And so they went even more cautiously, for they wished to come upon the thief from behind if they could and charge him before he was aware of their presence.
That a little gray-whiskered monkey had forestalled them they did not know, nor that three pairs of savage eyes were already watching their every move and waiting for them to come within reach of itching paws and slavering jowls.
On they came across the grove, and as they entered the path leading into the dense jungle beyond, a sudden “Kreeg-ah!” shrilled out close before them—a “Kreeg-ah” in the familiar voice of Teeka. The small brains of Toog and his companions had not been able to foresee that Teeka might betray them, and now that she had, they went wild with rage. Toog struck the she a mighty blow that felled her, and then the three rushed forth to do battle with Tarzan and Taug. The little monkey danced upon his perch and screamed with delight.
And indeed he might well be delighted, for it was a lovely fight. There were no preliminaries, no formalities, no introductions— the five bulls merely charged and clinched.
They rolled in the narrow trail and into the thick verdure beside it. They bit and clawed and scratched and struck, and all the while they kept up the most frightful chorus of growlings and barkings and roarings.
In five minutes they were torn and bleeding, and the little graybeard leaped high, shrilling his primitive bravos; but always his attitude was “thumbs down.” He wanted to see something killed. He did not care whether it were friend or foe. It was blood he wanted—blood and death.
Taug had been set upon by Toog and another of the apes, while Tarzan had the third—a huge brute with the strength of a buffalo. Never before had Tarzan's assailant beheld so strange a creature as this slippery, hairless bull with which he battled. Sweat and blood covered Tarzan's sleek, brown hide. Again and again he slipped from the clutches of the great bull, and all the while he struggled to free his hunting knife from the scabbard in which it had stuck.
At length he succeeded—a brown hand shot out and clutched a hairy throat, another flew upward clutching the sharp blade.
Three swift, powerful strokes and the bull relaxed with a groan, falling limp beneath his antagonist.
Instantly Tarzan broke from the clutches of the dying bull and sprang to Taug's assistance. Toog saw him coming and wheeled to meet him. In the impact of the charge, Tarzan's knife was wrenched from his hand and then Toog closed with him. Now was the battle even—two against two—while on the verge, Teeka, now recovered from the blow that had felled her, slunk waiting for an opportunity to aid. She saw Tarzan's knife and picked it up.
She never had used it, but knew how Tarzan used it.
Always had she been afraid of the thing which dealt death to the mightiest of the jungle people with the ease that Tantor's great tusks deal death to Tantor's enemies.
She saw Tarzan's pocket pouch torn from his side, and with the curiosity of an ape, that even danger and excitement cannot entirely dispel, she picked this up, too.
Now the bulls were standing—the clinches had been broken.
Blood streamed down their sides—their faces were crimsoned with it. Little graybeard was so fascinated that at last he had even forgotten to scream and dance; but sat rigid with delight in the enjoyment of the spectacle.
Back across the grove Tarzan and Taug forced their adversaries.
Teeka followed slowly. She scarce knew what to do.
She was lame and sore and exhausted from the frightful ordeal through which she had passed, and she had the confidence of her sex in the prowess of her mate and the other bull of her tribe—they would not need the help of a she in their battle with these two strangers.
The roars and screams of the fighters reverberated through the jungle, awakening the echoes in the distant hills.
From the throat of Tarzan's antagonist had come a score of “Kreeg-ahs!” and now from behind came the reply he had awaited. Into the grove, barking and growling, came a score of huge bull apes—the fighting men of Toog's tribe.
Teeka saw them first and screamed a warning to Tarzan and Taug.
Then she fled past the fighters toward the opposite side of the clearing, fear for a moment claiming her.
Nor can one censure her after the frightful ordeal from which she was still suffering.
Down upon them came the great apes. In a moment Tarzan and Taug would be torn to shreds that would later form the PIECE DE RESISTANCE of the savage orgy of a Dum-Dum.
Teeka turned to glance back. She saw the impending fate of her defenders and there sprung to life in her savage bosom the spark of martyrdom, that some common forbear had transmitted alike to Teeka, the wild ape, and the glorious women of a higher order who have invited death for their men. With a shrill scream she ran toward the battlers who were rolling in a great mass at the foot of one of the huge boulders which dotted the grove; but what could she do? The knife she held she could not use to advantage because of her lesser strength.
She had seen Tarzan throw missiles, and she had learned this with many other things from her childhood playmate.
She sought for something to throw and at last her fingers touched upon the hard objects in the pouch that had been torn from the ape-man. Tearing the receptacle open, she gathered a handful of shiny cylinders—heavy for their size, they seemed to her, and good missiles.
With all her strength she hurled them at the apes battling in front of the granite boulder.
The result surprised Teeka quite as much as it did the apes.
There was a loud explosion, which deafened the fighters, and a puff of acrid smoke. Never before had one there heard such a frightful noise. Screaming with terror, the stranger bulls leaped to their feet and fled back toward the stamping ground of their tribe, while Taug and Tarzan slowly gathered themselves together and arose, lame and bleeding, to their feet. They, too, would have fled had they not seen Teeka standing there before them, the knife and the pocket pouch in her hands.
“What was it?” asked Tarzan.
Teeka shook her head. “I hurled these at the stranger bulls,” and she held forth another handful of the shiny metal cylinders with the dull gray, cone-shaped ends.
Tarzan looked at them and scratched his head.
“What are they?” asked Taug.
“I do not know,” said Tarzan. “I found them.”
The little monkey with the gray beard halted among the trees a mile away and huddled, terrified, against a branch.
He did not know that the dead father of Tarzan of the Apes, reaching back out of the past across a span of twenty years, had saved his son's life.
Nor did Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, know it either.
11
A Jungle Joke
TIME SELDOM HUNG heavily upon Tarzan's hands. Even where there is sameness there cannot be monotony if most of the sameness consists in dodging death first in one form and then in another; or in inflicting death upon others.
There is a spice to such an existence; but even this Tarzan of the Apes varied in activities of his own invention.
He was full grown now, with the grace of a Greek god and the thews of a bull, and, by all the tenets of apedom, should have been sullen, morose, and brooding; but he was not. His spirits seemed not to age at all—he was still a playful child, much to the discomfiture of his fellow-apes. They could not understand him or his ways, for with maturity they quickly forgot their youth and its pastimes.
Nor could Tarzan quite understand them. It seemed strange to him that a few moons since, he had roped Taug about an ankle and dragged him screaming through the tall jungle grasses, and then rolled and tumbled in good-natured mimic battle when the young ape had freed himself, and that today when he had come up behind the
