However, such projects met with varied success. On one occasion, a reckless young blackback had been killed when a “bushbuck” he chased into a thick grove of saplings had turned out to be a leopard.
Hunting and killing were skills the apes learned and used to fetch meat, but also to protect the borders. There were other tribes of apes, and there were gorilla territories in the south and the smaller but vicious chimpanzee bands that ranged the north. Those border skirmishes reinforced Goro’s dominion over his lands but often produced meat for the tribe.
So, Gazda and the other little apes played at hunting, with one of their number performing the role of prey. Ooso was smallest and no match for the strength of her male friends but she was very nimble and quick, and her mind was fleeter than theirs also.
Except for Gazda’s. He was a very intelligent ape, deformed though he was, but it was this meeting of minds that had made them such fast friends.
Poomak crept forward on Gazda’s left when the night ape nodded, and Kagoon panted happily before rushing off to his right.
Gazda knelt low then with his stick-spear ready, knowing that Poomak and Kagoon would flush their prey out of the thick vegetation and chase it toward Gazda and into the waiting trap.
He sniffed the air and caught a scent, but he did not have time to react.
Something hard struck him in the back of the head, and he tumbled forward; his senses reeling. But Gazda came up quickly to see Ooso standing just back of where he had been, a thick branch gripped in her little hands like a club.
“Gazda is the monkey now!” she cried, and then panted happily, crouching low and mimicking Gazda’s surprised face.
“Ooso tricked Gazda!” he said, rushing forward and leaping onto his little friend. The pair wrestled until Poomak and Kagoon crept out of the thick verdure.
“Ooso caught the night monkey!” the she-ape teased from where Gazda held her against the ground.
He nipped at her arm and she shrieked playfully as they got to their feet.
“Ooso is smarter than you!” She beat her hands against the earth and the young males growled, turning their noses up disdainfully at the little she-ape’s disrespect.
The jungle went quiet...
Gazda looked to Ooso, who glanced at Poomak and Kagoon.
A deafening roar shook the trees around them, caused the earth to tremble underfoot as the youngsters sprinted toward their mothers. The she-apes were already speeding to collect them in their arms.
The others in the tribe had also abandoned the termite mound or foraging, and were climbing the surrounding trees to get away from the ground, for they had recognized the sound, and knew the rule: The jungle belonged to “Magnuh” if his wandering brought him near.
Gazda leapt into his mother’s arms and she swung up into the trees with the other apes.
Magnuh roared again, and the sound crashed through the forest, echoing in the maze of trees like a thunderstorm.
Eeda reached a safe height and then found a shady hollow against the trunk where she pressed her back. Gazda watched the other clambering apes in the trees around them, and saw Ooso’s little face peering over her mother, Amak’s, shoulder where they climbed even higher.
None dared to challenge the bull elephant Magnuh—not even Goro, though no one within the tribe could say what would happen if those powerful beasts were to battle.
Goro refused to speculate knowing that there was nothing to gain from such a fight, and if any ape in the tribe wished to challenge the elephant, he would be only too happy to watch. The silverback did not see the monster as a rival for his power but instead viewed encounters with Magnuh as something to be avoided or endured like a thunderstorm.
Magnuh and his kind followed an ancient elephant trail that cut a wandering path through Goro’s land, entering on the east and meandering the thick jungle forest before exiting again back the way they had come near the river. They lived on the grassy plateau that swept up into the mountains, and only returned to the jungle when certain fruits and trees were ripe.
Magnuh was a giant. The bull elephant stood some 13 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed 6 tons. The creature had terrorized the landscape for 20 years and without any natural enemies to prey upon him, promised to terrorize for decades to come.
The bull elephant roamed the jungle in search of fruit and lush vegetation, raking and thrashing at the undergrowth with his ten-foot tusks, or knocking over the thickest of trees with the brow of his mountainous head—all while crushing the life out of anything dull-witted or slow enough to get in his way.
Magnuh was a rogue, and a curse to others of his kind, wounding and killing any bull elephant that challenged him for the females of the various herds that traveled the inland plateau. Once he’d finally driven off all other competition, Magnuh would take supremacy over the herds as the cows came into heat.
He would go mad with desire and follow them as they traveled migratory patterns leading east to the grassy plains inland and back again to the jungle as the seasons dictated.
Magnuh protected the herd more by reputation than intent, and so his harsh rule was rarely challenged. The very sight of him in a rage protected the females and their calves from the fiercest of predators.
Few of the apes had done more than catch a glimpse of him—a deafening mountain of flesh hurtling through the dense jungle.
Old Baho, as the tribe’s former silverback could have been more accurately called a “whiteback” since in the years following his kingship the thick covering of silver hairs on his shoulders and hips that denoted his authority had gone as white as the long sideburns that trailed to either side of his scarred and
