"But, General, isn't it fitting that the greatest soldiers of the great leader of a great country, get the very best?"
"Best of what? Queen Elizabeth or the lowest bush tribe whore. Same thing."
"You have had Queen Elizabeth?"
"No. But if a man eats one hundred hogs, does he have to eat another to know what it will taste like?"
"I'm sorry, General, I thought you approved of what I was doing for your men." Butler twisted the gold ring on his right hand.
Obode shrugged his massive shoulders. "You wanted to have your house and your games so I let you. I like you, Butler. You are the only man on my staff who has no loyalty to one tribe or another, but is loyal just to me. Even if you are soft on the Loni. So, I let you have your house. Now let me see your jackal."
Butler turned the key and opened the door on an empty cell. Obode walked in and sniffed the air. Before the stunned Butler could move, Obode snapped the Colonel's revolver from his holster as if disarming a recalcitrant enlisted man.
"I put the jackal here myself. I tied it right to that wall. I wanted to show you there were liars in your guard. The jackal was here, General. What reason would I have to lie to you?"
"Outside, Butler," said Obode.
The palace courtyard was hot in the morning African sun, baking hot with dust in the very grass itself. The captain of the guard grinned broadly when he saw the Loni-loving American Colonel go before the General with his hands up and holster empty. He winked broadly at Butler, and then turned and motioned his firing squad to kneel.
"Against the wall," said General Obode.
At the wall, Butler spun around beside the Loni officer who was chained against the wall in a standing position, but whose body hung heavy from his wrist manacles.
"You're a damned idiot, General," Butler yelled.
"When you shoot me, you shoot the best officer you have. I just want you to know that, you dumb bastard."
"You call me a dumb bastard," yelled back Obode, "but you're the one who's got his hands up against the wall."
At that, Butler laughed.
"You're right, you fat bastard, but you're still shooting the best officer you ever had."
"That's where you're wrong, skinny little man. I am going to shoot the officer who lied to me about the jackal."
The captain of the guard smiled. The firing squad behind him waited for a signal. It did not get one. There was the crack of a pistol and the captain of the palace guard was no longer smiling. There was a very dumb look on his face and a very wide dark red hole between his eyes, although few people saw it because the head was jerked back by the force of the shot. The body followed. It hit the burned grass with a whoomph and moved no more.
"So much for people who lie to me about jackals. And now for those who call me a fat bastard," said General Obode. He extended the pistol at arm's length and walked up to Colonel Butler's face.
"Don't do it again," he said to Butler and spun the pistol around, Western style, offering it handle first.
"How do you know I won't shoot you now, you?…" said Butler, stopping as the pistol spun once more in Obode's hand so that now Butler was again looking down the barrel.
"… glorious leader," smiled Butler, finishing the sentence.
"You and you," Obode yelled to two soldiers still kneeling, waiting for an execution order. "Take that man down from the wall. And treat him carefully. He is your new captain of the palace guard." .
"He is a Loni," Butler said, taking the pistol from Obode and returning it to his holster.
"The other one was a Hausa, and he lied to me. How much worse could a Loni be?"
As he and Butler walked from the courtyard, Obode said, "You looked funny when that cell was empty. Did you look funny! Did you really think, though, that anyone could hide a jackal smell from me? Especially when the Hausa custom is that the chief must protect himself when the jackal howls at night?"
"I have a nose too, General. I smelled nothing but disinfectant in that call."
"Right," said Obode. "And who would wash a cell with disinfectant unless he was trying to hide a smell? The captain obviously found your jackal and disposed of it. I tell you, if more generals were sergeant majors, the world would be a better place." He paused and said, "I wonder if that captain was responsible for killing the Minister of Public Safety."
Butler shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "And maybe we'll never know. Anyway, now that we know the jackal wasn't magic, General, perhaps we can get on to other things."
Obode shook his head slowly, as he turned and led Butler down a gravelled path leading into the heavily-treed palace grounds.
"You think because one thing I believe in is disprove, I should not believe in anything I know to be true? Wrong. Because one of America's missiles doesn't work, do they stop building missiles? No. Because they know the majority of missiles are good. These are strange times in Busati, Butler. We are not rich and advanced like in Kenya or Zaire. But there are things one does not learn in universities. These things I know."
"I do not understand," said Butler. He saw a lizard scurry under a bush. For that lizard to brave the noonday African sun meant there must be a predator about, probably a rodent of some sort. This Butler had learned from Obode.
"Why do you think I have expelled all the Asians?" Obode asked. "Why do you think I expelled all the whites? The whole world thinks, here goes Big Daddy being cruel to whites and Asians he needs for his economy. Oh, what a crazy man is this Dada Obode. That is what they think. I know that. I am not a fool. Why do you think I did those things?"
"I don't know, General."
Big Daddy paused by a large wide mango tree, like the one Colonel Butler had nailed the Minister of Public Safety to, like the one Butler had killed James Forsythe Lippincott under, like the ones which stood before the hills where the Loni hid. Butler looked absent-mindedly for the predator to follow the lizard into the bush. But he saw no predator.
"It is all connected, Butler. All of it. And there is a reason for all the things I do."
Butler nodded, still wondering where the predator was. He saw the lizard's tail sticking out from under the bush, motionless.
"You do not know the Loni," Obode said. "Today, they are just a weak collection of spineless mountain bands, but once they were powerful. Once they ruled the Hausa as we now rule them. But there is a legend that says the Loni will again come to power. The legend says that when East and West are like father and son near the Busati River, then a force that no man can stop will come to shed blood in the river and in the mountains."
Butler nodded.
"You nod, but I do not think you understand, Colonel. The legend says that the Loni children will come home. It says a man from the East will purify the Loni and make them again worthy to rule. And it says a man from the West, a man who walks in the shoes of death, will rid the Loni of a man who would enslave them."
"And you're the man who would enslave the Loni?" Butler asked.
Obode shrugged his shoulders. "Who else could the legend mean but the Hausa man who is the leader of the country? You wonder why I have listened to you and put Loni men into my government? I have done it because I want to be free of the title of 'man who would enslave them.' But still I fear. I do not think that one can outsmart a legend."
"I see." Butler watched the lizard's tail poke out of the bush. When General Obode went into one of his prophecy raves, the best thing to do was to nod.
"Perhaps you are beginning to see," Obode said.
"The legend says a man from the East and a man from the West. Yellow and white. To serve the Loni. And if that happens, the Hausa are through and I am dead. That is why I got rid of our Asians. That is why I got rid of our whites. I do not want yellow men and white men joining, lest they become this force to free the Loni. You see?"