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One had met him face to face and had sunk to the ground before eyes "that were very hot and red and thrusting out little lightnings." He had been seen in many places in the Ochori, in the N'gombi city, in the villages of the Akasava, but mainly his hunting ground was the narrow strip of territory which is called Lombobo.

"Lord," said she, "the Walker of the Night comes not alone to the Lombobo; all people up and down the river have seen him, and to my mind he is a sign of great fortune showing that ghosts are with us. Now, if you are very brave, we will have a killing greater than any. Is there no hole in the hill which Bosambo dug for your shame?

All the Lombobo people, the warriors and the hunters, the wives and the maidens, and even the children of tender years, lined the steep slopes of the Cup of Sacrifice. For Lamalana, deaf and blind to reason, knew that her hour was short, and that with the sun would come a man terrible in his anger ... and the soldiers who eat up opposition with fire. "O people!" she cried.

For the maddening thing was that the slip of filched territory was less than a hundred yards wide and men of the Lombobo, who went out by night to widen it, never came out alive for Bosambo also had a guard.

"M'gani," said he, at parting, "where do you go now? tell me that I may send cunning men to guard you, for there is a bad spirit in this land, especially amongst the people of Lombobo, because I have offended B'limi Saka, the chief." "No soldiers do I need, O Bosambo," said the other. "Yet I tell you this that I go to quiet places to learn that which will be best for my people." He turned to go.

And they talked and walked, and Lombobo huntsmen, returning through the wood, gave them a wide berth, for Lamalana was possessed of an eye which was notoriously evil. "Let us go back to the city," said Lamalana, "for now I see that you are very brave and not a blind old man." "There will be a great palaver and who knows but M'ilitani will come with his soldiers?"

But Bosambo set himself to enlarge his borders by a single expedient. Wherever his hunters came upon a red gum tree they cut it down. B'limi Saka, the chief of the sullen Lombobo, retaliated by planting red gum saplings on the country between the forest and the river a fact of which Bosambo was not aware until he suddenly discovered a huge wedge of red gum driven into his lawful territory.

In forest land this was not possible, and there had ever been between the Ochori and the Lombobo a feud and a grievance, touched-up border fights, for hereabouts there is good hunting. Sanders had tried many methods and had hit upon the red gum border as a solution to a great difficulty.

Though the ferocity of this chief was afterwards revealed, though secret places in the forest held his horrible secret killing-houses, yet he was a timid man with a certain affection of his eyes which made him dependent upon the childless widow who had been his strength for two years. The Lombobo were the cruellest of Sanders' people; their chiefs the most treacherous.

For though all the tribes, save the Ochori, had been cannibals, yet by fire and rope, tempered with wisdom, had the Administration brought about a newer era to the upper river. But reformation came not to the Lombobo.