Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs (most important books to read TXT) 📖

clothing from me in our struggles. Hanging upon the wall of the hut was this white burnoose, the property, doubtless, of one of the murdered Arabs. I seized it, and throwing it about me ran into the village street. The huts were now all aflame, and the last of the natives was disappearing through the gateway. To my right was a section of palisade that had not yet been attacked by the flames. To escape into the jungle by the gateway would have meant running into the arms of my enemies, and so, somehow, I managed to scale the palisade and drop into the jungle unseen by any.

“I have had considerable difficulty eluding the various bands of blacks who escaped the village. A part of the time I have been hunting for the Waziri and the balance I have had to remain in hiding. I was resting in the crotch of a tree, about half a mile from here, when I saw the light of this man’s fire, and when I came to investigate I was almost stunned by joy to discover that I had, as I imagined, stumbled upon my Tarzan.”

“It was Luvini’s body, then, and not yours that they buried,” said Tarzan.

“Yes,” said Jane, “and it was this man who just escaped whom I saw run off into the jungle with Flora, and not you, as I believed.”

Flora Hawkes looked up suddenly. “And it must have been Esteban who came with the Waziri and stole the gold from us. He fooled our men and he must have fooled the Waziri, too.”

“He might have fooled anyone if he could deceive me,” said Jane Clayton. “I should have discovered the deception in a few minutes I have no doubt, but in the flickering light of the campfire, and influenced as I was by the great joy of seeing Lord Greystoke again, I believed quickly that which I wanted to believe.”

The ape-man ran his fingers through his thick shock of hair in a characteristic gesture of meditation. “I cannot understand how he fooled Usula in broad daylight,” he said with a shake of his head.

“I can,” said Jane. “He told him that he had suffered an injury to his head which had caused him to lose his memory partially—an explanation which accounted for many lapses in the man’s interpretation of your personality.”

“He was a clever devil,” commented the ape-man.

“He was a devil, all right,” said Flora.

It was more than an hour later that the grasses at the river bank suddenly parted and Jad-bal-ja emerged silently into their presence. Grasped in his jaws was a torn and bloody leopard skin which he brought and laid at the feet of his master.

The ape-man picked the thing up and examined it, and then he scowled. “I believe Jad-bal-ja killed him after all,” he said.

“He probably resisted,” said Jane Clayton, “in which event Jad-bal-ja could do nothing else in self-defense but slay him.”

“Do you suppose he ate him?” cried Flora Hawkes, drawing fearfully away from the beast.

“No,” said Tarzan, “he has not had time. In the morning we will follow the spoor and find his body. I should like to have the diamonds again.” And then he told Jane the strange story connected with his acquisition of the great wealth represented by the little bag of stones.

The following morning they set out in search of Esteban’s corpse. The trail led through dense brush and thorns to the edge of the river farther down stream, and there it disappeared, and though the ape-man searched both sides of the river for a couple of miles above and below the point at which he had lost the spoor, he found no further sign of the Spaniard. There was blood along the tracks that Esteban had made and blood upon the grasses at the river’s brim.

At last the ape-man returned to the two women. “That is the end of the man who would be Tarzan,” he said.

“Do you think he is dead?” asked Jane.

“Yes, I am sure of it,” said the ape-man. “From the blood I imagine that Jad-bal-ja mauled him, but that he managed to break away and get into the river. The fact that I can find no indication of his having reached the bank within a reasonable distance of this spot leads me to believe that he has been devoured by crocodiles.”

Again Flora Hawkes shuddered. “He was a wicked man,” she said, “but I would not wish even the wickedest such a fate as that.”

The ape-man shrugged. “He brought it upon himself, and, doubtless, the world is better off without him.”

“It was my fault,” said Flora. “It was my wickedness that brought him and the others here. I told them of what I had heard of the gold in the treasure vaults of Opar—it was my idea to come here and steal it and to find a man who could impersonate Lord Greystoke. Because of my wickedness many men have died, and you, Lord Greystoke, and your lady, have almost met your death—I do not dare to ask for forgiveness.”

Jane Clayton put her arm about the girl’s shoulder. “Avarice has been the cause of many crimes since the world began,” she said, “and when crime is invoked in its aid it assumes its most repulsive aspect and brings most often its own punishment, as you, Flora, may well testify. For my part I forgive you. I imagine that you have learned your lesson.”

“You have paid a heavy price for your folly,” said the ape-man. “You have been punished enough. We will take you to your friends who are on their way to the coast under escort of a friendly tribe. They cannot be far distant, for, from the condition of the men when I saw them, long marches are beyond their physical powers.”

The girl dropped to her knees at his feet. “How can I thank you for your kindness?” she said. “But I would rather remain here in Africa with you and Lady Greystoke, and work for you and show by my loyalty that I can redeem the wrong I did you.”

Tarzan glanced at his wife questioningly, and Jane Clayton signified her assent to the girl’s request.

“Very well, then,” said the ape-man, “you may remain with us, Flora.”

“You will never regret it,” said the girl. “I will work my fingers off for you.”

The three, and Jad-bal-ja, had been three days upon the march toward home when Tarzan, who was in the lead, paused, and, raising his head, sniffed the jungle air. Then he turned to them with a smile. “My Waziri are disobedient,” he said. “I sent them home and yet here they are, coming toward us, directly away from home.”

A few minutes later they met the van of the Waziri, and great was the rejoicing of the blacks when they found both their master and mistress alive and unscathed.

“And now that we have found you,” said Tarzan, after the greetings were over, and innumerable questions had been asked and answered, “tell me what you did with the gold that you took from the camp of the Europeans.”

“We hid it, O Bwana, where you told us to hide it,” replied Usula.

“I was not with you, Usula,” said the ape-man. “It was another, who deceived Lady Greystoke even as he deceived you—a bad man—who impersonated Tarzan of the Apes so cleverly that it is no wonder that you were imposed upon.”

“Then it was not you who told us that your head had been injured and that you could not remember the language of the Waziri?” demanded Usula.

“It was not I,” said Tarzan, “for my head has not been injured, and I remember well the language of my children.”

“Ah,” cried Usula, “then it was not our Big Bwana who ran from Buto, the rhinoceros?”

Tarzan laughed. “Did the other run from Buto?”

“That he did,” cried Usula; “he ran in great terror.”

“I do not know that I blame him,” said Tarzan, “for Buto is no pleasant playfellow.”

“But our Big Bwana would not run from him,” said Usula, proudly.

“Even if another than I hid the gold it was you who dug the hole. Lead me to the spot then, Usula.”

The Waziri constructed rude yet comfortable litters for the two white women, though Jane Clayton laughed at the idea that it was necessary that she be carried and insisted upon walking beside her bearers more often than she rode. Flora Hawkes, however, weak and exhausted as she was, could not have proceeded far without being carried, and was glad of the presence of the brawny Waziri who bore her along the jungle trail so easily.

It was a happy company that marched in buoyant spirits toward the spot where the Waziri had cached the gold for Esteban. The blacks were overflowing with good nature because they had found their master and their mistress, while the relief and joy of Tarzan and Jane were too deep for expression.

When at last they came to the place beside the river where they had buried the gold the Waziri, singing and laughing, commenced to dig for the treasure, but presently their singing ceased and their laughter was replaced by expressions of puzzled concern.

For a while Tarzan watched them in silence and then a slow smile overspread his countenance. “You must have buried it deep, Usula,” he said.

The black scratched his head. “No, not so deep as this, Bwana,” he cried. “I cannot understand it. We should have found the gold before this.”

“Are you sure you are looking in the right place?” asked Tarzan.

“This is the exact spot, Bwana,” the black assured him, “but the gold is not here. Someone has removed it since we buried it.”

“The Spaniard again,” commented Tarzan. “He was a slick customer.”

“But he could not have taken it alone,” said Usula. “There were many ingots of it.”

“No,” said Tarzan, “he could not, and yet it is not here.”

The Waziri and Tarzan searched carefully about the spot where the gold had been buried, but so clever had been the woodcraft of Owaza that he had obliterated even from the keen senses of the ape-man every vestige of the spoor that he and the Spaniard had made in carrying the gold from the old hiding place to the new.

“It is gone,” said the ape-man, “but I shall see that it does not get out of Africa,” and he despatched runners in various directions to notify the chiefs of the friendly tribes surrounding his domain to watch carefully every safari crossing their territory, and to let none pass who carried gold.

“That will stop them,” he said after the runners had departed.

That night as they made their camp upon the trail toward home, the three whites were seated about a small fire with Jad-bal-ja lying just behind the ape-man, who was examining the leopard skin that the golden lion had retrieved in his pursuit of the Spaniard, when Tarzan turned toward his wife.

“You were right, Jane,” he said. “The treasure vaults of Opar are not for me. This time I have lost not only the gold but a fabulous fortune in diamonds as well, beside risking that greatest of all treasures—yourself.”

“Let the gold and the diamonds go, John,” she said; “we have one another, and Korak.”

“And a bloody leopard skin,” he supplemented, “with a mystery map painted upon it in blood.”

Jad-bal-ja sniffed the hide and licked his chops in—anticipation or retrospection—which?