"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 047 - Land of Long JuJu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

when they had started, there had been six runners. Only these two had survived to reach this place.

"Safi maji,"
whispered the tallest runner hoarsely.
He meant the pool contained clean water. Some other pools had been poisoned. Two of the original six
runners had drunk of these pools.

These two had remained behind.

The taller runner directed his companion to drink while he kept watch. The skin drum continued to throb.

The shorter runner dropped to his hands and knees. He crept through the white fog to the pool. His
brown hands divided the broad leaves of a senecio tree.

No sound had been given forth by the fog-drenched leaves. The taller runner rasped a warning. The
shorter runner stretched on his stomach. His tongue lapped up water where his hand had pushed away
the scum.

Then he made a sudden, violent effort as if to rise. His neck seemed incapable of lifting his head. His face
splashed into the pool. Air bubbles arose around the man’s head.

The tall runner made no effort to rescue his companion. He whispered a word.

"Okoyong." Then he added, "Masai, the Long Juju."

The tall runner seemed almost to dissolve into the wall of the jungle. His companion was already a
stiffening body. A small dart had appeared behind one ear of the runner who had died beside the pool.

Though he had been running for five days and nights, halting only when overpowered by sleep, the tall
man slipped through the tangled vines of the liana with amazing speed.



THE tall figure was the last of the six runners. On the shoulders of this single man rested the burden of the
message that had been carried by six.

Whatever the encircling menace, the runner escaped temporarily. He carried but a single weapon. This
was a sharp-bladed, short-hafted stabbing spear.

He had said, "Okoyong" and "Masai." No fiercer tribes dwelt in all of Africa. The Masai were
blood-drinkers and head-hunters of this interior central country. The Okoyong were from a distant place.
They had come into the land of Kilimanjaro, bringing witchcraft, the worship of the Long Juju.

Perhaps the tall runner had no hope of escaping with his life. But his message must be delivered verbally.

More than one drum was talking now. The taut skins throbbed from four points of the compass.

The runner’s face was different from that of other tribes in the Kilimanjaro and Taveta forest country. His
skin was lighter than the smoky black mostly to be found. The nose was thin and hawklike, an arching
bone that might have belonged to an ancient Roman rather than to a native of Africa.