The Leopard Woman

by Stewart Edward White

"You and I have handled many safaris, Cazi Moto," he replied.

Delays from these causes ceased, but other delays supervened. Never were the reasons for them attributable to accident; but they were more numerous than ordinarily. Kingozi said nothing.

All the day's march he walked fifty yards ahead of the long procession. The Leopard Woman walked part of the time; part of the time she rode a donkey procured from the sultani. The two necessarily held little converse during the day. At camp Kingozi had many tasks--camp to arrange, meat to procure, sick to doctor, guides to interrogate. Only at the evening meal, which now they shared, did he and his travelling companion resume their intimacies.

The relation had developed into a curious one. For one thing, it was more expansive. They discussed many subjects of what might be called general interest, talking interestedly on books, world politics, colonial policies, even the larger problems of life. In these discussions they explored each other's intelligence, came to a mental approachment, a cold, clear respect for each other's capacity and experience. Never did they approach the personal. At no time in their acquaintance had they talked so unrestrainedly, so freely, with so much genuine pleasure; at no time did they touch so little the mysteries of personality.

If the Leopard Woman felt this, or wondered at the cloaked withdrawal, she gave no sign. Apparently she was all candour. She seemed to throw herself frankly and with pleasure into this relationship of the head, to have forgotten the possibilities so richly though so momentarily disclosed by the magic of the moon. She lounged in her canvas chair, twisting her lithe body within her silks; she smoked her cigarettes; the jewel of changing lights glowed on her forehead; she talked in her modulated voice and quaint, precise English. The man's pulses remained calm. His eyes did not miss the beauty of her form, as frankly defined beneath the silk as the forms of the naked bibis of the village; nor the alluring paleness of her face in contrast to the red lips; nor the drowning passion of her wide eyes. But they did not reach his senses. Were the insulation of his plain duty--which to Kingozi meant quite sincerely his whole excuse for existence in this puzzling life--were this to be withdrawn--he never even contemplated the thought. Reminders from that night of the moon prevented him from doing so.

After this fashion they came to the grass plains of the uplands. Here ensued more delays. These did not spring from delinquencies in the safari: the exemplary punishment assured that. But things broke, and things were forgotten, and things had to be done differently. The guides, procured with difficulty from the little hunting peoples of the plain, disappeared at the end of the second day. They professed themselves afraid of Chaké, the Nubian. The latter vehemently denied having spoken a word to them. Day's marches were shortened because the woman could not stand long ones. Kingozi found it a great bother to travel with a woman.

Nevertheless, he made no attempts to separate the safaris. He had been watching closely. These difficulties, the delays, breakages, and abbreviations of day's journeys had, nine times out of ten, their origin in the camp of the Leopard Woman. In ordinary circumstances he would have put this down to inferior organization. But there was the mysterious, unmentioned map, whose accuracy, by the way, he found exact. Gradually he came to the conclusion that the delays were not entirely accidental. The conclusion became a conviction that the Leopard Woman was making as much of a drag and as big a nuisance of herself as possible.

Why?

She wanted to become such a burden that Kingozi would go on without her. Again, why? At the village she had vehemently refused to go back, and had pleaded to join forces with Kingozi. This puzzled him for some time. Then he saw. Of course she did not want to turn back. If, as he surmised, she had some errand with M'tela, like his own, she would not want to turn back, but she would like a plausible excuse to separate from him once the ranges of mountains were crossed. Why did she not drop off then on the excuse, say, of the wonderful new hunting grounds? That would be simple. Kingozi concluded that she wished the initiative to come from him. And the more convinced he was that she wanted to get rid of him, the more firmly he resolved that she must remain.

But it did make for slow travel.