Stretching away on each side was a high cliff. To the right Jongor saw a protected nook among trees. The glint of water seen through shrubbery revealed a swamp. He slapped the dino on its massive shoulder.
“Go down the slope, little one. Take your time about it. We are in no great hurry now.”
The great beast picked its way slowly. It looked clumsy and awkward but it was as sure-footed as a mule. Jongor guided it to the nook he had glimpsed, slid to the ground. The others followed him.
“We rest here,” he said. “Yes, little one, you may go soak yourself in the water. And if a crocodile nibbles at your hide, bite him in two.”
Snorting its relief, the dinosaur trotted toward the water, launched itself into it with a splash like that of a battleship going down the ways.
Morton looked enviously after it. “I could use a swim myself,” he said. “What about it, Mr. Jongor? You got any objections?”
Jongor smiled both at being called “mister” and at the naive questions. “You can swim if you want to,” he said. “But remember what I told the dino about the crocodiles.”
“Golly!” Morton gasped. “Are there crocs in that water?”
“There are crocodiles in these swamps thirty feet long,” Jongor answered.
Morton hastily drew away from the water.
“I’m going hunting,” Jongor told the others. “You stay here and rest.”
“Would you like me to go with you?” Schiller questioned. “I have a gun—” Jongor patted the great bow. “Thanks, no,” he said. “I prefer this. Guns make too much noise. If there should be any Murtos in this neighborhood, they would be certain to hear the gun.”
Cautioning them to be on guard, he slipped into the jungle.
THE appearance of the little party in Lost Land had created quite a stir among a group hiding on a shelf in the cliffs to the right. The group was located in the one spot from which a watch could be constantly maintained on the narrow slit that was the entrance to the vast hidden valley. From the pieces of gnawed bones and other refuse on the shelf, it was evident that this group had been maintaining a vigil here for several days at least.
The members of this group was fifteen in number. Fourteen of them were human in form. They were shorter than the average man, but much heavier built, with squat muscular bodies covered with thin, soft fur. With the exception of hammered metal ornaments on their arms, they were completely naked. They looked like great, powerful apes, but the size of their heads revealed that they possessed far more intelligence than any ape. They looked like beast-men, creatures that have evolved past the ape but have not yet reached the human level. Their resemblance to animals was increased by the fact that each of them possessed a long, extremely bushy tail.
The fifteenth member of the group was even less human in appearance than the others. He possessed the head, shoulders, arms, and torso of a man. There the resemblance ended. He had the body of a horse.
When Jongor and the others on the dino first came into sight, there was great excitement among the ape-like creatures on the cliff.
“Something is coming, Great Orbo!” the sentinel hissed.
The creature called Great Orbo was the leader of the band. He was bigger, more heavily muscled, more powerful, than the others. His tail was longer, bushier. In addition to the armbands of hammered metal, he wore on a string round his neck a great sparkling gem set in a clasp of yellow metal, van insignia of leadership.
“What is coming?” Orbo called to the sentry.
The sentinel squinted his eyes at the pass that was the entrance to the valley. “I cannot be certain yet. Ah! Now I see! Great Orbo! It is he! It is he! It is the great jungle giant whom we seek.”
This information produced a flurry of excitement. The ape-like creatures all stared at the slit in the cliffs. They took great care not to expose themselves. The tired dinosaur and its riders were plainly in sight now.
“It is Jongor!” Orbo burst out, shaking his fist at the dinosaur and its riders. “And the girl is with him. And her brother. But who are the other two?”
It was a question no one could answer.
“It does not matter,” Orbo decided. “If there are three or five, we shall take them all. Hah, Jongor!” He shook his fist at the beast and his riders. “We have tricked you back into our power. You thought you were gone, you thought you had escaped from us forever, but we tricked you into returning to Lost Land. Now, Jongor, see if you like what will happen to you!”
FOR a few minutes a savage dance of exultation went on in the hid den niche in the cliffs. The creature with the body of a horse took no part in this demonstration. He remained aloof. His manner was somewhat disdainful of the antics of what he quite clearly regarded as a lower order of beings than himself. Orbo turned to him.
“Ha, Mozdoc!” Orbo exulted. “You have carried out your promise. You have brought Jongor back to us.”
Mozdoc shrugged. “Naturally, since I planned it that way, it would work,” he said. “Jongor would not be able to determine the origin of the water writing. He would think it came from Nesca, and thinking that, he would be certain to return here——”
“And fall into our trap!” Orbo interrupted. “Going to you for help was very wise. I want to thank you, we all want to thank——”
“Never mind thanking me,” Mozdoc interrupted. “I have performed my part of the agreement. Just pay me the agreed price.”
“Price? Ah, yes, the price,” Orbo mumbled, losing much of his enthusiasm. He looked craftily at Mozdoc, as though estimating the strength in that shaggy horse body and the intelligence in that over-size human head.
Mozdoc read the other’s thoughts. “If you are thinking of cutting my throat instead of paying me,” he suggested, “I would recommend you change your plans. Attempting to cut my throat would be neither easy nor safe—for you.”
“No such thought was in my mind!” Orbo said hastily. “Nothing of the kind. You misjudge me——”
“Just pay me,” Mozdoc interrupted. Orbo went reluctantly into a small cave that opened from the shelf. He returned carrying a small deer-skin bag. He poured the contents of this bag into Mozdoc’s outstretched hands.
Great glittering diamonds, gems as big as the egg of a hen, poured from the bag. The wealth of a maharajah was here, ransom for all the kings of Kush and far Cathay, a fortune, and twice a fortune. As they poured into his outstretched hands, Mozdoc’s eyes glittered only slightly less than the gems. One by one he dropped them into a bag carried round his waist.
“You Murtos,” he said, when the last jewel was out of sight, “scarcely deserve to possess such stones.”
“We have more of them than we can count,” Orbo boasted.
“Sometime, possibly, I shall help you count them,” Mozdoc said. He turned, and keeping carefully out of sight, picked his way slowly down the rocky ledge that led eventually to the jungle far below.
“I still think I should have cut his throat,” Orbo muttered, watching him go. “But there is always danger in that, and after all, what are the bright stones if they got us what we wanted?” His eyes sought the jungle below them. He saw the dinosaur launch itself into the swamp, saw the five humans in the nook under the trees, saw Jongor take the great bow and slip silently into the jungle.
Jongor was what Orbo wanted, Jongor and revenge. Jongor had wrecked the city of the Murtos; Orbo intended that the jungle giant should pay—for that and for other things.
Orbo studied the humans below them, watched what they were doing, noted how they might be approached unseen. Then he whispered his orders to his band of shaggy followers.
CHAPTER V
The Strategy of the Murtos
DUSK fell over Lost Land. Dark somber shadows reached slowly out from the surrounding mountains, spread long black fingers of shade over the jungle. Gradually, a little by a little, the bird calls began to go into silence. Far off somewhere in the green tangle a coughing grunt sounded as some meat eater roused from the sleep of t
he day and began to think again about the business of eating.
In the nook of trees, Ann Hunter had pulled off her moccasins. Her rifle lay beside her. She had rested and now she felt refreshed. She watched the men. Morton and her brother had gathered dead branches and now they were digging a hole in the ground. They would build a fire in that hole, a small, shaded blaze that would give off little smoke and would be invisible fifty yards away. When Jongor returned, they would roast succulent steaks over that small fire. The cooking of the steaks would be her job. Preparing food for her men—there was a thrill in the thought. Of course, Morton and Schiller were not her men but her brother and Jongor were. She thought about them.
Schiller sat apart, making no effort to help, brooding in silence over dark thoughts of his own.
Ann Hunter thought of Jongor—and of Queen Nesca.
“Damn her!” she whispered suddenly.
She hated Queen Nesca. It had been Nesca’s message that had brought them back to this land. There was little real cause for dislike in that—Jongor would never fail to answer a friend’s call for help. But what if Nesca was more than a friend? What if she had been Jongor’s sweetheart? What if Jongor had once been in love with Nesca, and seeing her again, should fall in love again?
To a man the problem would not have seemed important. A man would have shrugged his shoulders and said, “What the hell—” To a girl, no problem is more important. In Queen Nesca, Ann Hunter suspected she had a dangerous rival.
Suddenly the idea occurred to her to go meet Jongor as he returned from hunting. It seemed to be a very good idea. If he had killed a deer, she could help him carry it. She pulled on her moccasins, picked up her rifle.
“Hey, sis, where do you think you’re going?” Alan Hunter called to her.
“To meet Jongor, when he returns.”
“To help the big strong man bring home the bacon, eh?” her brother kidded.
She flushed but said nothing.
“Don’t you get out of sight,” her brother sternly ordered.
“I won’t,” she promised. She did not intend to go far. Anyhow she had a gun with her and she knew the country. Keeping well away from the edge of the swamp, she walked slowly in the direction Jongor had gone. The farther she walked, the more the idea of going to meet him appealed to her.
She thought it was her idea. She did not begin to suspect it might be somebody else’s idea until she walked under a clump of big trees and from the heavy foliage overhead a dozen dark furry bodies dropped down on her like plummets hurtling from the sky. They had her before she knew what was happening. The rifle was knocked from her grasp, a heavy hand was clasped over her mouth, other hands grabbed her arms and legs, threw her heavily to the ground. A gag was thrust into her mouth, jerked tight, and her arms were tied behind her back.
ORBO jumped up and down with excitement and pleasure. “Good! Good!” he grunted, as fighters tied up the girl. “Fine. Oh, very fine. I knew I could reach her mind, lure her into the trap. Good.”
He was holding aloft a crystal similar to the crystal Jongor had used to control the dinosaur. This one was smaller, more delicately made than the one. Jongor used. It had been designed to control humans. Orbo had used it to implant in Ann Hunter’s mind the idea that she should go and meet Jongor as he returned from the hunt.[7] A human who knew that such a device existed could use his will power to overcome its radiations. But its radiations were subtle, the person on whom it was used thought the idea was coming from his own mind. Ann Hunter had not known such a crystal existed. She had thought the idea to go out and meet Jongor had come from her own mind. It hadn’t. It had come from Orbo’s crystal.
Orbo was very pleased with himself.
Umber, his lieutenant, who was only slightly less strong, slightly less brutal, and whose tail was not quite as bushy, and who resented all three of these facts, was not so pleased.
“Why did we not use the crystal to lure Jongor into a trap?” Umber grumpily demanded. “What good will this skinny female do us? It is Jongor we want. Why did we not use the crystal on him?”
“You are a fool and the son of a fool!” Orbo stated flatly. “Jongor knows us. He knows the crystal. If we tried to use the crystal on him, he would know instantly what was happening, and instead of luring him into a trap, we would find ourselves in one.
Anybody but a fool would know that,” Orbo ended.
Umber was not pleased to be called a fool. But, looking thoughtfully at his chief’s bulk, he decided there was nothing he could do about it. “I still do not see what good the girl will do,” he muttered. “She will only get us into trouble. Jongor will go crazy when he learns that we have her. His anger will be terrible. I still remember what he did to our city,” Umber said uneasily.
“You have no more sense than a chattering monkey,” Orbo grunted. “We need the girl. She will be the bait for our trap, the one bait Jongor will not be able to resist. Certainly he will be angry. Certainly he will come seeking her. That is what we want him to do. We will leave a trail for him to follow. When he comes seeking the girl—” Orbo grinned delightedly and drew a hairy thumb across an equally hairy throat, making a snicking noise as he did so.
Not until then did Umber understand his chief’s strategy. It was good strategy, Umber reluctantly admitted. But even then he didn’t like it, largely because he had not thought of it himself. Umber had the opinion that he, and not Orbo, should be chief of the Murtos.
Under Orbo’s direction, the Murto’s, forcing the gagged girl to walk with them, slipped furtively into the jungle.
They left a clear trail behind them.
JONGOR found hunting anything but easy. It was one of those days when the jungle seems lifeless, when the game animals all seem hidden. Far distant on the cliffs he glimpsed pterodactyls but he knew from experience that their tough, leathery flesh made poor eating. Basking on the mud flats beside the swampy pools he saw alligators but he didn’t want them either.
He wanted a deer, if he could get one.
And deer he could not find.
It was almost night before he found one, feeding in a little glade below the cliffs. The stalk he made to get within shooting range would have won enthusiastic approval from an expert woodsman. He thought nothing of it. It was routine to him, something he had been doing all his life. The startled deer fell to his first arrow.
Slinging it over his shoulder, he started at a dog-trot back to camp. Heavy dusk had fallen before he arrived. He caught the vague reflection of the tiny campfire in the gathering darkness. The sight sent a thrill through him. A fire glistening in the night was home. He caught glimpses of the figures moving around it and called out softly.
“Hello, the camp.”
He knew better than to return even to his own camp without giving warning of his coming. If he came blundering out of the dusk without telling them who he was, he might get a bullet as his reception.
The three men looked up as he came into the firelight.
“A deer!” Morton gloated.
Schiller’s eyes lit with an appreciative gleam.
Alan Hunter looked behind Jongor. “Where’s Ann?” he asked.
Jongor’s heart missed a beat. “Ann? Isn’t she here with you?”
“No. She went out to meet you as you came back. Didn’t you see her?” For a split second Jongor was a bronze statue in the gathering dusk. “Which way did she go?” he asked, “That way,” Alan Hunter answered) pointing. “You don’t think anything has happened to her, do you? She promised not to go far——”
Jongor, dropping the deer on the ground, was already turning. Scarcely noticing that Alan was running beside him, he picked up the trail she had left, followed it with the ease of a dog running on a hot scent. An American Indian would have appreciated his ability to follow a trail, but, like stalking the deer, it was something that long training had enabled him to perfect. A broken twig, a turned blade of grass, the scuff of a moccasin in soft soil.
He was barely out
of sight of camp when he found a place where the ground had been disturbed as though by a slight struggle. His keen eyes, even in the fast-gathering night, read the sign at a glance. A single word dropped from his lips.
“Murtos!”
Alan Hunter went pale.
“Murtos!”
“A small band of them,” Jongor said. “They must have seen her coming and hid themselves in the trees. They took her completely by surprise. See! They went in that direction, taking her with them——”
Leaving the unwilling man behind him, Jongor plunged into the jungle. The trail was clear before him. Even in the semi-dusk, he could follow it.
WITHIN fifteen minutes the gathering dusk had turned into darkness. Even his keen eyes could not discern the trail. He knew the bitter truth. The Murtos had captured Ann, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He just couldn’t see well enough to follow the trail. He had to go back.
“What are we going to do?” the perturbed Alan Hunter demanded.
“There is nothing we can do—until tomorrow,” Jongor answered.
“But the Murtos——”
“I know it. I can’t help it.”
The words were hot with suppressed rage. In that moment, Jongor could cheerfully have broken the neck of every Murto who had ever been born.
“Sorry, Jongor,” Alan Hunter said miserably. “I should have watched her better. I shouldn’t have let her leave camp. But I didn’t think there were any Murtos in the vicinity, and—” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
Jongor- the Complete Tales Page 12
