Part 32 (2/2)

So Brown, Will Yerkes and I, with Kazimoto, our two personal servants, and six boys to carry one tent for the lot of us and food and cooking pots, started off just as the hed at Fred ht in the open space between the house and barn He was to follow as fast as the loaded porters could be made to travel, and with that concertina of his to spur the touch But the rear-guard, when it co place

”You've got all the luck,” he shouted ”Make the ain!”

That pursuit was a journey of accidents, chapter after chapter of theht into an elephant pit

Before we had gone a mile in the dark we stood in doubt as to whether the ht or left Brown set his own indecision down frankly to the whisky that had muddled him Even Kazimoto, who had passed that way three times, did not know for certain So I went forward to scout--stepped into the deep shadow of so--threw the other foot forward to save myself--and fell doard into blackness for an eternity

I brought up at last unhurt in the trash and decaying vegetation at the bottoh parallelograuessed wassides fell in and threatened to bury s ached, but without result I suppose the noise went tru upward out of the hole and away to the clouds and the stars At any rate, Will and Broore afterward they never heard it

I was fifteen minutes in the hole that very likely had held ether under him until the poor brute perished of thirst, before it occurred to me to fire my rifle I fired several shots when I did think of it; but we had agreed on no syste to findat leopards in the dark instead of scouting for the track I used twenty cartridges before they ca, and with the last shot I nearly blen's helmet off as he stooped over the hole to look down in

Then there werepole for me to swarround at last and wiped the blood from hands and knees, ere no wiser about the proper direction to take

The next accident was a little before , next the boys, and Brown bringing up the rear (for in those wild hills there is never a good track wide enough for two le file unless driven furiously) Will ca its kill, a fat buck, in the ht, and the brute resented the interruption of his et a shot at it, and for the next two hours followed us, slinking fro It plainly intended murder, but which of us was to be the victi, so that the nerves of all of us were tortured every time the brute approached

We wasted at least thirty cartridges on futile efforts to guess his whereabouts in velvet black shadows, and Broent through all the stages from simple nervousness to fear, and then to frenzy, until we feared he would shoot one of us in frantic deter the leopard's knell

At last the brute did rush in, and of course where least expected He seized one of our porters by the shoulder, his claws doingh that dropped hiht of his fall, tore wounds in the

One of the things we did have with us was bandages But it took tiht, and after that he could neither march fast, nor was there anywhere to leave him

So just before dawn Fred came up with us, and was more pleased at our discomfiture than sympathetic He told off two men to carry the injured porter to a mission station more than a day's ain, oncerock, hill, and cedar forest between us and our supply colu in our ears

”Better send for nursemaids and perambulators, and have yourselves pushed!”

At noon that day we found the track of the driven cattle, and soon after that came on the half-devoured carcass of a heifer that the Greeks had shot, presumably because it could not march, and perhaps with the added reason that freshly-killed meat would draw off leopards and hyenas and provide peace for a few miles

Once on the trail it would not have been easy to lose it, except in the dark, for the Greek marauders were bent on speed and the driven cattle had s deep hoof-prints at every water-course

The first suspicion that dawned onon the part of Coutlass, was due to the discovery of hoof-prints of eitheralone in advance, and came on them beside a stream that was only apparently fordable in that one place Aftersure of what they were I halted to let Will and Brown catch up

”Did Coutlass have ?”

wondered Will

”That robber?” snorted Brown ”When Lady Saffren Waldon refused him tobacco money in the hotel he tried to borrow from me!”

”Where could be steal mules?” Will asked

”Nowhere Aren't any!”

”Horses' then?”

”He'd never take horses They'd die”

”What are they riding, then?”