Page:Where Animals Talk (West African folk lore tales).djvu/111

 wife, who put it in a pot. And he went to his house, and left the skin hanging in his bedroom.

Then when the meat was cooked, he sent word for Leopard to come and eat. Leopard came and sat down at the table, and they ate. As they were eating. Leopard said, "Ah! my friend! You said you did not know how to catch beasts! What is this fine meat?"

Igwana replied, "I am unable to tell you. Just you eat it." So, they ate, and finished eating. Igwana continued that way for two weeks, killing the young leopards.

At that Leopard said to himself, "I had begotten twenty children, but now I find only ten. Where are the other ten?" He asked his children where their brothers were. They answered that they did not know, "Perhaps they were lost in the forest." The while that Igwana was killing the young leopards, he had hidden their skins all in his bedroom.

On another day, Leopard and Igwana began a journey together to a place about forty miles distant. Before he started, Igwana closed his house, and said to his children, "Njâ and I are going on a journey; while I am away, do not let any one enter into my bedroom." And they two went together on their journey. They reached their journey's end, and were there for the duration of seven days. While they were gone, there was no one to get meat for their people, and there came on their village a great njangu (hunger for meat).

One of those days, in the village, so great was that famine that the children of Leopard were searching for rats for food. The rats ran away to the house of Igwana that was shut up; and the children of Leopard pursued. But the children of Igwana said to them, "Do not enter the house! Our father forbade it! Stop at the door-way!"

But the young leopards replied, "No! all the Betoli have run in there. We must follow." So, they broke down the door. There they found skins of young leopards, and they exclaimed, "So! indeed! Ngâmbi kills our brothers!" And two days later, the two fathers came back to the village.

The young igwanas told their father that the young leopards had broken the door, and found leopard-skins hanging inside. Igwana asked them, "Really? They saw?" The