7

Tarzan the Terrible

by Edgar R. Burroughs

7, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE by Edgar R. Burroughs
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Jungle Craft

PRESENTLY he looked up and at Pan-at-lee. "Can you cross the
gorge through the trees very rapidly?" he questioned.

"Alone?" she asked.

"No," replied Tarzan.

"I can follow wherever you can lead," she said then.

"Across and back again?"

"Yes."

"Then come, and do exactly as I bid." He started back again
through the trees, swiftly, swinging monkey-like from limb to
limb, following a zigzag course that he tried to select with an
eye for the difficulties of the trail beneath. Where the
underbrush was heaviest, where fallen trees blocked the way, he
led the footsteps of the creature below them; but all to no
avail. When they reached the opposite side of the gorge the gryf
was with them.

"Back again," said Tarzan, and, turning, the two retraced their
high-flung way through the upper terraces of the ancient forest
of Kor-ul-gryf. But the result was the same--no, not quite; it
was worse, for another gryf had joined the first and now two
waited beneath the tree in which they stopped.

The cliff looming high above them with its innumerable cave
mouths seemed to beckon and to taunt them. It was so near, yet
eternity yawned between. The body of the Tor-o-don lay at the
cliff's foot where it had fallen. It was in plain view of the two
in the tree. One of the gryfs walked over and sniffed about it,
but did not offer to devour it. Tarzan had examined it casually
as he had passed earlier in the morning. He guessed that it
represented either a very high order of ape or a very low order
of man--something akin to the Java man, perhaps; a truer example
of the pithecanthropi than either the Ho-don or the Waz-don;
possibly the precursor of them both. As his eyes wandered idly
over the scene below his active brain was working out the details
of the plan that he had made to permit Pan-at-lee's escape from
the gorge. His thoughts were interrupted by a strange cry from
above them in the gorge.

"Whee-oo! Whee-oo!" it sounded, coming closer.

The gryfs below raised their heads and looked in the direction of
the interruption. One of them made a low, rumbling sound in its
throat. It was not a bellow and it did not indicate anger.
Immediately the "Whee-oo!" responded. The gryfs repeated the
rumbling and at intervals the "Whee-oo!" was repeated, coming
ever closer.

Tarzan looked at Pan-at-lee. "What is it?" he asked.

"I do not know," she replied. "Perhaps a strange bird, or another
horrid beast that dwells in this frightful place."

"Ah," exclaimed Tarzan; "there it is. Look!"

Pan-at-lee voiced a cry of despair. "A Tor-o-don!"

The creature, walking erect and carrying a stick in one hand,
advanced at a slow, lumbering gait. It walked directly toward the
gryfs who moved aside, as though afraid. Tarzan watched intently.
The Tor-o-don was now quite close to one of the triceratops. It
swung its head and snapped at him viciously. Instantly the
Tor-o-don sprang in and commenced to belabor the huge beast
across the face with his stick. To the ape-man's amazement the
gryf, that might have annihilated the comparatively puny
Tor-o-don instantly in any of a dozen ways, cringed like a
whipped cur.

"Whee-oo! Whee-oo!" shouted the Tor-o-don and the gryf came
slowly toward him. A whack on the median horn brought it to a
stop. Then the Tor-o-don walked around behind it, clambered up
its tail and seated himself astraddle of the huge back.
"Whee-oo!" he shouted and prodded the beast with a sharp point of
his stick. The gryf commenced to move off.

So rapt had Tarzan been in the scene below him that he had given
no thought to escape, for he realized that for him and Pan-at-lee
time had in these brief moments turned back countless ages to
spread before their eyes a page of the dim and distant past. They
two had looked upon the first man and his primitive beasts of
burden.

And now the ridden gryf halted and looked up at them, bellowing.
It was sufficient. The creature had warned its master of their
presence. Instantly the Tor-o-don urged the beast close beneath
the tree which held them, at the same time leaping to his feet
upon the horny back. Tarzan saw the bestial face, the great
fangs, the mighty muscles. From the loins of such had sprung the
human race--and only from such could it have sprung, for only
such as this might have survived the horrid dangers of the age
that was theirs.

The Tor-o-don beat upon his breast and growled horribly
--hideous, uncouth, beastly. Tarzan rose to his full height upon
a swaying branch--straight and beautiful as a demigod--unspoiled
by the taint of civilization--a perfect specimen of what the
human race might have been had the laws of man not interfered
with the laws of nature.

The Present fitted an arrow to his bow and drew the shaft far
back. The Past basing its claims upon brute strength sought to
reach the other and drag him down; but the loosed arrow sank deep
into the savage heart and the Past sank back into the oblivion
that had claimed his kind.

"Tarzan-jad-guru!" murmured Pan-at-lee, unknowingly giving him
out of the fullness of her admiration the same title that the
warriors of her tribe had bestowed upon him.

The ape-man turned to her. "Pan-at-lee," he said, "these beasts
may keep us treed here indefinitely. I doubt if we can escape
together, but I have a plan. You remain here, hiding yourself in
the foliage, while I start back across the gorge in sight of them
and yelling to attract their attention. Unless they have more
brains than I suspect they will follow me. When they are gone
you make for the cliff. Wait for me in the cave not longer than
today. If I do not come by tomorrow's sun you will have to start
back for Kor-ul-ja alone. Here is a joint of deer meat for you."
He had severed one of the deer's hind legs and this he passed up
to her.

"I cannot desert you," she said simply; "it is not the way of my
people to desert a friend and ally. Om-at would never forgive
me."

"Tell Om-at that I commanded you to go," replied Tarzan.

"It is a command?" she asked.

"It is! Good-bye, Pan-at-lee. Hasten back to Om-at--you are a
fitting mate for the chief of Kor-ul-ja." He moved off slowly
through the trees.

"Good-bye, Tarzan-jad-guru!" she called after him. "Fortunate are
my Om-at and his Pan-at-lee in owning such a friend."

Tarzan, shouting aloud, continued upon his way and the great
gryfs, lured by his voice, followed beneath. His ruse was
evidently proving successful and he was filled with elation as he
led the bellowing beasts farther and farther from Pan-at-lee. He
hoped that she would take advantage of the opportunity afforded
her for escape, yet at the same time he was filled with concern
as to her ability to survive the dangers which lay between
Kor-ul-gryf and Kor-ul-ja. There were lions and Tor-o-dons and
the unfriendly tribe of Kor-ul-lul to hinder her progress, though
the distance in itself to the cliffs of her people was not great.

He realized her bravery and understood the resourcefulness that
she must share in common with all primitive people who, day by
day, must contend face to face with nature's law of the survival
of the fittest, unaided by any of the numerous artificial
protections that civilization has thrown around its brood of
weaklings.

Several times during this crossing of the gorge Tarzan endeavored
to outwit his keen pursuers, but all to no avail. Double as he
would he could not throw them off his track and ever as he
changed his course they changed theirs to conform. Along the
verge of the forest upon the southeastern side of the gorge he
sought some point at which the trees touched some negotiable
portion of the cliff, but though he traveled far both up and down
the gorge he discovered no such easy avenue of escape. The
ape-man finally commenced to entertain an idea of the
hopelessness of his case and to realize to the full why the
Kor-ul-gryf had been religiously abjured by the races of
Pal-ul-don for all these many ages.

Night was falling and though since early morning he had sought
diligently a way out of this cul-de-sac he was no nearer to
liberty than at the moment the first bellowing gryf had charged
him as he stooped over the carcass of his kill: but with the
falling of night came renewed hope for, in common with the great
cats, Tarzan was, to a greater or lesser extent, a nocturnal
beast. It is true he could not see by night as well as they, but
that lack was largely recompensed for by the keenness of his
scent and the highly developed sensitiveness of his other organs
of perception. As the blind follow and interpret their Braille
characters with deft fingers, so Tarzan reads the book of the
jungle with feet and hands and eyes and ears and nose; each
contributing its share to the quick and accurate translation of
the text.

But again he was doomed to be thwarted by one vital weakness--he
did not know the gryf, and before the night was over he wondered
if the things never slept, for wheresoever he moved they moved
also, and always they barred his road to liberty. Finally, just
before dawn, he relinquished his immediate effort and sought rest
in a friendly tree crotch in the safety of the middle terrace.

Once again was the sun high when Tarzan awoke, rested and
refreshed. Keen to the necessities of the moment he made no
effort to locate his jailers lest in the act he might apprise
them of his movements. Instead he sought cautiously and silently
to melt away among the foliage of the trees. His first move,
however, was heralded by a deep bellow from below.

Among the numerous refinements of civilization that Tarzan had
failed to acquire was that of profanity, and possibly it is to be
regretted since there are circumstances under which it is at
least a relief to pent emotion. And it may be that in effect
Tarzan resorted to profanity if there can be physical as well as
vocal swearing, since immediately the bellow announced that his
hopes had been again frustrated, he turned quickly and seeing the
hideous face of the gryf below him seized a large fruit from a
nearby branch and hurled it viciously at the horned snout. The
missile struck full between the creature's eyes, resulting in a
reaction that surprised the ape-man; it did not arouse the beast
to a show of revengeful rage as Tarzan had expected and hoped;
instead the creature gave a single vicious side snap at the fruit
as it bounded from his skull and then turned sulkily away,
walking off a few steps.

There was that in the act that recalled immediately to Tarzan's
mind similar action on the preceding day when the Tor-o-don had
struck one of the creatures across the face with his staff, and
instantly there sprung to the cunning and courageous brain a plan
of escape from his predicament that might have blanched the cheek
of the most heroic.

The gambling instinct is not strong among creatures of the wild;
the chances of their daily life are sufficient stimuli for the
beneficial excitement of their nerve centers. It has remained for
civilized man, protected in a measure from the natural dangers of
existence, to invent artificial stimulants in the form of cards
and dice and roulette wheels. Yet when necessity bids there are
no greater gamblers than the savage denizens of the jungle, the
forest, and the hills, for as lightly as you roll the ivory cubes
upon the green cloth they will gamble with death--their own lives
the stake.

And so Tarzan would gamble now, pitting the seemingly wild
deductions of his shrewd brain against all the proofs of the
bestial ferocity of his antagonists that his experience of them
had adduced--against all the age-old folklore and legend that had
been handed down for countless generations and passed on to him
through the lips of Pan-at-lee.

Yet as he worked in preparation for the greatest play that man
can make in the game of life, he smiled; nor was there any
indication of haste or excitement or nervousness in his demeanor.

First he selected a long, straight branch about two inches in
diameter at its base. This he cut from the tree with his knife,
removed the smaller branches and twigs until he had fashioned a
pole about ten feet in length. This he sharpened at the smaller
end. The staff finished to his satisfaction he looked down upon
the triceratops.

"Whee-oo!" he cried.

Instantly the beasts raised their heads and looked at him. From
the throat of one of them came faintly a low rumbling sound.

"Whee-oo!" repeated Tarzan and hurled the balance of the carcass
of the deer to them.

Instantly the gryfs fell upon it with much bellowing, one of them
attempting to seize it and keep it from the other: but finally
the second obtained a hold and an instant later it had been torn
asunder and greedily devoured. Once again they looked up at the
ape-man and this time they saw him descending to the ground.

One of them started toward him. Again Tarzan repeated the weird
cry of the Tor-o-don. The gryf halted in his track, apparently
puzzled, while Tarzan slipped lightly to the earth and advanced
toward the nearer beast, his staff raised menacingly and the call
of the first-man upon his lips.

Would the cry be answered by the low rumbling of the beast of
burden or the horrid bellow of the man-eater? Upon the answer to
this question hung the fate of the ape-man.

Pan-at-lee was listening intently to the sounds of the departing
gryfs as Tarzan led them cunningly from her, and when she was
sure that they were far enough away to insure her safe retreat
she dropped swiftly from the branches to the ground and sped like
a frightened deer across the open space to the foot of the cliff,
stepped over the body of the Tor-o-don who had attacked her the
night before and was soon climbing rapidly up the ancient stone
pegs of the deserted cliff village. In the mouth of the cave
near that which she had occupied she kindled a fire and cooked
the haunch of venison that Tarzan had left her, and from one of
the trickling streams that ran down the face of the escarpment
she obtained water to satisfy her thirst.

All day she waited, hearing in the distance, and sometimes close
at hand, the bellowing of the gryfs which pursued the strange
creature that had dropped so miraculously into her life. For him
she felt the same keen, almost fanatical loyalty that many
another had experienced for Tarzan of the Apes. Beast and human,
he had held them to him with bonds that were stronger than
steel--those of them that were clean and courageous, and the weak
and the helpless; but never could Tarzan claim among his admirers
the coward, the ingrate or the scoundrel; from such, both man and
beast, he had won fear and hatred.

To Pan-at-lee he was all that was brave and noble and heroic and,
too, he was Om-at's friend--the friend of the man she loved. For
any one of these reasons Pan-at-lee would have died for Tarzan,
for such is the loyalty of the simple-minded children of nature.
It has remained for civilization to teach us to weigh the
relative rewards of loyalty and its antithesis. The loyalty of
the primitive is spontaneous, unreasoning, unselfish and such was
the loyalty of Pan-at-lee for the Tarmangani.

And so it was that she waited that day and night, hoping that he
would return that she might accompany him back to Om-at, for her
experience had taught her that in the face of danger two have a
better chance than one. But Tarzan-jad-guru had not come, and so
upon the following morning Pan-at-lee set out upon her return to
Kor-ul-ja.

She knew the dangers and yet she faced them with the stolid
indifference of her race. When they directly confronted and
menaced her would be time enough to experience fear or excitement
or confidence. In the meantime it was unnecessary to waste nerve
energy by anticipating them. She moved therefore through her
savage land with no greater show of concern than might mark your
sauntering to a corner drug-store for a sundae. But this is your
life and that is Pan-at-lee's and even now as you read this
Pan-at-lee may be sitting upon the edge of the recess of Om-at's
cave while the ja and jato roar from the gorge below and from the
ridge above, and the Kor-ul-lul threaten upon the south and the
Ho-don from the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho far below, for Pan-at-lee
still lives and preens her silky coat of jet beneath the tropical
moonlight of Pal-ul-don.

But she was not to reach Kor-ul-ja this day, nor the next, nor
for many days after though the danger that threatened her was
neither Waz-don enemy nor savage beast.

She came without misadventure to the Kor-ul-lul and after
descending its rocky southern wall without catching the slightest
glimpse of the hereditary enemies of her people, she experienced
a renewal of confidence that was little short of practical
assurance that she would successfully terminate her venture and
be restored once more to her own people and the lover she had not
seen for so many long and weary moons.

She was almost across the gorge now and moving with an extreme
caution abated no wit by her confidence, for wariness is an
instinctive trait of the primitive, something which cannot be
laid aside even momentarily if one would survive. And so she came
to the trail that follows the windings of Kor-ul-lul from its
uppermost reaches down into the broad and fertile Valley of
Jad-ben-Otho.

And as she stepped into the trail there arose on either side of
her from out of the bushes that border the path, as though
materialized from thin air, a score of tall, white warriors of
the Ho-don. Like a frightened deer Pan-at-lee cast a single
startled look at these menacers of her freedom and leaped quickly
toward the bushes in an effort to escape; but the warriors were
too close at hand. They closed upon her from every side and then,
drawing her knife she turned at bay, metamorphosed by the fires
of fear and hate from a startled deer to a raging tiger-cat. They
did not try to kill her, but only to subdue and capture her; and
so it was that more than a single Ho-don warrior felt the keen
edge of her blade in his flesh before they had succeeded in
overpowering her by numbers. And still she fought and scratched
and bit after they had taken the knife from her until it was
necessary to tie her hands and fasten a piece of wood between her
teeth by means of thongs passed behind her head.

At first she refused to walk when they started off in the
direction of the valley but after two of them had seized her by
the hair and dragged her for a number of yards she thought better
of her original decision and came along with them, though still
as defiant as her bound wrists and gagged mouth would permit.

Near the entrance to Kor-ul-lul they came upon another body of
their warriors with which were several Waz-don prisoners from the
tribe of Kor-ul-lul. It was a raiding party come up from a Ho-don
city of the valley after slaves. This Pan-at-lee knew for the
occurrence was by no means unusual. During her lifetime the
tribe to which she belonged had been sufficiently fortunate, or
powerful, to withstand successfully the majority of such raids
made upon them, but yet Pan-at-lee had known of friends and
relatives who had been carried into slavery by the Ho-don and she
knew, too, another thing which gave her hope, as doubtless it did
to each of the other captives--that occasionally the prisoners
escaped from the cities of the hairless whites.

After they had joined the other party the entire band set forth
into the valley and presently, from the conversation of her
captors, Pan-at-lee knew that she was headed for A-lur, the City
of Light; while in the cave of his ancestors, Om-at, chief of the
Kor-ul-ja, bemoaned the loss of both his friend and she that was
to have been his mate.