"'Now, remember,' I said as I was leaving, 'you can easily tell the hunter when he comes among your herd from the color and shape of his legs. Ostriches' legs are a sort of gray—as you see from your own—and the hunters' legs are black and thicker.' You see, the skin which the Badamoshis were going to use did not cover the hunters' legs. 'Now,' I said, 'you must tell all your birds when they see a black-legged ostrich trying to make friends with them to set on him and give him a good hiding. That will teach the Badamoshi hunters a lesson.'
"Well, you'd think after that everything should have gone smoothly. But I had not counted on the extraordinary stupidity of ostriches. The leader, going home that night, stepped into some marshy, boggy places and got his stupid long legs all over black mud—caked with it, thick. Then before he went to bed he gave all the ostriches the careful instructions which I had given to him.
"The next morning he was late in getting up and the herd was out ahead of him, feeding in a pleasant place on the hillside. Then that numbskull of a leader—the stupidest cock ostrich of them all—without bothering to brush the black mud off his legs which he had stepped into the night before, comes stalking out into the open space like a king, expecting a grand reception. And he got a grand reception, too—the ignoramus! As soon as the others saw his black legs they passed the word around quickly and at a given signal they set on the poor leader and nearly beat the life out of him. The Badamoshis, who had not yet appeared at all, arrived upon the scene at this moment. And the silly ostriches were so busy beating their leader, whom they took for a hunter in disguise, that the black men came right up to them and would have caught the whole lot if I hadn't shouted in time to warn them of their danger.
"So, after that, of course, I saw that if I wanted to save my good but foolish friends from destruction, I had better do something on my own account.
"And this was what I thought I'd do: When the Badamoshi hunters were asleep I would go and take that ostrich skin—the only one they had—away from them and that would be the end of their grand new hunting trick.
"So in the dead of night I crept out of the jungle and came to the place where the hunters' huts were. I had to come up from the leeward side, because I didn't want to have the dogs get my scent on the wind. I was more afraid of the hunters' dogs, you see, than I was of the hunters themselves. From the men I could escape quite easily, being much swifter than they were; but dogs, with their sense of smell, are much harder to get away from, even when you can reach the cover of the jungle.
"Well, then, coming up from the leeward side, I started searching around the huts for the ostrich skin. At first I couldn't find it anywhere. And I began to think they must have hidden it some place. Now, the Badamoshis, like a good many black races, when they go to bed for the night, always leave one of their number outside the huts to watch and keep guard. I could see this night-watchman at the end of the row of huts, and of course I was careful not to let him see me. But after spending some time hunting for this ostrich skin I noticed that the watchman had not moved at all, but stayed in the same place, squatting on a stool. Then I guessed he had probably fallen asleep. So I moved closer and I found, to my horror, that he was wearing the ostrich skin as a blanket—for the night was cool.
"How to get it without waking him was now the problem. On tiptoe—hardly breathing—I went up and began to draw it gently off his shoulders. But the wretched man had tucked part of it in under him and I couldn't get it free while he was sitting down.
"Then I was in despair and I almost gave up. But, thinking of the fate that surely awaited my poor, foolish friends if I didn't get that skin, I decided on desperate measures. Suddenly and swiftly I jabbed the watchman in a tender spot with one of my horns. With an 'Ouch!' you could hear a mile off, he sprang in the air. Then, snatching the bird skin from under him, I sped off into the jungle, while the Badamoshis, their wives, the dogs and the whole village woke up in an uproar and came after me like a pack of wolves.