The "Gunner" was perturbed. It was morning, and Lafayette Smith was
still missing. They had searched for him until late the previous night,
and now they were setting forth again. Ogonyo, the headman, acting
under instructions from the "Gunner" had divided the party into pairs
and, with the exception of four men left to guard the camp, these were
to search in different directions combing the country carefully for
trace of the missing man.
Danny had selected Obambi as his companion, a fact which irked the
black boy considerably as he had been the target for a great deal of
angry vituperation ever since Danny had discovered, the afternoon
before, that he had left Smith alone in the mountains.
"It don't make no difference what he told you, you punk," the "Gunner"
assured him, "you didn't have no business leavin' him out there alone.
Now I'm goin' to take you for a walk, and if we don't find Lafayette
you ain't never comin' back."
"Yes, bwana," replied Obambi, who had not even a crude idea of what the
white man was talking about. One thing, however, pleased him immensely
and that was that the bwana insisted on carrying his own gun, leaving
nothing for Obambi to carry but a light lunch and two fifty-round
drums of ammunition. Not that the nine pounds and thirteen ounces of a
Thompson submachine gun would have been an exceptionally heavy burden,
but that Obambi was always glad to be relieved of any burden. He would
have been mildly grateful for a load reduction of even thirteen ounces.
The "Gunner," in attempting to determine the probable route that Smith
would have followed in his search for camp, reasoned in accordance
with what he assumed he would have done under like circumstances; and,
knowing that Smith had been last seen well above the camp and a little
to the north of it, he decided to search in a northerly direction along
the foothills, it being obvious that a man would come down hill rather
than go farther up in such an emergency.
The day was hot and by noon the "Gunner" was tired, sweating, and
disgusted. He was particularly disgusted with Africa, which, he
informed Obambi, was "a hell of a burgh."
"Geeze," he grumbled; "I've walked my lousy legs off, and I ain't been
no further than from The Loop to Cicero. I been six hours, and I could
of done it in twenty minutes in a taxi. Of course they ain't got no
cops in Africa, but they ain't got no taxis either."
"Yes, bwana," agreed Obambi.
"Shut up!" growled the "Gunner."
They were sitting beneath the shade of a tree on a hillside, resting
and eating their lunch. A short distance below them the hillside
dropped sheer in a fifty foot cliff, a fact that was not apparent from
where they sat, any more than was the palisaded village at the cliffs
base. Nor did they see the man squatting by a bush at the very brink
of the cliff. His back was toward them, as from the concealment of the
bush, he gazed down upon the village below.
Here, the watcher believed, was the man he sought; but he wished to
make sure, which might require days of watching. Time, however, meant
little or nothing to Tarzan--no more than it did to any other jungle
beast. He would come back often to this vantage spot and watch. Sooner
or later he would discover the truth or falsity of his suspicion that
one of the white men he saw in the village below was the slave raider
for whom he had come north. And so, like a great lion, the ape-man
crouched, watching his quarry.
Below him Dominic Capietro and Leon Stabutch lolled in the shade of
a tree outside the hut of the raider, while a half dozen slave girls
waited upon them as they leisurely ate their belated breakfast.
A couple of fiery liquid bracers had stimulated their jaded spirits,
which had been at low ebb after their awakening following their debauch
of the previous day, though, even so, neither could have been correctly
described as being in fine fettle.
Capietro, who was even more surly and quarrelsome than usual, vented
his spleen upon the hapless slaves, while Stabutch ate in morose
silence, which he finally broke to revert to the subject of his mission.
"I ought to get started toward the south," he said. "From all I can
learn there's nothing to be gained looking for the ape-man in this part
of the country."
"What you in such a hurry to find him for?" demanded Capietro. "Ain't
my company good enough for you."
"'Business before pleasure,' you know, comrade," Stabutch reminded the
Italian in a conciliatory tone.
"I suppose so," grunted Capietro.
"I should like to visit you again after I have come back from the
south," suggested Stabutch.
"You may not come back."
"I shall. Peter Zveri must be avenged. The obstacle in the path of
communism must be removed."
"The monkey-man killed Zveri?"
"No, a woman killed him," replied the Russian, "but the monkey-man, as
you call him, was directly responsible for the failure of all Zveri's
plans and thus indirectly responsible for his death."
"You expect to fare better than Zveri, then? Good luck to you, but I
don't envy you your mission. This Tarzan is like a lion with the brain
of a man. He is savage. He is terrible. In his own country he is also
very powerful."
"I shall get him, nevertheless," said Stabutch, confidently. "If
possible I shall kill him the moment I first see him, before he has an
opportunity to become suspicious; or, if I cannot do that, I shall win
his confidence and his friendship and then destroy him when he least
suspects his danger."
Voices carry upward to a great distance, and so, though Stabutch
spoke only in normal tones, the watcher, squatting at the cliff top,
smiled--just the faintest suggestion of a grim smile.
So that was why the man from "Russa", of whom Goloba the headman had
told him, was inquiring as to his whereabouts? Perhaps Tarzan had
suspected as much, but he was glad to have definite proof.
"I shall be glad if you do kill him," said Capietro. "He would drive
me out of business if he ever learned about me. He is a scoundrel who
would prevent a man from earning an honest dollar."
"You may put him from your mind, comrade," Stabutch assured the raider.
"He is already as good as dead. Furnish me with men, and I shall soon
be on my way toward the south."
"My villains are already saddling to go forth and find men for your
safari," said Capietro, with a wave of his hand in the direction of
the central compound, where a score of cut-throats were saddling their
horses in preparation for a foray against a distant Galla village.
"May luck go with them," said Stabutch. "I hope--What was that?" he
demanded, leaping to his feet as a sudden crash of falling rock and
earth came from behind them.
Capietro was also upon his feet. "A landslide," he exclaimed. "A
portion of the cliff has fallen. Look! What is that?" he pointed at an
object half way up the cliff--the figure of a naked white man clinging
to a tree that had found lodgment for its roots in the rocky face of
the cliff. The tree, a small one, was bending beneath the weight of the
man. Slowly it gave way, there was the sound of rending wood, and then
the figure hurtled downward into the village where it was hidden from
the sight of the two white watchers by an intervening hut.
But Stabutch had seen the giant figure of the almost naked white long
enough to compare it with the description he had had of the man for
whom he had come all the long way from Moscow. There could not be two
such, of that he was certain. "It is the ape-man!" he cried. "Come,
Capietro, he is ours!"
Instantly the Italian ordered several _shiftas_ to advance and seize
the ape-man.
Fortune is never necessarily with either the brave or the virtuous.
She is, unfortunately, quite as likely to perch upon the banner of the
poltroon or the blackguard. Today she deserted Tarzan completely. As
he squatted upon the edge of the cliff, looking down upon the village
of Dominic Capietro, he suddenly felt the earth giving beneath him.
Catlike, he leaped to his feet, throwing his hands above his head, as
one does, mechanically, to preserve his balance or seek support, but
too late. With a small avalanche of earth and rock he slid over the
edge of the cliff. The tree, growing part way down the face of the
escarpment, broke his fall and for a moment, gave him hope that he
might escape the greater danger of the final plunge into the village,
where, if the fall did not kill him it was quite evident that his
enemies would. But only for a moment were his hopes aroused. With the
breaking of the bending stem hope vanished as he plunged on downward.
Danny "Gunner" Patrick, having finished his lunch, lighted a cigarette
and let his gaze wander out over the landscape that unfolded in a
lovely panorama before him. City-bred, he saw only a part of what
there was to be seen and understood but little of that. What impressed
him most was the loneliness of the prospect. "Geeze," he soliloquized,
"what a hideout! No one wouldn't never find a guy here." His eyes
suddenly focused upon an object in the foreground. "Hey, smoke," he
whispered to Obambi, "what's that?" He pointed in the direction of the
thing that had aroused his curiosity.
Obambi looked and, when they found it, his keen eyes recognized it for
what it was. "It is a man, bwana," he said. "It is the man who killed
Simba in our camp that night. It is Tarzan of the Apes."
"How t'ell do you know?" demanded the "Gunner."
"There is only one Tarzan," replied the black. "It could be no other,
as no other white man in all the jungle country or the mountain country
or the plains country goes thus naked."
The "Gunner" rose to his feet. He was going down to have a talk with
the ape-man, who, perhaps, could help him in his search for Lafayette
Smith; but as he arose he saw the man below him leap to his feet and
throw his arms above his head. Then he disappeared as though swallowed
up by the earth. The "Gunner," knitted his brows.
"Geeze," he remarked to Obambi, "he sure screwed, didn't he?"
"What, bwana?" asked Obambi.
"Shut up," snapped the "Gunner." "That was funny," he muttered. "Wonder
what became of him. Guess I'll give him a tail. Come on, dinge," he
concluded aloud to Obambi.
Having learned through experience (wholly the experience of others
who had failed to do so) that attention to details is essential to
the continued pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, the "Gunner"
looked carefully to his Thompson as he walked rapidly but cautiously
toward the spot where Tarzan had disappeared. He saw that there was a
cartridge in the chamber, that the magazine drum was properly attached
and that the fire control lever was set for full automatic fire.
In the village, which he could not yet see and of the presence of
which he did not dream, the _shiftas_ were running toward the place
where they knew the body of the fallen man must lie; and in the van
were Stabutch and Capietro, when suddenly there stepped from the
interior of the last hut the man they sought. They did not know that
he had alighted on the thatched roof of the hut from which he had just
emerged, nor that, though he had broken through it to the floor below,
it had so broken his fall that he had suffered no disabling injury.
To them it seemed a miracle; and to see him thus, apparently uninjured,
took the two white men so by surprise that they halted in their tracks
while their followers, imitating their example, clustered about them.
Stabutch was the first to regain his presence of mind. Whipping a
revolver from its holster he was about to fire point blank at the
ape-man, when Capietro struck his hand up. "Wait," growled the Italian.
"Do not be too fast. I am in command here."
"But it is the ape-man," cried Stabutch.
"I know that," replied Capietro, "and for that very reason I wish to
take him alive. He is rich. He will bring a great ransom."
"Damn the ransom," ejaculated Stabutch. "It is his life I want."
"Wait until I have the ransom," said Capietro, "and then you can go
after him."
In the meantime Tarzan stood watching the two. He saw that his
situation was fraught with exceptional danger. It was to the interest
of either one of these men to kill him; and while the ransom of
which one spoke might deter him temporarily he knew that but little
provocation would be required to induce this one to kill him rather
than to take the chance that he might escape, while it was evident that
the Russian already considered that he had sufficient provocation, and
Tarzan did not doubt but that he would find the means to accomplish his
design even in the face of the Italian's objections.
If he could but get among them, where they could not use firearms
against him, because of the danger that they might kill members of
their own party, he felt that, by virtue of his superior strength,
speed and agility, he might fight his way to one of the palisaded walls
of the village where he would have a fair chance to escape. Once there
he could scale the palisade with the speed of Manu, the monkey, and
with little danger other than from the revolvers of the two whites,
since he held the marksmanship of the _shiftas_ in contempt.
He heard Capietro call to his men to take him alive; and then, waiting
not upon them, he charged straight for the two whites, while from his
throat burst the savage growl of a wild beast that had, upon more than
a single occasion in the past, wrought havoc with the nerves of human
antagonists.
Nor did it fail in its purpose now. Shocked and unnerved for the
instant, Stabutch fell back while Capietro, who had no desire to kill
the ape-man unless it became necessary, leaped to one side and urged
his followers to seize him.
For a moment bedlam reigned in the village of the white raider.
Yelling, cursing men milled about a white giant who fought with his
bare hands, seizing an antagonist and hurling him in the faces of
others, or, using the body of another like a flail, sought to mow down
those who opposed him.
Among the close massed fighters, excited curs ran yelping and barking,
while children and women upon the outskirts of the melée shrieked
encouragement to the men.
Slowly Tarzan was gaining ground toward one of the coveted walls of
the village where, as he stepped quickly backward to avoid a blow, he
stumbled over a yapping cur and went down beneath a dozen men.
From the top of the cliff "Gunner" Patrick looked down upon this scene.
"That mob has sure got him on the spot," he said aloud. "He's a regular
guy, too. I guess here's where I step for him."
"Yes, Bwana," agreed the willing Obambi.
"Shut up," said the "Gunner," and then he raised the butt of the
Thompson to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
Mingled with the rapid reports of the machine gun were the screams
and curses of wounded and frightened men and the shrieks of terrified
women and children. Like snow before a spring shower, the pack that had
surrounded Tarzan melted away as men ran for the shelter of their huts
or for their saddled ponies.
Capietro and Stabutch were among the latter, and even before Tarzan
could realize what had happened he saw the two racing through the open
gates of the village.
The "Gunner," noting the satisfactory effect of his fire, had ceased,
though he stood ready again to rain a hail of death down upon the
village should necessity require. He had aimed only at the outskirts of
the crowd surrounding the ape-man, for fear that a bullet might strike
the man he was endeavoring to succor; but he was ready to risk finer
shooting should any press the naked giant too closely.
He saw Tarzan standing alone in the village street like a lion at bay,
and then he saw his eyes ranging about for an explanation of the burst
of fire that had liberated him.
"Up here, fellar!" shouted the "Gunner."
The ape-man raised his eyes and located Danny instantly. "Wait," he
called; "I'll be up there in a moment."