“And what became of the Hyena?”
“The Leopard ate him.”
The Elephant looked at the Leopard at work in the field.
“Then,” he said, “I must eat the Leopard or I shall not be respected by all the other animals. But if I am to do this I must come up behind him and strike him with my trunk.”
The Hyrax remembered something.
“Come with me,” he said, “and I will show you a way to go round behind the Leopard without his seeing you.”
Then he led the Elephant along a path in the middle of which was a deep hole among the rocks, and in the bottom of the hole was a sharp stake, and over the hole was a great mass of underbrush and vines and grass, all matted together. The Elephant stepped on it and fell down into the pit on the sharp stake and was killed. Then the Hyrax climbed down into the pit and skinned him, and brought the skin home to his wife.
All the people laughed and clapped their hands and said that the story was a good story, and some of them began to sing and dance again. Mpoko climbed a little farther up among the boughs, crooked his arms and legs around them so that he could sit comfortably, and thought about the story. It was not so wonderful that the Hyrax had killed the Elephant. Not long before the hunters of the village had done almost the same thing. It struck Mpoko that in almost all the stories the little animal got the best of the bigger ones by wise planning. While he was thinking it over, he went to sleep. When he awoke, later in the evening, most of the people had gone into their huts, and his father with some of the older men sat under the tree talking.
“I am not much like the Hyrax, for I am in a trap myself,” thought Mpoko, in disgust. “If I get down, they will think I have been listening and they will certainly make me eat whip. If I keep still until they go away and then get down, I shall not be beaten unless I tell what I hear, and I shall be very careful not to do that. This is a time for the wise man to stay behind the hedge of thorns,”—which was one of the Alo Man’s proverbs. It means to keep your tongue behind your teeth.