Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Cautiously he approached. It was a horse lying in the trail. It was alive. It tried to rise as he came nearer, but it stumbled and fell again — and it groaned. He saw that it was saddled and bridled. He waited in concealment, listening. There was no other sound. Creeping nearer he saw that the horse could not rise because one of its legs was broken. It suffered. Shoz-Dijiji drew his butcher knife and cut its throat, putting it out of its misery. Cheetim had ridden too fast down this rocky gorge. On foot now, leading Nejeunee, Shoz-Dijiji followed the faint spoor of the dismounted man. He found the place where it turned up the precipitous side of the gorge where no horse could go, and here Shoz-Dijiji abandoned Nejeunee and followed on alone.

  All night he followed. At dawn he knew that he was close upon the man he sought. Small particles of earth were still crumbling back into the depression of a footprint where Cheetim had stepped but a few moments before. Did Shoz-Dijiji hasten forward? No. On the contrary he followed more cautiously, more slowly than before, for he gave the enemy credit for doing precisely what Shoz-Dijiji would have done had their positions been reversed — except that Shoz-Dijiji would have done it hours earlier.With infinite patience and care he crept up each slope and from the summit surveyed the terrain ahead before he proceeded. He knew that Cheetim was just ahead of him and that he would soon stop to rest, for the spoor told him that the man was almost exhausted. For a long time Shoz-Dijiji had guessed that the other knew he was being followed — before that he had only feared it. The end must be near.

  Shoz-Dijiji crept slowly up a hillside. Just below the summit he stopped and took a red bandanna from his pouch. This he wrapped loosely about the stock of his rifle; and then, holding the piece by the muzzle, raised it slowly just above the hill top. Instantly there came the report of a rifle from beyond the hill; and Shoz-Dijiji; almost smiling, jerked the bandanna from sight.

  Quickly he hastened to the right, keeping well below the line of vision of his adversary; and when he crept upward again it was behind a low bush, through the branches of which he could see without being seen.

  A hundred yards away Cheetim lay behind a boulder upon another hill top. He was peering out from behind his shelter. Shoz- Dijiji took careful aim - not at the head of his enemy, which was in plain sight, but at his shoulder. Shoz-Dijiji had plans.

  He pressed his trigger, and with the report Cheetim jumped convulsively and slumped forward. Slowly the Apache arose and keeping his man covered with his rifle walked toward him. He found the white man, just as he had expected, stunned by the shock of the wound but not dead.

  Shoz-Dijiji removed Cheetim’s weapons from his reach and sat down and waited. With the patience that is an Apache’s he waited. Presently Cheetim opened his eyes and looked into the painted face of the Apache Devil. He shuddered and closed them again, but Shoz-Dijiji knew that the man was conscious.

  The Indian spoke no word as he bent and seized Cheetim by the hair. Again the man opened his eyes. He saw the butcher knife in the hand of the Indian and screamed.

  “Fer God’s sake don’t!” he cried. “I’ll give you whiskey, money — anything you want ef you’ll let me go.”

  Shoz-Dijiji did not answer him. The keen blade sank into the flesh of the white man. Cheetim screamed and struggled. There was a quick, deft, circular motion of Shoz-Dijiji’s hand, and a bloody scalp-lock dangled from the fingers of the war chief. It was then that Cheetim fainted.

  Shoz-Dijiji sat down and waited. Five, ten, fifteen minutes he waited before Cheetim gave signs of returning consciousness. Still Shoz-Dijiji waited. At last the white man was fully cognizant of his surroundings. He began to weep tears of self pity. Shoz-Dijiji arose and bent over him.

  “What are you going to do?” shrieked his victim, but the Apache did not answer him — in words. Instead he took some buckskin thongs from his pouch and making a running noose in one end of each he slipped one upon each wrist and ankle of the prostrate man. Then with his butcher knife he cut some stakes from stout shrubs that grew about them. Returning to Cheetim he turned the man upon his back and, stretching each arm and leg to its full extent, out spread, he staked the screaming coward to the ground.

  Rising, he stood looking down at Cheetim for a long minute. Then, in silence, he turned and walked away, back along the trail he had come.

  “Don’t leave me!” screamed Cheetim. “Fer God’s sake come back! Come back and kill me. Don’t leave me here to die alone — like this!”

  Shoz~Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he1 walked on in silence. Not once did he turn to look back in the direction of the first enemy he had ever tortured. Had he, he would have seen a vulture circling high against the blue on stationary wings above the last victim of the Apache Devil.

  Where he had left Nejeunee Shoz-Dijiji found Luis Mariel waiting for him.

  “I knew that you would come back to your pony,” said Luis.

  “Why did you follow me?” demanded the Apache.

  “The Senorita sent me after you.”

  “Why?”

  “She wished me to say to you that you are to come back to her.”

  * * * * *

  It was dark when Luis Mariel and Shoz-Dijiji rode into the ranch yard of the Crazy B. Wichita Billings was standing beneath the cottonwood trees that grew in front of the ranch house as they rode up to her and dismounted.

  “Luis,” she said, “take his horse and yours and turn them into the east pasture; then go to the cook house. Chung will give you supper.”

  Shoz-Dijiji said nothing. He watched Luis leading Nejeunee away. He waited. Wichita came close to him and laid her hands upon his breast as she had once before, long ago. Again came the terrible urge to take her in his arms, but this time he did not surrender to it.

  “You sent for me?” he asked.

  “To ask you to forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything,” she replied.

  “There is nothing to forgive. You did not understand — that is all.”

  “I understand now.”

  “I am glad,” he said simply. “Is that all?”

  “No. Kreff has left. I do not know why. He wouldn’t even stop for supper. Just got his stuff and his check and rode away. I need another foreman. Will you take the job?”

  “Do you want me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will take it. Now I go to the bunk house.”

  “Wait.”

  “Is there something more?”

  “Yes. You know there is. Oh! Shoz-Dijiji, are you a man or a stone?” she cried.

  “I am an Apache, Senorita,” he said. “Do not forget that. I am an Apache, and you are a white girl.”

  “I do not care. I love you!” She came very close to him again.

  “Are you very sure, Chita,?” he asked. “You must make no mistake this time.”

  “I am very sure, Shoz-Dijiji.”

  “We shall see,” he said, “for we must both be sure. Shoz-Dijiji will be very happy if he finds that you can love him even though he is an Indian - then he will tell you something that you will be glad to know, but not now.”

  “There is something that you could tell me now that I should like to hear, Shoz-Dijiji,” she whispered.

  “What is that?”

  “You have not told me that you love me.”

  The war chief took his mate into his arms and looked down into her tear filled eyes.

  “Shoz-Dijiji no sabe,” he said, smiling. Then he bent and covered her lips with his.

  In the east pasture a filly nickered, and a pinto stallion arched his neck and answered her.

  THE END

  The Venus Series

  This science-fiction series focuses on the adventures of Carson Napier — an amateur astronaut, who finds himself stranded on Venus after a miscalculation during his intended mission to Mars. The basic tone of the series will be familiar to readers of the Barsoom chronicles — a daring, bold adventurer, a beautiful heroine, warring alien factions, fantastic b
easts and even more fantastic near-death escapes. A striking difference is that, whereas the Mars novels are set on a dusty, dying, drought-ridden world, the Venus series takes place in a waterlogged wilderness, mainly on the island of Vepaja.

  The novels were mostly serialised in Argosy magazine and comprised of four volumes: Pirates of Venus (1934); Lost on Venus (1935), Carson of Venus (1939) and Escape on Venus (1946). In 1964 a novella, ‘The Wizard of Venus’, was published posthumously.

  First book edition of ‘Pirates of Venus’

  First book edition of ‘Lost on Venus’

  First book edition of ‘Carson of Venus’

  PIRATES OF VENUS (1932)

  CONTENTS

  1. CARSON NAPIER

  2. OFF FOR MARS

  3. RUSHING TOWARD VENUS

  4. TO THE HOUSE OF THE KING

  5. THE GIRL IN THE GARDEN

  6. GATHERING TAREL

  7. BY KAMLOT’S GRAVE

  8. ON BOARD THE SOFAL

  9. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY

  10. MUTINY

  11. DUARE

  12. “A SHIP!”

  13. CATASTROPHE

  14. STORM

  1. CARSON NAPIER

  “If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer this letter; otherwise, do not.”

  Having read this far in the letter, I was about to consign it to the wastebasket, where all my crank letters go; but for some reason I read on, “If she speaks to you, please remember her words and repeat them to me when you write.” I might have read on to the end; but at this juncture the telephone bell rang, and I dropped the letter into one of the baskets on my desk. It chanced to be the “out” basket; and had events followed their ordinary course, this would have been the last of the letter and the incident in so far as I was concerned, for from the “out” basket the letter went to the files.

  It was Jason Gridley on the telephone. He seemed excited and asked me to come to his laboratory at once. As Jason is seldom excited about anything, I hastened to accede to his request and satisfy my curiosity. Jumping into my roadster, I soon covered the few blocks that separate us, to learn that Jason had good grounds for excitement He had just received a radio message from the inner world, from Pellucidar.

  On the eve of the departure of the great dirigible, O-220, from the earth’s core, following the successful termination of that historic expedition, Jason had determined to remain and search for von Horst, the only missing member of the party; but Tarzan, David Innes, and Captain Zuppner had persuaded him of the folly of such an undertaking, inasmuch as David had promised to dispatch an expedition of his own native Pellucidarian warriors to locate the young German lieutenant if he still lived and it were possible to discover any clue to his whereabouts.

  Notwithstanding this, and though he had returned to the outer world with the ship, Jason had always been harassed by a sense of responsibility for the fate of von Horst, a young man who had been most popular with all the members of the expedition; and had insisted time and time again that he regretted having left Pellucidar until he had exhausted every means within his power of rescuing von Horst or learned definitely that he was dead.

  Jason waved me to a chair and offered me a cigarette. “I’ve just had a message from Abner Perry,” he announced, “the first for months.”

  “It must have been interesting,” I commented, “to excite you.”

  “It was,” he admitted. “A rumor has reached Sari that von Horst has been found.”

  Now as this pertains to a subject entirely foreign to the present volume, I might mention that I have alluded to it only for the purpose of explaining two facts which, while not vital, have some slight bearing on the remarkable sequence of events which followed. First, it caused me to forget the letter I just mentioned, and, second, it fixed the date in my mind — the tenth.

  My principal reason for mentioning the first fact is to stress the thought that the matter of the letter, so quickly and absolutely forgotten, had no opportunity to impress itself upon my mind and therefore could not, at least objectively, influence my consideration of ensuing events. The letter was gone from my mind within five minutes of its reading as completely as though it had never been received.

  The next three days were exceedingly busy ones for me, and when I retired on the night of the thirteenth my mind was so filled with the annoying details of a real estate transaction that was going wrong, that it was some time before I could sleep. I can truthfully affirm that my last thoughts were of trust deeds, receivers in equity, and deficiency judgments.

  What awoke me, I do not know. I sat up with a start just in time to see a female figure, swathed in what appeared to be a white winding sheet, enter my room through the door. You will note that I say door rather than doorway, for such was the fact; the door was closed. It was a clear, moonlit night; the various homely objects in my room were plainly discernible, especially the ghostly figure now hovering near the foot of my bed.

  I am not subject to hallucinations, I had never seen a ghost, I had never wished to, and I was totally ignorant of the ethics governing such a situation. Even had the lady not been so obviously supernatural, I should yet have been at a loss as to how to receive her at this hour in the intimacy of my bedchamber, for no strange lady had ever before invaded its privacy, and I am of Puritan stock.

  “It is midnight of the thirteenth,” she said, in a low, musical voice.

  “So it is,” I agreed, and then I recalled the letter that I had received on the tenth.

  “He left Guadalupe today,” she continued; “he will wait in Guaymas for your letter.”

  That was all. She crossed the room and passed out of it, not through the window which was quite convenient, but through the solid wall. I sat there for a full minute, staring at the spot where I had last seen her and endeavoring to convince myself that I was dreaming, but I was not dreaming; I was wide awake. In fact I was so wide awake that it was fully an hour before I had successfully wooed Morpheus, as the Victorian writers so neatly expressed it, ignoring the fact that his sex must have made it rather embarrassing for gentlemen writers.

  I reached my office a little earlier than usual the following morning, and it is needless to say that the first thing that I did was to search for that letter which I had received on the tenth. I could recall neither the name of the writer nor the point of origin of the letter, but my secretary recalled the latter, the letter having been sufficiently out of the ordinary to attract his attention.

  “It was from somewhere in Mexico,” he said, and as letters of this nature are filed by states and countries, there was now no difficulty in locating it.

  You may rest assured that this time I read the letter carefully. It was dated the third and post marked Guaymas. Guaymas is a seaport in Sonora, on the Gulf of California.

  Here is the letter:

  My dear Sir:

  “Being engaged in a venture of great scientific importance, I find it necessary to solicit the assistance (not financial) of some one psychologically harmonious, who is at the same time of sufficient intelligence and culture to appreciate the vast possibilities of my project.

  “Why I have addressed you I shall be glad to explain in the happy event that a personal interview seems desirable. This can only be ascertained by a test which I shall now explain.

  “If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer this letter; otherwise, do not. If she speaks to you, please remember her words and repeat them to me when you write.

  “Assuring you of my appreciation of your earnest consideration of this letter, which I realize is rather unusual, and begging that you hold its contents in strictest confidence until future events shall have warranted its publication, I am, Sir,

  “Very respectfully yours,

  “Carson Napier.”

  “It looks to me like another nut,” commented Rothmund.

  �
��So it did to me on the tenth,” I agreed; “but today is the fourteenth, and now it looks like another story.”

  “What has the fourteenth got to do with it?” he demanded.

  “Yesterday was the thirteenth,” I reminded him.

  “You don’t mean to tell me—” he started, skeptically.

  “That is just what I do mean to tell you,” I interrupted. “The lady came, I saw, she conquered.”

  Ralph looked worried. “Don’t forget what your nurse told you after your last operation,” he reminded me.

  “Which nurse? I had nine, and no two of them told me the same things.”

  “Jerry. She said that narcotics often affected a patient’s mind for months afterward.” His tone was solicitous.

  “Well, at least Jerry admitted that I had a mind, which some of the others didn’t. Anyway, it didn’t affect my eyesight; I saw what I saw. Please take a letter to Mr. Napier.” A few days later I received a telegram from Napier dated Guaymas.

  “LETTER RECEIVED STOP THANKS STOP SHALL CALL ON YOU TOMORROW,” it read.

  “He must be flying,” I commented.

  “Or coming in a white shroud,” suggested Ralph. “I think I’ll phone Captain Hodson to send a squad car around here; sometimes these nuts are dangerous.” He was still skeptical.

  I must admit that we both awaited the arrival of Carson Napier with equal interest. I think Ralph expected to see a wild-eyed maniac. I could not visualize the man at all.

  About eleven o’clock the following morning Ralph came into my study. “Mr. Napier is here,” he said.