GARRAM THE HUNTER
[Illustration: THE YOUNG HUNTER STOOD MOTIONLESS BEFORE HIM LOOKING
INTO THE DISTANCE. TO FIGHT--AH, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN GOOD! BUT TO FLY
FROM ONE’S ENEMIES--IT SEEMED TOO HARD A THING TO ASK.]
GARRAM THE HUNTER
_A BOY OF THE HILL TRIBES_
BY
HERBERT BEST
ILLUSTRATED BY
ERICK BERRY
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK BY
THE JUNIOR LITERARY GUILD
IN THE YEAR 1930
COPYRIGHT, 1930
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
FIRST EDITION
[Illustration]
TO
JOHN DUGDALE BEST
FROM E. B. AND
O. H. B.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A HUNTER AND HIS DOG 3
II. GARRAM FINDS TROUBLE 15
III. THE CULPRIT 27
IV. THE RAINMAKER’S ADVICE 45
V. A JOURNEY TO COME 61
VI. THE CITY OF THE FULANI 67
VII. LAUGHTER MAKES FRIENDS AND FOES 81
VIII. THE EMIR’S COURT 91
IX. THE EMIR’S SECRET 99
X. THE ROYAL HUNT 119
XI. KON AS DETECTIVE 131
XII. GARRAM ACCUSED 145
XIII. MENUD “TROUBLES TROUBLE” 157
XIV. A NOVEL PUNISHMENT 175
XV. A PIGLET ACTS FOR GARRAM 189
XVI. A STORY OF STORIES 205
XVII. A GHOST LEOPARD 217
XVIII. THE ALARM DRUM 245
XIX. THE CHIEF RETURNS 265
XX. GARRAM EARNS SLEEP 281
XXI. MENUD, THE TRAITOR 289
XXII. THE HILLMEN TRIUMPH 309
XXIII. HOME AGAIN 321
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE YOUNG HUNTER STOOD MOTIONLESS
BEFORE HIM LOOKING INTO THE DISTANCE.
TO FIGHT--AH, THAT WOULD
HAVE BEEN GOOD! BUT TO FLY FROM
ONE’S ENEMIES--IT SEEMED TOO HARD
A THING TO ASK _Frontispiece_
PAGE
DROVE THE KNIFE INTO THE KOB’S NECK 9
GARRAM SMUGGLED IT INTO A STABLE 151
BOULDER AFTER BOULDER, CRASHED DOWN 167
IT WAS LIKE A SNAKE, SWAYING 191
GARRAM WAS DIRECTLY ABOVE THE HUT 233
A HUNTER AND HIS DOG
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
A HUNTER AND HIS DOG
Garram stopped silently in midstride and listened. On each side the
narrow path beaten through the parched, straw-like grass by the feet of
different game animals, trees, gnarled and stunted by the annual forest
fires, hid all the view. Heat from the midday tropical sun beat down
into the breezeless African bush and made the perspiration run down the
silken black skin of the young hunter, down the uplifted foot as he
paused, leg raised in midstride, down the worn hollow of the path in
the red brick-like clay.
He was bare except for a soft leather loincloth and the knife at his
waist, the quiver and hunting ax slung over his shoulder. Everything in
his clean-cut build, even his long thin muscles, seemed in an attitude
of attention as he turned his head first this way, then that, to locate
more accurately the sound he had just heard.
As usual Garram hunted to-day far away from his father’s tribe in the
Hills. Deep in the country of the Plains, he was as a stranger liable
to be killed on sight if discovered.
As Garram waited for the sound to be repeated, Kon, his dark brown,
smooth-coated hunting dog, also waited. In the same attitude of
strained attention, one foot raised, he suppressed with difficulty his
panting so that he might hear the better. Then clear through all the
mingled and various sounds of the hot jungle, the bursting of seed
pods, the chirping of insects, the rustle of dried leaves and twigs
stretching and twisting in the heat, came the faint but unmistakable
click of hoof on stone.
[Illustration]
Kon’s huge head swung round to the boy, awaiting orders.
The young hunter’s right hand went up to the quiver over his left
shoulder, drew an arrow, and with a sweeping movement placed it across
the bow in readiness. Swift, almost too swift to follow, but the swing
of the arm and the pointing of the arrow had given the dog his orders.
As the arm had swung round to the right Kon plunged into the bush in
the direction indicated.
Then began a method of hunting probably unique, invented after long
practice by the boy and his dog. Hidden from each other by the dense
bush, Garram began to move Kon cautiously toward the game by sound
signals. Where Kon and the boy had waited listening, a pool of scent
would hang on the hot, stagnant air. The buck, probably a male kob by
the sound, could not be got to approach this place. So, swiftly but
silently as ever, Garram sought another station.
A hundred paces up the trail was a tree. Rather taller than the rest,
its boughs overhung the narrow clearing made by the game track. With
the ease of a forest monkey the boy swung himself up and lay, arrow on
bow, along a bough, waiting. Listening for occasional sounds made by
the buck’s horns striking against branches, or the rustle and crackle
of dry grass beneath his hoofs, Garram could follow the general line
taken by the grazing animal. With faint bird-like whistles he moved
the well-trained dog first to one side then the other, backward and
forward, but always edging the now suspicious quarry backward toward
the tree by the path.
The hunt continued, Garram motionless, eyes half shut, every atom of
attention concentrated in his ears. The bush grew more still as the
terrible heat seemed to increase and bludgeon into silence even the
sound of the insects. But even so, sounds needed sorting from each
other, locating, and, above all, understanding. A lizard dropped from
a height with that flat flop which saves him from damage but makes
him sound like a much larger animal. Bent grass straightened in the
blazing heat. A snake rustled in some cool undergrowth. These sounds,
once understood, could be dismissed as not likely to disturb the game
or complicate the hunt. But to the left was a faint crackle of some
larger game moving along a dry reed bed. A faint whistle from Garram
ordered the dog around to that side. This would edge the kob away from
threatened complication.
The little sweat bees of the bush were clustering in dozens and
hundreds in the corners of the boy’s mouth, the corners of his eyes,
anywhere where there was moisture. Garram was used to this. Moreover,
he was too intent even to notice them at the moment. He could picture
Kon, wriggling with eagerness, ears pricked, crawling from cover to
cover, almost flat bellied on the ground. The kob, he knew, would be
tossing his head in defiance of the unknown danger, reaching down
occasionally for a promising tuft of grass or leaf, but steadily moving
away from the suspicious sound made by Kon in his stalk, steadily
moving toward where Garram lay perched above the line of his sight,
above the range of his nose.
[Illustration: Drove the knife into the kob’s neck]
Then the kob emerged into the game trail. He sniffed for a moment and
got the full body scent left by Garram and Kon as they had stood
listening and waiting. With a snort the tawny yellow beast broke into
a swift but lumbering gallop, following the track that passed beneath
Garram’s tree. Now, from a slow painstaking stalk the hunt had reached
its phase of the last tearing split second of tense action. Thrusting
his bow and quiver swiftly among some boughs which would hold them, the
hunter prepared to launch himself flat upon the game.
The beast was two lumbering strides away when the lithe black body
dropped through the leaves, straightening itself as it fell. By a
miracle it seemed to miss impalement on the needle-sharp lyre-shaped
horns, and Garram’s weight, as he fell astride the shoulders, drove the
point of his outstretched knife deep between the vertebræ of the heavy
neck!
A blow instantly fatal. The great beast, killed in full gallop, thudded
upon the ground. The boy with one spring alighted unhurt and smiling in
the dust of the fall. For a moment he stood so, half sorry for his fine
opponent, then turned to the work on hand.
GARRAM FINDS TROUBLE
[Illustration]