Page:Where Animals Talk (West African folk lore tales).djvu/249

 all that shall come to my place where I dwell, if I be there, and it wants to get hold of you, if I tell it not to you, let this Medicine find and certainly kill me!" Dove also with his oath, said, "If I see Ngando, and I do not tell you, let this Medicine find me and certainly kill me!"

So, they made their promise; then they separated; and each one went to his own village.

Thus Dove and Leopard ate their kind of "Medicine," after Dove and Crocodile had already eaten theirs.

Then, one day. Crocodile came out from the river. Dove at once began to tell Leopard, saying, "He has emerged from the river and is about to settle on the log!" So, Leopard began slowly to come, and watching Crocodile, as he came. When he was near, in his advance. Dove spoke, telling Crocodile, and said, "Your watcher! Your watcher is coming! Do not apprachapproach [sic] here!"

Thereat, Crocodile slipped back into the water.

The next time that Dove and Leopard met, Leopard demanded, "What is this you have done to me? You swore to me this: 'If I see Crocodile I will tell you; and you must come catch him.' Now, as soon as you saw me, you turned around, and told Crocodile, 'Fall into the River!' You have mocked me!"

And Leopard grew very angry.

Observe the cannibalism of the story.

Leopard married a wife. After awhile she was about to become a mother.