The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1918-12-05
IN ODD ALLIANCE
Old Bull Gnu, Driven From Herd
Found Other Companions.
Wart-Hog and outcast Ostrich Allowed
to Travel With Deposed King
Old Bachelors Henceforth,
All of Them.

1ncTe WAS SOlIlt llOuDiC Jul III biC
glare Of the sun on the bare plain, and
the dust was rising in clouds, T. st.
Maris writes in London Answers.
single vulture hung over the scene, as
if expecting profit from the inspec-
ton, and a little black-backed jackal,
prick cared and doglike, was watching
attentively from an unsupported hole
under wait-a-bit thorn.
Presently forms began to loom up
among the dust as the cloud itself be-
gan to move. Beasts, extraordinarily
strange and odd beasts, with shaggy
heads and curved horns, like buffaloes,
long, horselike tails and sturdy
but graceful, somewhat antelope-like
bodies, began to loom up indistinctly.
One heavy, massive, very shaggy
beast was fighting with the rest. But
always the heavy, shaggy fellow,
whose very massiveness spelt age,
gave back slowly on the whole, though
often master In the single contests.
He could not fight the whole herd, and
that, in fact was what he wns being
asked to do then. In other words,
piece Of wild justice was taking place,
which Is to say that because Of his
"crustiness," jealousy, lack Of chivalry,
or for some other, or all these reasons,
that old shaggy brute was being kicked
out of the herd.
AS they drew nearer, one saw that
they were blue gnus, which are brfn-
died gnus, which are bearded gnus.
which are wild beasts, and devilish
wild beasts, too. If you did not know
they were antelope, you would have
said they were buffalo, musk OK, horse
and antelope mixed in one beast. The
result, anyway, was queer Gus
toner.
At last the old bull gnu-perhaps he
had been lord of the herd till then
acknowledged defeat, and, realizing
that he could not do the impossible,
cleared himself cleverly from terri
BILE mixup among three other bulls,
and set off at a gallop alone.
Then at length he remembered that
1t was shutdown, and time for all good
wild beasts to take the evening drink,
and he walked to one of those we'll
worn paths which all his kind make
toward water, and slowly plodded his
heavy way to the river.
1t was not q great distance, in and
out among the shattered clumps Of
thorny acacias, and he was not alone,
for as he drew into the river he met
many herds of antelopes and of zebra,
going to or coming from the water.
Coming up the bank behind a herd
OF gaudy zebra, he was the first to
sight, over a ridge not far off, the two
great, tawny, heavy, giant dog forms,
seen and gone in an instant, dead
ahead. They were lions, and his in
slant, loud warning snorts said so,
and drew the zebras' attention to the
danger, so that they broke away, and
stampeded thunderouSly in the OPP
posite direction. And again it was he,
SHE'D suddenly at a clump of acacias
and began zigzagging and swerving
wildly in and out at top speed, snort
ing madly, so that the Zebras scat
tered, and the lioness that had been
told off from her companions to lie
in wait for the stampeded herds, could
only come out and growl her disap-
polntment at them.
That night he kept with the zebras,
feeding with them wherever they went,
| and they did not drive him off. Per-
haps they realized that as sentry he
WAS an asset. And next day an old
wart-hog, as ugly as sin, came and
struck up acquaintance with him, and
later cock ostrich-all, perhaps, old,
bad-tempered' outcasts.
Anyway. when the day dawned they
were still together, and the zebra had
gone, and, for all know, they are to-
| gether to this day, surely as strange
an alliance as ever faced the battle
Of life-bird, pig and antelope-old
bachelors all.