“And a tough morsel you’d be,” I thought to myself. And Brad, he laughed. The headman was there, too, and generally when Brad laughed he’d laugh. He didn’t now. He said: ‘It is very bad. They are as many as the leaves, and their arrows are strong. They came once before and we beat them off, but they killed many of our fighting men. Now our huts are full of children again, but they are little, and I have just taken my third wife, whom I love. It is very bad.’ He laid his hand, which was black as a coal and delicate as a girl’s, for a moment on Brad’s. ‘It is very bad if they come while you, a great warrior, are away. But I will send a messenger, and then you will return and help us.’
“Yes. He said it just like that. Not as a question. He thought Brad was his friend, you see, and spoke accordin’.
“Brad Timmins he looked at me with one big wink, but I looked at my boots. Later I said to him: ‘If Mabendy—whoever he or they are—comes, and you’re sent for and you don’t go, you’ll lose your face. You won’t get no more hunters and beaters out o’ that village.’ And he swore at me with pure astonishment as a meddlesome grannie that minded what a pack of niggers thought. Yes, he swore amazin’.”
A girl passed, wearing small, high-heeled, patent-leather shoes; the man in khaki watched them gravely until the girl was out of sight. Then he said, suddenly, “But not so bad as when the message come”—and was once more silent.
“Then Mabendy came?”
The man in khaki looked at Hillard, nodding gravely, “Yes, mister. As we heard by special messenger, two days out—a boy with a rag round his head. He come reeling up our line and rolled at Brad’s feet, gasping out a word or two. And Brad he began kickin’ him cruel.
“ ‘Whatever are you doin’?’ I says, pulling Brad back. He was in a breathless rage, and couldn’t speak for a minute.
“ ‘Those f-fools,’ he stutters, ‘those fools! Do they think. . .’ His voice ran up to a sort of yell. And then, all of a sudden he stopped, gapin’ at me like a fish, and his jaw workin’.
“ ‘What is it now?’ I says.
“He lets out a sort of whisper—’ My tusks—and the next moment, mister, I give you my word, he was beatin’ our boys with a gun-butt to turn ’em round quicker.”