At the edge of the camp Atewy squatted beside Eyad. "You would like one of the white benat, Eyad," whispered Atewy. "I have seen it in your eyes."
Eyad eyed the other through narrowed lids. "Who would not?" he demanded. "Am I not a man?"
"But you will not get one, for the sheikh is going to keep them both. You will not get one—unless."
"Unless what?" inquired Eyad.
"Unless an accident should befall Ab el-Ghrennem. Nor will you get so many diamonds, for the sheikh's share of the booty is one fourth. If there were no sheikh we should divide more between us."
"Thou art hatab lil nar," ejaculated Eyad.
"Perhaps I am fuel for hell-fire," admitted Atewy, "but I shall burn hot while I burn."
"What dost thou get out of it?" inquired Eyad after a short silence.
Atewy breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Eyad was coming around! "The same as thou," he replied, "my full share of the diamonds and one of the benat."
"Accidents befall sheikhs even as they befall other men," philosophized Eyad as he rolled himself in his blanket and prepared to sleep.
Quiet fell upon the camp of the Arabs. A single sentry squatted by the fire, half dozing. The other Arabs slept.
Not Rhonda Terry. She lay listening to the diminishing sounds of the camp, she heard the breathing of sleeping men, she watched the sentry, whose back was toward her.
She placed her lips close to one of Naomi Madison's beautiful ears. "Listen!" she whispered, "but don't move nor make a sound. When I get up, follow me. That is all you have to do. Don't make any noise."
"What are you going to do?" The Madison's voice was quavering.
"Shut up, and do as I tell you."
Rhonda Terry had been planning ahead. Mentally she had rehearsed every smallest piece of business in the drama that was to be enacted. There were no lines—at least she hoped there would be none. If there were the tag might be very different from that which she hoped for.
She reached out and grasped a short, stout piece of wood that had been gathered for the fire. Slowly, stealthily, catlike, she drew herself from her blankets. Trembling, Naomi Madison followed her.
Rhonda rose, the piece of firewood in her hand. She crept toward the back of the unsuspecting sentry. She lifted the stick above the head of the Arab. She swung it far back, and then—.
13. A GHOST
Orman and Bill West tramped on through the interminable forest. Day after day they followed the plain trail of the horsemen, but then there came a day that they lost it. Neither was an experienced tracker. The trail had entered a small stream, but it had not emerged again directly upon the opposite bank.
Assuming that the Arabs had ridden in the stream bed for some distance either up or down before coming out on the other side, they had crossed and searched up and down the little river but without success. It did not occur to either of them that their quarry had come out upon the same side that they had entered, and so they did not search upon that side at all. Perhaps it was only natural that they should assume that when one entered a river it was for the purpose of crossing it.
The meager food supply that they had brought from camp was exhausted, and they had had little luck in finding game. A few monkeys and some rodents had fallen to their rifles, temporarily averting starvation; but the future looked none too bright. Eleven days had passed, and they had accomplished nothing.
"And the worst of this mess," said Orman, "is that we're lost. We've wandered so far from that stream where we lost the trail that we can't find our back track."
"I don't want to find any back track," said West. "Until I find Rhonda I'll never turn back."
"I'm afraid we're too late to do 'em much good now, Bill."
"We could take a few pot shots at those lousy Arabs."
"Yes, I'd like to do that; but I got to think of the rest of the company. I got to get 'em out of this country. I thought we'd overtake el-Ghrennem the first day and be back in camp the next. I've sure made a mess of everything. Those two cases of Scotch will have cost close to a million dollars and God knows how many lives before any of the company sees Hollywood again.
"Think of it, Bill—Major White, Noice, Baine, Obroski, and seven others killed, to say nothing of the Arabs and blacks—and the girls gone. Sometimes I think I'll go nuts just thinking about them."
West said nothing. He had been thinking about it a great deal, and thinking too of the day when Orman must face the wives and sweethearts of those men back in Hollywood. No matter what Orman's responsibility, West pitied him.
When Orman spoke again it was as though he had read the other's mind. "If it wasn't so damn yellow," he said, "I'd bump myself off; it would be a lot easier than what I've got before me back home."
As the two men talked they were walking slowly along a game trail that wandered out of one unknown into another. For long they had realized that they were hopelessly lost.
"I don't know why we keep on," remarked West. "We don't know where we're headed."
"We won't find out by sitting down, and maybe we'll find something or some one if we keep going long enough."
West glanced suddenly behind him. "I thought so," he said in a low tone. "I thought I'd been hearing something."
Orman's gaze followed that of his companion. "Anyway we got a good reason now for not sitting down or turning back," he said.
"He's been following us for a long time," observed West. "I heard him quite a way back, now that I think of it."
"I hope we're not detaining him."
"Why do you suppose he's following us?" asked West.
"Perhaps he's lonesome."
"Or hungry."
"Now that you mention it, he does look hungry," agreed Orman.
"This is a nasty place to be caught too. The trail's so narrow and with this thick undergrowth on both sides we couldn't get out of the way of a charge. And right here the trees are all too big to climb."
"We might shoot him," suggested Orman, "but I'm leary of these rifles. White said they were a little too light to stop big game, and if we don't stop him it'll be curtains for one of us."
"I'm a bum shot," admitted West. "I probably wouldn't even hit him."
"Well, he isn't coming any closer. Let's keep on going and see what happens."
The men continued along the trail, continually casting glances rearward. They held their rifles in readiness. Often, turns in the trail hid from their view momentarily the grim stalker following in their tracks.
"They look different out here, don't they?" remarked West. "Fiercer and sort of—inevitable, if you know what I mean—like death and taxes."
"Especially death. And they take all the wind out of a superiority complex. Sometimes when I've been directing I've thought that trainers were a nuisance, but I'd sure like to see Charlie Gay step out of the underbrush and say, 'Down, Slats!'"
"Say, do you know this fellow looks something like Slats—got the same mean eye?"
As they talked, the trail debouched into a small opening where there was little underbrush and the trees grew farther apart. They had advanced only a short distance into it when the stalking beast dogging their footsteps rounded the last turn in the trail and entered the clearing.
He paused a moment in the mouth of the trail, his tail twitching, his great jowls dripping saliva. With lowered head he surveyed them from yellow-green eyes, menacingly. Then he crouched and crept toward them.
"We've got to shoot, Bill," said Orman; "he's going to charge."
The director shot first, his bullet creasing the lion's scalp. West fired and missed. With a roar, the carnivore charged. The empty shell jammed in the breech of West's rifle. Orman fired again when the lion was but a few paces from him; then he clubbed his rifle as the beast rose to seize him. A great paw sent the rifle hurtling aside, spinning Orman dizzily after it. West stood paralyzed, his useless weapon clutched in his hands. He saw the lion wheel to spring upon Orman; then he saw something that left him stunned, aghast. He saw a
n almost naked man drop from the tree above them full upon the lion's back.
A great arm encircled the beast's neck as it reared and turned to rend this new assailant. Bronzed legs locked quickly beneath its belly. A knife flashed as great muscles drove the blade into the carnivore's side again and again. The lion hurled itself from side to side as it sought to shake the man from it. Its mighty roars thundered in the quiet glade, shaking the earth.
Orman, uninjured, had scrambled to his feet. Both men, spellbound, were watching this primitive battle of Titans. They heard the roars of the man mingle with those of the lion, and they felt their flesh creep.
Presently the lion leaped high in air, and when he crashed to earth he did not rise again. The man upon him leaped to his feet. For an instant he surveyed the carcass; then he placed a foot upon it, and raising his face toward the sky voiced a weird cry that sent cold shivers down the spines of the two Americans.
As the last notes of that inhuman scream reverberated through the forest, the stranger, without a glance at the two he had saved, leaped for an overhanging branch, drew himself up into the tree, and disappeared amidst the foliage above.
Orman, pale beneath his tan, turned toward West. "Did you see what I saw, Bill?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"I don't know what you saw, but I know what I thought I saw— but I couldn't have seen it."
"Do you believe in ghosts, Bill?"
"I—I don't know—you don't think?"
"You know as well as I do that that couldn't have been him; so it must have been his ghost."
"But we never knew for sure that Obroski was dead, Tom"
"We know it now."
14. A MADMAN
AS Stanley Obroski was dragged to earth in the village of Rungula, the Bansuto, a white man, naked but for a G string, looked down from the foliage of an overhanging tree upon the scene below and upon the bulk of the giant chieftain standing beneath him.
The pliant strands of a strong rope braided from jungle grasses swung in his powerful hands, the shadow of a grim smile played about his mouth.
Suddenly the rope shot downward; a running noose in its lower end settled about Rungula's body, pinning his arms at his sides. A cry of surprise and terror burst from the chiefs lips as he felt himself pinioned; and as those near him turned, attracted by his cry, they saw him raised quickly from the ground to disappear in the foliage of the tree above as though hoisted by some supernatural power.
Rungula felt himself dragged to a sturdy branch, and then a mighty hand seized and steadied him. He was terrified, for he thought his end had come. Below him a terrified silence had fallen upon the village. Even the prisoner was forgotten in the excitement and fright that followed the mysterious disappearance of the chief.
Obroski stood looking about him in amazement. Surrounded by struggling warriors as he had been he had not seen the miracle of Rungula's ascension. Now he saw every eye turned upward at the tree that towered above the chief's hut. He wondered what had happened. He wondered what they were looking at. He could see nothing unusual. All that lingered in his memory to give him a clue was the sudden, affrighted cry of Rungula as the noose had tightened about him.
Rungula heard a voice speaking, speaking his own language. "Look at me!" it commanded.
Rungula turned his eyes toward the thing that held him. The light from the village fires filtered through the foliage to dimly reveal the features of a white man bending above him. Rungula gasped and shrank back. "Walumbe!" he muttered in terror.
"I am not the god of death," replied Tarzan; "I am not Walumbe. But I can bring death just as quickly, for I am greater than Walumbe. I am Tarzan of the Apes!"
"What do you want?" asked Rungula through chattering teeth. "What are you going to do to me?"
"I tested you to see if you were a good man and your people good people. I made myself into two men, and one I sent where your warriors could capture him. I wanted to see what you would do to a stranger who had not harmed you. Now I know. For what you have done you should die. What have you to say?"
"You are here," said Rungula, "and you are also down there." He nodded toward the figure of Obroski standing in surprised silence amidst the warriors. "Therefore you must be a demon. What can I say to a. demon? I can give you food and drink and weapons. I can give you girls who can cook and draw water and fetch wood and work all day in the fields—girls with broad hips and strong backs. All these things will I give you if you will not kill me—if you just go away and leave us alone."
"I do not want your food nor your weapons nor your women. I want but one thing from you, Rungula, as the price of your life."
"What is that, Master?"
"Your promise that you will never again make war upon white men, and that when they come through your country you will help them instead of killing them."
"I promise, Master."
"Then call down to your people, and tell them to open the gates and let the prisoner go out into the forest."
Rungula spoke in a loud voice to his people, and they fell away from Obroski, leaving him standing alone; then warriors went to the village gates and swung them open.
Obroski heard the voice of the chief coming from high in a tree, and he was mystified. He also wondered at the strange action of the natives and suspected treachery. Why should they fall back and leave him standing alone when a few moments before they were trying to seize him and bind him to a tree? Why should they throw the gates wide open? He did not move. He waited, believing that he was being baited into an attempt at escape for some ulterior purpose.
Presently another voice came from the tree above the chief's hut, addressing him in English. "Go out of the village into the forest," it said. "They will not harm you now. I will join you in the forest."
Obroski was mystified; but the quiet English voice reassured him, and he turned and walked down the village street toward the gateway.
Tarzan removed the rope from about Rungula, ran lightly through the tree to the rear of the hut and dropped to the ground. Keeping the huts between himself and the villagers, he moved swiftly to the opposite end of the village, scaled the palisade, and dropped into the clearing beyond. A moment later he was in the forest and circling back toward the point where Obroski was entering it.
The latter heard no slightest noise of his approach, for there was none. One instant he was entirely alone, and the next a voice spoke close behind him. "Follow me," it said.
Obroski wheeled. In the darkness of the forest night he saw dimly only the figure of a man about his own height. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Tarzan of the Apes."
Obroski was silent, astonished. He had heard of Tarzan of the Apes, but he had thought that it was no more than a legendary character—a fiction of the folklore of Africa. He wondered if this were some demented creature who imagined that it was Tarzan of the Apes. He wished that he could see the fellow's face; that might give him a clue to the sanity of the man. He wondered what the stranger's intentions might be.
Tarzan of the Apes was moving away into the forest. He turned once and repeated his command, "Follow me!"
"I haven't thanked you yet for getting me out of that mess," said Obroski as he moved after the retreating figure of the stranger. "It was certainly decent of you. I'd have been dead by now if it hadn't been for you."
The ape-man moved on in silence, and Obroski followed him. The silence preyed a little upon his nerves. It seemed to bear out his deduction that the man was not quite normal, not as other men. A normal man would have been asking and answering innumerable questions had he met a stranger for the first time under such exciting circumstances.
And Obroski's deductions were not wholly inaccurate—Tarzan is not as other men; the training and the instincts of the wild beast have given him standards of behavior and a code of ethics peculiarly his own. For Tarzan there are times for silence and times for speech. The depths of the night, when hunting beasts are abroad, is no time to go gabbling through the jungle;
nor did he ever care much for speech with strangers unless he could watch their eyes and the changing expressions upon their faces, which often told him more than their words were intended to convey.
So in silence they moved through the forest, Obroski keeping close behind the ape-man lest he lose sight of him in the darkness. Ahead of them a lion roared; and the American wondered if his companion would change his course or take refuge in a tree, but he did neither. He kept on in the direction they had been going.
Occasionally the voice of the lion sounded ahead of them, always closer. Obroski, unarmed and practically naked, felt utterly helpless and, not unaccountably, nervous. Nor was his nervousness allayed when a cry, half roar and half weird scream, burst from the throat of his companion.
After that he heard nothing from the lion for some time; then, seemingly just ahead of them, he heard throaty, coughing grunts. The lion! Obroski could scarcely restrain a violent urge to scale a tree, but he steeled himself and kept on after his guide.
Presently they came to an opening in the forest beside a river. The moon had risen. Its mellow light flooded the scene, casting deep shadows where tree and shrub dotted the grass carpeted clearing, dancing on the swirling ripples of the river.
But the beauty of the scene held his eye for but a brief instant as though through the shutter of a camera; then it was erased from his consciousness by a figure looming large ahead of them in the full light of the African moon. A great lion stood in the open watching them as they approached. Obroski saw the black mane ripple in the night wind, the sheen of the yellow body in the moonlight. Now, beyond him, rose a lioness. She growled.
The stranger turned to Obroski. "Stay where you are," he said. "I do not know this Sabor; she may be vicious."
Obroski stopped, gladly. He was relieved to discover that he had stopped near a tree. He wished that he had a rifle, so that he might save the life of the madman walking unconcernedly toward his doom.
Now he heard the voice of the man who called himself Tarzan of the Apes, but he understood no word that the man spoke: "Tarmangani yo. Jad-bal-ja tand bundolo. Savor tand bundolo."
The Complete Tarzan Collection Page 376
