“John will be accompanying me,” answered Roosevelt. “The Mangbetu seem to be very fond of him.”
“They’re equally fond of you, Teddy.”
“I enjoy his company,” said Roosevelt. He smiled wryly. “I’ll also find it comforting to know that the state house hasn’t been sold to the highest bidder in my absence.”
“John,” remarked Roosevelt, as he and Boyes sat beside a campfire, “have you noticed that we haven’t seen any elephant sign in more than a week now?”
The horses started whinnying as the wind brought the scent of lion and hyena to them.
“Perhaps they’ve migrated to the west,” said Boyes.
“Come on, John,” said Roosevelt. “I’m not as old a hand at this as you are, but I know when an area’s been shot out.”
“We’ve shipped a lot of ivory to Mombasa and Zanzibar during the past year,” said Boyes.
“I didn’t mind our men making a little money on the side, John, but I won’t have them decimating the herds.”
“They’ve been more than a year without a paycheck,” answered Boyes seriously. “If you tell them they have to stop hunting ivory, I doubt that more than a dozen of them will stay in he Congo.”
“Then we’ll have to make do without their services,” said Roosevelt. “The elephants belong to the people of the Congo Free State now. We’ve got to start a game department and charge for hunting licenses while there’s still something left to hunt.”
“If you say so,” replied Boyes.
Roosevelt stared long and hard at him. “Will you be one of the ones who leaves, John?”
Boyes shook his head. “I’m the one who talked you into this in the first place, Mr. President,” he answered. “I’ll stay as long as you do.” He paused thoughtfully. “I’ve made more than my share of money off the ivory anyway, and I suppose we really ought to stop while there are still some elephants left. I was just pointing out the consequences of abolishing poaching.”
“Then start passing the word as soon as we get back,” said Roosevelt. Suddenly he frowned. “That’s funny.”
“What is, sir?”
“I felt very dizzy for just a moment there.” He shrugged. “I’m sure it will pass.”
But it didn’t, and that night the ex-President came down with malaria. Boyes tended to him and nursed him back to health, but another week had been wasted, and Roosevelt had the distinct feeling that he didn’t have too many of them left to put the country on the right track.
“Ah, my friend Johnny — and King Teddy!” Matapoli greeted them with a huge smile of welcome. “You honor my village with your presence.”
“Your village has changed since the last time we were here,” noted Boyes wryly.
Matapoli pointed proudly to the five railroad coach cars that his men had dragged miles through the bush over a period of months, and which now housed his immediate family and the families of four of the tribe’s elders.
“Oh, yes,” he said happily. “King Teddy promised us democracy, and he kept his promise.” He pointed to one of the cars. “My democracy is the finest of all! Come join me inside it.”
Roosevelt and Boyes exchanged ironic glances and followed Matapoli into the coach car, which was filled with some twenty or so of his children.
“King Teddy has returned!” enthused the Mangbetu chief. “We must have a hunt in the forest and have a feast in your honor.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Matapoli,” said Roosevelt. “But it has been many months since we last saw each other. Let us talk together first.”
“Yes, that would be very good,” agreed Matapoli, puffing out his chest as the children recognized the two visitors and raced off to inform the rest of the village.
“Just how many children do you have?” asked Roosevelt.
Matapoli paused in thought for a moment. “Ten, and ten more, and then seven,” he answered.
“And how many wives?”
“Five.”
The puritanical American tried without success to hide his disapproval. “That’s a very large family, Matapoli.”
“Should be more, should be more,” admitted the Mangbetu. “But it took many months to bring the democracies here.”
“Had you left them on the track, you could have traveled all across the country on them,” Boyes pointed out.
Matapoli threw back his head and laughed. “Why should I want to go to Lulua or Bwaka country?” he asked. “They would just kill me and take my democracies for themselves.”
“Please try to understand, Matapoli,” said Roosevelt. “There are no longer Mangbetu or Lulua or Bwaka countries. There is just the Congo Free State, and you all live in it.”
“You are king of all the countries, King Teddy,” answered Matapoli. “You need have no fear. If the Bwaka say that you are not, then we shall kill them.”
Roosevelt spent the next ten minutes trying to explain the Congo Free State to Matapoli, who was no closer to comprehending it at the end of the discussion than at the beginning.
“All right,” said the American with a sigh of resignation. “Let’s get back to talking about the trains.”
“Trains?” repeated Matapoli.
“The democracies, and the steel logs they rolled upon,” interjected Boyes.
“Another gift from King Teddy,” said Matapoli enthusiastically. “No longer can the leopards and the hyenas break through the thorns and kill my cattle. Now I use the metal thorns, and my animals are safe.”
“The metal thorns were built so that you and the other Mangbetu could travel many miles without having to walk,” said Roosevelt.
“Why should we wish to go many miles?” asked Matapoli, honestly puzzled. “The river runs beside the village, and the forest and its game are just a short walk away.”
“You might wish to visit another tribe.”
Matapoli smiled. “How could we sneak up on our enemies in the democracies? They are too large, and they would make too much noise when they rolled upon the iron thorns.” He shook his head. “No, King Teddy, they are much better right here, where we can put them to use.”
Long after the feast was over and Roosevelt and Boyes were riding their horses back toward Stanleyville, Roosevelt, who had been replaying the frustrating day over and over in his mind, finally sighed and muttered: “By God, that probably is the best use they could have been put to!”
Boyes found the remark highly amusing, and burst into laughter. A moment later Roosevelt joined him with a hearty laugh of his own, and that was the official end of the Trans-Congo Railway.
They came to a newly-paved road when they were fifteen miles out of Stanleyville and, glad to finally be free of the bush and the forest, they veered their mounts onto it. As they continued their journey, they passed dozens of men and women walking alongside the road.
“Why don’t they walk on it, John?” asked Roosevelt curiously. “There can’t be fifteen trucks in the whole of the Congo. Until we import some more, we might as well put the roads to some use.”
“They’re barefoot,” Boyes pointed out.
“So what? The road is a lot smoother than the rocks alongside it.”
“It’s also a lot hotter,” answered Boyes. “By high noon you could fry an egg on it.”
“You mean we’ve spent a million dollars on roads for which there not only aren’t any cars and trucks, but that the people can’t even walk on?”
“This isn’t America, sir.”
“A point that is being driven home daily,” muttered Roosevelt wearily.
Roosevelt sat at his desk, staring at a number of letters and documents that lay stacked neatly in front of him. To his left was a photograph of Edith and his children, to his right a picture of himself delivering a State of the Union address to the United States Congress, and behind him, on an ornate brass stand, was the flag of the Congo Free State.