"Ko," said Gulabala, deeply concerned, "this Bosambo is Sandi's dog. Let us go back to our village and say we have been hunting, for Bosambo will not cross into our lands for fear of Sandi's anger." They reached the village, and were preparing to remove the last evidence of their crime--one goat looks very much like another, but women can speak--when Sanders came striding down the village street, and Gulabala, with his curved execution knife in his hand, stood up by the side of the woman he had slain. "O Gulabala," said Sanders softly, "this is an evil thing." The chief looked left and right helplessly. "Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must not be overlooked--thus it has been for all time." Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man. "I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang, Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live." "Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived." Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his people were unresentful spectators. "This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt," said Sanders, pacing the deck of the _Zaire_, "and who on earth I am to put in his place I do not know." The _lokalis_ of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand palaver. In the shade of the reed-thatched _lokali_ house, before the hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble. Bosambo came--by the river route--as Sanders was leaving the _Zaire_ to attend the momentous council. "How say you, Bosambo--what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these people in check?" Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning. "Lord," he confessed, "I know of none, for they are a strange and hateful people. Whatever king you set above them they will despise. Also they worship no gods or ghosts, nor have they ju-ju or fetish. And, if a man does not believe, how may you believe him? Lord, this I say to you--set me above the Kulumbini, and I will change their hearts." But Sanders shook his head. "That may not be, Bosambo," he said. The palaver was a long and weary one. There were twelve good claimants for the vacant stool of office, and behind the twelve there were kinsmen and spears. From sunset to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in his mind. It is certain he was awake when Sanders gave his summing up.