No man could have blamed the carriers. They had in their own fashion done their utmost, and Dane almost shared their opinion about the locality; but he pointed to other men of lighter color and soldierly aspect.
"Do these want to lib for their own country one time, too?" he asked.
Amadu laughed mirthlessly, and fingering the hilt of the straight blade glanced at Monday, whose face was very grim, and the little negro, Bad Dollar, crouching close by with a polished matchet in his hand.
"They say they follow you if you be fit to hunt them Leopard or go chop them dam Rideau."
"They shall have an answer to-morrow," said Dane. "Monday, see there is order in the camp. Tell them no man is fit to reach the coast himself, and must wait until I go with him. There is something I want to ask you, Amadu. What you did was well done, but who taught you how, when a white soldier is buried, men carry the gun. Your master has gone, and I am Cappy now."
As it were mechanically, the big dusky alien closed his heels together, while his hand went up to his ragged turban and fell again with a rigid precision.
"I had suspected it already," said Dane, half-aloud. "Sit down and tell me about it. Monday, see no boy leaves the camp."
The others disappeared, and Dane was glad when the man obeyed him. He was respectful and intelligent, and Dane felt the need of company. It seemed that the same feeling troubled Amadu.
"The white man has guessed," he said, in a strangely mixed idiom. "I carried an Emir's standard in the North, in the dry country where men fear Allah, and there is corn and tobacco. My master mocked at the Sultan, refusing his tribute, and the Sultan's horsemen came upon us while we slept. They wore fine iron chain and carried the guns which come south through the desert from where no man knows, but for an hour a handful of us held the gate with the sword. Then when other gates went down and the huts burned behind us, some one brought my master's horse, and he rode out upon them. There were less than a score of us living then, but we carried the standard almost through their midst, and when my master went down, I and three others stood over him. The Sultan had fewer men and horses when at last a gun-butt struck me down."
Amadu flung his head up as he halted, and his eyes glittered when they fastened on the listener's face.