The Leopard Woman

The Leopard Woman

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Title: The Leopard Woman
Author: Stewart Edward White et al
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9401] [This file was first
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THE LEOPARD WOMAN
BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
Illustrated by W. H. D. Koerner
1916

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. The March II. The Camp III. The Rhinoceros IV. The Stranger V.
The Encounter VI. The Leopard Woman VII. The Water Hole VIII.
The Thirst IX. On the Plateau X. The Suliani XI. The Ivory Stockade
XII. The Pilocarpin XIII. The Tropic Moon XIV. Over the Ranges XV.
The Sharpening of the Spear XVI. The Murder XVII. The Darkness
XVIII. The Leopard Woman Changes Her Spots XIX. The Trial XX.
Kingozi's Ultimatum XXI. The Messengers XXII. The Second
Messengers XXIII. The Council of War XXIV. M'tela's Country XXV.
M'tela XXVI. Waiting XXVII. The Magic Bone XXVIII. Simba's
Adventure XXIX. Winkleman's Safari Arrives XXX. Winkleman
Appears XXXI. Light Again XXXII. The Colours XXXIII. Curtain

ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Go, I say!' cried the Leopard Woman. 'And hold up your head. If this
is suspected of you, you will surely die'" ... Frontispiece "'If you will
ride in a hammock, you ought to teach your men to shoot,' was

Kingozi's greeting"
"After the flat crack of the rifle a hollow plunk indicated that the bullet
had told"
"Their eyes were large with curiosity as to this man and woman of a
new species ... Kingozi touched his lips to the _tembo_"
"'Cazi Moto, take this stick and make on the ground marks exactly like
those on the barua. Make them deep, so that I may feel them with my
hands'"
"The search party found Winkleman, very dirty, quite hungry,
profoundly chagrined"
"At the top of the hill the guide stopped and pointed. Kingozi gathered
that through the distant cleft he indicated the strangers must come"
"So intent was the Leopard Woman on the examination and on Kingozi
that she seemed utterly unconscious of the men standing over
opposite ... A more startlingly exotic figure for the wilds of Central
Africa could not be imagined"

THE LEOPARD WOMAN

CHAPTER I
THE MARCH
It was the close of the day. Over the baked veldt of Equatorial Africa a
safari marched. The men, in single file, were reduced to the
unimportance of moving black dots by the tremendous sweep of the dry
country stretching away to a horizon infinitely remote, beyond which
lay single mountains, like ships becalmed hull-down at sea. The
immensities filled the world-- the simple immensities of sky and land.
Only by an effort, a wrench of the mind, would a bystander on the
advantage, say, of one of the little rocky, outcropping hills have been
able to narrow his vision to details.
And yet details were interesting. The vast shallow cup to the horizon
became a plain sparsely grown with flat-topped thorn trees. It was not a
forest, yet neither was it open country. The eye penetrated the thin
screen of tree trunks to the distance of half a mile or more, but was

brought to a stop at last. Underfoot was hard-baked earth, covered by
irregular patches of shale that tinkled when stepped on. Well-defined
paths, innumerable, trodden deep and hard, cut into the iron soil. They
nearly all ran in a northwesterly direction. The few traversing paths
took a long slant. These paths, so exactly like those crossing a village
green, had in all probability never been trodden by human foot. They
had been made by the game animals, the swarming multitudinous game
of Central Africa.
The safari was using one of the game trails. It was a compact little