Stewart Edward White

The Leopard Woman Stewart Edward White

It was the close of the day. Over the baked veldt of Equatorial Africa a safari marched. Themen, in single file, were reduced to the unimportance of moving black dots by thetremendous sweep of the dry country stretching away to a horizon infinitely remote, beyond which lay single mountains, like ships becalmed hull-down at sea. The immensitiesfilled the world--the simple immensities of sky and land. Only by an effort, a wrench of themind, would a bystander on the advantage, say, of one of the little rocky, outcropping hillshave been able to narrow his vision to details. And yet details were interesting. The vast shallow cup to the horizon became a plainsparsely grown with flat-topped thorn trees. It was not a forest, yet neither was it opencountry. The eye penetrated the thin screen of tree trunks to the distance of half a mile ormore, but was brought to a stop at last. Underfoot was hard-baked earth, covered byirregular patches of shale that tinkled when stepped on. Well-defined paths, innumerable, trodden deep and hard, cut into the iron soil. They nearly all ran in a northwesterlydirection. The few traversing paths took a long slant. These paths, so exactly like thosecrossing a village green, had in all probability never been trodden by human foot. They hadbeen made by the game animals, the swarming multitudinous game of Central Africa. The safari was using one of the game trails. It was a compact little safari, comprising notover thirty men all told. The single white man walked fifty yards or so ahead of the mainbody. He was evidently tired, for his shoulders drooped, and his shuffling, slow-swinginggait would anywhere have been recognized by children of the wilderness as that which getsthe greatest result from the least effort. Dressed in the brown cork helmet, the brownflannel shirt with spine-pad, the khaki trousers, and the light boots of the African travellerlittle was to be made of either his face or figure. The former was fully bearded, the latterpowerful across the shoulders. His belt was heavy with little leather pockets; a pair ofprismatic field-glasses, suspended from a strap around his neck, swung across his chest; inthe crook of his left arm he carried a light rifle. Immediately at his heels followed a native. This man's face was in conformation that of thetypical negro; but there the resemblance ceased. Behind the features glowed a proud, fiercespirit that transformed them. His head was high but his eyes roved from right to leftrestlessly, never still save when they paused for a flickering instant to examine somegazelle, some distant herd of zebra or wildebeeste standing in the vista of the flat-toppedtrees. His nostrils slowly expanded and contracted with his breathing, as do those of aspirited horse. In contrast to the gait of the white man he stepped vigorously and proudlyas though the long day had not touched his strengt