Читать книгу The Mysterious Arab - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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They left Nairobi at mid-afternoon making their way through the brilliantly sunlit streets slowly. A native clad in a one-piece skin proceeding on a bicycle directly in their path suddenly swerved from his leisurely pace into an intersecting street so that they narrowly missed running down a huge black whose raiment consisted of a G-string.

“Say,” said Piney with ill-concealed annoyance, “hadn’t you two better stop talking and watch where you’re going? First thing you know you’ll smash somebody up and then we’ll have to stay in this burg tonight!”

Hal turned about slowly in his seat and looked inquiringly at Piney until the man flushed and averted his face, taking a sudden and forced interest in two black girls in skin clothing who were gazing in the windows of a department store. No word was spoken, however, until Dudley cordially greeted a native traffic policeman and they passed out of the business section.

“You seem to know most of the brass buttons,” said Piney with a short laugh.

Dudley nodded. “They know me better than I know them,” he said wistfully. “That’s the way it is in this country.”

Hal felt a twinge of pity for Dudley, realizing as he did what little comradeship, if any, that young man had had in his life. A tyrant for a father and a lonely existence in the blue of British East Africa! The matter of Piney paled into insignificance beside the immediate need to give Dudley his whole-hearted companionship.

He decided first to draw him out. “Unk said you’ve never been to school,” said he.

“That’s right,” said Dudley. “Dad was prejudiced. He taught me right at the farm and a very stern teacher he was too. He’s taught me a lot though.”

They were passing out of the town now. Hal glanced at the few straggling houses on the outskirts, one fine Tudor with a vast garden of roses fenced in, and a few huts, some of mud and grass and a few of hammered-out petrol tins. They seemed like lonely sentinels of civilization for ahead stretched the illimitable plains country with the violet hills seeming to rise out of the fleecy white horizon.

He began to understand how difficult it was for Dudley to feel much loyalty toward his tyrannical parent. It must take a courageous soul to put up with the loneliness even under happier circumstances, he thought. East Africa had evidently not yielded to the boy an inch and he showed it despite his brave attempts to appear loyal and gay about his father.

He seemed to half divine Hal’s thoughts. “It’s going to seem thrilling and simply great here to you,” he said. “And it ought to, considering the distance you’ve come to see it! I guess I’m a bit fed up on a lifetime of primitive landscape, huh? Nairobi’s the nearest I’ve got to civilization and that’s never been any pleasure. I always come back with the car loaded down with supplies. You see how it is—Mr. Piney’s just been able to crawl in back there with leg room and that’s all. No, I want to go somewhere where I don’t have to think about supplies for the farm. Dad never leaves the place, so the job seems to be mine. But I’m going back to the States with you, Hal—I mean it! Nothing’s going to stop me, not even Dad!” he added vehemently.

Hal stole a glance at him and smilingly noted that some of his wistfulness of a few hours past had given place to a new determination. It did not occur to him that a few hours of his own dynamic comradeship had perhaps wrought this change in the lonely young man, buoying him up and fortifying him against the future tyranny of an erratic and unreasonable parent.

Whatever the reason, Dudley expanded for the entire trip homeward and became an ideal comrade, cheerful and gay and continually planning the surprises which he knew his guest would welcome. Hal fell into the spirit of it immediately, his voice sounding loud and clear above the noise of the motor after they had left the last of the straggling traffic behind on the highway.

They bumped a little along a narrow dust-choking road, but Hal did not mind—it seemed more “Africanese,” he explained, and more in keeping with his ideas of the dark continent. A modern highway such as they had just left did not fit into the mental pictures he had created of the veldt. It was too civilized.

“What did you expect here?” Dudley asked laughing. “Head hunters, impenetrable jungle and all that sort of thing?”

Hal grinned. “No, Unk shattered all those illusions for me long ago—the last time he was here to visit your father, I guess it was. He said there were plenty of hunters that lost their heads but not to cannibals. And as for the jungle he said it wasn’t impenetrable to you or your father or anyone else that’s lived here so many years.”

Dudley nodded. “He’s right about that. A fellow gets so he knows the jungle from A to Z besides knowing everything and everybody in it. It’s a good thing too because the darn place is full of danger when you don’t know it. I guess I’ve learned it more thoroughly than Dad for the natives have shown me ever since I toddled off the farm one day in rompers and got lost in the jungle. A Ndorobo hunter found me and he told me a thing or two that I’ll never forget as long as I live. Dad wouldn’t have anything to do with the natives ever, but I have and I’ve liked them. They’ve certainly shown me what to do and what not to do and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. They’ve taught me not to miss the most indistinct mark of the trail. Keep your eyes on the ground and the rest will be taken care of—that’s their slogan.”

Hal had good reason to remember all that not so many hours later when dusk had overtaken them. They stopped the car and had a snack on the banks of an icy-cold stream and by the time they had finished darkness enveloped them. Dudley strolled over to his car and tested his headlights, turning them on and off. He kicked the ground with his heels then drew himself up into the forward seat.

“I’m pretty tired, fellows,” he said pleasantly, “and I’ve got a suggestion—for Piney. To begin with, it’ll take us until tomorrow night quite late before we get to the farm. We can’t ride all that time without rest and the nearest hotel can’t be reached before around six o’clock tomorrow morning. That’s at a sort of crossroads and a pretty punk hotel it is—nothing but a series of thatched huts all strung together. Still it’s better than nothing and if you two say so we’ll go right on. But I was thinking we could all take an hour’s sleep right here in the car, one of us on guard, of course, and turn about. There’s hardly any danger from prowlers just this little distance from Nairobi and barring a stray lion we ought to all get in forty winks. Then tomorrow morning sometime we can shove into a shady grove and snatch a couple of hours the same way. How about it?”

“Fine,” said Hal enthusiastically.

Said Piney, “It suits me because I ain’t sleepy anyway. I slept like a log last night and it’ll do me till we shove into that grove you spoke about. I can go without sleep like a camel goes without water!” He laughed. “Don’t mind me—you two guys crawl under the stuff in the back there and I’ll sit front on guard against that stray lion.”

“All right,” said Dudley shaking his head dubiously, “you ought to know how you feel.” He turned to Hal apologetically. “This isn’t any way to be treating a guest certainly, but you insisted on giving in to Mr. Piney and getting out of Nairobi tonight. Otherwise we’d have started out tomorrow and slept at the crossroads hotel I was telling you about. At least, I’d feel better about it for I’d hate to hear what your mother will say. . . .”

Hal took a few strides to the car and reaching forward tousled Dudley’s hair. “Forget about it,” he chuckled. “Mother won’t know about it for one thing and if she did, I’d tell her to forget about it too, because I’m in Africa! Come on, let’s get back and sleep and leave Piney to the company of that stray lion.”

Piney grinned, giving no indication that such company would be distasteful to him.