Chapter V: A Journey to Come

Garram spent the rest of that day planning and preparing. If the safety of his father required him to leave the village of Kwallak it would debar him for the same reasons from those other villages of the Hills, where Sura might have influence. As Garram planned, he prepared also the famous poison of the Hill people, evaporating it in a piece of broken pot over a slow fire till it was the color and consistency of tar. There might be good reasons why he should leave the tribe but there was no reason for him to hide like a hunted animal.

One by one he examined his reed-shafted, unfeathered arrows, here and there renewing the fine lashing which held the soft iron heads in place. One by one he dipped them in the poison, laying them out to dry. Like all the other hunters of the Hills, he used a poison that was mainly strophanthus, and the faintest scratch with the arrow treated with it would kill man or beast painlessly and faster than a well-placed bullet.

He squatted, working, on a rock in the shade of a large tree and considered his possible plans. The people of the Plains to the east were of the Fulani race, and the little Garram had heard of them did not make either them or their country seem attractive. The tales he had heard were from Hillmen, who, captured young by raiding parties, had seen their parents wantonly butchered. Finally, when their captors had considered them no longer worth guarding as slaves, some homing instinct had made them drag their worn and broken bodies back to the Hills.

Arrows finished, the boy turned his attention to re-hafting his hunting ax. Meanwhile he considered the country of the Fulani of the West. Of these he knew little. They were, by their dress and appearance, of the same race as the Fulani of the East. But for some reason they had left the Hillmen alone, making no slave raids. Most thrilling about them was the half-fabled story of their mighty walled city, Yelwa. To the Hillmen, whose little round thatched huts clung like small clusters of mushrooms to the steep hillsides, had come vague tales of a widespread city, flat roofed, shadowed with ancient date palms, and encircled by an incredible wall.

With the completion of his preparations came decision. He gathered up his weapons and for safety’s sake overturned the remnants of the poison into the fire. If then he was to be denied adventure in the Hills he would go to meet it in Yelwa itself--if the city really existed!

Garram called to Kon and entered his father’s house. Just before dusk he made his final preparations in the shape of an incredibly large meal, a real traveler’s meal, designed to last him through a night of hard going.

THE CITY OF THE FULANI