The People the Time forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs (best free ereader .TXT) 📖

/> heard him returning through the other apartments of his dwelling.
He was perturbed when he entered that in which I awaited him, and
I saw a worried expression upon his face.

"What is wrong?" I asked. "Have they found Ajor?"

"No," he replied; "but Ajor has gone. She learned that you had
escaped them and was told that you had left the village, believing
that she had escaped too. So-al could not detain her. She made her
way out over the top of the palisade, armed with only her knife."

"Then I must go," I said, rising. Nobs rose and shook himself.
He had been dead asleep when I spoke.

"Yes," agreed Chal-az, "you must go at once. It is almost dawn.
Du-seen leaves at daylight to search for her." He leaned close
to my ear and whispered: "There are many to follow and help you.
Al-tan has agreed to aid Du-seen against the Galus of Jor; but
there are many of us who have combined to rise against Al-tan and
prevent this ruthless desecration of the laws and customs of the
Kro-lu and of Caspak. We will rise as Luata has ordained that we
shall rise, and only thus. No _batu_ may win to the estate of a Galu
by treachery and force of arms while Chal-az lives and may wield
a heavy blow and a sharp spear with true Kro-lus at his back!"

"I hope that I may live to aid you," I replied. "If I had my weapons
and my ammunition, I could do much. Do you know where they are?"
"No," he said, "they have disappeared." And then: "Wait! You
cannot go forth half armed, and garbed as you are. You are going
into the Galu country, and you must go as a Galu. Come!" And
without waiting for a reply, he led me into another apartment, or
to be more explicit, another of the several huts which formed his
cellular dwelling.

Here was a pile of skins, weapons, and ornaments. "Remove your
strange apparel," said Chal-az, "and I will fit you out as a true
Galu. I have slain several of them in the raids of my early days
as a Kro-lu, and here are their trappings."

I saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and as my clothes were by now
so ragged as to but half conceal my nakedness, I had no regrets in
laying them aside. Stripped to the skin, I donned the red-deerskin
tunic, the leopard-tail, the golden fillet, armlets and leg-ornaments
of a Galu, with the belt, scabbard and knife, the shield, spear,
bow and arrow and the long rope which I learned now for the first
time is the distinctive weapon of the Galu warrior. It is a rawhide
rope, not dissimilar to those of the Western plains and cow-camps
of my youth. The _honda_ is a golden oval and accurate weight for
the throwing of the noose. This heavy _honda_, Chal-az explained,
is used as a weapon, being thrown with great force and accuracy at
an enemy and then coiled in for another cast. In hunting and in
battle, they use both the noose and the _honda_. If several warriors
surround a single foeman or quarry, they rope it with the noose
from several sides; but a single warrior against a lone antagonist
will attempt to brain his foe with the metal oval.

I could not have been more pleased with any weapon, short of a
rifle, which he could have found for me, since I have been adept with
the rope from early childhood; but I must confess that I was less
favorably inclined toward my apparel. In so far as the sensation
was concerned, I might as well have been entirely naked, so short
and light was the tunic. When I asked Chal-az for the Caspakian
name for rope, he told me _ga_, and for the first time I understood
the derivation of the word _Galu_, which means ropeman.

Entirely outfitted I would not have known myself, so strange was
my garb and my armament. Upon my back were slung my bow, arrows,
shield, and short spear; from the center of my girdle depended my
knife; at my right hip was my stone hatchet; and at my left hung
the coils of my long rope. By reaching my right hand over my left
shoulder, I could seize the spear or arrows; my left hand could find
my bow over my right shoulder, while a veritable contortionist-act
was necessary to place my shield in front of me and upon my left
arm. The shield, long and oval, is utilized more as back-armor than
as a defense against frontal attack, for the close-set armlets of
gold upon the left forearm are principally depended upon to ward
off knife, spear, hatchet, or arrow from in front; but against the
greater carnivora and the attacks of several human antagonists,
the shield is utilized to its best advantage and carried by loops
upon the left arm.

Fully equipped, except for a blanket, I followed Chal-az from his
domicile into the dark and deserted alleys of Kro-lu. Silently
we crept along, Nobs silent at heel, toward the nearest portion of
the palisade. Here Chal-az bade me farewell, telling me that he
hoped to see me soon among the Galus, as he felt that "the call
soon would come" to him. I thanked him for his loyal assistance and
promised that whether I reached the Galu country or not, I should
always stand ready to repay his kindness to me, and that he could
count on me in the revolution against Al-tan.


Chapter 7


To run up the inclined surface of the palisade and drop to the
ground outside was the work of but a moment, or would have been but
for Nobs. I had to put my rope about him after we reached the top,
lift him over the sharpened stakes and lower him upon the outside.
To find Ajor in the unknown country to the north seemed rather
hopeless; yet I could do no less than try, praying in the meanwhile
that she would come through unscathed and in safety to her father.

As Nobs and I swung along in the growing light of the coming day,
I was impressed by the lessening numbers of savage beasts the
farther north I traveled. With the decrease among the carnivora,
the herbivora increased in quantity, though anywhere in Caspak they
are sufficiently plentiful to furnish ample food for the meat-eaters
of each locality. The wild cattle, antelope, deer, and horses
I passed showed changes in evolution from their cousins farther
south. The kine were smaller and less shaggy, the horses larger.
North of the Kro-lu village I saw a small band of the latter
of about the size of those of our old Western plains--such as the
Indians bred in former days and to a lesser extent even now. They
were fat and sleek, and I looked upon them with covetous eyes and
with thoughts that any old cow-puncher may well imagine I might
entertain after having hoofed it for weeks; but they were wary,
scarce permitting me to approach within bow-and-arrow range, much
less within roping-distance; yet I still had hopes which I never
discarded.

Twice before noon we were stalked and charged by man-eaters; but
even though I was without firearms, I still had ample protection in
Nobs, who evidently had learned something of Caspakian hunt rules
under the tutelage of Du-seen or some other Galu, and of course
a great deal more by experience. He always was on the alert for
dangerous foes, invariably warning me by low growls of the approach
of a large carnivorous animal long before I could either see or
hear it, and then when the thing appeared, he would run snapping
at its heels, drawing the charge away from me until I found safety
in some tree; yet never did the wily Nobs take an unnecessary chance
of a mauling. He would dart in and away so quickly that not even
the lightning-like movements of the great cats could reach him.
I have seen him tantalize them thus until they fairly screamed in
rage.

The greatest inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay,
for they have a nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or
more if balked in their designs; but at last we came in sight of
a line of cliffs running east and west across our path as far as
the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that we reached
the natural boundary which marks the line between the Kro-lu and
Galu countries. The southern face of these cliffs loomed high and
forbidding, rising to an altitude of some two hundred feet, sheer
and precipitous, without a break that the eye could perceive. How
I was to find a crossing I could not guess. Whether to search to
the east toward the still loftier barrier-cliffs fronting upon the
ocean, or westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question
which baffled me. Were there many passes or only one? I had no
way of knowing. I could but trust to chance. It never occurred
to me that Nobs had made the crossing at least once, possibly
a greater number of times, and that he might lead me to the pass;
and so it was with no idea of assistance that I appealed to him as
a man alone with a dumb brute so often does.

"Nobs," I said, "how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs?"

I do not say that he understood me, even though I realize that an
Airedale is a mighty intelligent dog; but I do swear that he seemed
to understand me, for he wheeled about, barking joyously and trotted
off toward the west; and when I didn't follow him, he ran back to
me barking furiously, and at last taking hold of the calf of my leg
in an effort to pull me along in the direction he wished me to go.
Now, as my legs were naked and Nobs' jaws are much more powerful
than he realizes, I gave in and followed him, for I knew that
I might as well go west as east, as far as any knowledge I had of
the correct direction went.

We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance.
The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing
animals, alone, in pairs and in herds--a motley aggregation of the
modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A huge woolly mastodon
stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant fern--a mighty
bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him grazed an aurochs
bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a lone rhinoceros asleep
in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison, horses, sheep, and goats
were all in sight at the same time, and at a little distance a
great megatherium reared up on its huge tail and massive hind feet
to tear the leaves from a tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed
flanks with the present--while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns,
passed in the garb of pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a
creature of a breed scarce sixty years old. Nobs was a parvenu;
but it failed to worry him.

As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and several
great amphibians, but none of them attacked us. As we were topping
a rise in the