When I had wiped off that mess with Kazimoto’s help I saw Fred and Will and Brown pursuing the retreating Masai, kneeling to shoot every few yards, at every other shot or so bringing down a victim, but being rapidly out-distanced.  Cattle are all the Masai care about.  They had the cattle.  They had hold of tails and were making the whole herd scamper due east, where they no doubt knew of a trail not in maps.  They made no attempt to defend themselves—­left their dead lying—­and ran.  I saw two or three wounded ones riding on cows, and no doubt some of those who ran holding to the cows’ tails were wounded, too.

I was useless now, as far as fighting was concerned, for the butt of my rifle was broken clean off at the grip, but I ran on, and heard Brown shout:  “Shoot cattle!  Don’t let the brutes get away with them all!”

He was shooting cows himself when I came up, but it was Fred who stopped him.

“Never mind that, old man.  We’ll follow ’em up!  Our time’s our own.  We’ll get your cattle back, never fear.  Dead ones are no use.”

Brown stopped shooting and began to blubber.  Whisky had not left him manhood enough to see his whole available resources carried away before his eyes, and he broke down as utterly as any child.  It was neither agreeable nor decent to watch, and I turned away.  I was feeling sick myself from the pressure of the Masai’s knees in my stomach.  That, and the sun, and the long march, and hunger (for we had not stopped to eat a meal that day) combined in argument, and I hunted about for a soft place and a little shade.  It happened that Fred Oakes was watching me, although I did not know it.  He suspected sunstroke.

I saw a clump of rushes that gave shade enough.  I could crush down some, and lie on those.  I hurried, for I was feeling deathly sick now.  As I reached the grass my knees began giving under me.  I staggered, but did not quite fall.

That, and Fred’s watchfulness, saved my life; for at the moment that my head and shoulders gave the sudden forward lurch, a wounded Masai jumped out of the rushes and drove with his spear at my breast.  The blade passed down my back and split my jacket.

He sprang back, and made another lunge at me, but Fred’s rifle barked at the same second and he fell over sidewise, driving the spear into my leg in his death spasm.

The twenty minutes following that are the worst in memory.  Kazimoto broke the gruesome news that the spear-blade was almost surely poisoned—­dipped in gangrene.  The Masai are no believers in wounded enemies, or mercy on the battlefield.

We doubted the assertion for a while—­I especially, for none but a hypochondriac would care to admit without proof that gangrene had been forced into his system.  Kazimoto grew indignant, and offered to prove the truth of his claim on some animal.  But there was no living animal in sight on which to prove it.  We asked him how long gangrene, injected in that way, took to kill a man.