Oju was standing still now. Blood was streaming down his side. Tarzan moved the point of the knife to the base of Oju's brain and jabbed it in just enough to draw blood and inflict pain.
'Kagoda!' screamed Oju.
Tarzan released his hold and stepped aside. Oju lumbered off and squatted down to nurse his wounds. Tarzan knew that he had made an enemy, but an enemy that would always be afraid of him. He also knew that he had established himself as an equal in the tribe. He would always have friends among them.
He called Uglo's attention to the spoor of men in the trail. 'Tarmangani?' he asked. Tar is white, mangani means great apes; so tarmangani, white great apes, means white men.
'Sord tarmangani,' said Uglo—bad white men.
Tarzan knew that to the great apes, all white men were bad. He knew that he could not judge these men by the opinion of an ape. He would have to investigate them himself. These men might prove valuable allies.
He asked Uglo if the white men were travelling or camped. Uglo said that they were camped. Tarzan asked how far away. Uglo extended his arms at full length toward the sun and held his palms facing one another and about a foot apart. That is as far as the sun would appear to travel in an hour. That, Tarzan interpreted as meaning that the camp of the white men was about three miles distant—as far as the apes would ordinarily move through the trees in an hour.
He swung into a tree and was gone in the direction of the camp of the tarmangani. There are no 'Good-bys' nor 'Au revoirs' in the language of the apes. The members of the tribe had returned to their normal activities. Oju nursed Ms wounds and his rage. He bared his fangs at any who came near him.
Chapter 12
JERRY was smarting under self-censure. 'I feel like a heel,' he said, 'letting those two fellows take it while I hid. But I couldn't leave you here alone, Corrie, or risk your capture.'
'Even if I hadn't been here,' said Corrie, 'the thing for you to do was just what you did. If you had been captured with them, you could not have done anything more for them than they can do for themselves. Now, perhaps, you and Tarzan and I can do something for them.'
'Thanks for putting it that way. Nevertheless, I—' He stopped, listening. 'Someone is coming,' he said, and drew the girl back into the concealment of the underbrush.
From where they were hidden, they had a clear view back along the trail for a good fifty yards before it curved away from their line of sight. Presently they heard voices more distinctly. 'Japs,' whispered Corrie. She took a handful of arrows from the quiver at her back and fitted one to her bow. Jerry grinned and followed her example.
A moment later, two Jap soldiers strolled carelessly into view. Their rifles were slung across their backs. They had nothing to fear in this direction—they thought. They had made a token gesture of obeying their officer's instructions to search back along the trail for the three missing whites, whom they had been none too anxious to discover waiting in ambush for them. They would loaf slowly back to camp and report that they had made a thorough search.
Corrie leaned closer to Jerry and whispered, 'You take the one on the left. I'll take the other.' Jerry nodded and raised his bow.
'Let 'em come to within twenty feet,' he said. 'When I say now, we'll fire together.'
They waited. The Japs were approaching very slowly, jabbering as though they had something worthwhile to say.
'Monkey talk,' said Jerry.
'S-sh!' cautioned the girl. She stood with her bow drawn, the feathers of the arrow at her right ear. Jerry glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. Joan of Sumatra, he thought. The Japs were approaching the dead line.
'Now!' said Jerry. Two bow strings twanged simultaneously. Corrie's target pitched forward with an arrow through the heart. Jerry's aim had not been so true. His victim clutched at the shaft sunk deep in his throat.
Jerry jumped into the trail, and the wounded Jap tried to unsling his rifle. He had almost succeeded when Jerry struck him a terrific blow on the chin. He went down, and the pilot leaped upon him with drawn knife. Twice he drove the blade into the man's heart. The fellow twitched convulsively and lay still.
Jerry looked up to see Corrie disentangling the slung rifle from the body of the other Jap. He saw her stand above her victim like an avenging goddess. Three tunes she drove the bayonet into the breast of the soldier. The American watched girl's face. It was not distorted by rage or hate or vengeance. It was illumined by a divine light of exaltation.
She turned toward Jerry. 'That is what I saw them do to my father. I feel happier now. I only wish that he had been alive.'
'You are magnificent,' said Jerry.
They took possession of the other rifle and the belts and ammunition of the dead men. Then Jerry dragged the bodies into the underbrush. Corrie helped him.
'You can cut a notch in your shootin' iron, woman,' said Jerry, grinning. 'You have killed your man.'
'I have not killed a man,' contradicted the girl. 'I have killed a Jap.'
''Haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,'' quoted Jerry.
'You think a woman should not hate,' said Corrie. 'You could never like a woman who hated.'
'I like you,' said Jerry gently, solemnly.
'And I like you, Jerry. You have been so very fine, all of you. You haven't made me feel like a girl, but like a man among men.'
'God forbid!' exclaimed Jerry, and they both laughed.
'For you, Jerry, I shall stop hating—as soon as I have killed all the Japs in the world.'
Jerry smiled back at her. 'A regular Avenging Angel,' he said. 'Let's see—who were The Avenging Angels?'
'I don't know,' said Corrie. 'I've never met any angels.'
'Now I remember,' said Jerry. 'A long while ago there was an association of Mormons, the Danite Band. They were known as The Avenging Angels.'
'The Mormons are the people who have a lot of wives, aren't they? Are you a Mormon?'
'Perish the thought. I'm not that courageous. Neither are the present day Mormons. Just imagine being married to a WAC sergeant, a welder, and a steamfitter!'
'And an Avenging Angel?' laughed Corrie.
He didn't answer. He just looked at her, and Corrie wished that she had not said it. Or did she wish that she had not said it?
Tarzan, swinging through the trees overlooking the trail, stopped suddenly and froze into immobility. Ahead of him he saw a man squatting on a platform built in a tree that gave a view of the trail for some distance in the direction from which Tarzan had come. The man was heavily bearded and heavily armed. He was a white man. Evidently he was a sentry watching a trail along which an enemy might approach.
Tarzan moved cautiously away from the trail. Had he not been fully aware of the insensibility of civilized man he would have marvelled that the fellow had not noted his approach. The stupidest of the beasts would have heard him or smelled him or seen him.
Making a detour, he circled the sentry; and a minute or two later came to the edge of a small mountain meadow and looked down upon a rude and untidy camp. A score or so of men were lying around in the shade of trees. A bottle passed from hand to hand among them, or from mouth to mouth. Drinking with them were a number of women. Most of these appeared to be Eurasians. With a single exception, the men were heavily bearded. This was a young man who sat with them, taking an occasional pull at the bottle. The men carried pistols and knives, and each had a rifle close at hand. It was not a nice looking company.
Tarzan decided that the less he had to do with these people the better. And then the branch on which he sat snapped suddenly, and he fell to the ground within a hundred feet of them. His head struck something hard, and he lost consciousness.
