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

of the horrible swamp. I saw that
Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors. The alliance
against Jor the chief had, therefore, been consummated, and this
horde was already marching upon the Galu city. I sighed as I
thought how close I had been to saving not only Ajor but her father
and his people from defeat and death.

Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this,
we would have been safe; but it might as well have been a hundred
miles away as a hundred yards across that hidden lake of sticky mud.
Upon the edge of the swamp Du-seen and his horde halted to revile
us. They could not reach us with their hands; but at a command from
Du-seen they fitted arrows to their bows, and I saw that the end
had come. Ajor huddled close to me, and I took her in my arms. "I
love you, Tom," she said, "only you." Tears came to my eyes then,
not tears of self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart
filled with a great love--a heart that sees the sun of its life
and its love setting even as it rises.

The renegade Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for the
word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death
upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest
music that ever fell upon the ears of man--the sharp staccato of at
least two score rifles fired rapidly at will. Down went the Galu
and Kro-lu warriors like tenpins before that deadly fusillade.

What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was
that Hollis and Short and the others had scaled the cliffs and made
their way north to the Galu country upon the opposite side of the
island in time to save Ajor and me from almost certain death. I
didn't have to have an introduction to them to know that the men
who held those rifles were the men of my own party; and when, a
few minutes later, they came forth from their concealment, my eyes
verified my hopes. There they were, every man-jack of them; and
with them were a thousand straight, sleek warriors of the Galu
race; and ahead of the others came two men in the garb of Galus.
Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled; yet they differed
as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen of another species.
As they approached the mire, Ajor held forth her arms and cried,
"Jor, my chief! My father!" and the elder of the two rushed in
knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other came close and looked
into my face, and his eyes went wide, and mine too, and I cried:
"Bowen! For heaven's sake, Bowen Tyler!"

It was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company
and the man we had searched a new world to find. They cut saplings
from the forest and laid a road into the swamp before they could
get us all out, and then we marched back to the city of Jor the
Galu chief, and there was great rejoicing when Ajor came home again
mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion Ace.

Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans nearly
worked our jaws loose on the march back to the village, and for
days afterward we kept it up. They told me how they had crossed
the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-four hours a day in
three eight-hour shifts with two reliefs to each shift alternating
half-hourly. Two men with electric drills driven from the dynamos
aboard the _Toreador_ drilled two holes four feet apart in the face
of the cliff and in the same horizontal planes. The holes slanted
slightly downward. Into these holes the iron rods brought as
a part of our equipment and for just this purpose were inserted,
extending about a foot beyond the face of the rock, across these
two rods a plank was laid, and then the next shift, mounting to the
new level, bored two more holes five feet above the new platform,
and so on.

During the nights the searchlights from the _Toreador_ were kept
playing upon the cliff at the point where the drills were working,
and at the rate of ten feet an hour the summit was reached upon
the fifth day. Ropes were lowered, blocks lashed to trees at the
top, and crude elevators rigged, so that by the night of the fifth
day the entire party, with the exception of the few men needed to
man the _Toreador_, were within Caspak with an abundance of arms,
ammunition and equipment.

From then on, they fought their way north in search of me, after
a vain and perilous effort to enter the hideous reptile-infested
country to the south. Owing to the number of guns among them,
they had not lost a man; but their path was strewn with the dead
creatures they had been forced to slay to win their way to the
north end of the island, where they had found Bowen and his bride
among the Galus of Jor.

The reunion between Bowen and Nobs was marked by a frantic display
upon Nobs' part, which almost stripped Bowen of the scanty attire
that the Galu custom had vouchsafed him. When we arrived at the
Galu city, Lys La Rue was waiting to welcome us. She was Mrs.
Tyler now, as the master of the _Toreador_ had married them the very
day that the search-party had found them, though neither Lys nor
Bowen would admit that any civil or religious ceremony could have
rendered more sacred the bonds with which God had united them.

Neither Bowen nor the party from the _Toreador_ had seen any sign
of Bradley and his party. They had been so long lost now that any
hopes for them must be definitely abandoned. The Galus had heard
rumors of them, as had the Western Kro-lu and Band-lu; but none had
seen aught of them since they had left Fort Dinosaur months since.

We rested in Jor's village for a fortnight while we prepared for
the southward journey to the point where the _Toreador_ was to lie
off shore in wait for us. During these two weeks Chal-az came up
from the Kro-lu country, now a full-fledged Galu. He told us that
the remnants of Al-tan's party had been slain when they attempted
to re-enter Kro-lu. Chal-az had been made chief, and when he rose,
had left the tribe under a new leader whom all respected.

Nobs stuck close to Bowen; but Ace and Ajor and I went out upon
many long rides through the beautiful north Galu country. Chal-az
had brought my arms and ammunition up from Kro-lu with him; but my
clothes were gone; nor did I miss them once I became accustomed to
the free attire of the Galu.

At last came the time for our departure; upon the following morning
we were to set out toward the south and the _Toreador_ and dear old
California. I had asked Ajor to go with us; but Jor her father
had refused to listen to the suggestion. No pleas could swerve him
from his decision: Ajor, the _cos-ata-lo_, from whom might spring a
new and greater Caspakian race, could not be spared. I might have
any other she among the Galus; but Ajor--no!

The poor child was heartbroken; and as for me, I was slowly realizing
the hold that Ajor had upon my heart and wondered how I should get
along without her. As I held her in my arms that last night, I
tried to imagine what life would be like without her, for at last
there had come to me the realization that I loved her--loved my
little barbarian; and as I finally tore myself away and went to
my own hut to snatch a few hours' sleep before we set off upon our
long journey on the morrow, I consoled myself with the thought that
time would heal the wound and that back in my native land I should
find a mate who would be all and more to me than little Ajor could
ever be--a woman of my own race and my own culture.

Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and
breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ajor. It was best, I thought, that
I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell. The
party formed for the march, an escort of Galu warriors ready to
accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace's corral and bid
him farewell. The night before, I had given him to Ajor, and now
in my mind the two seemed inseparable.

And so we marched away, down the street flanked with its stone
houses and out through the wide gateway in the stone wall which
surrounds the city and on across the clearing toward the forest
through which we must pass to reach the northern boundary of Galu,
beyond which we would turn south. At the edge of the forest I cast
a backward glance at the city which held my heart, and beside the
massive gateway I saw that which brought me to a sudden halt. It
was a little figure leaning against one of the great upright posts
upon which the gates swing--a crumpled little figure; and even
at this distance I could see its shoulders heave to the sobs that
racked it. It was the last straw.

Bowen was near me. "Good-bye old man," I said. "I'm going back."

He looked at me in surprise. "Good-bye, old man," he said, and
grasped my hand. "I thought you'd do it in the end."

And then I went back and took Ajor in my arms and kissed the tears
from her eyes and a smile to her lips while together we watched
the last of the Americans disappear into the forest.


THE END

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Publication Date: 02-19-2011

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