They explained nothing to Sanders at the moment.
*CHAPTER IX*
*THE KI-CHU*
The messenger from Sakola, the chief of the little folk who live in the
bush, stood up. He was an ugly little man, four feet in height and
burly, and he wore little save a small kilt of grass.
Sanders eyed him thoughtfully, for the Commissioner knew the bush people
very well.
"You will tell your master that I, who govern this land for the King,
have sent him lord's pleasure in such shape as rice and salt and cloth,
and that he has sworn by death to keep the peace of the forest. Now I
will give him no further present----"
"Lord," interrupted the little bushman outrageously, "he asks of your
lordship only this cloth to make him a fine robe, also ten thousand
beads for his wives, and he will be your man for ever."
Sanders showed his teeth in a smile in which could be discovered no
amusement.
"He shall be my man," he said significantly
The little bushman shuffled his uneasy feet.
"Lord, it will be death to me to carry your proud message to our city,
for we ourselves are very proud people, and Sakola is a man of greater
pride than any."
"The palaver is finished," said Sanders, and the little man descended
the wooden steps to the sandy garden path.
He turned, shading his eyes from the strong sun in the way that bushmen
have, for these folk live in the solemn half-lights of the woods and do
not love the brazen glow of the heavens.
"Lord," he said timidly, "Sakola is a terrible man, and I fear that he
will carry his spears to a killing."
Sanders sighed wearily and thrust his hands into the deep pockets of his
white jacket.
"Also I will carry my spears to a killing," he said. "O ko! Am I a man
of the Ochori that I should fear the chattering of a bushman?"
Still the man hesitated.
He stood balancing a light spear on the palm of his hand, as a man
occupied with his thoughts will play with that which is in reach. First
he set it twirling, then he spun it deftly with his finger and thumb.
"I am the servant of Sakola," he said simply.
Like a flash of light his thin brown arm swung out, the spear held
stiffly.
Sanders fired three times with his automatic Colt, and the messenger of
the proud chief Sakola went down sideways like a drunken man.
Sergeant Abiboo, revolver in hand, leapt through a window of the
bungalow to find his master moving a smouldering uniform jacket--you
cannot fire through your pocket with impunity--and eyeing the huddled
form of the fallen bushman with a thoughtful frown.
"Carry him to the hospital," said Sanders. "I do not think he is dead."
He picked up the spear and examined the point.
There was lock-jaw in the slightest scratch of it, for these men are
skilled in the use of tetanus.
The compound was aroused. Men had come racing over from the Houssa
lines, and a rough stretcher was formed to carry away the debris.
Thus occupied with his affairs Sanders had no time to observe the
arrival of the mail-boat, and the landing of Mr. Hold.
The big American filled the only comfortable seat in the surf-boat, but
called upon his familiar gods to witness the perilous character of his
sitting.
He was dressed in white, white irregularly splashed with dull grey
patches of sea-water, for the Kroomen who manipulated the sweeps had not
the finesse, nor the feather stroke, of a Harvard eight, and they worked
independently.
He was tall and broad and thick--the other way. His face was
clean-shaven, and he wore a cigar two points south-west.
Yet, withal, he was a genial man, or the lines about his face lied
cruelly.
Nearing the long yellow beach where the waters were engaged
everlastingly in a futile attempt to create a permanent sea-wall, his
references to home ceased, and he confined himself to apprehensive
"huh's!"
"Huh!" he grunted, as the boat was kicked into the air on the heels of a
playful roller. "Huh!" he said, as the big surfer dropped from the
ninth floor to a watery basement. "Huh--oh!" he exclaimed--but there
was no accident; the boat was gripped by wading landsmen and slid to
safety.
Big Ben Hold rolled ashore and stood on the firm beach looking
resentfully across the two miles of water which separated him from the
ship.
"Orter build a dock," he grumbled.
He watched, with a jealous eye, the unloading of his kit, checking the
packing cases with a piece of green chalk he dug up from his waistcoat
pocket and found at least one package missing. The only important one,
too. Is this it? No! Is that it? No! Is that--ah, yes, that was it.
He was sitting on it.
"Suh," said a polite Krooman, "you lib for dem k'miss'ner?"
"Hey?"
"Dem Sandi--you find um?"
"Say," said Mr. Hold, "I don't quite get you--I want the
Commissioner--the Englishman--savee."
Later, he crossed the neat and spotless compound of the big, cool
bungalow, where, on the shaded verandah, Mr. Commissioner Sanders
watched the progress of the newcomer without enthusiasm.
For Sanders had a horror of white strangers; they upset things; had
fads; desired escorts for passing through territories where the natural
desire for war and an unnatural fear of Government reprisal were always
delicately balanced.
"Glad to see you. Boy, push that chair along; sit down, won't you?"
Mr. Hold seated himself gingerly.
"When a man turns the scale at two hundred and thirty-eight pounds,"
grumbled Big Ben pleasantly, "he sits mit circumspection, as a Dutch
friend of mine says." He breathed a long, deep sigh of relief as he
settled himself in the chair and discovered that it accepted the strain
without so much as a creak.
Sanders waited with an amused glint in his eyes.
"You'd like a drink?"
Mr. Hold held up a solemn hand. "Tempt me not," he adjured. "I'm on a
diet--I don't look like a food crank, do I?"
He searched the inside pocket of his coat with some labour. Sanders had
an insane desire to assist him. It seemed that the tailor had taken a
grossly unfair advantage of Mr. Hold in building the pocket so far
outside the radius of his short arm.
"Here it is!"
Big Ben handed a letter to the Commissioner, and Sanders opened it. He
read the letter very carefully, then handed it back to its owner. And
as he did so he smiled with a rare smile, for Sanders was not easily
amused.
"You expect to find the ki-chu here?" he asked.
Mr. Hold nodded.
"I have never seen it," said Sanders; "I have heard of it; I have read
about it, and I have listened to people who have passed through my
territories and who have told me that they have seen it with, I am
afraid, disrespect."
Big Ben leant forward, and laid his large and earnest hand on the
other's knee.
"Say, Mr. Sanders," he said, "you've probably heard of me--I'm Big Ben
Hold--everybody knows me, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. I am the
biggest thing in circuses and wild beast expositions the world has ever
seen. Mr. Sanders, I have made money, and I am out of the show business
for a million years, but I want to see that monkey ki-chu----"
"But----"
"Hold hard." Big Ben's hand arrested the other. "Mr. Sanders, I have
made money out of the ki-chu. Barnum made it out of the mermaid, but my
fake has been the tailless ki-chu, the monkey that is so like a man that
no alderman dare go near the cage for fear people think the ki-chu has
escaped. I've run the ki-chu from Seattle to Portland, from Buffalo to
Arizona City. I've had a company of militia to regulate the crowds to
see the ki-chu. I have had a whole police squad to protect me from the
in-fu-ri-ated populace when the ki-chu hasn't been up to sample. I have
had ki-chus of every make and build. There are old ki-chus of mine that
are now raising families an' mortgages in the Middlewest; there are
ki-chus who are running East-side saloons with profit to themselves and
their dude sons, there----"
"Yes, yes!" Sanders smiled again. "But why?"
"Let me tell you, sir," again Big Ben held up his beringed hand, "I am
out of the business--good! But, Mr. Sanders, sir, I have a conscience."
He laid his big hand over his heart and lowered his voice. "Lately I
have been worrying over this old ki-chu. I have built myself a
magnificent dwelling in Boston; I have surrounded myself with the
evidences and services of luxury; but there is a still small voice which
penetrates the sound-proof walls of my bedroom, that intrudes upon the
silences of my Turkish bath--and the voice says, 'Big Ben Hold--there
aren't any ki-chu; you're a fake; you're a swindler; you're a green
goods man; you're rollin' in riches secured by fraud.' Mr. Sanders, I
must see a ki-chu; I must have a real ki-chu if I spend the whole of my
fortune in getting it"; he dropped his voice again, "if I lose my life
in the attempt."
He stared with gloom, but earnestness, at Sanders, and the Commissioner
looked at him thoughtfully. And from Mr. Hold his eyes wandered to the
gravelled path outside, and the big American, following his eyes, saw a
discoloured patch.
"Somebody been spillin' paint?" he suggested. "I had----"
Sanders shook his head.
"That's blood," he said simply, and Mr. Hold jerked.
"I've just shot a native," said Sanders, in a conversational tone. "He
was rather keen on spearing me, and I was rather keen on not being
speared. So I shot him."
"Dead?"
"Not very!" replied the Commissioner. "As a matter of fact I think I
just missed putting him out--there's an Eurasian doctor looking him over
just now, and if you're interested, I'll let you know how he gets
along."
The showman drew a long breath.
"This is a nice country," he said.
Sanders nodded. He called his servants and gave directions for the
visitor's comfortable housing.
A week later, Mr. Hold embarked for the upper river with considerable
misgiving, for the canoe which Sanders had placed at his disposal
seemed, to say the least, inadequate.
It was at this time that the Ochori were in some disfavour with the
neighbouring tribes, and a small epidemic of rebellion and warfare had
sustained the interest of the Commissioner in his wayward peoples.
First, the N'gombi people fought the Ochori, then the Isisi folk went to
war with the Akasava over a question of women, and the Ochori went to
war with the Isisi, and between whiles, the little bush folk warred
indiscriminately with everybody, relying on the fact that they lived in
the forest and used poisoned arrows.
They were a shy, yet haughty people, and they poisoned their arrows with
tetanus, so that all who were wounded by them died of lock-jaw after
many miserable hours.
They were engaged in harrying the Ochori people, when Mr. Commissioner
Sanders, who was not unnaturally annoyed, came upon the scene with fifty
Houssas and a Maxim gun, and although the little people were quick, they
did not travel as fast as a well-sprayed congregation of .303 bullets,
and they sustained a few losses.
Then Timbani, the little chief of the Lesser Isisi, spoke to his people
assembled:
"Let us fight the Ochori, for they are insolent, and their chief is a
foreigner and of no consequence."