"Nanzela the Barushu?"
"He is."
"Where is he now?"
"With his people?"
"With his people."
"What are you doing here?"
"I was on my way to join him when you arrived. I was afraid, and hid myself."
"You may go to Nanzela and give him a message. Say that I have come. That I come because I hear Nanzela boasts. He says he will not pay the Government tax. That he asks for war. Tell him that if by sunrise to-morrow he does not come to me with tax-money in his hands, I shall come to him with a gun in mine."
Whilst Wrenshaw had been speaking the native's eyes had wandered. He was making a mental note of the white man's forces. There was the white man himself—an unknown quantity—an alien black man in clothes who interpreted the white man's words, a native of a neighbouring tribe attending to two horses, and a half-caste busy with some cooking-pots at the fire. So far as he could see there were no more than these. He looked again at the white man and wondered what his real strength might be. However, it didn't matter, as by this time Nanzela had posted scouts on every path, and the police camp, some miles away, was being watched. The white man, too, would be watched.