Читать книгу Sargasso of Lost Safaris - James Anson Buck - Страница 3

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THE LION had Sheena cornered. An old lion, scarred and shaggy, his yellow eyes flat and still, and only the tip of his tail moving; an old lion but still dangerous. He held both Sheena and Chim, the monkey, at bay in a triangular niche in the rock.

Chim stirred whimpered a little, and Sheena, without taking her eyes from the lion, said, "Quiet. Be still."

She spoke calmly, keeping herself rigid.

Sheena, of course, hadn't quite foreseen this emergency. She had crossed a clearing, on her way to a water hole where she might find antelope for food. There had been lions in the tall grass about a hundred yards away, hardly a thing to trouble Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She had walked right past them, downwind. It was late afternoon, and by late afternoon most lions have full bellies, especially when they lie quietly in the sun.

But the old lion had not yet fed.

"Run—this way!" she'd cried to Chim. There was a kopje ahead; a rocky hillock perhaps thirty feet high.

She might have loosed arrows at the beast then and there, but she knew that the slim shafts would be uncertain loosed so quickly, and at a moving target. Possibly they could climb it in time to leave the lion behind. Or at the very least he would hesitate, be still, and make an easier target before he entered the niche.

The lion, however, came right along, and the moment she was in the niche she realized there was no time to scramble upward. She whirled and faced the beast.

Now it took a step forward, and Sheena saw that it was a limping step. She glanced at its left forepaw and saw the porcupine quills and the nasty swelling. She understood, then. A lion never learns about porcupines and is unable to resist them; then, with a paw full of quills he is unable to chase the swifter beasts. This is when he seeks the weaker, two-legged creatures.

Sheena smiled just a little. She began to make a soft, purring noise. The lion cocked its head, puzzled. Slowly, deliberately, she slipped her bow of nahete wood from her shoulder. She reached across the other shoulder and plucked an arrow from her quiver.

The shot would have to count. The small arrows hadn't the shocking power of a spear or bullet and the first one would have to pierce the heart. If it didn't—well, there was one more chance; she would use, then, the ivory hilted Arab poniard at her side.

These were Sheena's weapons, these and her quick senses and her jungle wisdom. With these the orphaned daughter of a white explorer had grown up among the beasts and natives of the steaming Congo to become undisputed Queen of the Jungle. She was already a familiar sight to many tribes and wild things. They saw her as a tall, slim, bronzed young goddess, striding through the lion grass with her head and shoulders held high, or making a golden blur against the green jungle as she sped through the treetops. Her leopard-skin clung to her torso, showing every graceful curve. Armbands, earrings and light bracelets of pure gold were her decorations, although she would have been beautiful enough without them.

Now she laid the arrow carefully to the bow. The lion's eyes flickered: in the next instant it would spring.

Sheena drew the bow quickly and effortlessly until the head of the arrow touched the wood. There was a dull snap. It wasn't at all the sharp twang of the arrow flying away—the string had broken. The arrow dangled limply in her hand.

Chim, in terror, cried out: "Chee-chee-chee-chee-chee!"

The lion sprang.

Sheena leapt, too, twisting herself violently in mid-air. She came down upon the lion's back, facing forward. She whipped the long Arab knife from her side.

Holding the knife with thumb and forefinger she began to plunge it into the beast's ribs just behind its left shoulder. She was striking for the heart—if only she could hold on long enough. The lion plunged and clawed and made terrifying screams of rage, but she hooked her knees around its body and held firmly to its mane with her free hand.

The lion, bucking wildly, slammed into the rock wall of the niche just as Sheena had her knife drawn back for another blow. Sheena's hand struck the rock. The tip of the knife was caught for an instant against the granite, and as the lion came down again the weapon was knocked from her hand.

She grasped the lion's mane quickly with her other hand and hung on even more tightly. She glanced at the lion's flank and saw that it was stained with blood. Perhaps in a moment he would tire, and fall to his knees. Perhaps his heart had already been pierced.

GLANCING from the corner of her eye she saw that Chim had scrambled to the top of the kopje now and was standing there jumping up and down and chattering. Then she saw her fallen arrows there in the point of the niche.

"Chim!" she cried. "The arrows!"

The monkey chattered and jumped up and down again.

Sheena pressed her lips together. Sometimes Chim would understand, and sometimes he wouldn't. And then if he did understand, like as not he'd forget what he started out to do before he was halfway there.

"Arrows, Chim! Arrows!" she cried again. She released her hold long enough to point to them.

Chim glanced down, then up again. He looked puzzled.

The lion tried to bite and claw the two-legged thing on its back. Sheena yanked its mane in the other direction each time it did that. Yet she knew she couldn't keep this up forever. The powerful king of beasts would probably have more endurance than even Sheena, whose smooth, spring-steel muscles could carry a full-grown man up a ngoji vine and into a treetop.

"Arrows, Chim!" she called sharply.

Chim scratched his head, scrambled half way down the rock face, then stopped, then looked at the arrows that had fallen from Sheena's quiver during her twisting leap, then looked up at Sheena again.

There was a sudden twang!

As if by magic an arrow appeared in the lion's flank, inches from Sheena's own shoulder. The beast whipped about viciously to bite at it. His legs became suddenly unsteady. He stumbled.

Sheena whirled her eyes toward the top of the rock; the arrow had come from that direction. She saw no one. She frowned. She had, in this moment, a curious flash memory of another time when someone had saved her life by shooting an attacking lion—only that had been with a bullet, not an arrow. She had been facing this charging beast with only her knife, a rifle had cracked twice, and it had died in midair. Then a white man had stepped into view; he had called himself Rick Thorne. Not like other white men she'd known: he was tall, and his hair was black as the wing of a raven, and his eyes were gray mist. He had awakened a strange feeling in her. Since then she had roamed many jungle trails with Rick Thorne, but at the moment he was in the far Bilina country taking the tribe's yearly bag of ivory tusks back to civilization for them. It seemed he had been gone much too long, and lately Sheena had been wondering whether or not to head in that direction.

Then, abruptly, the lion fell and rolled to its side. Sheena leapt free. The beast shuddered, its hind legs twitched several times and after that it was dead.

Chim, chattering for all he was worth, and grinning with peeled lips, came running to Sheena with one of the fallen arrows in his hand.

She shook her head sadly, trying not to grin. "I don't need it now, you fool," she said.

She remembered the arrow out of nowhere then and glanced quickly at the top of the rock. A head came slowly over the edge and into view. It was grinning. It belonged to a black man with huge cheeks like ebony apples and three or four fat chins. He wore the claw headpiece of a sub-chief.

Chim saw the newcomer and immediately set up a racket.

The black laughed. It was a rich, deep laugh that came from his immense depths. He pointed to the monkey. "The white girl," he said, "has more courage than her little brother!"

There was no malice in the remark. A joke like this meant friendly intentions. Sheena smiled back and said, "Chim is not afraid. He only means to protect me from strange-looking creatures that appear!"

The fat man roared with laughter. He slipped heavily over the edge of the rock and with many grunts and groans began to let himself down.

Chim began to imitate the grunts and groans.

"Quiet, Chim," said Sheena. Then to the black, "You speak the tongue of the Bilina."

He was facing her now, and still grinning. "It is so. I am K'ando, sub-chief of the Bilina. And you are Sheena."

She raised an eyebrow. "How did you know?"

He waved his fingers, which were fat but nevertheless tapered and graceful, and said, "Even the waves of the two far oceans know Sheena."

Sheena smiled then. "And you have saved Sheena's life. Sheena owes you a debt."

"There is a way to pay that debt," said K'ando. "In fact, I sought the Queen of the Jungle in many kraals before I was sent this way."

"Oh?" said Sheena quietly, and waited.

K'ando dropped his eyes. "There is great trouble among my people, the Bilina." He half-chanted in his rich, deep voice as he talked. "Do you know of the Spirit Men?"

She thought. She had heard rumors of the Spirit Men from time to time, although she had never actually met them. They were a secret group, with members scattered at odd places, something like the Leopard Society that once terrorized all of Africa. They were supposed to know all the secrets of magic. "What of the Spirit Men?" she asked.

"They are among us," said K'ando gravely. "The son of our chief, Poko Na, returned from a long visit to far places where he learned some of the white man's ways, but also found the evil of the Spirit Men. Now he and the warriors of the society take much tribute, especially in ivory. As you know the Bilina's lands have long since become fruitless of grain or cattle, and the tribe lives only by its ivory, the finest of any. Because of the Spirit Men, many are weak, many starve among the villages."

"But what can I do to help?" asked Sheena.

K'ando frowned. "I have no plan. Yet, the name of Sheena is known to my people, and they think of Sheena as a white goddess—one of magic, herself. Perhaps in some way we can make the magic of Sheena stronger than that of the Spirit Men."

Sheena had a sudden thought. "The white hunter, Rick Thorne; has he left the country of the Bilina, yet?"

"He was waiting for the ivory to be gathered when I left," said K'ando. "There was but a small carry this year, and he remarked upon it."

Sheena looked up for a moment at the hot, endless sky and the high clouds.

"Sheena thinks," said K'ando.

"Yes." She nodded slowly. "Sheena thinks that some magic, perhaps, is the work of spirits. Not that of witch doctors, of Spirit Men, but the magic of the jungle itself. Sheena has seen strange things. Sometimes there is a strange feeling in one's stomach, and this feeling seems to warn not to take a certain journey."

"Sheena has such a feeling now?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "It is very difficult to know." And then abruptly she smiled and tossed her blonde tresses and said, "I will go with you, K'ando. Together we will see what we can do about these Spirit Men."