Bones of the River by Edgar Wallace Page A

it well.”
    As she bent down to perform this service, his well hand shot out, and he caught her swiftly by the throat and threw her backward over his knees.
    “It is better that I have one arm than none,” he said, “or no arms than that I be dead. I am too old to live in fear of death; therefore, M’mina, my daughter, you go quickly to the Place of Ghosts.”
    She lay unstruggling as the pressure of his sinewy fingers increased, and when it seemed to him that she was resigned to death, with a strength that he had not guessed, she flung herself free from him and fled into the hut. He rose a little awkwardly and followed. As he stooped to enter the low door, she struck at him twice with the long- handled N’gombi axe that he kept to trim away the tree. Ogonobo coughed thickly and went down on to his knees, clutching with his one hand at the doorway’s edge.
    “Death,” said M’mina, and brought the keen edge to his unprotected neck with all her power…
    When she had buried him and had cleaned away the mess, she went back to her corn, and, carrying the pestle into the hut, lay down on her bed and slept. And she sat in Ogonobo’s place and said magic words to the tree, and held communion with ghosts of all colours.
    One day she went on a journey into the city of the king and stood before his house, and Ofaba, the king, who had heard of her, came out.
    “I see you, M’mina, daughter of Ogonobo, the Keeper of the Tree. Where is your father?”
    “Lord, he is dead, and his mystery is mine. And I sit in the Forest of Dreams and many pleasant devils make love to me. One I shall marry soon, and on that night M’shimba M’shamba shall come to my hut and sing my marriage song.”
    Ofaba shivered and spat. “How did Ogonobo die, woman?” he asked. “One of my young men when hunting saw blood on the leaves.”
    “A devil killed him with a great axe that was bigger than the Tree of the World. And I fought with the devil by my magic, and he is dead too. And I cut him into pieces, and one of his legs I threw into the Little River, and it overflowed, as all men know.”
    That the Little River had overflown Ofaba knew. The rains had been heavy, but the Little River had never overflown before. Here, then, was an explanation more in harmony with Ofaba’s known predilection for the mysterious and the magical.
    “This I came to tell you, lord,” she said. “Also that I had a dream, and in this dream I saw Bosambo of the Ochori, who was on his knees before you, Ofaba, and you put your foot on his neck, and said ‘Wa,’ and Bosambo shook with fear.”
    Ofaba himself trembled with something that was not fear, for she had dreamt his dream. This he did not tell her, sending her away with presents, and by certain wonderful acts confirming her in her office.
    It is a saying in the Akasava country, that the child of the eaten moon is a great glutton, and Ofaba M’lama, the son of B’suri, King of the Akasava and paramount lord of the Ten Little Rivers, was so born. For the moon was at its last quarter when he came squealing into the world, and B’suri, looking up at the fading crescent, said, having a grievance: “This child will eat. Let him eat the Ochori.”
    A wise saying, so frequently repeated to Ofaba, long after he had taken B’suri’s stool of office and his great silver medal of chieftainship; long after B’suri had been paddled stark to the middle island where dead men lie in shallow graves.
    Ofaba needed little to remind him that the Akasava hated the Ochori, because that was traditional. Cala cala , which means “Years ago,” the Ochori had been the slave tribe, a debased and fearful people who, at the first hint of danger, ran away into the woods with their wives and children and such goats as they could grab. Sometimes they left their wives behind, but there is no record of their having gone entirely goatless.
    So it was that, what any nation needed, they took from the Ochori, and if the taking was