Chapter XVII: A Ghost Leopard

An hour after the audience had ended Garram was already on his way out of the city of Yelwa by its eastern gate. Three months ago, or very little more, he had entered by the same gate, warily, almost furtively, into a strange and probably hostile town. Now people--more people than he thought could have known him--pressed forward with farewells, with food for him, and other small provision for the road. Some, and among these was Goshi, wanted to present him with swords, slaves, and even horses. If he had accepted, he would have had a small fortune, as fortunes went in those parts. Reluctantly he thanked the people, but returned their gifts, for hard travel, and he knew not what else, lay in front of him, where such luxuries would be only encumbrances.

Two things, however, he could not resist, and he now carried them over his shoulder, his arms fully occupied with the struggling piglet. One was a coat of finest chain mail, such as used to find their way across the Sahara and may even have seen the fighting of the Crusades. It was light, as armor goes, and the small interlaced steel rings rippled almost like silk when the coat was worn. It had been handed down by the Emir’s ancestors and was indeed a royal gift. The other present, which Goshi had given, was a leaf-headed spear with long and slender damascened iron shaft all made in one piece. Though designed for mounted use, it was of such fine workmanship that it was little heavier than a stout hill spear, and its balance in the hand was a delight.

Kon careered wildly ahead as soon as they were outside the city walls. Thrilled at the release from the tame life at court, he snuffled at everything with a wriggling and inquiring nose, bounced back, and made a playful snap at the corkscrew tail of the pig, then galloped off ahead once more. But the boy traveled intent upon making good time, and for once taking no notice of the things around him. Something from the Hills, almost an audible voice, seemed to be calling. “Come!” it said. “Come! Hasten!”

Though starting late in the day and cumbered with the pig, Garram reached the foot of the Hills before dark. There, as he had somehow expected, a boy with a message from the Rainmaker was waiting for him.

“The Rainmaker told me to meet you here and said you would be expecting me.” Garram would have made inquiries, but hastily, so as not to forget it, the small boy went on with his message: “The Rainmaker says, ‘Come! For Warok your father is lying in a hut bound and under guard. The elders who listen to the evil counsel of Sura and Menud wish him deposed from his chieftainship and, for their own safety, killed!’”

Now Garram understood the feeling that he had had all the day, urging him as if with a voice to leave the city and go to the Hills. For the old Rainmaker had practised sending him messages in this mysterious way, sometimes when they were sitting together, sometimes from a different hut or even different village. Sometimes he even got messages from the Rainmaker when hunting. It had been only an amusing game in those days, with a thrill of mystery about it. Now the advantage of it became obvious.

“Where is Warok lying?” Garram asked. No great talker, his questions were to the point and swift.

“In his own hut, but guarded by Menud’s own followers. The friends of your father dare not help him, for each is afraid to act without the others, and they have no leader.” The messenger would have gone off into a dramatic recital of events, but Garram had no time to waste.

“With what crime have they charged my father, what injustice to the tribe? For they dare not say they do this out of hatred.” Holding the piglet under one arm, Garram was impatiently pricking the ground with his spear point.

The young messenger hesitated before replying. “O Garram the Hunter, do not be angry at this which I tell you. But they say that you showed the secret passes of the Hills to the Fulani whom we fear. And more--that this you did by orders of Warok himself! Also they say that Menud and his followers surprised you in the act and would have brought you back for trial, but a large body of the enemy released you and captured them, taking them even as far as the great city of the plains. And they speak of the city, describing it in such manner that all may know their story is true.”

Garram writhed at the ease with which Menud the Talker with a few easy lies had turned the tables on him. But that story did not account for their being back in the Hills, nor for Menud being stained a deep and indelible blue. Swift question elicited the simple explanation from the messenger.

“Menud the Wily, they say, escaped first and, staining himself blue, came back as a returned spirit of the dead, so scaring the guard that the escape of the rest of the band was easy.”

Garram acknowledged the ingenuity of the lie with a grim smile. The Rainmaker’s envoy went on: “And this we know must be true, for the color is not yet off his skin, and all men seeing him must believe his story.”

Angrily Garram turned with the younger boy toward the Hills. As they went, in as few words as possible he outlined the true story. Darkness had been falling as they spoke, and as the night was moonless, there should be little fear of their being seen by spies of Menud. For still greater precaution they took a difficult path known only to Garram, and avoided the main pass into the Hills.

After an hour’s traveling their short but difficult route cut across the main track. Garram showed the messenger his way. He himself would take another short cut. “Take then this true account that I have told you to the Rainmaker, that hearing he may know. Also, this small and very light piglet you will take to him. For he will recognize it and so know that the story like the piglet comes from me.” And with a grin of relief, unseen in the darkness, the young hunter passed over his awkward, kicking burden.

The messenger would have protested. Carrying struggling pigs, even small ones, along a dark and broken rocky path was not a habit of his. But Garram sent him firmly upon his way.

“Child! Idiot!” His voice sounded very stern to the younger boy. “The Rainmaker will expect some sign from me to show that you have done his bidding. Otherwise and without doubt he will beat you and say your tale is a lie. This is the only token I will give you, so be content with the pig that saves you a beating.”

Grumbling, the messenger took his way. For a moment Garram stood considering the short cut, then changed his mind. Probably he would save time by the main route, which, though longer, was far easier. Time was so important that the extra risk must be taken. Within a few moments he was back on the main track, after a swift detour which cut in, in front of the Rainmaker’s envoy. Garram thought of the awkward burden he had so easily transferred and chuckled. Then he arranged his weapons so that they would not rattle and gave himself up to swift and silent travel.

This extreme silence and Kon’s keen ears and nose lessened any risk of capture. Several times they stepped swiftly from the path and crouched while something, perhaps beast, perhaps man, passed within a few yards of them on their windward side. These halts served also as a well-earned rest. The two were moving at a swift lope, no easy task over a dark rocky path and in that high mountain air which starves the lungs.

To Kon darkness mattered little. His nose kept him as fully informed of his surroundings as his eyes could have done in daylight, and even Garram picked out many scents on the still night air. The inhabitants of the villages which he passed had long since gone to bed, so it was too late for the sweet savor of the evening cooking, but the smoke of wood fires from the huts drifted across the track here and there. The aromatic taste in the smoke made from the brush wood of the Hills was pleasantly distinct from the heavy acrid smoke of the city fires. Garram wriggled his nose and snorted to get a stronger whiff of it.

The feel of the rocks under foot, the bracing touch of the crisp mountain air, the stillness of the barren Hills all gave him the thrill of homecoming. Where the chill mist, which he could feel but could not see, hung in the little fertile cups of valleys he could catch the scent of dwarf cattle. Away in the distance, in front of him, he heard the sawing note of a leopard busy on his night’s hunt.

It was going to be no easy homecoming. With his enemies in power and his father awaiting death at their hands, he was more likely to be killed on sight than welcomed! The young hunter repressed his desire to sing and turned his attention to producing some plan of action.

Half the art of hunting is in laying plans. Plans not so detailed that unexpected behavior of the game throws them out, but elastic plans with alternatives to fit any possible move of the quarry. Garram, the invisible ground slipping away behind him as he ran, tried over plan after plan in his mind, rejecting one because it would take outside assistance, and he preferred to play a lone-hand game; rejecting another because it would take too long. For he felt that whatever he did must be done before dawn if it were to be in time to rescue his father, Warok.

It was still early in the night when he arrived outside Kwallak, the village where he had been born. He was still testing the plan he had in mind by confronting it with all possible variations, when Kon, who had been bounding ahead, slunk back as if for protection, tail down and every bristle raised. As the hunter’s hand felt the dog’s raised mane in the darkness, he stopped in his stride and listened.

Only two things could make the dog behave like this: a lion in the Plains or a leopard in the Hills. Garram almost shouted with joy as he saw how this might fit into his plan. If he could kill it! And what a glorious mad adventure to fight a leopard single handed in the dark!

The faint breeze was from in front of them, and if this leopard followed the path, as they usually do, it must almost bump into him. Swiftly he made his preparations, slipping the chain mail over his head, putting one arrow on his bow, and silently placing the quiver on the ground. Kon backed farther and farther into the darkness as the scent of the approaching beast strengthened.

Then came the soft swish-swish of padded paws in front. Breathlessly the boy waited until the sound was within five paces, swinging his head to get the exact direction by sound; then loosed the arrow.

In one swift movement he dropped the bow, set the butt of his new spear against the ground, and clamped it there with his foot. With a coughing roar, which told that the arrow had not missed, the leopard charged. Square and low in the chest the inclined head of the spear met the leaping body, raking upward into the heart as the weight of the animal forced the butt more firmly into the rocky soil.

Garram’s foot and left hand stayed only just long enough to present the spear point at the leopard. Then he leaped aside and with his right hand swung his hunting ax with a crash into the beast’s skull.

The huge leopard kicked and lay dead, the ax torn from the hunter’s hand still embedded in its brain.

The young hunter extracted the spear, and after several jerks freed the ax, which had bitten deeply into the skull. Either ax or spear wound would have been immediately fatal without the other. The arrow wound too was mortal, but poison often takes a minute or two to kill outright. Carefully he made his examination, sliding quick fingers over the warm silky body. Then, ever businesslike, set to work on the skinning. For it was the skin he needed for his plan.

The skinning finished, Kon, to his disgust, was ordered to remain in the cover afforded by some thick bushes while Garram cautiously reconnoitered the village. Careful inspection showed that, though everywhere else the people seemed to have gone to sleep, a murmur of talk still rose from the chiefs compound. The huts of Warok’s house were built touching each other, and forming four sides of a rough square. In the center of this square was the courtyard from which the voices seemed to come. The only entrance was through a hut which faced inward toward the maze of village streets. If the small messenger’s story were true Warok must be a prisoner somewhere inside. In which case the entrance hut would be well guarded.

In daylight there would be no chance of getting in undetected. But by night.... How about the wide-spreading doka tree which reached out its branches well outside the compound? It was just the sort of weak point in his defences which Menud might leave open.

Silently the young hunter felt his way along the outer wall until he reached the place where he remembered the boughs to hang lowest. Then he leaped, once, twice, and even a third time, but still his upstretched hands closed on nothing. For a moment dread seized him that his plan might fail. Then, jumping farther to one side, his fingers touched some leaves, and little by little he bent down first twigs, then boughs, until he gripped something strong enough to support him as he climbed.

The leaves, green though they were, seemed to his anxious ears to rustle and crackle like dried hide, and in spite of the most painstaking caution twigs snapped in a way which he was certain must arouse even a sleeping guard. But at last he reached the center of the tree where the bare limbs could neither rustle nor snap, and hung silently watching and listening.

Below him lay the courtyard, with an isolated hut, usually used as a granary, in the center. Before the door of the hut a large fire glowed, and beyond this again were the guard, some lying wrapped in rough cloth, others sitting and talking. From time to time one would rise and pace up and down in front of the hut door, replenish the fire with huge logs, or kick it into a warm blaze before sitting down again.

Carefully Garram weighed the situation. A few well-directed arrows might kill several of the guard, but this would only bring in others whom he could hear in the entrance hut. Warok would be unable to help, as he would undoubtedly be lying bound behind the closed and fastened door. If the surprise attack failed, everyone would be on the alert till dawn, and any further attempt at rescue would be hopeless. Fantastic as it was, his first plan seemed the best, and without further delay he started to put it into execution.

First he carefully sought among the tangle of boughs, for the limb which stretched out above the well-guarded hut. There was no bright moonlit sky to reveal him but from time to time the watch fire threw a dangerous glow upon the underside of the tree. Inch by inch Garram made his way out along the bough, skilfully parting the leaves and twigs in front of him, and slowly releasing them again behind him so that they should not rustle. The guard had stopped talking, which, unless they went to sleep, made silence more imperative than ever. Each time the youth parted the leaves for a fresh examination of his position there were still some sitting upright, or rising from time to time to tend the fire.

It seemed hours of strained caution before Garram found himself directly above the hut with the guards beneath still unsuspecting. Then came disappointment, for the thatched roof was too far below him! It would be impossible to jump to the cracking straw without arousing the men. To attempt any method of letting himself down gently by his bow and bowstring would be useless, for between the cover of the leaves and the shelter of the roof he would be hanging in the glow of the fire in full view of the watchers.

For a moment all seemed useless, and the boy even considered his other plan of a surprise attack on the guard. Then in a flash he had the solution. With as much care as he had used before, he retraced his way along the bough to where the thinner one joined it. Cutting and laying aside twigs which barred his way, he wormed his way out again toward the hut, still managing to keep a screen of leaves between himself and the watchers in the courtyard. As he went the bough, as he had hoped, began to bend ever so little under his weight, to lean down toward the hut roof.

It would not be sufficient to pass along the bough silently till it bent so that he could step off, though this seemed difficult enough: he must move so slowly that to any one who glanced that way the bough must still appear stationary. This slow motion set up a strain that brought the perspiration bursting from his skin, in spite of the coolness of the night. Once, too, it nearly led to his being discovered. For a wrist that had been bearing the weight of his body in the slow forward movement for nearly a minute began to tremble and started a rustling among the leaves.

One of the guard rose to his feet, picked up a stone, and came and stood under the young hunter, peering up into the dark mass of leaf. No doubt he had hoped that it was a stray hen roosting there, as they sometimes did, and that he might pass some of the long hours of the night making and eating a chicken stew. Garram chuckled inwardly at the mistake. Then nearly yelled. For the stone thrown experimentally to see if it might bring anything down had glanced off a twig and spent its remaining force on his elbow.

There was no chance to rub it, he must make no move nor sound while the man stood below. It was with extraordinary satisfaction that he heard the man move slowly back to the fire.

There was no further incident to hinder his scheme, and within a quarter of an hour he was pressed flat along the roof, on the side farthest from the guard and the watch fire. But the helpful bough now became a nuisance. It must not be allowed to flip up into position again, or it would bring the guard to see what had happened. Swiftly he loosened his bowstring, joined it to the spare one that he always carried, and attached it to the bough that he was gripping with his elbow. Inch by inch he began to pay out the string, but the tremendous pull exerted by the branch began to make the plan impossible. It was almost certain to make a noise, cause him to slip on the roof and let go, or some other catastrophe. Also time was getting very precious. He thought a moment. The branch must not be allowed to flip back into place. True. But why let it go back at all? In fact, why not tie it to the peak of the conical roof?

That was easy. Then came more trouble. The idea of cutting his way in through the thatch of the roof had sounded simple. But to do it silently he found he needed to sort out each straw-like grass stem separately--working by touch only, since it was dark on the side away from the fire--and then cut it and dispose of it by sticking it back into the thatch somewhere else.

At last even this labor was ended, and he was standing safely within the hut, the unsuspecting guard separated from him by only a thin wall and a few yards of space.

For a moment he stood, uncertain what to do. How could he manage to find his father in the darkness, and waken him without disturbing the warriors outside? Then hope seemed to drain out by his feet, and despondency which was almost a physical sickness swept over him. His plan was near final success, so very near---- He checked a gasp of dismay, for surely the hut was empty, surely no man could be here in this silence?

“Son!” came the faintest of mocking whispers. “Do not breathe so loudly, or the guard who are outside will make base talk of me as an old man who snores and grunts in his sleep!”

Quickly Garram bent down with his knife and cut the cords that bound the chief. Then, while he helped to restore the circulation in the cramped arms and legs, whispered his plan of escape. Whispered with his mouth to Warok’s ear, for the clear crackle of the fire and loud grunts of the watch warned him how near they were.

In a short while Warok was able to stand upright. With whispered instructions the young hunter handed into his keeping the new spear, his bow, arrow quiver, and even his trusted hunting ax. Then, keeping only his long-bladed knife, he busied himself with the awkward bundle of chain mail and newly flayed leopard skin.

* * * * *

A noise inside the hut caught the attention of the guard. It sounded like the faint note of a leopard. It could not be a leopard, of course, but it might be the old man making the call of his totem animal in his dreams. People do dream of their totem animals, and it seemed quite likely that the chief would have a disturbed night since he would be killed on the morrow. So one of the watchers at the fire thought, and got up to undo the door of the hut and make sure that everything was all right with the prisoner and that he had not worked loose his bonds. Fumblingly, standing in his own light, he undid the leather fastening of the door and walked in.

Then with a howl he leaped back. For the whole hut stank of leopard, and there, following him out of the doorway, moved the leopard himself.

Even in the dim firelight the animal looked huge and tremendously broad in the shoulders. The rest of the guard awoke, as, with a howl of dismay the first man loosed an arrow.

At that range the arrow could not have missed. But there stood the leopard with dropped head, insolently regarding him. Then, obviously unharmed, stalked slowly and majestically toward the group of men around the fire.

There had been no time to stir the embers into a blaze, but even as they retreated the guard fired again and again at such close ranges that they could not miss.

And in the firelight they saw the arrows strike the spotted flank only to fall broken to the ground!

Huddled for protection in the entrance hut of the compound they watched the huge beast skirt the fire and move slowly toward them, arrows bouncing off him as they struck.

“God pity us! Warok is changed into his totem animal, the leopard,” a scared and shaking voice gabbled. “O Warok, spare us! It is not we who would have done you harm. Spare us! Spare us!”

For a moment they stood, then turned to fly. Wild terror jammed them struggling in the outer door of the entrance hut. Then with a crash the walls each side gave way and released them. Far down the winding maze of village streets went the stumbling hurrying fugitives, eager only to get away. Over their shoulders they gasped, “Spare us! Only spare us!” and each saw a leopard ready to spring.

Garram, from under his chain mail and leopard skin, beckoned to the hut door, and Warok came stiffly forth. Preceded by Garram, still on all fours and covered with the yellow hide, he walked slowly out into the village street. No one would touch them, no one would even willingly set eyes on them. For it was well known that the mere sight of an angry totem animal would kill. Outside the village the impatient Kon awaited them.

THE ALARM DRUM