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"How could you tell?"

"When they befriended us and gave us food, I knew Just like that"

"I led back toward the road but never quite got there We stayed with the path ere on It was a perfect day, with a high hot sun and a breeze that rippled the grass around us We saw s, antelopes of one sort or another Now and then a haould circle overhead It was calhtfallbuzzards gathering ahead of us on the right We approached quietly An antelope lay in a bloody circle of trautted and lifeless The lion that hadit off now, and a pair of hyenas orrying what it had left behind The hyenas looked for like a bull, and they turned tail and ran I cut some steaks from the antelope’s haunches and wiped the blade of the Swiss Army pocketknife on the beast’s hide Plum looked at the meat in my hand and made a face

"Steak," I said happily "I e had a knapsack or soh to last for weeks if we could only take it along"

"I hope you don’t expect me to eat that, Evan"

"Of course"

"It’s dead le A wild aniers and looked at her " Plum," I said, "all meat comes from dead animals"

"When you buy it in the store, you don’t have to think about it"

" Plum, this is your country, for Christ’s sake"

"I know"

"Idark we picked a spot for the night We caly wali tree, and I used dead leaves and twigs to get a fire started Once it was blazing nicely I began ripping off parts of the tree and feeding them to the fire We shishkebabed the antelope meat and Plum overcarass and cut palm fronds and made a bed for her beside the fire She lay down on it and looked expectantly at me I sat next to the fire and fed it with a couple of handfuls of dry grass

"Are you co to sleep?"

I said I would sit up awhile

"I want you to sleep with me, Evan"

"I am not tired"

"That is not what I"Plum, don’t be silly"

"You do not like me"

"Of course I like you"

"You do not think I am pretty?"

"You’re very pretty"

"You do not care for my body"

"Plum, you’re just a kid You’re fifteen years old, for heaven’s sake" I had this very strange and quite unco of a headache "You go to sleep now," I said "I’ll tend the fire"

"I cannot sleep," she said And I thought she was going to say soain she was out She lay on her back, her hands clenched into little fists at her sides, and she slept

Chapter 5

At one village the head s and spoke a sort of pidgin Dutch "I know Sheena," he said "A moon is born and dies, and another, and another, and another, and another" He drew five moons in the dirt with a sharpened stick "Sheena comes from the place of trees and vines She kills with the sun and rides off with the moon I am told she roasts babies and eats their flesh, and hacks off the breasts of the women, and the private parts of men I am also told what she does with them, but I see none of this with my own eyes, and do not believe or disbelieve For men’s words are carried upon the wind, and so, is it not so?"

And at another village where the woes of clay beneath the skin and where no one spoke anything which I could understand, the naasps, an eesture, a pointing toward the northwest

So the white goddess, the Queen of the Jungle, seeeneral consensus see were somewhere to the northwest, soan I would have liked to ask about Sae barrier that would have been hard to h here? Or one black man?" Wonderful