SHEENA
KILLER'S KRAAL


III

S

HE FROWNED over the saying. There were many words in Swahili speech that had no meaning for her, because the Abama dialect had no words to match them. "What is 'grace'?" she asked.

He was silent, balancing an answer in his mind. "It is ze minga," he decided. "A thing given, as when the Abama sacrifice for rain, and the rain comes."

"So? But I have given you nothing."

He gave her a long, steady look, then: "I think so. I am thinking of a certain night in the garden of Sleman bin Ali.

"I gave you a knife wound also!" she reminded him sharply. But under his steady gaze she felt the blood rise to her head and pulse in her ears. To hide her confusion she got to her feet, and as she did so a deep-toned voice shouted her name. She turned quickly to see Ekoti come running across the clearing, the tails of his leopard-skin kroos whipping about his black, muscular legs. He came to a stand before her, his great chest heaving as he fetched his breath. As Rick got to his feet the young chief's keen eyes came to focus on him. Stern disapproval was written on his face, and his greeting was coldly formal:

"I know you, Bwana!"

"I know you, Chieftain!" Rick returned.

"I did not think to find you still here," Ekoti said, but looked to Sheena for an answer.

"Kalundas attacked his camp," the Jungle Queen told him. "He was wounded in the fight and could not trek."

"Ah—so!" Ekot looked relieved, then: "I sent Leta to your dwelling place in the forest. She could not find you, and when she came back she said she was sure that the young Bwana had taken—"

"Your wives chatter like parrots!" the Jungle Queen, interposed sharply. "And if you wanted me why are your drums silent?"

Ekoti's eyes became uneasy. He looked up at the sky and then down at the ground. "I came to speak of this thing," he said at last. "Our drums are silent because the witchdoctors say that no drum must talk after sundown now."

"What witchdoctors? Who dares to silence my drums?" Sheena was furious, and Ekoti looked as if he expected the earth to open and swallow him.

"All the witchdoctors say so, Sheena," he rumbled. "Surely you have heard the drum?"

"I have heard it. What more?"

Ekoti looked grave. "There is much more and it is all bad, Sheena. When the drum first spoke the witchdoctors went to a secret meeting place, and when they came to their villages they told the people that the drum was the ghost-voice of Yamo Galagi. It was a great magic, they said, and that all the young warriors must make ready to trek into the Kalunda country."

"So? But you did not let the young men go, Ekoti?"

The chief took his time about answering, and that the worst had yet to come was made plain by his hesitation and the way he shifted from one foot to the other. "I tried to stop them," he said at last. "I called the Elders to council, and it was made taboo for any man to go more than a day's trek beyond his village. But the call of the drum was stronger than our taboo. When it spoke again a few young men stole away when all were sleeping. On the next night a few more. And so it has been every night. Aie truly, it was as if a ghost walked into the villages, touched each man on the shoulder as he lay on his bed, and said: 'Follow me!' Soon there will be no young men left to hunt and watch our cattle, and I have come to ask you what I should do about this thing."

"The witchdoctors lie!" the Jungle Queen flashed at him. "It cannot be the Galagi's drum. It was buried with him and no man knows where."

"It may be that they speak the truth, Sheena." Rick, who had been listening with keen attention, held out his hand.

"So!" she said caustically. "The white Bwana believes in ghosts also!"

"Let me see that knife again," he said quietly. She gave it to him, and he examined the ivory haft with a frown between his eyes. Then he nodded his head with a grunt of satisfaction and said: "Now I know the meaning of these carvings. They tell a story of bygone days. Listen—"

And then be gave her a full account of all he had learned of the Abamas at Benguela. At first Sheena could not understand how he could know so much about her people, never having lived among them. But as he got deeper into the story she was remembering certain things Ebid Ela had told her, so long ago that she had forgotten them until this moment. And once Ekoti, his eyes big with wonderment, broke in: "True, true I have heard the old ones speak of such days. It is said—"

Sheena silenced him with a quick gesture and Rick went on: "See, the carvings tell the story of Yamo Galagi's visit to the Portuguese king. It may be that the man who dropped it got it in trade," he concluded. "But I do not think so. No, the drum calls the Abama warriors to Massumba, I think."

Sheena was silent for a moment, turning it all over in her mind. Her keen brain was quick to grasp the significance of what Rick had told her.

"If this be so," she summed up. "the drum speaks of much evil that is brewing at Massumba. It must be silenced, Ekoti," she added, turning to the chief.

E

koti looked down at his feet; then: "The Abamas will not help you, Sheena. The witchdoctors have frightened them, and I fear—"

"Have I asked for their help, Ekoti? If you are not afraid of ghosts, we two will go to Massumba—"

"We three," Rick put in quietly. And she turned to look him up and down with an amused smile.

"It will be a hard trek for you," she told him. "There will be no servants to carry Bwana's tent, to fetch his water and to cook his food." She saw a muscle tighten in his jaw; but in a moment his slow smile had relaxed the tension, and he said:

"Anywhere you go, I can follow."

Now, it flashed into her mind that, with the Abamas worked up, excited by the fetish-call of the big drum, she would not be able to get porters to take him to the coast. And there was a meaner thought—it might be well for him to learn that to trek with a safari was one thing, and to trek with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, quite another thing. Truly, such a trek would put an end, once and for all, to any notion he might have of living in the jungle with her. She laughed softly and said:

"So be it, Bwana. Follow me, then!" She picked up her bow and quiver, gave him a dazzling smile, and then sped across the clearing without a backward glance.

Rick's lips rounded to an oath, and he would have started to run after her had not Ekoti caught his arm.

"You could not catch her, Bwana," the chief told him. "No man could. Always she will be in the trees ahead of. us. You and I, we will follow on the ground, as real people must."

Rick looked up the game trail, into the misty green of which Sheena had already vanished, rubbing the nape of his neck with his hand. He muttered something under his breath which would have made the Jungle Queen's ears burn had she heard it, then he turned to Ekoti and said gravely:

"It will be good to trek with the chief of the Abamas."

"It will be good to trek with the slayer of the Bearded One," Ekoti returned with a flash of white teeth. Then he looked down at Rick's empty holster and asked: "But where is the Father-of-Six?"

"Must be around somewhere," said Rick and started. to look around the clearing for his Colt. Ekoti soon spotted it, gleaming in the the grass where it had been knocked from Rick's hand. He picked it up and gave it to Rick.

"If I had such a gun, and could shoot as quickly and as straight as you do, I would fear no man," he said.

"There is such another in my tent," Rick told him. "When I was at the coast I thought of my friend Ekoti, and I bought the gun for him. I will teach him to shoot with it."

"Truly?" the young chief's eyes bulged.

"Truly," said Rick, and went to his tent to get the gun. But when he came back the Abama chief's face was set in stern lines. He said:

"There is a thing in my mind, Bwana. It will be good to speak of it before I take your gift I know what is in your heart. Sheena's skin is white, your skin is white. It would be good for you to mate with her, you think. It may be so. But I tell you now that if you try to take her to the coast with you this spear will drink your blood!"

For a time black and white, both perfect specimens of their race, looked deeply each into the other's eyes. Rick said:

"The Abama chief speaks plainly as a warrior should. I will speak as plainly. I will take Sheena to the coast with me, but only when she asks me to do so. Meanwhile, I wish to be your friend. Freely, I give you this gun, and I will teach you to shoot with it, even though the first bullet you fire finds my heart."

"Aie!" exclaimed the chief and his dark eyes came alight with a gleam of appreciation. "You are a man, Bwana, a fit mate for Sheena!" Then he added with a deep chuckle, "But if you wait for her to do the asking, as you say you will, I think we will be friends for a long time. Oh yes, we will be too old to fight then!"

"Maybe you're not far out at that!" Rick muttered with a wry grin, and then went to make up his pack.

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