The Complete Tarzan Collection

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The shiftas fought among themselves for the loose horses that were now stampeding in terror about the village; and as a number of them succeeded in mounting they rode for the village gates, overthrowing those who had remained to defend them. Some among them forced the portals open; and as the horsemen dashed out they were met by a band of black warriors, above whose heads waved white plumes, and in whose hands were modern high powered rifles.

  The attacking force had been lying partially concealed behind a low ridge, and as it rose to meet the escaping shiftas the savage war cry of the Waziri rang above the tumult of the battle.

  First to the gates was Tarzan, war chief of the Waziri, and while Muviro and a small detachment accounted for all but a few of the horsemen who had succeeded in leaving the village, the ape-man, with the remaining Waziri, charged the demoralized remnants of Capietro's band that remained within the palisade.

  Surrounded by enemies, the shiftas threw down their rifles and begged for mercy, and soon they were herded into a corner of the village under guard of a detachment of the Waziri.

  As Tarzan greeted the "Gunner" and Jezebel he expressed his relief at finding them unharmed.

  "You sure come at the right time," Danny told him. "This old typewriter certainly chews up the ammunition, and that last burst just about emptied the drum; but say, who are your friends? Where did you raise this mob?"

  "They are my people," replied Tarzan.

  "Some gang!" ejaculated the "Gunner," admiringly; "but say, have you seen anything of old Smithy?"

  "He is safe at my camp."

  "And Barbara," asked Jezebel; "where is she?"

  "She is with Smith," replied Tarzan. "You will see them both in a few hours. We start back as soon as I arrange for the disposal of these people." He turned away and commenced to make inquiries among the prisoners of the shiftas.

  "Is he not beautiful!" exclaimed Jezebel.

  "Hey, sister, can that 'beautiful stuff' warned the "Gunner," "and from now on remember that I'm the only 'beautiful' guy you know, no matter what my pan looks like."

  Quickly Tarzan separated the prisoners according to their tribes and villages, appointed headman to lead them back their homes and issued instructions to them as he explained his plans.

  The weapons, ammunition, loot and belongings of the shiftas, were divided among the prisoners, after the Waziri had been allowed to select such trifles as they desired. The capturedshiftas were placed in charge of a large band of Gallas with orders to return them to Abyssinia and turn them over to the nearest ras.

  "Why not hang them here?" asked the Galla headman. "We shall then save all the food they would eat on the long march back to our country, besides saving us much trouble and worry in guarding them—for the ras will certainly hang them."

  "Take them back, as I tell you," replied Tarzan. "But if they give you trouble do with them as you see fit."

  It took little more than an hour to evacuate the village. All of Smith's loads were recovered, including Danny's precious ammunition and extra drums for his beloved Thompson; and these were assigned to Smith's porters, who were once again assembled under Ogonyo.

  When the village was emptied it was fired in a dozen places; and, as the black smoke curled up toward the blue heavens, the various parties took their respective ways from the scene of their captivity, but not before the several headmen had come and knelt before the Lord of the Jungle and thanked him for the deliverance of their people.

  26. THE LAST KNOT IS TIED

  Lafayette Smith and Lady Barbara had been mystified witnesses to the sudden transformation of the peaceful scene in the camp of Lord Passmore. All day the warriors had remained in readiness, as though expecting a summons; and when night fell they still waited.

  Evidences of restlessness were apparent; and there was no singing and little laughter in the camp, as there had been before. The last that the two whites saw, as they retired for the night, were the little groups of plumed warriors squatting about their fires, their rifles ready to their hands; and they were asleep when the summons came and the sleek, black fighting men melted silently into the dark shadows of the forest, leaving only four of their number to guard the camp and the two guests.

  When Lady Barbara emerged from her tent in the morning she was astonished to find the camp all but deserted. The boy who acted in the capacity of personal servant and cook for her and Smith was there and three other blacks. All were constantly armed; but their attitude toward her had not changed, and she felt only curiosity relative to the other altered conditions, so obvious at first glance, rather than apprehension.

  When Smith joined her a few minutes later he was equally at a loss to understand the strange metamorphosis that had transformed the laughing, joking porters and askaris into painted warriors and sent them out into the night so surreptitiously, nor could they glean the slightest information from their boy, who, though still courteous and smiling, seemed by some strange trick of fate suddenly to have forgotten the very fair command of English that he had exhibited with evident pride on the previous day.

  The long day dragged on until mid afternoon without sign of any change. Neither Lord Passmore nor the missing blacks returned, and the enigma was as baffling as before. The two whites, however, seemed to find much pleasure in one another's company; and so, perhaps, the day passed more rapidly for them than it did for the four blacks, waiting and listening through the hot, drowsy hours.

  But suddenly there was a change. Lady Barbara saw her boy rise and stand in an attitude of eager listening. "They come!" he said, in his own tongue, to his companions. Now they all stood and, though they may have expected only friends, their rifles were in readiness for enemies.

  Gradually the sound of voices and of marching men became distinctly audible to the untrained ears of the two whites, and a little later they saw the head of a column filing through the forest toward them.

  "Why there's the 'Gunner!'" exclaimed Lafayette Smith. "And Jezebel, too. How odd that they should be together."

  "With Tarzan of the Apes!" cried Lady Barbara. "He has saved them both."

  A slow smile touched the lips of the ape-man as he witnessed the reunion of Lady Barbara and Jezebel and that between Smith and the "Gunner;" and it broadened a little, when, after the first burst of greetings and explanations, Lady Barbara said, "It is unfortunate that our host, Lord Passmore, isn't here."

  "He is," said the ape-man.

  "Where?" demanded Lafayette Smith, looking about the camp.

  "I am 'Lord Passmore," said Tarzan.

  "You?" exclaimed Lady Barbara.

  "Yes. I assumed this role when I came north to investigate the rumors I had heard concerning Capietro and his band, believing that they not only would suspect no danger, but hoping, also, that they would seek to attack and plunder my safari as they have those of others."

  "Geeze," said the "Gunner." "What a jolt they would of got!"

  "That is why we never saw 'Lord Passmore," said Lady Barbara, laughing. "I thought him a most elusive host."

  "The first night I left you here," explained Tarzan, "I walked into the jungle until I was out of sight, and then I came back from another direction and entered my tent from the rear. I slept there all night. The next morning, early, I left in search of your Mends—and was captured myself. But everything has worked out well, and if you have no other immediate plans I hope that you will accompany me back to my home and remain a while as my guests while you recover from the rather rough experiences Africa has afforded you. Or, perhaps," he added, "Professor Smith and his friend wish to continue their geological investigations."

  "I, ah, well, you see," stammered Lafayette Smith; "I have about decided to abandon my work in Africa and devote my life to the geology of England. We, or, er—you see, Lady Barbara—"

  "I am going to take him back to England and teach him to shoot before I let him return to Africa. Possibly we shall come back later, though."

  "And you, Patrick," asked Tarzan, "are you remaining to hunt, perh
aps?"

  "Nix, mister," said Danny, emphatically, "We're goin' to California and buy a garage and filling station."

  "We?" queried Lady Barbara.

  "Sure," said the "Gunner;" "me and Jez."

  "Really?" exclaimed Lady Barbara. "Is he in earnest, Jezebel?"

  "Oke, kid—isn't it ripping?" replied the golden one.

  THE END

  EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

  TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD

  BOOK 16 IN THE TARZAN SERIES

  Serialized in The Argosy magazine, March 12—April 16, 1932

  First Book Edition—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., September 1933

  * * *

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

   Chapter 1. Savage Quarry

   Chapter 2. The White Prisoner

   Chapter 3. Cats By Night.

   Chapter 4. Down The Flood

   Chapter 5. The City Of Gold

   Chapter 6. The Man Who Stepped On A God

   Chapter 7. Nemone

   Chapter 8. Upon The Field Of The Lions

   Chapter 9. "Death! Death!"

   Chapter 10. In The Palace Of The Queen

   Chapter 11. The Lions Of Cathne

   Chapter 12. The Man In The Lion Pit

   Chapter 13. Assassin In The Night

   Chapter 14. The Grand Hunt

   Chapter 15. The Plot That Failed

   Chapter 16. In The Temple Of Thoos

   Chapter 17. The Secret Of The Temple

   Chapter 18. Flaming Xarator

   Chapter 19. The Queen's Quarry

  * * *

  1. SAVAGE QUARRY

  Down out of Tigre and Amhara upon Gojam and Shoa and Kaffa come the rains from June to September, carrying silt and prosperity from Abyssinia to the eastern Sudan and to Egypt, bringing muddy trails and swollen rivers and death and prosperity to Abyssinia.

  Of these gifts of the rains, only the muddy trails and the swollen rivers and death interested a little band of Shiftas that held out in the remote fastnesses of the mountains of Kaffa. Hard men were these mounted bandits, cruel criminals without even a vestige of culture such as occasionally leavens the activities of rogues, lessening their ruthlessness. Kaficho and Galla they were, the off- scourings of their tribes, outlaws, men with prices upon their heads.

  It was not raining now, and the rainy season was drawing to a close, for it was the middle of September. But there was still much water in the rivers, and the ground was soft after a recent rain.

  The Shiftas rode, seeking loot from wayfarer, caravan, or village; and as they rode, the unshod hoofs of their horses left a plain spoor that one might read upon the run.

  A short distance ahead of them, in the direction toward which they were riding, a hunting beast stalked its prey. The wind was blowing from it toward the approaching horsemen, and for this reason their scent spoor was not borne to its sensitive nostrils, nor did the soft ground give forth any sound beneath the feet of their walking mounts.

  Though the stalker did not resemble a beast of prey, such as the term connotes to the mind of man, he was one nevertheless, for in his natural haunts he filled his belly by the chase and by the chase alone. Neither did he resemble the mental picture that one might hold of a typical British lord, yet he was that, too—he was Tarzan of the Apes.

  All beasts of prey find hunting poor during a rain, and Tarzan was no exception to the rule. It had rained for two days, and as a result Tarzan was hungry. A small buck was drinking in a stream fringed by bushes and tall reeds, and Tarzan was worming his way upon his belly through short grass to reach a position from which he might either charge or loose an arrow or cast a spear. He was not aware that a group of horsemen had reined in upon a gentle rise a short distance behind him where they sat in silence regarding him intently.

  Usha the wind, who carries scent, also carries sound. Today, Usha carried both the scent and the sound of the Shiftas away from the keen nostrils and ears of the ape-man.

  The circumstances that brought Tarzan northward into Kaffa are not a part of this story. Perhaps they were not urgent, for the Lord of the Jungle loves to roam remote fastnesses still unspoiled by the devastating hand of civilization, and needs but trifling incentive to do so.

  At the moment, however, Tarzan's mind was not occupied by thoughts of adventure. He did not know that it loomed threateningly behind him. His concern and his interest were centered upon the buck which he intended should satisfy the craving of his ravenous hunger. He crept cautiously forward.

  From behind, the white-robed Shiftas moved from the little rise where they had been watching him in silence, moved down toward him with spear and long-barreled matchlock. They were puzzled. Never before had they seen a white man like this one, but if curiosity was in their minds, there was only murder in their hearts.

  The buck raised his head occasionally to glance about him, wary, suspicious. When he did so, Tarzan froze into immobility. Suddenly the animal's gaze centered for an instant upon something in the direction of the ape-man; then it wheeled and bounded away. Instantly Tarzan glanced behind him, for he knew that it had not been he who had frightened his quarry, but something beyond and behind him that the alert eyes of Wappi had discovered. That quick glance revealed a half-dozen horsemen moving slowly toward him, told him what they were, and explained their purpose. Knowing that they were Shiftas, he knew that they came only to rob and kill—knew that here were enemies more ruthless than Numa.

  When they saw that he had discovered them, the horsemen broke into a gallop and bore down upon him, waving their weapons and shouting. They did not fire, evidently holding in contempt this primitively armed victim, but seemed to purpose riding him down and trampling him beneath the hoofs of their horses or impaling him upon their spears.

  But Tarzan did not turn and run. He knew every possible avenue of escape within the radius of his vision for every danger that might reasonably be expected to confront him here, for it is the business of the creatures of the wild to know these things if they are to survive, and so he knew that there was no escape from mounted men by flight. But this knowledge threw him into no panic. Could the requirements of self-preservation have been best achieved by flight, he would have fled, but as they could not, he adopted the alternative quite as a matter of course—he stood to fight, ready to seize upon any fortuitous circumstance that might offer a chance to escape.

  Tall, magnificently proportioned, muscled more like Apollo than like Hercules, garbed only in a lion skin, he presented a splendid figure of primitive manhood that suggested more, perhaps, the demigod of the forest than it did man. Across his back hung his quiver of arrows and a light, short spear; the loose coils of his grass rope lay across one bronzed shoulder. At his hip swung the hunting knife of his father, the knife that had given the boy-Tarzan the first suggestion of his coming supremacy over the other beasts of the jungle on that far-gone day when his youthful hand drove it into the heart of Bolgani the gorilla. In his left hand was his bow and between the fingers four extra arrows.

  As Ara the lightning, so is Tarzan for swiftness. The instant that he had discovered and recognized the menace creeping upon him from behind and known that he had been seen by the horsemen, he had leaped to his feet, and in the same instant strung his bow. Now, perhaps even before the leading Shiftas realized the danger that confronted them, the bow was bent, the shaft sped.

  Short but powerful was the bow of the ape-man; short, that it might be easily carried through the forest and the jungle; powerful, that it might send its shafts through the toughest hide to a vital organ of its prey. Such a bow was this that no ordinary man might bend it.

  Straight through the heart of the leading Shifta drove the first arrow, and as the fellow threw his arms above his head and lunged from his saddle four more arrows sped with lightning-like rapidity from the bow of the ape-man, and every arrow found a target. Another Shifta dropped to ride no more, and three were wounded.

  Only
seconds had elapsed since Tarzan had discovered his danger, and already the four remaining horsemen were upon him. The three who were wounded were more interested in the feathered shafts protruding from their bodies than in the quarry they had expected so easily to overcome, but the fourth was whole, and he thundered down upon the ape-man with his spear set for the great chest.

  There could be no retreat for Tarzan; there could be no side- stepping to avoid the thrust, for a step to either side would have carried him in front of one of the other horsemen. He had but a single slender hope for survival, and that hope, forlorn though it appeared, he seized upon with the celerity, strength, and agility that make Tarzan Tarzan. Slipping his bowstring about his neck after his final shot, he struck up the point of the menacing weapon of his antagonist, and grasping the man's arm swung himself to the horse's back behind the rider.

  As steel-thewed fingers closed upon the Shifta's throat he voiced a single piercing scream; then a knife drove home beneath his left shoulder blade, and Tarzan hurled the body from the saddle. The terrified horse, running free with flying reins, tore through the bushes and the reeds into the river, while the remaining Shiftas, disabled by their wounds, were glad to abandon the chase upon the bank, though one of them, retaining more vitality than his companions, did raise his matchlock and send a parting shot after the escaping quarry.

  The river was a narrow, sluggish stream but deep in the channel, and as the horse plunged into it, Tarzan saw a commotion in the water a few yards downstream and then the outline of a long sinuous body moving swiftly toward them. It was Gimla the crocodile. The horse saw it too and, becoming frantic, turned upstream in an effort to escape. Tarzan climbed over the high cantle of the Abyssinian saddle and unslung his spear in the rather futile hope of holding the reptile at bay until his mount could reach the safety of the opposite bank toward which he was now attempting to guide him.

  Gimla is as swift as he is voracious. He was already at the horse's rump, with opened jaws, when the Shifta at the river's edge fired wildly at the ape-man. It was well for Tarzan that the wounded man had fired hurriedly, for simultaneously with the report of the firearm, the crocodile dove, and the frenzied lashing of the water about him evidenced the fact that he had been mortally wounded.