Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [118]
Stumbling back into motion, Kunta knew after only a little while that his muscles would not carry him much farther. He must retreat into the thickest part of the forest he could find and hide there. So he went clawing his way back, sometimes on all fours, his feet and arms and legs tangling in the vines, until at last he found himself in a dense grove of trees. Though his lungs were threatening to burst, Kunta considered climbing one of them, but the softness of the thick carpeting of leaves under his feet told him that many of the trees’ leaves had fallen off, which could make him easily seen, so that his best concealment would be on the ground.
Crawling again, he settled finally—just as the sky began to lighten—in a place of deep undergrowth. Except for the wheeze of his own breath, everything was very still, and it reminded him of his long, lonely vigils guarding the groundnut fields with his faithful wuolo dog. It was just then that he heard in the distance the deep baying of a dog. Perhaps he had heard it only in his mind, he thought, snapping to alertness and straining his ears. But it came again—only now there were two of them. He didn’t have much time.
Kneeling toward the east, he prayed to Allah for deliverance, and just as he finished, the deep-throated baying came again, closer this time. Kunta decided it was best to stay hidden where he was, but when he heard the howling once again—closer still—just a few minutes later, it seemed that they knew exactly where he was and his limbs wouldn’t let him remain there a moment longer. Into the underbrush he crawled again, hunting for a deeper, even more secreted place. Every inch among the brambles raking at his hands and knees was torture, but with every cry from the dogs he scrambled faster and faster. Yet the barking grew ever louder and closer, and Kunta was sure that he could hear now the shouting of men behind the dogs.
He wasn’t moving fast enough; springing up, he began to run—stumbling through the brambles—as quickly and quietly as his exhaustion would permit. Almost immediately he heard an explosion, the shock buckled his knees and sent him sprawling into a tangle of briars.
The dogs were snarling at the very edge of the thicket now. Quivering in terror, Kunta could even smell them. A moment later they were thrashing through the underbrush straight for him. Kunta made it up onto his knees just as the two dogs came crashing through the brush and leaped on him, yowling and slavering and snapping as they knocked him over, then sprang backward to lunge at him again. Snarling himself, Kunta fought wildly to fend them off, using his hands like claws while he tried to crab backward away from them. Then he heard the men shouting from the edge of the brush, and again there was an explosion, this time much louder. As the dogs relented somewhat in their attack, Kunta heard the men cursing and slashing through the brush with knives.
Behind the growling dogs, he saw first the black one he had choked. He held a huge knife in one hand, a short club and a rope in the other, and he looked murderous. Kunta lay bleeding on his back, jaws clenched to keep from screaming, expecting to be chopped into bits. Then Kunta saw the toubob who had brought him here appear behind the black one, his face reddish and sweating. Kunta waited for the flash and the explosion that he had learned on the big canoe could come from the firestick that a second toubob—one he hadn’t seen before—pointed at him now. But it was the black one who now rushed forward furiously, raising his club, when the chief toubob shouted.
The black