It was daylight when Barney Custer awoke. His first thought was for his
prisoner, and when his eyes fell upon the empty cot across the room
the American came to the center of the floor with a single bound. Clad
in his pajamas he ran out into the living room and gave the alarm. In
another moment the search was on, but no sign of the caveman was to be
found, nor of the guardian Terkoz.
"He must have killed the dog," insisted Greystoke; but they failed
to find the beast's body, for the excellent reason that at that very
moment Terkoz, bristling with anger, was nosing about the spot where,
nearly a month before, he had been struck down by the Arab, as he had
sought to protect the girl to whom he had attached himself.
As he searched the spot his equally savage companion hastened to the
cave further up the mountainside, and with his knife unearthed the head
of Oo which he had buried there in the soft earth of a crevice within
the lair. The trophy was now in a rather sad state of putrefaction, and
Nu felt that he must forego the pleasure of laying it intact at the
feet of his future mate; but the great saber-teeth were there and the
skull. He removed the former, fastening them to his gee-string and laid
the balance of the head outside the cave where vultures might strip it
clean of flesh against Nu's return, for he did not wish to be burdened
with it during his search for Nat-ul.
A deep bay from Terkoz presently announced the finding of the trail and
at the signal Nu leaped down the mountainside where the impatient beast
awaited him. A moment later the two savage trailers were speeding away
upon the spoor of the Arab slave and ivory raiders. Though the trail
was old it still was sufficiently plain for these two. The hound's
scent was but a trifle more acute than his human companion's, but the
man depended almost solely upon the tell-tale evidences which his eyes
could apprehend, leaving the scent-spoor to the beast, for thus it had
been his custom to hunt with the savage wolfish progenitors of Terkoz a
hundred thousand years before.
They moved silently and swiftly through the jungle, across valleys,
over winding hill-trails, wherever the broad path of the caravan led.
In a day they covered as much ground as the caravan had covered in a
week. By night they slept at the foot of some great tree, the man and
beast curled up together; or crawled within dark caves when the way led
through the mountains; or, when Zor, the lion, was abroad the man would
build a rude platform high among the branches of a tree that he and the
hound might sleep in peace throughout the night.
Nu saw strange sights that filled him with wonder and sealed his belief
that he had been miraculously transferred to another world. There were
villages of black men, some of which gave evidence of recent conflict.
Burned huts, and mutilated corpses were all that remained of many, and
in others only a few old men and women were to be seen.
He also passed herds of giraffe--a beast that had been unknown in his
own world, and many elephant which reminded him of Gluh, the mammoth.
But all these beasts were smaller than those he had known in his other
life, nor nearly so ferocious. Why, he could scarce recall a beast of
any description that did not rush into a death struggle with the first
member of another species which it came upon--provided, of course,
that it stood the slightest show of dispatching its antagonist. Of
course there had been the smaller and more timid animals whose entire
existence had consisted in snatching what food they could as they fled
through the savage days and awful nights of that fierce age in the
perpetual effort to escape or elude the countless myriads of huge
carnivora and bellicose ruminants whose trails formed a mighty network
from pole to pole.
So to Nu the jungles of Africa seemed silent and deserted places. The
beasts, even the more savage of them, seldom attacked except in hunger
or the protection of their young. Why, he had passed within a dozen
paces of a great herd of these diminutive, hairless mammoths and they
had but raised their little, pig eyes and glanced at him, as they
flapped their great ears back and forth against the annoying flies and
browsed upon the branches of young trees.
The ape-people seemed frightened out of their wits at his approach, and
he had even seen the tawny bodies of lions pass within a stone's throw
of him without charging. It was amazing. Life in such a world would
scarce be worth the living. It made him lonelier than ever to feel that
he could travel for miles without encountering a single danger.
Far behind him along the trail of the Arabs came a dozen white men and
half a hundred savage Waziri warriors. Not an hour after Barney Custer
discovered Nu's absence a native runner had come hurrying in from the
north to beg Lord Greystoke's help in pursuing and punishing a band
of Arab slave and ivory raiders who were laying waste the villages,
murdering the old men and the children and carrying the young men and
women into slavery.
While Greystoke was questioning the fellow he let drop the fact that
among the other prisoners of the Arabs was a young white woman.
Instantly commotion reigned upon the Greystoke ranch. White men were
jumping into field khaki, looking to firearms and ammunition lest their
black body servants should have neglected some essential. Stable boys
were saddling the horses, and the sleek, ebon warriors of Uziri were
greasing their black hides, adjusting barbaric war bonnets, streaking
faces, breasts, limbs and bellies with ocher, vermillion or ghastly
bluish white, and looking to slim shield, poisoned arrow and formidable
war spear.
For a time the fugitive was forgotten, but as the march proceeded
they came upon certain reminders that recalled him to their thoughts
and indicated that he was far in advance of them upon the trail of
the Arabs. The first sign of him was the carcass of a bull buffalo.
Straight through the heart was the great hole that they now knew was
made by the passage of the ancient, stone-tipped spear. Strips had been
knife cut from the sides, and the belly was torn as though by a wild
beast. Brown stooped to examine the ground about the bull. When he
straightened up he looked at Greystoke and laughed.
"Didn't I understand you to say that he must have killed the dog?" he
asked. "Look here--they ate side by side from the body of their kill."