Down out of Tigre and Amhara upon Gojam and Shoa and Kaffa come the
rains from June to September, carrying silt and prosperity from
Abyssinia to the eastern Sudan and to Egypt, bringing muddy trails and
swollen rivers and death and prosperity to Abyssinia.
Of these gifts of the rains, only the muddy trails and the swollen
rivers and death interested a little band of _shiftas_ that held out in
the remote fastnesses of the mountains of Kaffa. Hard men were these
mounted bandits, cruel criminals without even a vestige of culture
such as occasionally leavens the activities of rogues, lessening their
ruthlessness. Kaficho and Galla they were, the offscourings of their
tribes, outlaws, men with prices upon their heads.
It was not raining now; and the rainy season was drawing to a close,
for it was the middle of September; but there was still much water in
the rivers, and the ground was soft after a recent rain.
The _shiftas_ rode, seeking loot from wayfarer, caravan, or village;
and as they rode, the unshod hoofs of their horses left a plain spoor
that one might read upon the run; not that that caused the _shiftas_
any concern, because no one was looking for them. All that anyone in
the district wished of the _shiftas_ was to keep out of their way.
A short distance ahead of them, in the direction toward which they
were riding, a hunting beast stalked its prey. The wind was blowing
from it toward the approaching horsemen; and for this reason their
scent spoor was not borne to its sensitive nostrils, nor did the soft
ground give forth any sound beneath the feet of their walking mounts
that the keen ears of the hunter might detect during the period of
concentration and mild excitement attendant upon the stalk.
Though the stalker did not resemble a beast of prey, such as the term
connotes to the mind of man, he was one nevertheless; for in his
natural haunts he filled his belly by the chase and by the chase alone;
neither did he resemble the mental picture that one might hold of a
typical British lord, yet he was that too--he was Tarzan of the Apes.
All beasts of prey find hunting poor during a rain, and Tarzan was no
exception to the rule. It had rained for two days, and as a result
Tarzan was hungry. A small buck was drinking in a stream fringed by
bushes and tall reeds, and Tarzan was worming his way upon his belly
through short grass to reach a position from which he might either
charge or loose an arrow or cast a spear. He was not aware that a group
of horsemen had reined in upon a gentle rise a short distance behind
him where they sat in silence regarding him intently.
Usha, the wind, who carries scent, also carries sound. Today, Usha
carried both the scent and the sound of the _shiftas_ away from the
keen nostrils and ears of the ape-man. Perhaps, endowed as he was with
supersensitive perceptive faculties, Tarzan should have sensed the
presence of an enemy; but "Even the worthy Homer sometimes nods."
However self-sufficient an animal may be it is endowed with caution,
for there is none that has not its enemies. The weaker herbivora
must be always on the alert for the lion, the leopard, and man; the
elephant, the rhinoceros, and the lion may never relax their vigilance
against man; and man must always be on guard against these and
others. Yet one may not say that such caution connotes either fear or
cowardice; for Tarzan, who was without fear, was the personification of
caution, especially when he was far from his own stamping grounds as
he was today and every creature a potential enemy.
The combination of ravenous hunger with the opportunity to satisfy
it may have placed caution in abeyance as, oftentimes, a certain
recklessness born of pride in his might did; but, be that as it may,
the fact remains that Tarzan was wholly ignorant of the presence of
that little knot of villainous bandits who were quite prepared to kill
him, or anyone else, for a few poor weapons or for nothing at all.
The circumstances that brought Tarzan northward into Kaffa are not
a part of this story. Perhaps they were not urgent, for the Lord of
the Jungle loves to roam remote fastnesses still unspoiled by the
devastating hand of civilization and needs but trifling incentive
to do so. Still unsated with adventure, it may be that Abyssinia's
three hundred fifty thousand square miles of semi-savagery held an
irresistible lure for him in their suggestion of mysterious back
country and in the ethnological secrets they have guarded from time
immemorial.
Wanderer, adventurer, outcast, Greek phalanx, and Roman legion, all
have entered Abyssinia within times chronicled in history or legend
never to reappear; and it is even believed by some that she holds
the secret of the lost tribes of Israel. What wonders, then, what
adventures, might not her remote corners reveal!
At the moment, however, Tarzan's mind was not occupied by thoughts of
adventure; he did not know that it loomed threateningly behind him; his
concern and his interest were centered upon the buck which he intended
should satisfy the craving of his ravenous hunger. He crept cautiously
forward. Than he, not even Sheeta, the leopard, stalks more silently or
more stealthily.
From behind, the white-robed _shiftas_ moved from the little rise where
they had been watching him in silence, moved down toward him with spear
and long-barreled matchlock. They were puzzled. Never before had they
seen a white man like this one; but if curiosity were in their minds,
there was only murder in their hearts.
The buck raised his head occasionally to glance about him, wary,
suspicious; and when he did so, Tarzan froze into immobility. Suddenly
the animal's gaze centered for an instant upon something in the
direction of the ape-man; then it wheeled and bounded away. Instantly
Tarzan glanced behind him, for he knew that it had not been he who had
frightened his quarry but something beyond and behind him that the
alert eyes of Wappi had discovered; and that quick glance revealed a
half dozen horsemen moving slowly toward him, told him what they were,
and explained their purpose; for, knowing that they were _shiftas_, he
knew that they came only to rob and kill--knew that here were enemies
more ruthless than Numa.
When they saw that he had discovered them, the horsemen broke into a
gallop and bore down upon him, waving their weapons and shouting. They
did not fire, evidently holding in contempt this primitively armed
victim, but seemed to purpose riding him down and trampling him beneath
the hoofs of their horses or impaling him upon their spears. Perhaps
they thought that he would seek safety in flight, thereby giving them
the added thrill of the chase; and what quarry could give the hunter
greater thrills than man.
But Tarzan did not turn and run. He knew every possible avenue of
escape within the radius of his vision for every danger that might
reasonably be expected to confront him here, for it is the business of
the creatures of the wild to know these things if they are to survive,
and so he knew that there was no escape from mounted men by flight.
But this knowledge threw him into no panic. Could the requirements of
self-preservation have been best achieved by flight, he would have
fled; but as they could not, he adopted the alternative quite as a
matter of course--he stood to fight, ready to seize upon any fortuitous
circumstance that might offer a chance of escape.
Tall, magnificently proportioned, muscled more like Apollo than like
Hercules, garbed only in a narrow G string of lion skin with a lion's
tail depending before and behind, he presented a splendid figure of
primitive manhood that suggested more, perhaps, the demigod of the
forest than it did man. Across his back hung his quiver of arrows and a
light, short spear; the loose coils of his grass rope lay across one
bronzed shoulder; at his hip swung the hunting knife of his father, the
knife that had given the boy-Tarzan the first suggestion of his coming
supremacy over the other beasts of the jungle on that far gone day when
his youthful hand drove it into the heart of Bolgani, the gorilla; in
his left hand was his bow and between the fingers four extra arrows.
As Ara, the lightning, so is Tarzan for swiftness. The instant that he
had discovered and recognized the menace creeping upon him from behind
and known that he had been seen by the horsemen he had leaped to his
feet, and in the same instant strung his bow. Now, perhaps even before
the leading _shiftas_ realized the danger that confronted them, the bow
was bent, the shaft sped.
Short but powerful was the bow of the ape-man; short, that it might be
easily carried through the forest and the jungle; powerful, that it
might send its shafts through the toughest hide to a vital organ of its
prey. Such a bow was this that no ordinary man might bend it.
Straight through the heart of the leading _shifta_ drove the first
arrow, and as the fellow threw his arms above his head and lunged from
his saddle four more arrows sped with lightning-like rapidity from the
bow of the ape-man, and every arrow found a target. Another _shifta_
dropped to ride no more, and three were wounded.
Only seconds had elapsed since Tarzan had discovered his danger, and
already the four remaining horsemen were upon him. The three who
were wounded were more interested in the feathered shafts protruding
from their bodies than in the quarry they had expected so easily to
overcome; but the fourth was whole, and he thundered down upon the
ape-man with his spear set for the great bronzed chest.
There could be no retreat for Tarzan; there could be no side-stepping
to avoid the thrust, for a step to either side would have carried him
in front of one of the other horsemen. He had but a single slender hope
for survival, and that hope, forlorn though it appeared, he seized
upon with the celerity, strength, and agility that make Tarzan Tarzan.
Slipping his bowstring about his neck after his final shot, he struck
up the point of the menacing weapon of his antagonist, and grasping the
man's arm swung himself to the horse's back behind the rider.
As steel-thewed fingers closed upon the _shifta_'s throat he voiced
a single piercing scream; then a knife drove home beneath his left
shoulder blade, and Tarzan hurled the body from the saddle. The
terrified horse, running free with flying reins, tore through the
bushes and the reeds into the river, while the remaining _shiftas_,
disabled by their wounds, were glad to abandon the chase upon the bank,
though one of them, retaining more vitality than his companions, did
raise his matchlock and send a parting shot after the escaping quarry.
The river was a narrow, sluggish stream but deep in the channel; and as
the horse plunged into it, Tarzan saw a commotion in the water a few
yards downstream and then the outline of a long, sinuous body moving
swiftly toward them. It was Gimla, the crocodile. The horse saw it too
and, becoming frantic, turned upstream in an effort to escape. Tarzan
climbed over the high cantle of the Abyssinian saddle and unslung his
spear in the rather futile hope of holding the reptile at bay until his
mount could reach the safety of the opposite bank toward which he was
now attempting to guide him.
Gimla is as swift as he is voracious. He was already at the horse's
rump, with opened jaws, when the _shifta_ at the river's edge fired
wildly at the ape-man. It was well for Tarzan that the wounded man had
fired hurriedly; for simultaneously with the report of the firearm,
the crocodile dove; and the frenzied lashing of the water about him
evidenced the fact that he had been mortally wounded.
A moment later the horse that Tarzan rode reached the opposite bank and
clambered to the safety of dry land. Now he was under control again;
and the ape-man wheeled him about and sent a parting arrow across the
river toward the angry, cursing bandits upon the opposite side, an
arrow that found its mark in the thigh of the already wounded man who
had unwittingly rescued Tarzan from a serious situation with the shot
that had been intended to kill him.
To the accompaniment of a few wild and scattered shots, Tarzan of the
Apes galloped toward a nearby forest into which he disappeared from the
sight of the angry _shiftas_.