THE ENCOUNTER
Kingozi saw a tall figure without a coat, dressed in brown shirt,
riding breeches, and puttees. The Nubian had retrieved a spilled sun
helmet even before the stranger had scrambled erect, so the head and
face were invisible. Kingozi's countenance did not change, but a faint
contempt appeared in his eyes. The first impression conveyed by the
numbers of the tin boxes and their bearers and escort had been
deepened. Why? Because the riding breeches were of that exaggerated cut
sometimes actually to be seen outside tailor's advertisements. They
were gathered trimly around an effeminately slender waist, and then
ballooned out to an absurd width, only to contract again skin tight
around the knees.
"_M'buzi!_" grunted Kingozi, applying to the stranger the superlative
of Swahili contempt. He did not know he spoke aloud; for it is not well
for one white man to criticise another to a native. But Mali-ya-bwana
replied.
"_Bibi_," he corrected.
Kingozi stared. "By Jove, you're right!" he exclaimed in English. "It
_is_ a woman!" He burst into an unexpected laugh. "It isn't balloon
breeches; it's _hips!_" he cried. This correction seemed to him
singularly humorous. He approached her, laughing.
It was evidently an angry woman, to judge by her gestures and the
deprecating attitude of the Nubian. Kingozi surmised that she probably
did not fancy being dumped down incontinently before an angry
rhinoceros. After a moment, however, her attitude lost its rigidity,
she gestured toward the dead monster, evidently commending the savage.
He shook his head and motioned in Kingozi's direction. The woman
turned, showing an astonished face.
Kingozi was now close up. He saw before him a personality. Physically
she was beautiful or not, according as one accepted conventional
standards. The dress she wore revealed fully the fact that she had a
tall, well-knit figure of long, full curves; a thoroughly feminine
figure in conformation, and yet one that looked competent to transcend
the usual feminine incompetencies. So far she measured to a high but
customary standard. But her face was as exotic as an orchid. It was
long, narrow, and pale with three accents to redeem it from what that
ordinarily implies--lips of a brilliant carmine, eyes of a deep
sea-green, and eyebrows high, arched, clean cut, narrow as though drawn
by a camel's-hair brush. Indeed, in civilization no one would have
believed them to have been otherwise produced. In spite of the awkward
sun helmet she carried her head imperiously.
"If you _will_ ride in a hammock, you ought to teach your men to
shoot," was Kingozi's greeting. "It's absurd to go barging through a
rhino country like this. You look strong and healthy. Why don't you
walk?"
Her crest reared and her nostrils expanded haughtily. For a half-minute
she stared at him, her sea-green eyes darkening to greater depths. This
did not disturb Kingozi in the least: indeed he did not see it. His
eyes were taking in the surroundings.
The dead rhinoceros lay a scant fifteen paces distant; loads were
scattered everywhere; the _askaris_, their ancient muskets reloaded,
had drawn near in curiosity. From the thorn trees across the tiny grass
opening porters were descending, very gingerly, and with lamentations.
It is comparatively easy to ascend a thorn tree with the fear of death
snapping at your heels: to descend in cold blood is another matter.
"Why don't you do your work!" he addressed the soldiers. "Do you want
to catch _kiboko_?"
The startled _askaris_ scuttled away about their business, which was,
at this moment, to herd and hustle the reluctant porters back to their
job. Kingozi, his head and jaw thrust forward, stared after them, his
eyes--indeed, his whole personality--projecting aggressive force. The
men hurried to their positions, their loud laughter stilled, glancing
fearfully and furtively over their shoulders, whipped by the baleful
glare with which Kingozi silently battered them.
[Illustration: "'If you _will_ ride in a hammock, you ought to teach
your men to shoot,' was Kingozi's greeting"]
Only when the last man had picked up his load did Kingozi turn again to
the woman. Although her bosom still heaved with emotion, it was a
suppressed emotion. He met a face slightly and inscrutably smiling.
"You take it upon yourself to manage my safari?" she said. "You think I
cannot manage my men? It is kind of you."
Her English was faultless, but some slight unusual spacing of the
words, some ultra-clarity of pronunciation, rather than a recognizable
accent, made evident that the language was not her own.
"Your _askaris_ are slack," said Kingozi briefly.
"And how of these?" she demanded imperiously, sweeping with an almost
theatrical gesture the miserable-looking group of hammock bearers.
"They are at fault," replied Kingozi indifferently, "but after all they
are common porters. You can't expect gun-bearer service or _askari_
service from common porters, now can you?"
He looked at her directly, his clear, steady eyes conveying nothing but
a mild interest in the obvious. In contrast to his detached almost
indifferent calm, the woman was an embodiment of emotions. Head erect,
red lips compressed, breast heaving, she surveyed him through narrowed
lids.
"So?" she contented herself with saying.
"It's the nature of the beast to run crazy," pursued Kingozi
tranquilly. "You really can't blame them."
"Then am I to be thrown down, like a sack, when it pleases them to
run?" she demanded tensely. "Really, you are incredible."
"I should expect it. The real point is that you have no business to
ride in a hammock through a rhino country."
The woman's control slipped a very little.
"Who are you to teach me my business?"
For the first time Kingozi's careless, candid stare narrowed to a focus.
"You have not told me what your business is," he replied with an edge
of intention in his tones. Their glances crossed like rapiers for the
flash of an instant.
She turned to the hammock bearers.
"Lie down!" she commanded. Then to the impassive Nubian, "The _kiboko!_
I suppose," she observed politely to Kingozi, "that you will admit
these men should be punished, and that you will permit me to do so?"
"Surely they should be punished; that goes without saying."
"Give them thirty apiece," she ordered the Nubian.
"That is too many," interposed Kingozi. "Six is a great plenty for such
people. It is their nature to run away."
"Thirty," she repeated to the Nubian, without a glance in the white
man's direction.
The huge negro produced the rhinoceros-hide whip, and went to his task.
To lay thirty lashes on sixteen backs and to do justice to the occasion
is a great task. The Nubian's face streamed sweat when he had finished.
The bearers, who had taken the punishment in silence, arose, saluted,
and begun to skylark among themselves, which was their way of working
off emotion.
"_Askaris!_" summoned the woman.
They came trotting.
"Lay down your guns! Lie down!"
A mild wonder appeared in Kingozi's gray eyes.
"Do you _kiboko_ your _askaris?_" he asked.
She jerked her head in his direction.
"Do you presume to question my actions?"
"By no means; I am interested in methods."
She paid him no more attention. Kingozi waited patiently until this
second bout of punishment was over. The _askaris_ lay quietly face down
until their mistress gave the word, then leaped to their feet, saluted
smartly, seized their guns, and marched jauntily to their appointed
positions. The woman watched them for a moment, and turned back to
Kingozi.
Her mood had completely changed. The orgy of punishment had cleared
away the nervous effects of the fright she had undergone.
"So; that is done," she said. "I have travelled much in Africa. I what
you call know my way about. See how my men fall into line. It will be
so at camp. _Presto!_ Quick! The tents will be up, the fires made."
Her lips smiled at him, but her sea-green eyes remained steady and
inscrutable.
"They seem smart enough," acknowledged Kingozi without interest. "Have
you ever tried them out?"
"Tried them out?" she repeated. "I do not understand."
"You never know what hold you really have until you get in a tight
place."
"And if I get in a 'tight place,'" she rejoined haughtily, "I shall get
out again--without help from negroes--or anybody."
"Quite so," conceded Kingozi equably. His attitude and the tone of his
voice were indifferent, but the merest flicker of the tail of his eye
touched the dead rhino. His expression remained quite bland. She saw
this. The pallor of her cheek did not warm, but her strangely
expressive eyes changed.
"_Bandika!_" she cried sharply. The men began to take up their loads.
"I will wish you a good afternoon," observed Kingozi as though taking
his leave from an afternoon tea. "By the way, do you happen to care for
information about the next water, or do you know all that?" "Thank you,
I know all that," she replied curtly.
The _askaris_ began to shout the order for the advance, "_Nenda!
nenda!_" the men to swing forward. Kingozi stared after them, watching
with a professional eye the way they walked, the make-up of their
loads, the nature of their equipment; marking the lame ones, or the
weak ones, or the ones recently sick. His eye fell on the figure of the
strange woman. She was striding along easily, the hammock deserted,
with a free swing of the hips, an easy, slouch of the relaxed knees
that indicated the accustomed walker. Kingozi smiled.
"'I know all that,'" he repeated. "Now I wonder if you do, or if some
idea of silly pride makes you say so." He was talking aloud, in
English. Mali-ya-bwana stood attentive, waiting for something he could
understand. Kingozi's eye fell on the dead rhinoceros.
"There is good meat; tell the men they can come out to get what they
wish of it. There will be lions here to-night."
"Yes, _bwana_."
"If she 'knew all that,'" observed Kingozi, "she knew more than I did.
Small chance. Still, if she has information or guides, she may know the
next water. But how? Why?"
He shifted his rifle to the crook of his arm.
"That _bibi_ is a great _memsahib_," he told Mali-ya-bwana. "And this
evening we will go to see her. Be you ready to go also."