14
A Priestess But Yet a Woman
At first La closed her eyes and clung to Tarzan in terror, though shemade no outcry; but presently she gained sufficient courage to lookabout her, to look down at the ground beneath and even to keep her eyesopen during the wide, perilous swings from tree to tree, and then therecame over her a sense of safety because of her confidence in theperfect physical creature in whose strength and nerve and agility herfate lay. Once she raised her eyes to the burning sun and murmured aprayer of thanks to her pagan god that she had not been permitted todestroy this godlike man, and her long lashes were wet with tears. Astrange anomaly was La of Opar--a creature of circumstance torn byconflicting emotions. Now the cruel and bloodthirsty creature of aheartless god and again a melting woman filled with compassion andtenderness. Sometimes the incarnation of jealousy and revenge andsometimes a sobbing maiden, generous and forgiving; at once a virginand a wanton; but always--a woman. Such was La.
She pressed her cheek close to Tarzan's shoulder. Slowly she turnedher head until her hot lips were pressed against his flesh. She lovedhim and would gladly have died for him; yet within an hour she had beenready to plunge a knife into his heart and might again within thecoming hour.
A hapless priest seeking shelter in the jungle chanced to show himselfto enraged Tantor. The great beast turned to one side, bore down uponthe crooked, little man, snuffed him out and then, diverted from hiscourse, blundered away toward the south. In a few minutes even thenoise of his trumpeting was lost in the distance.
Tarzan dropped to the ground and La slipped to her feet from his back."Call your people together," said Tarzan.
"They will kill me," replied La.
"They will not kill you," contradicted the ape-man. "No one will killyou while Tarzan of the Apes is here. Call them and we will talk withthem."
La raised her voice in a weird, flutelike call that carried far intothe jungle on every side. From near and far came answering shouts inthe barking tones of the Oparian priests: "We come! We come!" Againand again, La repeated her summons until singly and in pairs thegreater portion of her following approached and halted a short distanceaway from the High Priestess and her savior. They came with scowlingbrows and threatening mien. When all had come Tarzan addressed them.
"Your La is safe," said the ape-man. "Had she slain me she would nowherself be dead and many more of you; but she spared me that I mightsave her. Go your way with her back to Opar, and Tarzan will go hisway into the jungle. Let there be peace always between Tarzan and La.What is your answer?"
The priests grumbled and shook their heads. They spoke together and Laand Tarzan could see that they were not favorably inclined toward theproposition. They did not wish to take La back and they did wish tocomplete the sacrifice of Tarzan to the Flaming God. At last theape-man became impatient.
"You will obey the commands of your queen," he said, "and go back toOpar with her or Tarzan of the Apes will call together the othercreatures of the jungle and slay you all. La saved me that I mightsave you and her. I have served you better alive than I could havedead. If you are not all fools you will let me go my way in peace andyou will return to Opar with La. I know not where the sacred knife is;but you can fashion another. Had I not taken it from La you would haveslain me and now your god must be glad that I took it since I havesaved his priestess from love-mad Tantor. Will you go back to Oparwith La, promising that no harm shall befall her?"
The priests gathered together in a little knot arguing and discussing.They pounded upon their breasts with their fists; they raised theirhands and eyes to their fiery god; they growled and barked amongthemselves until it became evident to Tarzan that one of their numberwas preventing the acceptance of his proposal. This was the HighPriest whose heart was filled with jealous rage because La openlyacknowledged her love for the stranger, when by the worldly customs oftheir cult she should have belonged to him. Seemingly there was to beno solution of the problem until another priest stepped forth and,raising his hand, addressed La.
"Cadj, the High Priest," he announced, "would sacrifice you both to theFlaming God; but all of us except Cadj would gladly return to Opar withour queen."
"You are many against one," spoke up Tarzan. "Why should you not haveyour will? Go your way with La to Opar and if Cadj interferes slayhim."
The priests of Opar welcomed this suggestion with loud cries ofapproval. To them it appeared nothing short of divine inspiration.The influence of ages of unquestioning obedience to high priests hadmade it seem impossible to them to question his authority; but whenthey realized that they could force him to their will they were ashappy as children with new toys.
They rushed forward and seized Cadj. They talked in loud menacingtones into his ear. They threatened him with bludgeon and knife untilat last he acquiesced in their demands, though sullenly, and thenTarzan stepped close before Cadj.
"Priest," he said, "La goes back to her temple under the protection ofher priests and the threat of Tarzan of the Apes that whoever harms hershall die. Tarzan will go again to Opar before the next rains and ifharm has befallen La, woe betide Cadj, the High Priest."
Sullenly Cadj promised not to harm his queen.
"Protect her," cried Tarzan to the other Oparians. "Protect her sothat when Tarzan comes again he will find La there to greet him."
"La will be there to greet thee," exclaimed the High Priestess, "and Lawill wait, longing, always longing, until you come again. Oh, tell methat you will come!"
"Who knows?" asked the ape-man as he swung quickly into the trees andraced off toward the east.
For a moment La stood looking after him, then her head drooped, a sighescaped her lips and like an old woman she took up the march towarddistant Opar.
Through the trees raced Tarzan of the Apes until the darkness of nighthad settled upon the jungle, then he lay down and slept, with nothought beyond the morrow and with even La but the shadow of a memorywithin his consciousness.
But a few marches to the north Lady Greystoke looked forward to the daywhen her mighty lord and master should discover the crime of AchmetZek, and be speeding to rescue and avenge, and even as she pictured thecoming of John Clayton, the object of her thoughts squatted almostnaked, beside a fallen log, beneath which he was searching with grimyfingers for a chance beetle or a luscious grub.
Two days elapsed following the theft of the jewels before Tarzan gavethem a thought. Then, as they chanced to enter his mind, he conceiveda desire to play with them again, and, having nothing better to do thansatisfy the first whim which possessed him, he rose and started acrossthe plain from the forest in which he had spent the preceding day.
Though no mark showed where the gems had been buried, and though thespot resembled the balance of an unbroken stretch several miles inlength, where the reeds terminated at the edge of the meadowland, yetthe ape-man moved with unerring precision directly to the place wherehe had hid his treasure.
With his hunting knife he upturned the loose earth, beneath which thepouch should be; but, though he excavated to a greater distance thanthe depth of the original hole there was no sign of pouch or jewels.Tarzan's brow clouded as he discovered that he had been despoiled.Little or no reasoning was required to convince him of the identity ofthe guilty party, and with the same celerity that had marked hisdecision to unearth the jewels, he set out upon the trail of the thief.
Though the spoor was two days old, and practically obliterated in manyplaces, Tarzan followed it with comparative ease. A white man couldnot have followed it twenty paces twelve hours after it had been made,a black man would have lost it within the first mile; but Tarzan of theApes had been forced in childhood to develop senses that an ordinarymortal scarce ever uses.
We may note the garlic and whisky on the breath of a fellow straphanger, or the cheap perfume emanating from the person of the wondrouslady sitting in front of us, and deplore the fact of our sensitivenoses; but, as a matter of fact, we cannot smell at all,
our olfactoryorgans are practically atrophied, by comparison with the development ofthe sense among the beasts of the wild.
Where a foot is placed an effluvium remains for a considerable time.It is beyond the range of our sensibilities; but to a creature of thelower orders, especially to the hunters and the hunted, as interestingand ofttimes more lucid than is the printed page to us.
Nor was Tarzan dependent alone upon his sense of smell. Vision andhearing had been brought to a marvelous state of development by thenecessities of his early life, where survival itself depended almostdaily upon the exercise of the keenest vigilance and the constant useof all his faculties.
And so he followed the old trail of the Belgian through the forest andtoward the north; but because of the age of the trail he wasconstrained to a far from rapid progress. The man he followed was twodays ahead of him when Tarzan took up the pursuit, and each day hegained upon the ape-man. The latter, however, felt not the slightestdoubt as to the outcome. Some day he would overhaul his quarry--hecould bide his time in peace until that day dawned. Doggedly hefollowed the faint spoor, pausing by day only to kill and eat, and atnight only to sleep and refresh himself.
Occasionally he passed parties of savage warriors; but these he gave awide berth, for he was hunting with a purpose that was not to bedistracted by the minor accidents of the trail.
These parties were of the collecting hordes of the Waziri and theirallies which Basuli had scattered his messengers broadcast to summon.They were marching to a common rendezvous in preparation for an assaultupon the stronghold of Achmet Zek; but to Tarzan they were enemies--heretained no conscious memory of any friendship for the black men.
It was night when he halted outside the palisaded village of the Arabraider. Perched in the branches of a great tree he gazed down upon thelife within the enclosure. To this place had the spoor led him. Hisquarry must be within; but how was he to find him among so many huts?Tarzan, although cognizant of his mighty powers, realized also hislimitations. He knew that he could not successfully cope with greatnumbers in open battle. He must resort to the stealth and trickery ofthe wild beast, if he were to succeed.
Sitting in the safety of his tree, munching upon the leg bone of Horta,the boar, Tarzan waited a favorable opportunity to enter the village.For awhile he gnawed at the bulging, round ends of the large bone,splintering off small pieces between his strong jaws, and sucking atthe delicious marrow within; but all the time he cast repeated glancesinto the village. He saw white-robed figures, and half-naked blacks;but not once did he see one who resembled the stealer of the gems.
Patiently he waited until the streets were deserted by all save thesentries at the gates, then he dropped lightly to the ground, circledto the opposite side of the village and approached the palisade.
At his side hung a long, rawhide rope--a natural and more dependableevolution from the grass rope of his childhood. Loosening this, hespread the noose upon the ground behind him, and with a quick movementof his wrist tossed the coils over one of the sharpened projections ofthe summit of the palisade.
Drawing the noose taut, he tested the solidity of its hold. Satisfied,the ape-man ran nimbly up the vertical wall, aided by the rope which heclutched in both hands. Once at the top it required but a moment togather the dangling rope once more into its coils, make it fast againat his waist, take a quick glance downward within the palisade, and,assured that no one lurked directly beneath him, drop softly to theground.
Now he was within the village. Before him stretched a series of tentsand native huts. The business of exploring each of them would befraught with danger; but danger was only a natural factor of each day'slife--it never appalled Tarzan. The chances appealed to him--thechances of life and death, with his prowess and his faculties pittedagainst those of a worthy antagonist.
It was not necessary that he enter each habitation--through a door, awindow or an open chink, his nose told him whether or not his prey laywithin. For some time he found one disappointment following upon theheels of another in quick succession. No spoor of the Belgian wasdiscernible. But at last he came to a tent where the smell of the thiefwas strong. Tarzan listened, his ear close to the canvas at the rear,but no sound came from within.
At last he cut one of the pin ropes, raised the bottom of the canvas,and intruded his head within the interior. All was quiet and dark.Tarzan crawled cautiously within--the scent of the Belgian was strong;but it was not live scent. Even before he had examined the interiorminutely, Tarzan knew that no one was within it.
In one corner he found a pile of blankets and clothing scattered about;but no pouch of pretty pebbles. A careful examination of the balanceof the tent revealed nothing more, at least nothing to indicate thepresence of the jewels; but at the side where the blankets and clothinglay, the ape-man discovered that the tent wall had been loosened at thebottom, and presently he sensed that the Belgian had recently passedout of the tent by this avenue.
Tarzan was not long in following the way that his prey had fled. Thespoor led always in the shadow and at the rear of the huts and tents ofthe village--it was quite evident to Tarzan that the Belgian had gonealone and secretly upon his mission. Evidently he feared theinhabitants of the village, or at least his work had been of such anature that he dared not risk detection.
At the back of a native hut the spoor led through a small hole recentlycut in the brush wall and into the dark interior beyond. Fearlessly,Tarzan followed the trail. On hands and knees, he crawled through thesmall aperture. Within the hut his nostrils were assailed by manyodors; but clear and distinct among them was one that half aroused alatent memory of the past--it was the faint and delicate odor of awoman. With the cognizance of it there rose in the breast of theape-man a strange uneasiness--the result of an irresistible force whichhe was destined to become acquainted with anew--the instinct whichdraws the male to his mate.
In the same hut was the scent spoor of the Belgian, too, and as boththese assailed the nostrils of the ape-man, mingling one with theother, a jealous rage leaped and burned within him, though his memoryheld before the mirror of recollection no image of the she to which hehad attached his desire.
Like the tent he had investigated, the hut, too, was empty, and aftersatisfying himself that his stolen pouch was secreted nowhere within,he left, as he had entered, by the hole in the rear wall.
Here he took up the spoor of the Belgian, followed it across theclearing, over the palisade, and out into the dark jungle beyond.