On the supposition that she was well informed, it seemed unlikely that she could expect to make the whole distance from the last camp to the mountains in one march. Therefore there must be another water between. In that case, if Kingozi followed her tracks, he would arrive at that water. On the other supposition--that she was striking recklessly into the unknown--well, all the more reason for following her tracks!

They commenced their journey before daylight the following morning.

Each man was instructed to fill his water bottle; and the instructions were rigidly enforced. In the darkness they stumbled down the gentle slopes of the kopjes, each steering by the man ahead, and Kingozi steering by the stars. The veldt was still, as though all the silences, driven from those portions inhabited by the beasts, had here made their refuge. The earth lay like a black pool becalmed. Overhead the stars blazed clearly, slowly faded, and gave way to the dawn. The men spoke rarely, and then in low voices.

Kingozi led the way steadily, without hurrying, but without loitering.

Daylight came: the sun blazed. The country remained the same in character. Behind them the kopje dwindled in importance until it took its place with insignificant landmarks. The mountains ahead seemed no nearer.

At the end of three hours, by the watch Kingozi carried on his wrist, he called the first halt. The men laid down their loads, and sprawled about in abandon. Kingozi produced a pipe.

The rest lasted a full half hour. Then two hours more of marching, and another rest. By now a normal day's march would be about over. But this was different. Kingozi rigidly adhered to the plan for all forced marches of this kind: three hours, a half-hour's rest; then two hours, a half-hour's rest; and after that march and rest as the men can stand it, according to their strength and condition.

This latter is the cruel period. At first the ranks hold together.

Then, in spite of the efforts of the headman to bring up the rear, the weaker begin to fall back. They must rest oftener, they go on with ever-increasing difficulty. The strong men ahead become impatient and push on. The safari is no longer a coherent organization, but an aggregate of units, each with his own problem of weariness, of thirst, finally of suffering. More and more stretches the distance between the _bwana_ and his headman.

No native of the porter intelligence has the slightest forethought for the morrow, and very little for the day. If it is hot and he has started early, his water bottle is empty by noon.

This wise program Kingozi entered upon carefully. The three hours'

march went well; the two hours followed with every one strong and cheerful; then two hours more without trouble. Kingozi's men were picked, and hard as nails. By now it was one o'clock; coming the hottest part of the day. The power of the vertical sun attained its maximum. Kingozi felt as though a heavy hand had been laid upon his head and was pressing him down. The mirage danced and changed, its illusions succeeding one another momently as the successive veils of heat waves shimmered upward. Reflected heat scorched his face. His spirit retired far into its fastness, taking with it all his energies.

From that withdrawn inner remoteness he doled out the necessary vitality parsimoniously, drop by drop. Deliberately he withdrew his attention from the unessentials. Not a glance did he vouchsafe to the prospect far or near; not a thought did he permit himself of speculation or of wandering interest. His sole job now was to plod on at an even gait, to keep track of time, to follow the spoor of the Leopard Woman's safari, to save himself for later. If he had spared any thought at all, it would have been self-congratulation that Simba and Cazi Moto were old and tried. For Simba relieved him of the necessity of watching for dangerous beasts, and Cazi Moto of the responsibility of keeping account of the men.

At the rest periods Kingozi sat down on the ground. Then in the relaxation his intelligence emerged. He took stock of the situation.

Mali-ya-bwana and nine others were always directly at his heels. They dropped their loads and grinned cheerfully at their _bwana_, their bronze faces gleaming as though polished. If only they were all like this! Then perhaps five minutes later a smaller group came in, strongly enough. The first squad shouted ridiculing little jokes at them; and they shrieked back spirited repartee, whacking their loads vigorously with their safari sticks. These, too, would cause no anxiety. But then Kingozi sat up and began to take notice. The men drifted in by twos and threes. Kingozi scrutinized them closely, trying to determine the state of their strength and the state of their spirit. And after twenty minutes, or even the full half hour allotted to the rest period, Cazi Moto came in driving before him seven men.

The wizened little headman was as cheerful and lively and vigorous as ever. He, too, grinned, but his eyes held a faint anxiety, and he had shifted his closed umbrella to his left hand and held the _kiboko_ in his right. At the fifth rest period five of the seven men stumbled wearily in; but Cazi Moto and the other two did not appear before Kingozi ordered a resumption of the march.

But the mountains had moved near. When this had happened Kingozi could not have told. It was between two rest periods. From an immense discouraging distance, they towered imminent. It seemed that a half-hour's easy walk should take them to the foothills. Yet not a man there but knew that this nearness was exactly as deceitful as the distance had been before.

The afternoon wore on. Kingozi's canteen was all but empty, though he had drunk sparingly, a swallow at a time. His tongue was slightly swollen. The sun had him to a certain extent; so that, although he could rouse himself at will, nevertheless, he moved mechanically in a sort of daze.

He heard Simba's voice; and brought himself into focus.

The gun bearer was staring at something on the ground. Kingozi followed the direction of his gaze. Before him lay a dead man.

It was one of the common porters--a tall, too slender savage, with armlets of polished iron, long, ropy hair--a typical _shenzi_. His load was missing: evidently one of the _askaris_ had taken it up.

Kingozi's safari filed by, each man gazing in turn without expression at the huddled heap. Only Maulo, the camp jester, hurled a facetious comment at the corpse. Thereupon all the rest laughed after the strange, heartless custom of the African native. Or is it heartless? We do not know.

The day's march had pa.s.sed through the phase of coordinated action. It was now the duty of each man to get in if he could. It was Kingozi's duty to arrive first, and to arrange succour for Cazi Moto and those whom he drove.

Twenty minutes beyond the dead man they came upon three porters sitting by the wayside. They were men in the last extremity of thirst and exhaustion, their eyes wide and vacant, their tongues so swollen that their teeth were held apart. Nothing was to be done here, so Kingozi marched by.

Then he came upon a half-dozen bags of _potio_. They were thrown down pellmell, anyhow; so that Kingozi concluded they had been surrept.i.tiously thrown away, and not temporarily abandoned with intent to return for them.

After that the trail resembled the traces of a rout. Every few yards now were the evidences of desperation: loads of _potio_, garments, water bottles emptied and cast aside in a gust of pa.s.sion at their emptiness. At intervals also they pa.s.sed more men, gaunt, incredibly cadaverous, considering that only the day before they had been strong and well. They sat or lay inert, watching the safari pa.s.s, their eyes apathetic. Kingozi paid no attention to them, nor to the loads of _potio_, nor to the garments and accoutrements; but he caused Simba to gather the water bottles. After a time Simba was hung about on all sides, and resembled at a short distance some queer conical monster.

Then they topped the bank of a wide shallow dry streambed and saw the remnants of other safari below them.

The Leopard Woman sat on a tent load. Even at this distance her erect figure expressed determination and defiance. The Nubian squatted beside her. Men lay scattered all about in att.i.tudes of abandon and exhaustion; yet every face was turned in her direction.

Kingozi descended the bank and approached, his experienced eye registering every significant detail.

She turned to him a face lowering like a thundercloud, her eyes flashing the lightnings, her lips scarlet and bitten. Kingozi noted the bloodied _kiboko_.

"They won't go on!" she cried at him harshly. "I can't make them! It is death for them here, but all they will do is to sit down! It is maddening! If they must die----"

She leaped to her feet and drew an automatic pistol.

"_Bandika!_" she cried. "Take your loads! Quickly!"

She threatened the man nearest her. He merely stared, his expression dull with the infinite remoteness of savage people. Without further parley she fired. Although the distance was short, she missed, the bullet throwing up a spurt of sand beneath the man's armpit. He did not stir, nor did his face change.

Kingozi's bent form had straightened. An authority, heretofore latent, flashed from his whole personality.

"Stop!" he commanded.

She turned toward him a look of convulsed rage. Then suddenly her resistance to circ.u.mstances broke. She hurled the automatic pistol at the porter, and flopped down on the tent load, hiding her face in her hands.

Kingozi paid her no further attention.