Chapter XIII: Menud “troubles Trouble”

Late that night a small figure with a bundle on its back slung itself with swift dexterity up the almost smooth ten-foot wall which encircled the numerous buildings of the Liman’s house. A slight pause to reconnoiter, and it dropped noiselessly down on the inside. Clinging like a lizard, Garram, for it was he, worked his way up the wall which formed an angle of the flat-roofed building in front of him. There, hearing the soft thud of footsteps on the sandy road outside, he flattened himself so that his outline should not show against the stars.

Then from building to building he made his way, jumping the dizzy gaps between them and landing with no more noise than the thump of a leaping cat. Lost in the darkness for a time, presently he returned, moving more easily without his burden. Outlined against the stars, he danced exultingly along the ten-foot wall, then flung wide his arms and dropped to the sandy road beneath.

* * * * *

Ibrahim had had no trouble in getting permission to be absent and at dawn he and Garram met inside the eastern gate of the city. Early as it was, quite a number of citizens, hoe on shoulder and drinking calabash in hand, were waiting for the opening of the gates. It was still cold, and the huddled shapes were standing silently, waiting with African patience for such time as the guard would deign to open the doors. At Ibrahim’s coming, however, beams were lifted out of sockets, chains unhooked, and the great ports, wooden and hinged with leather, creaked and groaned as they were folded back.

Ibrahim and Garram had a long distance to go, so kept to the main road for some time, where traveling was easiest and quickest. The farmers, old and young, began to come out of their torpor as the sun gradually warmed the chill air of morning. Exchanging salutations and wishes for the day, little groups swung off the road into the fields, to clean and burn the rubbish and do such light preliminary hoeing as can be done before the rains soften the iron soil and allow proper tilling.

Like a river being traced to its source, the wide shady road gradually narrowed and became more choked with elephant grass. Presently it became only a single-file track.

This was the first time that the two had gone on an expedition together, and they eyed each other’s arms with interest. Like hunters all the world over, there was some disapproval in the glance. The beautiful long war bow carried by the Fulani would drive an arrow through all but the largest game and would give twice the range that Garram’s stiff short bow would. But Garram noted how cumbersome its length would be in the thick bush and marveled that its string should be unprovided with that little tuft of cotton which silences the twang of the release.

Ibrahim also had the heavy war quiver which holds from fifty to a hundred poisoned arrows. Excellent no doubt for battle, as were the broad-bladed arrows called _pasa_ which he carried. These were mixed with the more usual plain points called _isiko_. But Garram carried less than a dozen arrows, and even those were divided between two separate quivers so that, if some were lost or shot or broken, the others would not have room to rattle or to warp out of shape. And in hunting, game does not stand while one shoots arrow after arrow at it. Large quiverfuls savored to Garram of military pose and conceit.

As the road petered out into a bush track the two broke into a trot, the light hunting axes and throwing sticks thumping on their shoulders, their knives slapping against the leather loin cloth that each wore. Kon, the serious occupation of the day not yet commenced, bounded alongside them like a frolicsome calf.

Near the city the ground had been of hard, sun-baked red clay with deep sand in the hollows. Gradually the sand became less. The trees, too, changed. Near the city generations of farmers had kept the ground clear of grass and smaller trees, leaving only here and there one big shade tree. Gradually the growth became smaller, stunted and gnarled by the annual bush fires, and with impenetrable thickets of thorns and tall elephant grass. Slowing down to a fast walk, mostly for Ibrahim, who, though strong, had not the endurance of the boy from the Hills, they continued to cover the ground until the sun was nearly overhead.

After a pause for a drink from the stream which flowed at the base of an isolated rocky hill, Garram signed that they should swing off up the rock. As they scrambled up the steep way, Garram leaping and balancing, Ibrahim using hands and knees, little black rock partridges retreated with much bobbing of tails, and at the top a family of baboons seemed inclined to resent their invasion, but finally, with much barking, dropped over a ledge and went swinging heavily through the trees to the plain below.

Seated in the shade of a twisted tree which grew out of a cleft in the bare rock, Garram outlined his story. Ibrahim sat silent, his bare toes playing with a loop of the bowstring which hung from the end of his bow. Garram’s eyes were fixed on a range of hills showing blue in the eastern distance.

“And so--if I go back to my Hills,” nodding in the direction of his eyes, “perhaps Warok, my father, will die, and I also. But if I stay there,” nodding his head backward in the direction of the now invisible Fulani city, “I think I shall die too, for such seems to be the meaning of that old man, the Liman, with his talk and his hate.”

“You seek my counsel? Whether to go or to stay?”

“Yes, I can weigh and judge the one matter, for I know the minds of my people of the Hills. But the people of the Plains and of the city are strange game in a strange country, whose customs I do not know and whose track I cannot read.”

Garram, his story told, lay at ease, running his finger up and down a crack in the rock. A frown of perplexity appeared on Ibrahim’s face, and his toes ceased playing with the bowstring. Presently he spoke: “What you have done is of small account. Perhaps they might thrust you out of the city, but no more. For many of the state, country dwellers, are unbelievers, even as yourself, and it is no crime. It is not your acts but the poison that the Liman may spread over them that is to be feared.”

There was a pause. A rock rabbit came round a ledge of rock, stopped to consider them, and then fled, squawking alarm.

“Had you told me of this before we left the city I could have sought the opinion of others. Those skilled in words led me to attempt the life of a friend of my father, the Emir. Words are a weapon in which I have no skill. But let us hunt. And while we hunt I will think, and in the end give you such counsel as I can.”

Kon, very bored, had disappeared downhill. As if thought-reading, he now reappeared, his coat dripping from a bath in the stream. His vigorous shake filled the air with spray which, in the bright hot sunlight, made a rainbow of mist. The dousing also brought Ibrahim and Garram to their feet. As the latter, grinning, made a dive to pull Kon’s tail, the dog went bounding down the eastern slope of the hill, and the hunting party set off again.

They killed an oribi which broke from its thick midday sun cover only as they almost stepped on it, was transfixed by an arrow from the Fulani’s powerful bow, cooked in slivers before a fire, and with Kon’s noteworthy assistance, was almost completely consumed.

Resuming their rapid travel toward the ever distant hills, they watched them recede into the shimmering haze as if outdistancing them. This was the worst part of the day, when everything more than a few yards away from them danced in the heat, and in spite of the dryness, streams of perspiration rolled down their shiny brown backs.

No animals except humans face the blaze of the tropical afternoon. Everything was silent except for the creak or rustle of an occasional twig or leaf, twisted and tortured by the heat. Even Kon moved without spring or bound, as if economizing his energy to the utmost. Ibrahim, accustomed to the coolness of dwellings with six-foot thickness of walls, suffered most, but Garram suffered too, for he was more used to the freshness of the Hills than to this sweltering air.

Then gradually the shimmering heat seemed to become less. What more natural when the afternoon was drawing on, but what more difficult to believe at the end of a hard afternoon? To the two hunters it seemed almost too good to be true.

In another half mile of travel the Hills were coming out of the blur and seemed actually to be advancing to meet them. The pass, down which Garram had come on his first visit to the city and at the foot of which he had met the Rainmaker’s messenger each moon, now became clearly visible. Kon’s level trot became more lively and occasionally he snapped at a fly or stopped in his stride to investigate a scent.

A gentle breeze, like a cooling drink, arose, and soon they were traveling through the cool of the evening, chatting comfortably as they went. Arriving at the foot of the Hills as dusk began to fall, they discovered good water, made a meal on the remainder of the oribi, and before night fell were all asleep.

They started again before midnight, and the bare granite mountains looked more impressive than ever by moonlight. But it was long after dawn, and the sun had commenced to get hot, before they had their first sight of the klipspringer, the quarry for which they had come so far. In habits it is the West African equivalent to the chamois or the Barbary sheep; consequently, it was not surprising that their first sight of it was only of a head looking down at them from a ledge of rock on the other side of a precipitous gorge and well out of bowshot. Ibrahim, when it was pointed out to him, had to look hard before he could see it. In this strange rocky country which was all ups and downs, nothing seemed recognizable to him and all distances and sizes were deceptive.

Ibrahim poked his tender feet with an exploring finger and swore gently to himself as Garram dilated on the special importance of the animal. Smaller than a native goat, and with a papery sort of hair that comes out in tufts at the slightest touch, it was able, perhaps because of the very stiff upright hoofs, to leap down from incredible heights and to keep its footing on the steepest, smoothest rock.

Garram badly wanted new bowstrings, and the hide of no other animal, nor even catgut, can approach carefully twisted lengths of this skin for smoothness and strength. Unfortunately the klipspringer only frequents broken hillsides where the eddying breeze brings to it the scent of possible pursuers from almost any direction. Hillsides too are almost bare of cover to assist the stalker.

Ibrahim swore again, but more audibly this time. He would willingly leave the precious bowstrings to someone else and not hunt in land that had been lifted up and left standing on edge. But the end of his remarks was lost. Garram had been studying the hillside carefully and had marked out what seemed a possible line of approach. Grumbling, but more in amusement than ill humor, Ibrahim followed, feet and hands fully occupied in keeping him from sliding down the jumble of broken rocks into the valley beneath.

Suddenly Ibrahim was swept off his feet by a sliding rock. Garram, with a warning shout, leaped to a ledge under an overhanging cliff. Boulder after boulder was crashing down from above them, leaping, bounding, and shivering into fragments that disappeared over the cliff to explode on the massive rocks below. Ibrahim, with two fractured ankles, lost consciousness and lay limply across a heap of stones, his bow fallen somewhere in the valley beneath.

So swiftly had the attack come that Garram had been taken completely by surprise. As if satisfied now, the stones seemed to stop rolling down toward where the young Fulani lay moaning, but still poured in a torrent over where Garram lay crouched.

A NOVEL PUNISHMENT