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I, g'la, a fool, stand before you and yet the killer of B'chumbiri sits trembling and will not rise before me, fearing my vengeance. Am I so terrible?" His wide open eyes were fixed upon the uncle of B'chumbiri, and the old man returned the gaze defiantly. "Am I so terrible?" Bones went on, gently. "Do men fear me when I walk? Or run to their huts at the sound of my puc-a-puc?
Presently B'chumbiri came sweeping round the bend, singing in his poor, cracked voice about a land and a people and treasures ... he turned his canoe at his father's bidding, and came obediently to land....
"Here we will wait," panted the uncle, "and when B'chumbiri comes we will call him to land, for he has the sickness mongo." "What of Sandi?" asked the father, who was no gossip. "Sandi is gone," replied the other, "and there is no law."
Do women wring their hands when I pass?" Again there was a little titter, but M'gobo, the uncle of B'chumbiri, grimacing now in his rage, was not amongst the laughers. "Yet the brave one who slew " M'gobo sprang to his feet. "Lord," he said harshly, "why do you put all men to shame for your sport?" "This is no sport, M'gobo," answered Bones quickly. "This is a palaver, a killing palaver.
"Lord," said a wooding man, "this is B'chumbiri who was mad, and he lived in the village near by." "There will we go," said Bones, very gravely.
Round his head he had twisted a wire so tightly that it all but cut the flesh: this was necessary, for B'chumbiri had a headache which never left him day or night. Now he stood, his lank body wrapped in a blanket, and he looked with dull eyes from face to face. "I see you," he said at last, and repeated his motto which had something to do with monkeys.
Also they tell me that you smiled at him. Now I tell you there will come a day when you will not smile, and that day is near at hand." "Lord," said the chief, "he made with us a foolish palaver, believing that we had put away B'chumbiri."
Bones took the other's hand, snivelled a bit despite his fierce effort of restraint, and went aboard the Zaire. "Tell all men," said B'chumbiri, addressing his impassive relatives, "that I go to a great day and to many strange lands." He was tall and knobby-kneed, spoke with a squeak at the end of his deeper sentences, and about his tired eyes he had made a red circle with camwood.
Yet I hold the laws in my two hands even as Sandi held them, for laws do not change with men, neither does the sun change whatever be the land upon which it shines. Now, I say to you and to all men, deliver to me the slayer of B'chumbiri that I may deal with him according to the law." There was a dead silence, and Bones waited.
Now all the people of M'fa knew that the father of B'chumbiri and his uncle had put away the tiresome youth with his headache and his silly talk, and when there came news that the Zaire was beating her way to the village there was a hasty likambo of the eldermen. With this arrangement all agreed; for surely here was a palaver not to be feared. Bones came with his escort of Houssas.
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