Chapter 1 Tarzan and the Jungle Murders by Edgar Rice Burroughs
THE HYENA'S VOICE
A bronzed giant of a man, naked save for a breech-clout, stalked silently along a forest trail. It was Tarzan, moving through his vast jungle domain in the crisp freshness of the early morning. The forest was more or less open in this section, with occasional natural clearings in which only a few scattered trees grew. Consequently Tarzan's progress was rapid—rapid, that is, for ground movement. If the jungle had been thick he would have taken to the trees, and gone hurtling through them with the strength of an ape and the speed of a monkey. For he was Tarzan of the Apes, who, despite his many contacts with civilization since the early days of his young manhood, had retained the fullness of all his jungle ways and powers. He seemed indifferent to his surroundings, yet this indifference was deceptive, the result of his familiarity with the sights and sounds of the jungle. In reality, every sense in him was on the alert. Tarzan knew, for example, that a lion was lying in a patch of brush a hundred feet to his left and that the king of beasts lay beside the partially eaten carcass of a slain zebra. He saw neither the lion nor the zebra, but he knew they were there. Usha, the Wind, carried that information to his sensitive nostrils. Long experience had taught this man of the jungle the characteristic odors of both lion and zebra. The spoor of a lion with a full belly is different from that of a hungry, stalking lion. So Tarzan passed on, unconcerned, knowing that the lion would not attack. Tarzan preferred the evidence of his nostrils to any other way of finding things out. The eyes of a man could deceive him in the twilight and the night, the ears could be wrongly influenced by imagination. But the sense of smell never failed. It was always right; it always told a man what was what. It was unfortunate, therefore, that a man could not always be traveling up-wind—either the man himself changed his direction, or the wind itself shifted. The former case applied to Tarzan now, as he moved across wind to avoid a stream which he was not in the mood to swim. Consequently his preternatural sense of smell, temporarily less useful, yielded place to his other information-bringing senses.
And so, something was borne in upon his hearing that would have escaped all ears but his—the far off cry of Dango, the Hyena. Tarzan's scalp tingled, as it always did when he heard that unpleasant sound. Toward all other animals, the crocodile alone excepted, Tarzan could have respect—but for Dango, the Hyena, he could have only contempt. He despised the creature's filthy habits and loathed its odor. Chiefly because of this last, he usually avoided the vicinity of Dango whenever he could, lest he be moved to kill a living creature out of pure hate, which he did not consider good cause. So long as Dango did not commit evil, Tarzan spared him—after all he couldn't kill a beast just because he didn't like that animal's smell, could he? Besides, it was Dango's nature to smell the way he did. Tarzan was about to change his direction once more, this time to avoid getting close to Dango, when suddenly a new note in Dango's voice caused him to change his mind completely. It was a strange note, it told of something unusual.
Tarzan's curiosity was aroused, so he decided to investigate. He increased his speed. When the forest closed in on him he took to the trees, hurtling through them in great leaps that ate up the distance. The monkeys chattered to him as he went past, and he replied to them with the same rapid sounds, telling them that he had not time to stop. At any other time he might have paused to cavort with the baby monkeys, while the mothers looked on in approval or the fathers tried to inveigle him into playing coconut-catch with them; but now he was in a hurry to find out what had put that strange note into Dango's voice. Nevertheless, one particularly mischievous simian let fly with a coconut without giving warning. He did not do it viciously, because he knew the quickness of Tarzan's eye. And he was totally unprepared for Tarzan's swift return shot. Tarzan caught the missile and flung it back in almost one and the same motion, and the jungle baseball went through the monkey's grasp to bounce with a hollow thump against the hairy chest. A chorus of monkey-laughter rose, and the mischievous monkey rubbed his chest ruefully with one hand while he scratched his head sheepishly with the other.
"Play with your brothers," Tarzan sang out. "Tarzan has no time for games today."
And he increased his speed still more. The voices of Dango and his fellows came louder and louder to his ears, their smell grew still more offensive. In mid-air he spat his distaste, but he did not swerve from his course. And at last, at the edge of a clearing, he looked down on a sight that was strange indeed in this African wilderness. There on the ground lay an aeroplane, partially wrecked. And there, prowling round and round the wreckage, was the source of the smell Tarzan hated—a half dozen slaver-dripping, tongue-rolling hyenas. On soft feet they padded, round and round in restless motion, occasionally jumping high against the plane's side in an obvious effort to get at something within.
Conquering his revulsion, Tarzan dropped lightly to the ground. Soft as the impact was, though, the hyenas heard and turned sharply. They snarled, then retreated a little. It is always the hyena's first impulse to retreat except from things already dead. Then seeing that Tarzan was alone, some of the bolder among them inched forward with bared fangs. There was an old and mutual enmity between this man and the seed of Dango. Tarzan seemed to pay the hyenas no heed. The bow and quiver of arrows at his back remained unslung. His hunting knife remained in its sheath. He did not even raise his spear in menace. He showed his contempt. But he was watchful. He knew the hyena of old. Cowardly, yes—but when goaded by hunger, capable of sudden daring attack with claw and fang. He smelled their hunger now, and while outwardly he remained contemptuous, inwardly he was vigilant.
Emboldened by Tarzan's outward indifference, the hyenas moved closer to him. Then, with a sudden rush, the biggest of them leaped for his throat! Before the wicked fangs could clamp together around his throat, Tarzan shot out a bronzed hand, grabbed the beast's neck. He swung the body once above his head, sent it hurtling with terrific force against the other hyenas, knocking three to the ground.
The three were up almost at once but the one remained, and all the hyenas straightway fell upon the broken body of their leader and commenced devouring it. Aye, Tarzan of the Apes knew the best way of handling hyenas.
While they were busy at their loathsome feeding, Tarzan examined the plane and found it was not totally damaged. One wing was crumpled and the landing gear was shattered. But what was true of this thing of wire and metal was not true of the flesh and blood that had guided it—the flesh and blood which the hyenas had been unable to reach. The pilot, encased in his part of the cockpit, still sat at his controls; but his body was bent forward in death, his head resting against the instrument board. The plane was an Italian army ship. Tarzan made a mental note of the number and insignia. Then clambering onto the wing to reach the cockpit, he drew away the wreckage from the pilot's accidental tomb and examined the man more closely.
"Dead—one, two days," he muttered. "Bullet hole in throat, a little to the left of larynx. Now, that's strange. I'd say this man was wounded while in the air. He lived long enough to land his ship. He had company with him, too. But they didn't shoot him."
It took no special figuring on Tarzan's part to infer that the dead man had not been alone. The ground around the ship showed human footprints, not native ones, either, for the feet had been shod with civilized foot-gear. Also there were a number of cigarette butts and a piece of a cellophane wrapping. But the deduction that the pilot had not been shot by his companions required much closer reasoning. On the face of it, it was incredible that it could have happened any other way—if they didn't shoot him, who did? Yet, a shot from his companions would have had to come either from the right side or from the rear. The bullet, however, had penetrated the throat at the left of the larynx.
A low, jungle oath escaped Tarzan. "Impossible as it may seem," he muttered, "this man was shot while in the air—and not by his companions either. Who did it then?"
Once again he examined the wound. He shook his head, his brow furrowed.
"The bullet came down from above... Now how could that be... unless... unless it came from another plane. That's it. That must be it! It couldn't have happened in any other way."
A strange mystery, indeed, in the heart of Africa, far from all traveled air-lanes. Tarzan interpreted its sign, as he would have read spoor along jungle trails, and the conclusions he reached were as certain, so certain that he now asked himself:
"Where did the other plane go?"
The sounds the hyenas were making—the tearing of flesh, the snufflings and champings and slaverings, the grinding of their teeth as they devoured one of their own kind—came to Tarzan and he spat his disgust. Almost he was minded to spring out with spear and knife and make an end of them—make food out of the feeders, food for vultures. But he muttered to himself: "There are things here that are more important. Things that have to do with human beings. They come first."
So he went on with his investigation. He found a single glove, a right-hand glove. He picked it up, opened it, smelled of the inside. His nostrils quivered. Then he dropped the glove—but he would not soon forget what he had learned from it. He leaped to the ground. Now the sight of the hyenas at their gruesome work was coupled with the sounds they made and augmented by their smell.
It was too much for Tarzan. A booming roar broke from his great chest and he hurtled toward the hyenas, spear brandished threateningly. They scattered. He knew they would be back to finish the carcass, but in the meantime, while he finished his survey, he would at least be free of their offensiveness.
Minutely he examined the ground. "Two men," he said softly. "They started out"—he pointed downward, although he was talking to no one but himself—"from here. And they went"—again he pointed—"this way. The trail is about two days old, but not too cold to follow. I'll follow it."
Several motives animated Tarzan's decision. If still alive, the men who had dropped down from the skies and were now in the jungle, were fellow human beings who might need help. In addition, those men were strangers, and it was Tarzan's business to find out who they were and what they were doing in his domain. Accordingly he started out with no further deliberation.
Tantor, the Elephant, trumpeted across his path and stood waiting with ready trunk to swing Tarzan onto his back, but Tarzan had no time for such luxuries. He could follow the trail better if close to the ground, so he shouted: "Go back to your herd, Tantor!" But lest the elephant should feel hurt, Tarzan vaulted upon his back, gave Tantor a quick rub behind the ears, jumped down and was off and away on the trail again. Tantor, content, lumbered off to rejoin his herd, his trunk lifted high.
It was Usha, the Wind, which brought Tarzan his next interruption. Usha, shifting slightly, transmitted to Tarzan's nostrils an altogether new scent—a scent completely at variance with what anyone would have expected in the fastnesses of the African jungle. Straightway Tarzan swerved off the trail to follow up this new sign. Swiftly the odor grew more pronounced until at last he recognized beyond further doubt the odor of gasoline. Here again was mystery. Gasoline implied the presence of man, but he detected no man-odor on the breeze. Still, the gasoline scent was a kind of advance-evidence that he had been right in his assumption of the presence of another aeroplane. The assumption was soon verified by actual sight. There it lay, the mass of crumpled wreckage that had once been a man-made bird, a ship winging through the air above Africa. Now it was broken and twisted—grim evidence of tragedy. Here, Tarzan knew, was the second half of the puzzle. This was the other plane, which had held the man, who had fired the bullet, which had entered the throat of that other man and killed him. The tail of his plane showed the ravaging effect of machine-gun fire. Yes, quite evidently there had been a fight in the air, an unequal fight, for apparently the man in this second plane had been armed only with a revolver. Unequal or not however, Man Number Two had managed to escape the fate of Number One. See there, the trampled grass. Number Two had come back to the plane, then gone away. Tarzan followed the spoor a short way, came to a tangled mass of rope and silk.
"Parachute," he said. "Number Two bailed out."
Tarzan's brain was busy. His eyes held a faraway look as he was reconstructing what must have happened.
"Plane Number One attacked Plane Number Two. That's obvious, since Number One had a machine gun and Number Two did not. Pilot Number Two had a revolver. With it, he shot pilot Number One, who made a forced landing, then died, and was deserted by two companions. The machine-gun bullets forced down Plane Number Two. Its pilot bailed out and landed here, several miles from Number One. All told, then, three men walked away from two planes."
Were they still alive?
"And why has all this happened?" Tarzan wondered.
But for that question he could give no answer. He could figure out what had happened; but he could not figure out why. And this jungle, he knew, would probably lock the answer away in death. The jungle was harsh to those who did not know her ways. The three men who had been cast away in it had little chance, if they were not dead already.
Tarzan shook his head. He was not satisfied that this should be the answer. Humanitarian impulses stirred his breast. Plane Number Two was English—its pilot was probably English too, just as the other two men were probably Italian. In Tarzan's veins ran English blood. To Tarzan, the life of a man was no better than the life of an antelope. Tarzan would help an antelope in trouble, and he would help a man in trouble if that man deserved it. The only difference was that an antelope in trouble always deserved help whereas man sometimes did not. But Tarzan could not say one way or another what these men, and in particular the Englishman, deserved.
"Englishman," he said to himself, "you first. Let's hope I can get to you before the lions or the Buiroos do."
So Tarzan set out on the trail of a man whom he did not know. Tarzan set out on the trail of Lieutenant Cecil Giles-Burton.