Out of the Primitive | Page 8

Lord James's lips pressed together and his gray eyes clouded with pain.
"Close shave, heh?" he muttered.
"Yes," replied Blake. He drew in a deep breath, and added, "Not the first, though, nor the last. But a miss is as good as a mile, hey, Jimmy boy?"
"Gad, old man, that sounds natural! Can't say you look it, though--not altogether. Must get you aboard and into another style of fine raiment. Fur trousers not good form in this climate, y'know. You picked up that shirt at a remnant counter, I take it. Come aboard. Must mow that alfalfa patch before any one suspects you're trying to raise a beard."
The friendly banter seemed to have the contrary effect from that intended. Blake's face darkened.
"Good Lord, no!" he rumbled. "Go aboard with her? What d'you take me for?"
"Give you my word, I don't take you at all," replied the puzzled Englishman.
"What! Hasn't she told you? But of course she wouldn't--unless she saw you alone," muttered Blake. "Come on up the canon. I've thought it all out--just what must be done. But it'll take some time to explain. Wait! Did you come alone?--any one follow you?"
"No. Told 'em to stay near the boat."
"Just the same, I'll make sure," said Blake. He dived into the barricade passage, and quickly reappeared, dragging at the butt of the date palm. "There, me lud; the door is shut. Nobody is going to walk in on our private conference now. Come on."

CHAPTER III
LORD AND MAN
Blake turned about and swung away up the ravine. Lord James followed in the half-obliterated path, which led along the edge of a tiny spring rill. The cleft was here closed in on each side with sheer walls of rock from twenty to thirty feet high. At the point where this small box canon intersected the middle of the cliff ridge, the gigantic baobab that Lord James had seen from the steamer, towered skyward, its huge trunk filling a good third of the width of the gorge. Across from it and nearer at hand was a thicket of bamboos, around which the spring rill trickled from a natural basin in the rock.
But the visitor gave scant heed to the natural features of the place. His glance passed from a great antelope hide, drying on a frame, to the bamboo racks on which sun-seared strips of flesh were curing over a smudge fire. Looking to his left, he saw a hut hardly larger than a dog kennel but ingeniously thatched with bamboo leaves. Then his glance was caught and held by a curious contrivance of interwoven thorn branches and creepers, fitted into a high narrow opening in the trunk of the baobab.
"What's that?--hollow tree?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Blake, without turning. "Sixteen-foot room inside. That's where the she-leopard and the cubs were smothered. Fired the gully to drive out the family. All stayed at home and got smothered 'cept old Mr. Leopard. He ran the gantlet. Lord, how he squalled, poor brute! But they'd have eaten us if we hadn't eaten them. He landed in the pool, too scorched to see. Settled him with my club."
"Clubbed him?--a leopard! I say now! A bit different, that, to snipe shooting."
"Well, yes, a trifle different, Jeems--a trifle," conceded Blake.
"My word! What haven't you been through!" burst out the Englishman. "And to think she, too, went through it all--six weeks of it!"
"That's it!" enthused Blake. "She's the truest, grittiest little girl the sun ever had the good luck to shine on! If she thinks now I can't realize--that I'm not going to do the square thing by her! I've been thinking it all over, Jimmy. I've got it all mapped out what I'm going to do. Wait, though!"
He sprang ahead and pulled at the thorny contrivance that stopped the opening in the baobab trunk. It was balanced midway up, on a crossbar. Almost at a touch, the lower part swung up and outward and the upper half down and inward. He stepped in under it, hesitated a moment, and went on into the hollow, with an exclamation of relief: "No, 't isn't her room any more, thank God!"
Lord James stared. Well as he knew the sterling qualities of his friend, he had never suspected him of such delicacy. He gazed curiously around at the unshapely but flawless sand-glazed earthenware set on a bamboo rack beside the open stone fireplace, at the rough- woven but strong baskets piled together near the foot of the baobab, at the pouch of antelope skin, the grass sombreros, the bamboo spits and forks and spoons--all the many useful utensils that told of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of his friend.
But, most of all, he was interested in the weighty hardwood club leaning against the tree trunk and the great bamboo bow hanging above in a skin sheath beside a