d has his
lair most comfortably placed. And you should have come with me, but your
creaking English gaiters would have disturbed him, while my soft native
ones let me go within thirty or forty yards of his new home in safety." My
companion was wearing the Moorish gaiters of the sort his trackers
used--things made of palmetto. When they follow on foot the trackers
wear leather aprons too, in order to deaden the sound made by their
passage through the resisting undergrowth.

Then we rode back by another route, down paths that only an Arab horse
could have hoped to negotiate, through densely wooded forest tracks that
shut out the sun, but allowed its brightness to filter through a leafy
sieve and work a pattern of dappled light and shadow on the grass, for our
delectation. Most of the way had been made familiar in pursuit of some
wild boar that would not stand and fight but hurried into the wildest and
most difficult part of the forest, charging through every bush, however
thick and thorny, in vain endeavour to shake off the pitiless pack. For my
companion no corner of the forest lacked memories, some recent, some
remote, but all concerned with the familiar trial of skill in which the
boar had at last yielded up his pleasant life.

We came quite suddenly upon the stream and past a riot of green bamboo and
rushes, saw the kaid's house, more than ever gaunt and dishevelled by
daylight, with the shining water in front, the wild garden beyond, and on
the other bank the Susi muleteers sitting with the black slave in pleasant
contemplation of the work Salam had done. Kaid M'Barak dozed on one of the
boxes, nursing his beloved gun, while the horse equally dear to him stood
quietly by, enjoying the lush grasses. Salam and the tracker were not far
away, a rendezvous was appointed for the hunt, and Pepe Ratto, followed by
his men, cantered off, leaving me to a delightful spell of rest, while
Salam persuaded the muleteers to load the animals for the last few miles
of the road between us and Mogador.

Then, not without regret, I followed the pack-mules out of the valley,
along the track leading to a broad path that has been worn by the feet of
countless nomads, travelling with their flocks and herds, from the heat
and drought of the extreme south to the markets that receive the trade of
the country, or making haste from the turbulent north to escape the heavy
hand of the oppressor.

It was not pleasant to ride away from the forest,