A JOURNEY TO COME
Garram spent the rest of that day planning and preparing. If the safety
of his father required him to leave the village of Kwallak it would
debar him for the same reasons from those other villages of the Hills,
where Sura might have influence. As Garram planned, he prepared also
the famous poison of the Hill people, evaporating it in a piece of
broken pot over a slow fire till it was the color and consistency of
tar. There might be good reasons why he should leave the tribe but
there was no reason for him to hide like a hunted animal.
One by one he examined his reed-shafted, unfeathered arrows, here
and there renewing the fine lashing which held the soft iron heads
in place. One by one he dipped them in the poison, laying them out
to dry. Like all the other hunters of the Hills, he used a poison
that was mainly strophanthus, and the faintest scratch with the arrow
treated with it would kill man or beast painlessly and faster than a
well-placed bullet.
He squatted, working, on a rock in the shade of a large tree and
considered his possible plans. The people of the Plains to the east
were of the Fulani race, and the little Garram had heard of them did
not make either them or their country seem attractive. The tales he
had heard were from Hillmen, who, captured young by raiding parties,
had seen their parents wantonly butchered. Finally, when their captors
had considered them no longer worth guarding as slaves, some homing
instinct had made them drag their worn and broken bodies back to the
Hills.
Arrows finished, the boy turned his attention to re-hafting his hunting
ax. Meanwhile he considered the country of the Fulani of the West. Of
these he knew little. They were, by their dress and appearance, of the
same race as the Fulani of the East. But for some reason they had left
the Hillmen alone, making no slave raids. Most thrilling about them
was the half-fabled story of their mighty walled city, Yelwa. To the
Hillmen, whose little round thatched huts clung like small clusters of
mushrooms to the steep hillsides, had come vague tales of a widespread
city, flat roofed, shadowed with ancient date palms, and encircled by
an incredible wall.
With the completion of his preparations came decision. He gathered up
his weapons and for safety’s sake overturned the remnants of the poison
into the fire. If then he was to be denied adventure in the Hills he
would go to meet it in Yelwa itself--if the city really existed!
Garram called to Kon and entered his father’s house. Just before dusk
he made his final preparations in the shape of an incredibly large
meal, a real traveler’s meal, designed to last him through a night of
hard going.
THE CITY OF THE FULANI
[Illustration]