The visitors passed through the defensive anteroom and entered the village enclosure.
On the flat below the hills, heretofore invisible, stood a half-dozen large houses. At the end, where the cañon began to narrow, a fence gleamed dazzlingly white. From this distance the four-foot posts, planted in proximity like a stockade, looked to have been whitewashed.
People were appearing everywhere. The crags and points of the hills were filling with bold black figures silhouetted against the sky. Men, women, children, dogs sprang up, from the soil apparently. As though by magic the flat open space became animated. Plumed heads appeared above the white fence in the distance, where, undoubtedly, their owners had been loafing in the shade. Another drum began to roar somewhere, and with it the echoes began to arouse themselves in the hills.
Paying no attention to any of this interesting confusion Kingozi sauntered straight ahead. At his command the Leopard Woman had dropped a pace to the rear.
"The royal palace is behind the white fence," he volunteered over his shoulder.
They approached the sacred precincts. But while yet fifty yards distant, Kingozi stopped with an exclamation. He turned to the Leopard Woman, and for the first time she saw on his face and in his eyes a genuine and unconcealed excitement.
"My Lord!" he cried to her, "saw ever any man the likes of that!"
The white posts of which the fence was made were elephants' tusks!
"Kingdom coming, what a sight!" murmured Kingozi. "Why, there are hundreds and hundreds of them--and the smallest worth not less than fifty pounds!"
Her eyes answered him whole-heartedly, for her imagination was afire.