Page:Where Animals Talk (West African folk lore tales).djvu/150

 ed, inquiring, "Where is It? Where is It? Where is It?" Discovering nothing, they returned to the town. Then, they could not find Tortoise, And they said, "Let be! Kudu has slipped away."

One day after this, the wife of Dog and the wife of Tortoise went into the forest to their gardens to seek for food. And their children went out on the prairie, to play. Dog and Tortoise both remained in the town. Notwithstanding that Dog had saved his life, Tortoise was still angry at him for having spoiled their going to the Njabi Tree. Tortoise came to Dog's end of the town and said to him, "Let us shave our foreheads." Dog was pleased, and said, "Kudu, you first do me; then I will do you."

So Tortoise took the razor, and he shaved away Dog's front locks.

Then Tortoise said to Dog, "Let me shave also your neck." Dog bent down his head. Tortoise slashed the entire neck, cutting Dog's head off. And Dog fell down a corpse.

Tortoise cut up the body, and put the pieces in a kettle of water on the fire. Also, he gathered pepper pods, and ground them for the seasoning. He looked for salt, and saw it was up on top of a shelf. So, he took three chairs, putting them on top of one another, by which to climb up. As he was creeping up, the chairs fell over on the ground. As they fell, he tumbled also down, almost into the kettle of hot water, where were boiling the pieces of Dog. But, Tortoise scrambled away, and went off to his end of the town.

After a while the children of Dog came back from their play, and not finding their father in his house, they came to the house of his friend Tortoise, and asked, "Where is our father?" Tortoise replied, "As for me, where I was, I did not see him. When he went from here, who sent for him?"

When the two women returned, Dog's wife found, but did not recognize, the pieces of meat in her kettle. She wailed and mourned for him as dead. When, by the next day, the people of Dog did not find him, they said, "He is dead." But they suspected Tortoise. The wife of Tortoise also doubted him, and deserting him, returned to the house of her father. So, Tortoise left them all, and went to another place, fearing they would charge him with the death of Dog.