"You callin' me a liar?" demanded Orman.
"Yes, you and any one else who says that."
Orman shrugged. "Well, she told me so herself—said she asked him over and made him scram when she saw me coming. That stuff's got to stop, and I told her so. I told the Polack too—the damn pansy;" then he lurched out and headed for his own tent.
Bill West lay awake until almost morning.
V
DEATH
While the camp slept, a bronzed white giant, naked but for a loin cloth, surveyed it—sometimes from the branches of overhanging trees, again from the ground inside the circle of the sentries. Then, he moved among the tents of the whites and the shelters of the blacks as soundlessly as a shadow. He saw everything, he heard much. With the coming of dawn he melted away into the mist that enveloped the forest.
It was long before dawn that the camp commenced to stir. Major White had snatched a few hours sleep after midnight. He was up early routing out the cooks, getting the whites up so that their tents could be struck for an early start, directing the packing and loading by Kwamudi's men. It was then that he learned that fully twenty-five of the porters had deserted during the night.
He questioned the sentries, but none had seen any one leave the camp during the night. He knew that some of them lied. When Orman came out of his tent he told him what had happened.
The director shrugged. "We still got more niggers than we need anyway."