PROWLERS OF THE PLAINS 71 



The chief could speak Swahili, and after greetings he 

 registered a few complaints, one of them wliich I 

 particularly remember being concerned with the price 

 of wives. It seems the market on new wives was all 

 shot to pieces while secondhand ones were not in 

 demand at all. He had quite a few young ladies for 

 sale, the price of each being two steers, two cows, and 

 one drum of honey beer. I tliinli the old codger was 

 making tliis sales talk for our benefit, but we diplo- 

 matically evaded the point. 



We made a deal with the chief to hold the cattle 

 within the inclosure until after sunrise, but upon our 

 arrival next morning found the boma empty. We had 

 another pow-wow with the cliief during which he 

 raised the ante. He was now to receive fifty shillings, 

 a bag of posho, and some sugar. The sun arose again 

 on the same story, the cattle were gone. We were 

 quite peeved by this time and told the cliief in no 

 imcertain terms that another disappointment might 

 cause him plenty of trouble. He was very sorry but 

 some of the lesser chiefs had told him he should have 

 more sliiUings, more posho, and more sugar. We asked 

 him how much of each he wanted, whereupon he 

 named an enormous amount to which we agreed out- 

 wardly but not inwardly. 



On the morning after this arrangement, we were up 

 long before dawn, headed across the moonlit veldt 

 toward the weird hiU of rocks that hid the manyatta. 

 En route we almost ran over five hyenas solemnly 

 walking in a row. The leading one was dragging a 

 large piece of meat and the others were following in the 

 hope he would drop it. Outside of these and a few 

 jackals we saw nothing and arrived at the village just 



