by Talbot Mundy
“Suppose,” I argued, “he sets the natives of that village to searching! What’s to prevent him? You know the kind of job they’d make of it — blade by blade of grass — pebble by pebble. Where they found a trace of loosened dirt they’d dig.”
“Did you bury something, then?” inquired a voice we knew too well. “By the ace of stinks, those natives can smell out anything a white man ever touched!”
We turned and faced Coutlass, whom we had imagined on ahead with the safari. If he noticed our sour looks, he saw fit to ignore them; but he took an upperhanded, new, insolent way with us, no doubt due to our refusal to shoot Schillingschen. He ascribed that to a yellow streak.
“I was right. Gassharamminy! I could have sworn I saw two of you on watch while the third man dug among the stones! What did you bury? I came back to talk about Brown. The poor drunkard wants to head more to the east. I say straight on. What do you say?”
We told him to go forward. Then we looked in one another’s eyes, and said nothing. Whether or not the original decision had been wise, there was no question now what was the proper course.
Instead of tiring out Schillingschen we made an early camp by a watercourse, and built a very big protection for the donkeys against lions — a high thorn enclosure, and an outer one not so high, with a space between them wide enough for the two tents and half a dozen big fires. Before dark we had enough fuel stacked up to keep the fires blazing well all night long.
Neither Coutlass nor Brown had had a drink of whisky that day, so it was all the more remarkable that Coutlass lay down early in a corner of the tent and fell into a sound sleep almost at once. We were thoroughly glad of it. Our plan was for two of us to creep out of camp when it was dark enough, and recover the contents of that tin box before Schillingschen or the blacks could forestall us.
The lions began roaring again at about sundown, but they love donkey-meat more than almost any except giraffe, and it was not likely they would trouble us. We were so sure the task was not particularly risky that Fred, who would have insisted on the place of greater danger for himself, consented willingly enough to stay in camp while Will and I went back. Our original intention was to take Schillingschen’s patent, wind-proof, non-upsettable camp lantern to find the way with and keep wild beasts at bay; but just as Will went toward the tent to fetch it (Fred’s back was turned, over on the far side where he was seeing to the camp-fires) we both at once caught sight of Coutlass creeping on hands and knees along a shadow. We had closed the gap in the outer wall of thorn, but he dragged aside enough to make an opening and slipped through, thinking himself unobserved.
To have followed him with a lantern would have been worse than my crime of stalking lions in the dark. Will ran to tell Fred what had happened while I followed the Greek through the gap, and presently Will and I were both hot on his trail, as close to him as we could keep without letting him hear us.
“Fred says,” Will whispered, “if we catch him talking with Schillingschen, shoot ’em both! Fred won’t let him into camp again unless we bring back proof he’s not a traitor!”
We were pursuing a practised hunter, who at first kept stopping to make sure he was not followed. He took a line across that wild country in the dark with such assurance, and so swiftly that it was unbelievably hard to follow him quietly. It was not long before we lost sound of him. Then we ran more freely, trusting to luck as much as anything to keep him thinking he had the darkness to himself.
Our short day’s journey seemed to have trebled itself! We were leg-weary and tired-eyed when at last we reached, and nearly fell into a hollow we recognized. Will went down and struck a match to get a look at his watch.
“There ought to be a moon in about ten minutes,” he whispered. “We’re within sight of the place. Suppose we climb a tree and scout about a bit.”
It was not a very big tree that we selected, but it was the biggest; it had low branches, and the merit of being easy to climb.
When the pale latter half of the moon announced itself we could dimly make out from the upper branches all of the flat ground where the camp had been. There was no sign of Coutlass. None of Schillingschen. A lioness and two enormous lions stood facing one another in a triangle, almost exactly on the spot where the larger tent had stood, not fifty yards from us.
“Gee!”’ whispered Will excitedly. “We nearly stumbled on ’em!”
“Shoot!” I whispered. My own position on the branch was so insecure that I could not have brought my rifle into use without making a prodigious noise. Will shook his head.
“I can see Coutlass now! Look at that rock — he’s hiding behind it — see, he’s climbing! And look, there’s Schillingschen!”
Neither man was aware of the other’s presence, or of ours. They were out of sight of each other, Coutlass on the very rocks against which we had leaned to watch the tent the afternoon before, and neither man really out of reach of anything with claws that cared to go after them in earnest.
The arrival of the dim moon seemed to give the lions their cue for action. The lioness turned half away, as if weary of waiting, and then lay down full-length to watch as one lion sprang at the other with a roar like the wrath of warring worlds. They met in mid-air, claw to claw, and went down together — a roaring, snarling, eight-legged, two-tailed catastrophe — never apart — not still an instant — tearing, beating — rolling over and over — emitting bellows of mingled rage and agony whenever the teeth of one or other brute went home.
Even as shadows fighting in the shadows they were terrible to watch. They shook the very earth and air, as if they owned all the primeval bestial force of all the animals. And the she-lion lay watching them, her eyes like burning yellow coals, not moving a muscle that we could see.
Iron could not have withstood the blows; the thunder of them reached us in the tree! Steel ropes could not have endured the strain as claws went home, and the brutes wrenched, ripped, and yelled in titanic agony. Their fury increased. Wounds did not seem to enfeeble them. Nothing checked the speed of the fighting an instant, until suddenly the lioness stood erect, gave a long loud call like a cat’s, and turned and vanished.
She had seen. She knew. Like a spring loosed from its containing box one of the lions freed himself in mid-air and hurtled clear, landing on all-fours and hurrying away after the lioness with a bad limp. The other lion fell on his side and lay groaning, then roared half-heartedly and dragged himself away.
The second lion had hardly gone when Coutlass descended gingerly from the rock, peering about him, and listening. He evidently had no suspicion of our presence, for he never once looked in our direction. It was Schillingschen, not lions, he feared; and Schillingschen, clambering over the top of another rock, watched him as a night-beast eyes its prey. Another one-act drama was staged, and it was not time for us to come down from the tree yet.
Satisfied he was not followed and that Schillingschen was elsewhere, Coutlass crept from rock to rock toward the little cluster of small ones where, by his own confession, he had seen Fred bury the box. Schillingschen stalked him through the shadows as actively as a great ape, making no sound, as clearly visible to us as he was invisible to Coutlass.
There was not a trace of mist — nothing to obscure the dim pale light, and as the moon swung higher into space we could see both men’s every movement, like the play of marionettes.
Down on his knees at last among the small loose rocks, Coutlass began digging with his fingers — grew weary of that very soon, and drew out the long knife from his boot — dug with that like a frenzied man until from our tree we heard the hard point strike on metal. Then Schillingschen began to close in, and it was time for us to drop down from the tree.
We made an abominable lot of noise about it, for the tree creaked, and our clothing tore on the thorny projections of limbs that seemed to have grown there since we climbed. To make matters worse, I stepped off the lowest branch, imagining there was another branch beneath it, and fell headlong, rifle and all, with a
clatter and thump that should have alarmed the village half a mile away. And Will, not knowing what I had done but alarmed by the noise I made, jumped down on top of me.
We picked ourselves up and listened. We could hear the short quick stabs of the knife as Coutlass loosed and scooped the earth out. Among the myriad noises of the African night our own, that seemed appalling to us, had passed unnoticed — or perhaps Schillingschen heard, and thought it was the injured lion dragging himself away. (Nobody needed worry about the chance of attack from that particular lion for many a night to come; he would ask nothing better than to be left to eat mice and carrion until his awful wounds were healed.)
Reassured by the sound of digging we crept forward, knowing pretty well the best path to take from having seen Schillingschen stalking. But it was more by dint of their obsession than by any skill of ours that we crept up near without giving them alarm. Coutlass was still on his knees, throwing out the last few handfuls of loose dirt. Schillingschen stood almost over him, so close that the thrown dirt struck against his legs.
We took up positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like the proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man — even such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen — made me as nervous as a school-girl at a grown-up party.
At last Coutlass groped down shoulder-deep and drew the box out.
“Give that to me!” Schillingschen shouted like a thunder-clap, making me jump as if I were the one intended.
The moonlight gleamed on the tin box. Coutlass did not drop it but turned his head to look behind him. Schillingschen swung for his face with a clenched fist and the whole weight and strength of his ungainly body. He would have broken the jaw he aimed at had the blow landed; but the Greek’s wit was too swift.
He kicked like a mule, hard and suddenly, ducking his head, and then diving backward between the German’s legs that were outspread to give him balance and leverage for the fist-blow. Schillingschen pitched over him head-forward, landing on both hands with one shoulder in the hole out of which the box had come. With the other arm he reached for the knife that Coutlass had laid on the loose earth. Coutlass reached for it, too, too late, and there followed a fight not at all inferior in fury to the battle of the lions. Humans are only feebler than the beasts, not less malicious.
Will reached for the tin box, opened it, took out the diary, closed it again, put the diary in his own inner pocket, and returned the box; but they never saw or heard him. The German, with an arm as strong as an ape’s, thrust again and again at Coutlass, missing his skin by a bait’s breadth as the Greek held off the blows with the utmost strength of both hands.
Suddenly Coutlass sprang to his feet, broke loose for a second, landed a terrific kick in the German’s stomach, and closed again. He twisted Schillingschen’s great splay beard into a wisp and wrenched it, forcing his head back, holding the knife-hand in his own left, and spitting between the German’s parted teeth; then threw all his weight on him suddenly, and they went down together, Coutlass on top and Schillingschen stabbing violently in the direction of his ribs.
Letting go the beard, Coutlass rained blows on the German’s face with his free fist. Made frantic by that assault Schillingschen squirmed and upset the Greek’s balance, rolled him partly over and, blinded by a very rain of blows, slashed and stabbed half a dozen times. Coutlass screamed once, and swore twice as the knife got in between his bones. The German could not wrench it out again. With both hands free now, the Greek seized him by the throat and began to throttle him, beating with his forehead on the purple face the while his steel fingers kneaded, as if the throat were dough.
We were not at all inclined to stop Coutlass from killing the man. We came closer, to see the end, and Coutlass caught sight of us at last.
“Shoot him!” he screamed. “Gassharamminy! Shoot him, can’t you, while
I hold him!”
As he made that appeal the German convulsed his whole body like an earthquake, wrenched the knife loose at last, and as Coutlass changed position to guard against a new terrific stab rolled him over, freed himself and stood with upraised hand to give the finishing blow. Then suddenly he saw us and his jaw dropped, the beastly mess that had been his well-kept beard dropping an inch and showing where the Greeks fist had broken the front teeth. But that was only for a second — a second that gave Coutlass time to rise to his knees, and dodge the descending blow.
I made up my mind then it was time to shoot the German, whatever the crimes of the Greek might be; but Coutlass had not grown slower of wit from loss of blood. As he dodged he rolled sidewise and seized my rifle, jerking it from my hand. He jerked too quickly. The German saw the move and kicked it, sending it spinning several yards away. We all made a sudden scramble for it, Schillingschen leading, when the German turned as suddenly as one of the great apes he so resembled, tripped Will by the heel, wrenched the rifle from his right hand, pounced on the empty tin box, and was gone!
Too late, I remembered my own rifle and fired after him, emptying the magazine at shadows.
Will’s rage and self-contempt were more distressing than the Greek’s spouting knife-wounds.
“By blood and knuckle-bones! Give me that gun of yours, will you! I go after the swine! I cut his liver out! Where is my knife? Ah, there it is! Stoop and give it me, for my ribs hurt! So! Now I go after him!”
We held Coutlass back, making him be still while we tore his shirt in strips, and then our own, and tried to staunch the blood, Will almost blubbering with rage while his fingers worked, and the Greek cursing us both for wasting time.
“He has the box!” he screamed. “He has the rifle!”
“He has no ammunition but what’s in the magazine,” said I; and that started Will off swearing at himself all over again from the beginning.
“You damned yegg!” he complained as he knotted two strips of shirt. “This would never have happened if you hadn’t sneaked out to steal the contents of the box!”
Suddenly Coutlass screamed again, like a mad stallion smelling battle.
“There he is! There the swine is! I see him! I hear him! Give me that—”
He reached for my rifle, but I was too quick that time and stepped back out of range of his arm. As I did that the blood burst anew from his wounds. He put his left hand to his side and scattered the hot blood up in the air in a sort of votive offering to the gods of Greek revenge, and, brandishing the long knife, tore away into the dark.
“I see him!” he yelled. “I see the swine! By Gassharamminy! To-night his naked feet’ll blister on the floor of hell!”
We followed him, enthralled by mixed motives made of desire and a sort of half-genuine respect for the courage of this man, who claimed three countries and disgraced each one at intervals in turn. We did not go so fast as he. We were not so enamored of the risks the dark contained.
Suddenly there came out of the blackness just ahead a marrow-curdling cry — agony, rage, and desperation — that surely no human ever uttered — roar, yelp of pain, and battle-cry in one.
“Help!” yelled Coutlass. “Help! Oh-ah! Ah!”
We raced forward then, I leading with my rifle thrust forward. A second later I fired; and that was the only time in my life I ever touched a lion’s face with a rifle muzzle before I pulled the trigger! The brute fell all in a heap, with Coutlass underneath him and the Greek’s long knife stuck in his shoulder to the hilt. The lion must have died within the minute without my shot to finish him.
Coutlass lay dead under the defeated beast that had crawled away to hide and lick his wounds. We dragged his body out from under, and in proof that Schillingschen, the common enemy, lived, a bullet came whistling between us. The flash of my shot had given him direction. Perhaps he could see us, too, against the moon. We ducked, and lay still, but no more shots came.
“He’s only got four left,” Will whispered. “Maybe he’ll husband those!”
“Us for the tree, then, until morning!” said Will.
“Sure!” I answered. “And be shot out of it like crows out of a nest!”
But Will had the right idea for all that. He was merely getting at it in his own way. After a little whispering we went to work with fevered fingers, stripping off the bloody bandages we had tied on the Greek’s ribs — stripping off more of his clothes — then more of ours — tying them all into one — then skinning the mangled lion with the long knife that had really ended his career, tearing the hide into strips and knotting them each to each. In twenty minutes we had a slippery, smeary, smelly rope of sorts. In five more we had dragged the Greek’s dead body underneath the tree.
Then I went back to the vantage point among the rocks and waited until Will had thrown the rope with a stone tied to its end over an upper branch. Presently I saw Coutlass’ dead body go clambering ungracefully up among the branches, looking so much less dead than alive that I thought at first Will must have tangled the rope in the crotch of the tree and be clambering up to release it.
The ruse worked. Georges Coutlass served us dead as well as living. Out of the darkness to my left there came a flash and a report. I did not look to see whether the corpse in the tree jerked as the bullet struck. Before the flash had died — almost before the crack of the report bad reached my ear-drums I answered with three shots in quick succession.
“Did you get him?” called Will.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “If I didn’t, he’s only got three cartridges left!”
We left the Greek’s body in the tree for Schillingschen to shoot at further if he saw fit; it was safer there from marauding animals than if we had laid it on the ground, and as for the rites of the dead, it was a toss-up which was better, kites and vultures, or jackals and the ants. We saw no sense that night in laboring with a knife and our hands to bury a body that the brutes would dig up again within five minutes of our leaving it.