"I can make nothing of it," growled the sheykh. "Fetch the bint from whom you took it."
"I shall have to fetch them both," replied Atewy, "since I cannot tell them apart."
"Fetch them both then," commanded el-Ghrennem; and while he waited he puffed meditatively upon his nargily, thinking of a valley filled with diamonds and of the many riding camels and mares that they would buy; so that he was in a mellow humor when Atewy returned with the prisoners.
Rhonda walked with her chin up and the glint of battle in her eye, but Naomi revealed her fear in her white face and trembling limbs.
Sheykh Ab el-Ghrennem looked at her and smiled. "Ma aleyk," he said in what were meant to be reassuring tones.
"He says," interpreted Atewy, "that thou hast nothing to fear—that there shall no evil befall thee."
"You tell him," replied Rhonda, "that it will be just too bad for him if any evil does befall us and that if he wants to save his skin he had better return us to our people pronto."
"The Bedauwy are not afraid of your people," replied Atewy, "but if you do what the sheykh asks no harm will come to you."
"What does he want?" demanded Rhonda.
"He wishes you to help us find the valley of diamonds," replied Atewy.
"What valley of diamonds?"
"It is on this map which we cannot read because we cannot read the language of el-Engleys." He pointed at the map the sheykh was holding.
Rhonda glanced at the paper and broke into laughter. "You don't mean to tell me that you dumb bunnies kidnapped us because you believe that there is a valley of diamonds! Why, that's just a prop map."
"Dumb bunnies! Prop! I do not understand."
"I am trying to tell you that that map doesn't mean a thing. It was just for use in the picture we are making. You might as well return us to our people, for there isn't any valley of diamonds."
Atewy and the sheykh jabbered excitedly to one another for a few moments, and then the former turned again to the girl. "You cannot make fools of the Bedauwy," he said. "We are smarter than you. We knew that you would say that there is no valley of diamonds, because you want to save it all for your father. If you know what is well for you, you will read this map for us and help us find the valley. Otherwise—" he scowled horridly and drew a forefinger across his throat.
Naomi shuddered; but Rhonda was not impressed—she knew that while they had ransom or sale value the Arabs would not destroy them except as a last resort for self-protection.
"You are not going to kill us, Atewy," she said, "even if I do not read the map to you; but there is no reason why I should not read it. I am perfectly willing to; only don't blame us if there is no valley of diamonds."
"Come here and sit beside Ab el-Ghrennem and read the map to us," ordered Atewy.
Rhonda kneeled beside the sheykh and looked over his shoulder at the yellowed, timeworn map. With a slender finger she pointed at the top of the map. "This is north," she said, "and up here—this is the valley of diamonds. You see this little irregular thing directly west of the valley and close to it? It has an arrow pointing to it and a caption that says, 'Monolithic column: Red granite outcropping near only opening into valley.' And right north of it this arrow points to 'Entrance to valley.'
"Now here, at the south end of the valley, is the word 'Falls' and below the falls a river that runs south and then southwest."
"Ask her what this is," the sheykh instructed Atewy, pointing to characters at the eastern edge of the map southeast of the falls.
"That says 'Cannibal village,'" explained the girl. "And all across the map down there it says, 'Forest!' See this river that rises at the southeast edge of the valley, flows east, southeast, and then west in a big loop before it enters the 'Big river' here. Inside this loop it says, 'Open country,' and near the west end of the loop is a 'Barren, cone-shaped hill —volcanic.' Then here is another river that rises in the southeast part of the map and flows northwest, emptying into the second river just before the latter joins the big river."
Sheykh Ab el-Ghrennem ran his fingers through his beard as he sat in thoughtful contemplation of the map. At last he placed a finger on the falls.
"Shuf, Atewy!" he exclaimed. "This should be the Omwamwi Falls, and over here the village of the Bansuto. We are here." He pointed at a spot near the junction of the second and third rivers. "Tomorrow we should cross this other river and come into open country. There we shall find a barren hill."
"Billah!" exclaimed Atewy. "If we do we shall soon be in the valley of diamonds, for the rest of the way is plain."
"What did the sheik say?" asked Rhonda.
Atewy told her, adding, "We shall all be very rich; then I shall buy you from the sheykh and take you back to my ashirat."
"You and who else?" scoffed Rhonda.
"Billah! No one else. I shall buy you for myself alone."
"Caveat emptor," advised the girl.
"I do not understand, bint," said Atewy.
"You will if you ever buy me. And when you call me bint, smile. It doesn't sound like a nice word."
Atewy grinned. He translated what she had said to the sheykh, and they both laughed. "The Narrawia would be good to have in the beyt of Ab el-Ghrennem," said the sheykh, who had understood nothing of what Atewy had said to Rhonda. "When we are through with this expedition, I think that I shall keep them both; for I shall be so rich that I shall not have to sell them. This one will amuse me; she hath a quick tongue that is like aud in tasteless food."
Atewy was not pleased. He wanted Rhonda for himself; and he was determined to have her, sheykh or no sheykh. It was then that plans commenced to formulate in the mind of Atewy that would have caused Sheykh Ab el-Ghrennem's blood pressure to rise had he known of them.
The Arabs spread blankets on the ground near the fire for the two girls; and the sentry who watched the camp was posted near, that they might have no opportunity to escape.
"We've got to get away from these highbinders, Naomi," said Rhonda as the girls lay close together beneath their blankets. "When they find out that the valley of diamonds isn't just around the corner, they're going to be sore. The poor saps really believe that that map is genuine—they expect to find that barren, volcanic hill tomorrow. When they don't find it tomorrow, nor next week nor next, they'll just naturally sell us 'down river'; and by that time we'll be so far from the outfit that we won't have a Chinaman's chance ever to find it."
"You mean to go out alone into this forest at night!" whispered Naomi, aghast. "Think of the lions!"
"I am thinking of them; but I'm thinking of some fat, greasy, black sultan too. I'd rather take a chance with the lion—he'd be sporting at least."
"It's all so horrible! Oh, why did I ever leave Hollywood!"
"D'you know it's a funny thing, Naomi, that a woman has to fear her own kind more than she does the beasts of the jungle. It sort o' makes one wonder if there isn't something wrong somewhere—it's hard to believe that a divine intelligence would create something in His own image that was more brutal and cruel and corrupt than anything else that He created. It kind of explains why some of the ancients worshipped snakes 'and bulls and birds. I guess they had more sense than we have."
At the edge of the camp Atewy squatted beside Eyad. "You would like one of the white benat, Eyad," whispered Atewy. "I have seen it in your eyes."
Eyad eyed the other through narrowed lids. "Who would not?" he demanded. "Am I not a man?"
"But you will not get one, for the sheykh is going to keep them both. You will not get one—unless."
"Unless what?" inquired Eyad.
"Unless an accident should befall Ab el-Ghrennem. Nor will you get so many diamonds, for the sheykh's share of the booty is one fourth. If there were no sheykh we should divide more between us."
"Thou art hatab lil nar," ejaculated Eyad.
"Perhaps I am fuel for hell-fire," admitted Atewy, "but I shall burn hot while I burn."
"What dost thou get out of it?" inquired Eyad after
a short silence.
Atewy breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Eyad was coming around! "The same as thou," he replied, "my full share of the diamonds and one of the benat."
"Accidents befall sheykhs even as they befall other men," philosophized Eyad as he rolled himself in his blanket and prepared to sleep.
Quiet fell upon the camp of the Arabs. A single sentry squatted by the fire, half dozing. The other Arabs slept.
Not Rhonda Terry. She lay listening to the diminishing sounds of the camp, she heard the breathing of sleeping men, she watched the sentry, whose back was toward her.
She placed her lips close to one of Naomi Madison's beautiful ears. "Listen!" she whispered, "but don't move nor make a sound. When I get up, follow me. That is all you have to do. Don't make any noise."
"What are you going to do?" The Madison 's voice was quavering.
"Shut up, and do as I tell you."
Rhonda Terry had been planning ahead. Mentally she had rehearsed every smallest piece of business in the drama that was to be enacted. There were no lines—at least she hoped there would be none. If there were the tag might be very different from that which she hoped for.
She reached out and grasped a short, stout piece of wood that had been gathered for the fire. Slowly, stealthily, catlike, she drew herself from her blankets. Trembling, Naomi Madison followed her.
Rhonda rose, the piece of firewood in her hand. She crept toward the back of the unsuspecting sentry. She lifted the stick above the head of the Arab. She swung it far back, and then—.
Chapter Thirteen
A Ghost
Orman and Bill West tramped on through the interminable forest. Day after day they followed the plain trail of the horsemen, but then there came a day that they lost it. Neither was an experienced tracker. The trail had entered a small stream, but it had not emerged again directly upon the opposite bank.
Assuming that the Arabs had ridden in the stream bed for some distance either up or down before coming out on the other side, they had crossed and searched up and down the little river but without success. It did not occur to either of them that their quarry had come out upon the same side that they had entered, and so they did not search upon that side at all. Perhaps it was only natural that they should assume that when one entered a river it was for the purpose of crossing it.
The meager food supply that they had brought from camp was exhausted, and they had had little luck in finding game. A few monkeys and some rodents had fallen to their rifles, temporarily averting starvation; but the future looked none too bright. Eleven days had passed, and they had accomplished nothing.
"And the worst of this mess," said Orman, "is that we're lost. We've wandered so far from that stream where we lost the trail that we can't find our back track."
"I don't want to find any back track," said West. "Until I find Rhonda I'll never turn back."
"I'm afraid we're too late to do 'em much good now, Bill."
"We could take a few pot shots at those lousy Arabs."
"Yes, I'd like to do that; but I got to think of the rest of the company. I got to get 'em out of this country. I thought we'd overtake el-Ghrennem the first day and be back in camp the next. I've sure made a mess of everything. Those two cases of Scotch will have cost close to a million dollars and God knows how many lives before any of the company sees Hollywood again.
"Think of it, Bill—Major White, Noice, Baine, Obroski, and seven others killed, to say nothing of the Arabs and blacks—and the girls gone. Sometimes I think I'll go nuts just thinking about them."
West said nothing. He had been thinking about it a great deal, and thinking too of the day when Orman must face the wives and sweethearts of those men back in Hollywood. No matter what Orman's responsibility, West pitied him.
When Orman spoke again it was as though he had read the other's mind. "If it wasn't so damn yellow," he said, "I'd bump myself off; it would be a lot easier than what I've got before me back home."
As the two men talked they were walking slowly along a game trail that wandered out of one unknown into another. For long they had realized that they were hopelessly lost.
"I don't know why we keep on," remarked West. "We don't know where we're headed."
"We won't find out by sitting down, and maybe we'll find something or some one if we keep going long enough."
West glanced suddenly behind him. "I thought so," he said in a low tone. "I thought I'd been hearing something."
Orman's gaze followed that of his companion. "Anyway we got a good reason now for not sitting down or turning back," he said.
"He's been following us for a long time," observed West. "I heard him quite a way back, now that I think of it."
"I hope we're not detaining him."
"Why do you suppose he's following us?" asked West.
"Perhaps he's lonesome."
"Or hungry."
"Now that you mention it, he does look hungry," agreed Orman.
"This is a nasty place to be caught too. The trail's so narrow and with this thick undergrowth on both sides we couldn't get out of the way of a charge. And right here the trees are all too big to climb."
"We might shoot him," suggested Orman, "but I'm leary of these rifles. White said they were a little too light to stop big game, and if we don't stop him it'll be curtains for one of us."
"I'm a bum shot," admitted West. "I probably wouldn't even hit him."
"Well, he isn't coming any closer. Let's keep on going and see what happens."
The men continued along the trail, continually casting glances rearward. They held their rifles in readiness. Often, turns in the trail hid from their view momentarily the grim stalker following in their tracks.
"They look different out here, don't they?" remarked West. "Fiercer and sort of—inevitable, if you know what I mean—like death and taxes."
"Especially death. And they take all the wind out of a superiority complex. Sometimes when I've been directing I've thought that trainers were a nuisance, but I'd sure like to see Charlie Gay step out of the underbrush and say, 'Down, Slats!'"
"Say, do you know this fellow looks something like Slats—got the same mean eye?"
As they talked, the trail debouched into a small opening where there was little underbrush and the trees grew farther apart. They had advanced only a short distance into it when the stalking beast dogging their footsteps rounded the last turn in the trail and entered the clearing.
He paused a moment in the mouth of the trail, his tail twitching, his great jowls dripping saliva. With lowered head he surveyed them from yellow-green eyes, menacingly. Then he crouched and crept toward them.
"We've got to shoot, Bill," said Orman; "he's going to charge."
The director shot first, his bullet creasing the lion's scalp. West fired and missed. With a roar, the carnivore charged. The empty shell jammed in the breech of West's rifle. Orman fired again when the lion was but a few paces from him; then he clubbed his rifle as the beast rose to seize him. A great paw sent the rifle hurtling aside, spinning Orman dizzily after it. West stood paralyzed, his useless weapon clutched in his hands. He saw the lion wheel to spring upon Orman; then he saw something that left him stunned, aghast. He saw an almost naked man drop from the tree above them full upon the lion's back.
A great arm encircled the beast's neck as it reared and turned to rend this new assailant. Bronzed legs locked quickly beneath its belly. A knife flashed as great muscles drove the blade into the carnivore's side again and again. The lion hurled itself from side to side as it sought to shake the man from it. Its mighty roars thundered in the quiet glade, shaking the earth.
Orman, uninjured, had scrambled to his feet. Both men, spellbound, were watching this primitive battle of Titans. They heard the roars of the man mingle with those of the lion, and they felt their flesh creep.
Presently the lion leaped high in air, and when he crashed to earth he did not rise again. The man upon him leaped to his feet. For an instant he sur
veyed the carcass; then he placed a foot upon it, and raising his face toward the sky voiced a weird cry that sent cold shivers down the spines of the two Americans.
As the last notes of that inhuman scream reverberated through the forest, the stranger, without a glance at the two he had saved, leaped for an overhanging branch, drew himself up into the tree, and disappeared amidst the foliage above.
Orman, pale beneath his tan, turned toward West. "Did you see what I saw, Bill?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"I don't know what you saw, but I know what I thought I saw—but I couldn't have seen it."
"Do you believe in ghosts, Bill?"
"I—I don't know—you don't think?"
"You know as well as I do that that couldn't have been him; so it must have been his ghost."
"But we never knew for sure that Obroski was dead, Tom"
"We know it now."
Chapter Fourteen
A Madman
AS Stanley Obroski was dragged to earth in the village of Rungula, the Bansuto, a white man, naked but for a G string, looked down from the foliage of an overhanging tree upon the scene below and upon the bulk of the giant chieftain standing beneath him.
The pliant strands of a strong rope braided from jungle grasses swung in his powerful hands, the shadow of a grim smile played about his mouth.
Suddenly the rope shot downward; a running noose in its lower end settled about Rungula's body, pinning his arms at his sides. A cry of surprise and terror burst from the chiefs lips as he felt himself pinioned; and as those near him turned, attracted by his cry, they saw him raised quickly from the ground to disappear in the foliage of the tree above as though hoisted by some supernatural power.
Rungula felt himself dragged to a sturdy branch, and then a mighty hand seized and steadied him. He was terrified, for he thought his end had come. Below him a terrified silence had fallen upon the village. Even the prisoner was forgotten in the excitement and fright that followed the mysterious disappearance of the chief.
Obroski stood looking about him in amazement. Surrounded by struggling warriors as he had been he had not seen the miracle of Rungula's ascension. Now he saw every eye turned upward at the tree that towered above the chief's hut. He wondered what had happened. He wondered what they were looking at. He could see nothing unusual. All that lingered in his memory to give him a clew was the sudden, affrighted cry of Rungula as the noose had tightened about him.
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