I jumped up right quick at that, and peered off in the direction he was looking. There were about twenty half-naked black savages off in the distance, all of them carrying spears and shields.
“Do you reckon they're cannibals, Brother Rourke?” I asked, holding up a hand to shade my eyes from the morning sun.
“Too far away,” said Rourke. “I can't see their teeth.”
“What have their teeth got to do with it?”
“I read somewhere that all cannibals file their teeth,” he said.
I remembered some gossip I had heard about old Doc Peterson back in Moline before they locked him away, and I knew
he
sure didn't file
his
teeth, so I kind of discounted that theory. But they were getting closer now, and most of them looked pretty full, so I figured that it wasn't worth worrying about for the time being.
“What do you think we ought to do?” asked Rourke. “Heal ’em or convert ’em?”
“They don't look like they need much of either,” I said, as they approached to within a hundred yards. “I don't suppose you know Zulu or Tswana?”
He shook his head. “They don't speak much of either back in Dublin. How about beads? I'm told they go crazy for beads.”
“Sounds reasonable, Brother Rourke,” I said. “I didn't know you had any.”
“Me? Of course not. Don't you have any rosary beads in your pockets?”
“Wrong religion,” I replied.
The savages were about forty yards away now, and muttering amongst themselves. They had slowed down a bit, but were still approaching.
“They look like they mean business,” said Rourke. “Suppose we ought to make a run for it?”
“To where?” I asked. “We don't even know where we are.”
“The way I figure it,” said Rourke, “Cairo's north and the Cape's south. Take your choice.”
But by then they had split up, and a moment later we were surrounded. Pulling the Good Book from my pocket, I cleared my throat, raised my hands above my head, and took a step forward.
"Brethren!"
I shouted, and they all jumped back a couple of steps. “In the Book of Herod, Chapter 8, Verse 3, the Lord God said unto Moses: Thou shall not eat thy neighbor!”
The leader of the heathens stopped dead in his tracks and blinked his eyes very rapidly.
“You're getting to them,” said Rourke out of the side of his mouth. “Say something else. Maybe a little hellfire and damnation.”
“And the children of Israel were wicked,” I intoned. “And you know
why
they were wicked? Because they ate two wayfarers who had mistakenly wandered into their city. For does not Jesus say that to err is human, but to forgive divine? And the children of Israel, who were dressed a far sight better than you, you Godless savages, were cast out into the desert to wander for forty years! Do you want that to happen to you, you ignorant barbarians?”
“Oh, you got ’em on the run, Saint Luke!” said Rourke. “You really got ’em going!”
Well, they got going, all right, but in the wrong direction, and a few seconds later the leader was standing so close to me that l could just about smell his breath.
“Make him smile,” said Rourke. “I still want to get a look at his teeth.”
The savage responded with an enormous grin. “Like so?” he asked in a deep gravelly voice. Then, frowning, he extended a forefinger and poked me right in the short ribs. “You come!” He jabbed Rourke with the butt of his spear. “You too!”
We acceded to his wishes, not caring to dwell upon the alternatives for any considerable length of time. They didn't treat us unkindly, but then no competent butcher likes to bruise the meat, so I can't say that we were real quick to develop a mutual trust with our black companions. We walked the better part of a day, stopping every now and then for water and privy calls, and when night came we built a big fire and huddled around it, more from cold than from fear of man-eating beasts, of which there weren't none, except maybe for our present company.
Finally the leader walked over to us and sat himself down, cross-legged. He pointed to himself and said, “Kitunga.”
“Rourke,” said Burley, tapping himself on the chest. “And this here's Saint Luke.”
Kitunga solemnly extended his hand, kind of upside down, and shook each of ours.
“Does this mean you're not going to eat us?” asked Rourke.
“Eat you?” said Kitunga, and laughed. “No. No. Not eat.”
“Then what do you want from us?” said Rourke.
"Chumbi-chumbi,"
said Kitunga.
“Sounds like some kind of ritual,” said Rourke. “What the devil does it mean?”
Kitunga flashed every tooth in his head. “Make babies,” he said. He shook our hands again, spat in the fire, and began walking away.
“Hold on a minute!” I said, jumping up. “What do you mean, make babies?”
“Make babies,” said Kitunga solemnly. With the forefinger of one hand and the fist of the other, he gave us a graphic and vigorous analogy.
“You mean you want us to make babies with some naked black barbarians?” I demanded.
“Not black,” said Kitunga. “Like you.”
“You mean a white woman?” asked Rourke.
“Yes, yes,” said Kitunga. “White woman.”
As you can imagine, we immediately fell to discussing this development between ourselves while Kitunga ambled off to sleep with his men. Back in those days there were lots of tales making the rounds about white women who were priestesses or goddesses of heathen black tribes, but while they sounded good over a lonely campfire or in the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, they were about as likely to be true as our lost Zulu gold mine.
“The way I see it, Brother Rourke,” I said after considerable thought, “is that these here savages have killed some hunting party except for a white woman, whom they've doubtless got chained to a post in their village, and whom they probably ravish by the hour.”
“I don't know that I'm real pleased about this turn of events, Saint Luke,” said Rourke. “Oh, I'll admit that it beats being eaten, but I suppose she's going to want us to rescue her.”
It
was
a kind of gloomy thought at that, and I said as much. “Still,” I added, “it's the Christian thing to do.”
“Maybe you could tell her to turn the other cheek, a fascinating thought in itself,” said Rourke.
“Well, I suppose we'd at least better make sure she
wants
to be rescued before we go about upsetting Kitunga,” I suggested.
“Right,” agreed Rourke. “A person can get used to anything in time. Maybe she's gotten to where she likes being ravished.”
“A telling point,” I agreed.
We fell silent for a while, and then an interesting notion hit me.
“Brother Rourke,” I said, “I think we've been looking at this situation all wrong.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Why should a bunch of healthy young bucks want our help ravishing a prisoner?”
“I hadn't quite gotten around to considering that,” he admitted. “Now that you mention it, it doesn't really make a lot of sense, does it?”
“It sure as hell don't.”
“Scientific curiosity, maybe?” he said.
“Nope,” I said. “I been mulling on it for a couple of minutes now, and it seems to me that if they was choosing partners for this white woman, they'd just naturally choose themselves.”
“Makes sense,” said Rourke, nodding his head thoughtfully.
“Well, then, it stands to reason that if bringing us back with them ain't
their
idea, it must be
hers
.”
“Sensible,” muttered Rourke. “Sensible.”
“And if she's giving orders to a batch of spear-toting heathen like Kitunga and his buddies, she must be a pretty powerful little lady.”
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Rourke suddenly. “An oversexed white priestess!” He stared up at the clouds, which were covering up the stars as usual, and got a faraway look on his face. “Golden hair down to her waist,” he said, “and breasts like white cantaloupes. Maybe a bracelet or an armband or two...”
Well, I couldn't see that the picture he was painting was all that much more enticing than a naked white woman staked out spread-eagled on the ground, but I could tell that Rourke didn't want to be bothered none, so I fell to thinking about what kind of tabernacle me and this white priestess could build right here in the bush before we got around to trading ivory and other such trinkets with civilized folks. I didn't know how big her tribe was, but if Kitunga's group was just a foraging party, I figured we'd have an awful lot of manpower able to respond to a terse command or two. As for Burley, I decided that he wasn't such an all-fired bad fellow, and I'd probably let him stick around as a resident witch doctor, so long as he didn't impose on our hospitality too often, like coming over to dinner of a Sunday or asking us to steal a white woman for him too.
Ten minutes later Rourke was still drawing verbal pictures in the damp night air. By now he'd got her hair down to her ankles, and her breasts were the size of honeydew melons. Seems to me that he'd done away with her armbands, too. He just kept whispering to nobody in particular all night, and by morning he was busy working out the color of her eyes and how narrow her waist was.
Once the sun came up it got warm enough to start traveling again—no matter how hot the days are in Africa, the nights are enough to convince you that you've wandered into Eskimo country by mistake—and Kitunga gave us each a none-too-gentle nudge with the butt of his spear. We began walking, mostly over open veldtland, but occasionally going through sky-high grasses on old elephant and rhino trails, and I fell to questioning him about the white woman.
It didn't help much, since Kitunga had just about run through his entire English vocabulary the day before. I couldn't tell how his tribe had come by this woman, or what she looked like, or if she had been there so long she'd forgotten how to speak in a civilized language, or even why she felt the need to make babies. One thing he did let drop that she was a medicine woman, which was probably as close to being a high priestess as a person could get among these heathen, so Rourke was right on that point at least. I figured it was all to the good, since once she and I started taking field trips to Nairobi and places like that, the tribe would need a good medicine man, and even if Rourke couldn't cure a dysentery germ, he could probably talk it to death.
We walked for two more days. I tried to figure out where we were, but one tree looks pretty much like another, and it was raining so much I never did get a fix on the Southern Cross or any of the constellations, so finally I gave up on it and just followed along. When we bedded down that second night Kitunga gave us to understand, more through gestures than words, that we would reach his village the next morning.
“And that's where we'll meet your witchwoman?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said.
“And then we both move in with her?”
“Just one,” said Kitunga.
“Just one?” said Rourke, looking a little upset. “What happens to the other?”
Kitunga shrugged and walked away.
“Looks like the winner gets to eat the loser, Brother Rourke,” I said at last.
“I'd never eat you, no matter what,” said Rourke devoutly.
I fully agreed with that remark, and me and the Lord fell to discussing the matter between ourselves, trying to figure out how best not to present Rourke with any such opportunity.
On the surface of it, there was no problem that I could see, what with me being a handsome and vigorous young stallion, possessed as I was with the eye of a hawk, the heart of a lion, and the gentle hand of a lady. But women are peculiar creatures in matters of taste, and a woman who would send a small battalion of naked warriors out in search of a bed partner was likely to be a little more peculiar than most.
So, having dwelled on the matter for some time, I waited until Rourke was asleep and borrowed a sharp hunting knife from Kitunga. Then I walked to a nearby river, cut off my beard and shaved as close as I could, and washed out all my clothes. On the way back I passed a pile of elephant dung which had been sitting there for some days, picked some up, and carefully smeared it over Rourke's shirt and pants as he slept. I couldn't be sure he'd accept it in the sporting manner in which it was done, so I wandered over to where Kitunga's boys were sleeping and piled in with them. One of them spent half the night grabbing at my ass and giggling, but I awoke whole and in one piece.
Matter of fact, what woke me up was Rourke, screaming at the top of his lungs. He'd flung off all his clothes except for his boots, and was jumping up and down in a right impressive fit of rage. His eyes fell on me, and he pointed an accusing finger in my direction.
“You did it, you Judas!” he screamed. “You son of a bitch! You want her all to yourself! You did it!”
“Calm yourself, Brother Rourke,” I said, stepping forward, but still keeping a couple of warriors between him and me. “I don't know quite what you're talking about.”
“Damn your hide!” he screamed. “You know bloody well what I'm talking about! Mark my words, you sure as hell aren't going to have her, not without one whopping big fight!”
I just looked at Kitunga and shrugged. He grinned and motioned his men to get moving. “Go now,” he said.
“Now just a goddamned minute!” snapped Rourke. “I've got to clean up first.”
Kitunga walked over and pointed the business end of his spear at him. “Go now,” he said.
Rourke's shoulders sagged. He paused just long enough to transfer his money from his pants pocket into his boot and started walking off with us. He made a pretty comical picture walking through the bush, six and a half feet tall, skinny as a rail, and wearing nothing but his beat-up old hunting boots, but I thought it safer to admire him from afar and always kept half a dozen men between us.
In about two hours we reached the top of a hill, and, looking down, I could see a batch of thorn huts sitting beside a stream that ran through a large valley.
I adjusted my jacket, buttoned my shirt up to the collar, tried to comb my hair a bit with my fingers, and turned to Kitunga.
“What's her name?” I asked.
“Neeyora,” he said.