"Would you also stick your claws into me, cat?" shouted Umbezi, catching
the old woman a savage cut across the back with the light dancing-stick
which he still held in his hand, whereon she fled away screeching and
cursing him.
"Oh, Saduko," he went on, "let not your ears be poisoned by these
falsehoods. Mameena never said anything of the sort, or if she did it
was not to me. Well, the moment that my daughter had consented to take
Masapo as her husband his people drove a hundred and twenty of the most
beautiful cattle over the hill, and would you have had me refuse them,
Saduko? I am sure that when you have seen them you will say that I
was quite right to accept such a splendid lobola in return for one
sharp-tongued girl. Remember, Saduko, that although you had promised a
hundred head, that is less by twenty, at the time you did not own one,
and where you were to get them from I could not guess. Moreover," he
added with a last, desperate, imaginative effort, for I think he saw
that his arguments were making no impression, "some strangers who called
here told me that both you and Macumazahn had been killed by certain
evil-doers in the mountains. There, I have spoken, and, Saduko, if you
now have cattle, why, on my part, I have another daughter, not quite so
good-looking perhaps, but a much better worker in the field. Come and
drink a sup of beer, and I will send for her."
"Stop talking about your other daughter and your beer and listen to me,"
replied Saduko, looking at the assegai which he had thrown to the ground
so ominously that I set my foot on it. "I am now a greater chief
than the boar Masapo. Has Masapo such a bodyguard as these
Eaters-up-of-Enemies?" and he jerked his thumb backwards towards the
serried lines of fierce-faced Amangwane who stood listening behind us.
"Has Masapo as many cattle as I have, whereof those which you see are
but a tithe brought as a lobola gift to the father of her who had been
promised to me as wife? Is Masapo Panda's friend? I think that I have
heard otherwise. Has Masapo just conquered a countless tribe by his
courage and his wit? Is Masapo young and of high blood, or is he but an
old, low-born boar of the mountains?
"You do not answer, Umbezi, and perhaps you do well to be silent. Now
listen again. Were it not for Macumazahn here, whom I do not desire to
mix up with my quarrels, I would bid my men take you and beat you to
death with the handles of their spears, and then go on and serve the
Boar in the same fashion in his mountain sty. As it is, these things
must wait a little while, especially as I have other matters to attend
to first. Yet the day is not far off when I will attend to them also.
Therefore my counsel to you, Cheat, is to make haste to die or to find
courage to fall upon a spear, unless you would learn how it feels to be
brayed with sticks like a green hide until none can know that you
were once a man. Send now and tell my words to Masapo the Boar. And to
Mameena say that soon I will come to take her with spears and not with
cattle. Do you understand? Oh! I see that you do, since already you weep
with fear like a woman. Then farewell to you till that day when I
return with the sticks, O Umbezi the cheat and the liar, Umbezi,
'Eater-up-of-Elephants,'" and turning, Saduko stalked away.