Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs (good ebook reader txt) 📕

TO the northwest of the valley of Opar the smoke rose from the cook fires of a camp in which some hundred blacks and six whites were eating their evening meal. The negroes squatted sullen and morose, mumbling together in low tones over their meager fare, the whites, scowling and apprehensive, kept their firearms close at hand. One of them, a girl, and the only member of her sex in the party, was addressing her fellows:

“We have Adolph’s stinginess and Esteban’s braggadocio to thank for the condition in which we are,” she said.

The fat Bluber shrugged his shoulder, the big Spaniard scowled.

“For vy,” asked Adolph, “am I to blame?”

“You were too stingy to employ enough carriers. I told you at the time that we ought to have had two hundred blacks in our party, but you wanted to save a little money, and now what is the result? Fifty men carrying eighty pounds of gold apiece and the other carriers are overburdened with camp equipment, while there are scarce enough left for askari to guard us properly. We have to drive them like beasts to make any progress and to keep them from throwing away their loads, and they are fagged out and angry. They don’t require much of an excuse to kill us all on the spot. On top of all this they are underfed. If we could keep their bellies filled we could probably keep them happy and reasonably contented, but I have learned enough about natives to know that if they are hungry they are neither happy nor contented, even in idleness. If Esteban had not bragged so much about his prowess as a hunter we should have brought enough provisions to last us through, but now, though we are barely started upon our return journey, we are upon less than half rations.”

“I can’t kill game when there isn’t any game,” growled the Spaniard.

“There is plenty of game,” said Kraski, the Russian. “We see the tracks of it every day.”

The Spaniard eyed him venomously. “If there is so much game,” he said, “go out and get it yourself.”

“I never claimed to be a hunter,” replied Kraski, “though I could go out with a sling shot and a pea shooter and do as well as you have.”

The Spaniard leaped to his feet menacingly, and instantly the Russian covered him with a heavy service revolver.

“Cut that business,” cried the girl, sharply, leaping between them.

“Let the blighters fight,” growled John Peebles. “If one of ’em kills the hother there’ll be fewer to split the swag, and ’ere we are ’n that’s that.”

“For vy should ve quarrel?” demanded Bluber. “Dere is enough for all—over forty-tree t’ousand pounds apiece. Ven you get mad at me you call me a dirty Jew und say dat I am stingy, but Mein Gott! you Christians are vorser. You vould kill vun of your friends to get more money. Oi! Oi! tank Gott dat I am not a Christian.”

“Shut up,” growled Throck, “or we’ll have forty-three thousand pounds more to divide.”

Bluber eyed the big Englishman fearfully. “Come, come, Dick,” he oozed, in his oiliest tones, “you vouldn’t get mad at a leedle choke vould you, und me your best friend?”

“I’m sick of all this grousin’,” said Throck. “I h’ain’t no high-brow, I h’ain’t nothin’ but a pug. But I got sense enough to know that Flora’s the only one in the bloomin’ bunch whose brains wouldn’t rattle around in a peanut shell. John, Bluber, Kraski and me, we’re here because we could raise the money to carry out Flora’s plan. The dago there”—and he indicated Esteban—“because his face and his figure filled the bill. There don’t any of us need no brains for this work, and there ain’t any of us got any more brains than we need. Flora’s the brains of this outfit, and the sooner everyone understands that and takes orders from her, the better off we’ll all be. She’s been to Africa with this Lord Greystoke feller before—you wuz his wife’s maid, wasn’t you, Flora? And she knows somethin’ about the country and the natives and the animals, and there don’t none of us know nuttin’.”

“Throck is right,” said Kraski, quickly, “we’ve been muddling long enough. We haven’t had a boss, and the thing to do is to make Flora boss from now on. If anyone can get us out of this, she can, and from the way those fellows over there are acting,” and he nodded toward the blacks, “we’ll be lucky if we ever get out with our skins, let alone taking any of the gold with us.”

“Oil Oi! You don’t mean to leave the gold?” almost shrieked Bluber.

“I mean that we do whatever Flora thinks best,” replied Kraski. “If she says to leave the gold, we’ll leave it.”

“That we do,” seconded Throck.

“I’m for it,” said Peebles. “Whatever Flora says goes.”

The Spaniard nodded his assent sullenly.

“The rest of us are all for it, Bluber. How about you?” asked Kraski.

“O vell—sure—if you say so,” said Bluber, “und as John says ‘und here ve ain’t und vat’s dat.’ ”

“And now, Flora,” said Peebles, “you’re the big ’un. What you say goes. What’ll we do next?”

“Very well,” said the girl; “we shall camp here until these men are rested, and early tomorrow we’ll start out intelligently and systematically, and get meat for them. With their help we can do it. When they are rested and well fed we will start on again for the coast, moving very slowly, so as not to tire them too much. This is my first plan, but it all hinges upon our ability to get meat. If we do not find it I shall bury the gold here, and we will do our best to reach the coast as quickly as possible. There we shall recruit new porters—twice as many as we have now—and purchase enough provisions to carry us in and out again. As we come back in, we will cache provisions at every camping place for our return trip, thus saving the necessity of carrying heavy loads all the way in and out again. In this way we can come out light, with twice as many porters as we actually need. And by working them in shifts we will travel much faster and there will be no grumbling. These are my two plans. I am not asking you what you think of them, because I do not care. You have made me chief, and I am going to run this from now on as I think best.”

“Bully for you,” roared Peebles; “that’s the kind of talk I likes to hear.”

“Tell the head man I want to see him, Carl,” said the girl, turning to Kraski, and a moment later the Russian returned with a burly negro.

“Owaza,” said the girl, as the black halted before her, “we are short of food and the men are burdened with loads twice as heavy as they should carry. Tell them that we shall wait here until they are rested and that tomorrow we shall all go out and hunt for meat. You will send your boys out under three good men, and they will act as beaters and drive the game in to us. In this way we should get plenty of meat, and when the men are rested and well fed we will move on slowly. Where game is plentiful we will hunt and rest. Tell them that if they do this and we reach the coast in safety and with all our loads, I shall pay them twice what they agreed to come for.”

“Oi! Oi!” spluttered Bluber, “twice vat dey agreed to come for! Oh, Flora, vy not offer dem ten per cent? Dot vould be fine interest on their money.”

“Shut up, you fool,” snapped Kraski, and Bluber subsided, though he rocked back and forth, shaking his head in disapproval.

The black, who had presented himself for the interview with sullen and scowling demeanor, brightened visibly now. “I will tell them,” he said, “and I think that you will have no more trouble.”

“Good,” said Flora, “go and tell them now,” and the black turned and left.

“There,” said the girl, with a sigh of relief, “I believe that we can see light ahead at last.”

“Tvice vat ve promised to pay them!” bawled Bluber, “Oi! Oi!”

Early the following morning they prepared to set out upon the hunt. The blacks were now smiling and happy in anticipation of plenty of meat, and as they tramped off into the jungle they were singing gayly. Flora had divided them into three parties, each under a head man, with explicit directions for the position each party was to take in the line of beaters. Others had been detailed to the whites as gun-bearers, while a small party of the askari were left behind to guard the camp. The whites, with the exception of Esteban, were armed with rifles. He alone seemed inclined to question Flora’s authority, insisting that he preferred to hunt with spear and arrows in keeping with the part he was playing. The fact that, though he had hunted assiduously for weeks, yet had never brought in a single kill, was not sufficient to dampen his egotism. So genuinely had he entered his part that he really thought he was Tarzan of the Apes, and with such fidelity had he equipped himself in every detail, and such a master of the art of make-up was he, that, in conjunction with his splendid figure and his handsome face that were almost a counterpart of Tarzan’s, it was scarcely to be wondered at that he almost fooled himself as successfully as he had fooled others, for there were men among the carriers who had known the great ape-man, and even these were deceived, though they wondered at the change in him, since in little things he did not deport himself as Tarzan, and in the matter of kills he was disappointing.

Flora Hawkes, who was endowed with more than a fair share of intelligence, realized that it would not be well to cross any of her companions unnecessarily, and so she permitted Esteban to hunt that morning in his own way, though some of the others grumbled a little at her decision.

“What is the difference?” she asked them, after the Spaniard had set out alone. “The chances are that he could use a rifle no