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He doubted that either of the men would leave camp now before morning, so he withdrew, but toward the south, for there it seemed most likely the girl still was. In the garden beside the bungalow Meriem wandered thoughtfully in the moonlight. She still smarted from Bwana's, to her, unjust treatment of the Hon. Morison Baynes.
There was scarce a head man from coast to coast who would not heed the big Bwana's commands in preference to those of the hunters who employed them, and so it was easy to turn back any undesirable stranger Bwana had simply to threaten to order his boys to desert him. But there was evidently one who had slipped into the country unheralded.
The Persian breathed: "With our Bwana's own pistol. As if he had killed himself. I peeped through the curtain. The pistol was hanging from the tent-pole. When he looked at it, and then at our Bwana, I read everything in his mind. But if this also is the will of God it will not happen until some hour when the camp is still when we are all asleep."
The fellow knew his master's plans sufficiently well to understand that he had done something to arouse the ire of the Big Bwana and that it would fare ill with them all if they were overtaken in Big Bwana's country. At the suggestion Baynes took alarm. What if the Big Bwana, as the head-man called him, had surprised "Hanson" in his nefarious work.
He assisted the Leopard Woman to this improvised couch and laid her upon it. She seemed to drop instantly asleep. They brought more grass and piled it in another place. Mali-ya-bwana superintended these activities zealously. He had drunk his fill, had bolted a chunk of goat's flesh one of the savages had handed him, now he was ready to fulfil his bwana's commands. "You will eat?" he asked.
"Then we remain in camp five days," they concluded, after working out the subtraction. "But," intervened one of the porters, "we have no more potio." "I have the bwana's gun," Simba pointed out, "and also the gun of this m'zungu. There is here plenty of game." "To eat meat always is not well," grumbled the porter.
Hanson did not accept Bwana's invitation to move his camp closer to the bungalow. He said his boys were inclined to be quarrelsome, and so were better off at a distance; and he, himself, was around but little, and then always avoided coming into contact with the ladies. A fact which naturally aroused only laughing comment on the rough trader's bashfulness.
He had no desire to follow this strange white man who was afraid at night; he had less to remain at the tender mercies of the Big Bwana's lusty warriors, between whom and his people there was long-standing blood feud; and he was more than delighted, into the bargain, for a legitimate excuse for deserting his much hated Swede master.
The girl had assured Baynes that Korak was safe in the jungle with Tantor. It had not occurred to her that the ape-man might not be able to burst his bonds. Baynes had been wounded by a shot from the rifle of one of the Arabs, and the girl wanted to get him back to Bwana's home, where he could be properly cared for. "Then," she said, "I shall get Bwana to come with me and search for Korak.
"Let you or me, it does not matter take the magic bone, and with it take also this safari and its potio." "I will do it," assented Simba after a moment. "You will stay here to carry out the bwana's orders." In the course of the evening Winkleman, conceiving that the right moment had come, set himself seriously to establishing a dominance over these members of an inferior race.
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