“What happened?  Nothin’!  I was that riled I didn’t stop to think—­fixed a bayonet on the old Martini the gov’ment supplies to settlers out of the depths of its wisdom an’ generosity—­climbed up by the same route the leopard took—­invaded him—­an’ skewered him wi’ the bayonet in the dark!  I wouldn’t do it again for a kingdom—­but I won’t buy more pigeons either!”

“What do you raise on your farm, then—­pigs?” we asked.

“No, the leopards take pigs.”

“What then?”

“Well—­as I was explainin’ to that Greek Georges Coutlass at Nairobi—­there’s a way of farmin’ out your cattle among the natives that beats keepin’ ’em yourself.  The natives put ’em in the village pen o’ nights; an’ besides, they know about the business.

“All you need do is give ’em a heifer calf once in a while, and they’re contented.  I keep a herd o’ two hundred cows in a native village not far from my place.  The natural increase o’ them will make me well-to-do some day.”

The day before we reached Brown’s tiny homestead we heard a lot of shooting over the hill behind us.

“That’ll be railway men takin’ a day off after leopards,” announced Brown with the air of a man who can not be mistaken.

Nevertheless, Fred and I went back to see, but could make out nothing.  We lay on the top of the hill and watched for two or three hours, but although we heard rifle firing repeatedly we did not once catch sight of smoke or men.  We marched into camp late that night with a feeling of foreboding that we could not explain but that troubled us both equally.

Once or twice in the night we heard firing again, as if somebody’s camp not very far away was invaded by leopards, or perhaps lions.  Yet at dawn there were no signs of tents.  And when that night we arrived at Brown’s homestead we seemed to have the whole world to ourselves.

Brown’s house was a tiny wooden affair with a thick grass roof.  It boasted a big fireplace at one end of the living-room, and a chimney that Brown had built himself so cunningly that smoke could go up and out but no leopards could come down.

He got very drunk that night to celebrate the home-coming, and stayed completely drunk for three days, we making use of his barn to give our porters a good rest.  By day we shot enough meat for the camp, and at night we sat over the log fire, praying that Brown might sober up, Fred singing songs to his infernal concertina, and all the natives who could crowd in the doorway listening to him with all their ears.  Fred made vast headway in native favor, and learned a lot of two languages at once.

Every day we sent Kazimoto and another boy exploring among the Lumbwa tribe, gathering information as to routes and villages, and it was Kazimoto who came running in breathless one night just as Brown was at last sobering up, with the news that some Greeks had swooped down on Brown’s cattle, had wounded two or three of the villagers who herded them, and had driven the whole herd away southward.