t great expense and risk
to steal Brown's cattle?"

"They'll figure," said Will, "that Brown is helping us, and therefore,
Brown is an enemy. Prob'ly they surmise Brown is in league with us to
show us a short cut to what we're after. If that's how they work it
out, then they wouldn't need think much to conclude that putting Brown
on the blink would hoodoo us. Maybe they allow that that much bad luck
to begin with would unsettle Brown's friendly feelings for us.
Anyway--somebody bought the mules--somebody stole the cattle--cattle
are somewhere ahead. Let's hurry forward and see!"

We did hurry, but made disgustingly poor time. Once a dozen buffalo
stampeded our tiny column. Our five porters dropped their loads, and
the biggest old bull mistook our only tent for our captain's dead body
and proceeded to play ball with it, tossing it and tearing it to pieces
until at last Will got a chance for a shoulder shot and drilled him
neatly. Two other bulls took to fighting in the midst of the
excitement and we got both of them. Then the rest trotted off; so we
packed the horns of the dead ones on the head of our free porter (for
the tent he had carried was now utterly no use) and hastened on.

Once, in trying to make a cut that should have saved us ten or fifteen
miles between two rivers, we fell shoulder-deep into a bog and only
escaped after an hour's struggle during which we all but lost two
porters. We had to retrace our steps and follow the Greek's route,
only to have the mortification of seeing Fred and our column of
supplies coming over the top of a rise not eight miles behind us.

Determined not to be overtaken by him a second time and treated to
advice about nursemaids, we dispensed with sleep altogether for that
night, and nearly got drowned at the second river.

We found a native who owned a thing he called a mtungi--a near-canoe,
burned out of a tree-trunk. He assured us the ford was very winding
(he drew a wiggly finger-mark in the mud by way of illustration) but
that his boat would hold twice our number, and that he could take us
over easily in the dark. In fact he swore he had ferried twice our
number over on darker nights more than twenty or thirty times. He also
said that he had taken the cattle over by the ford early that morning,
and then had crossed over in the boat with two Greeks and a bwana Goa.
He showed us the brass wire and beads they gave him in proof of that
statement, and we began to put