The Ivory Trail Part 68

At last Coutla.s.s 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. Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s had laid on the loose earth. Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s, missing his skin by a bait's breadth as the Greek held off the blows with the utmost strength of both hands.

Suddenly Coutla.s.s 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, Coutla.s.s on top and Schillingschen stabbing violently in the direction of his ribs.

Letting go the beard, Coutla.s.s rained blows on the German's face with his free fist. Made frantic by that a.s.sault 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. Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s from killing the man. We came closer, to see the end, and Coutla.s.s caught sight of us at last.

"Shoot him!" he screamed. "Ga.s.sharamminy! 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 Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s 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 Coutla.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 Coutla.s.s 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 G.o.ds of Greek revenge, and, brandishing the long knife, tore away into the dark.

"I see him!" he yelled. "I see the swine! By Ga.s.sharamminy! To-night his naked feet'll blister on the floor of h.e.l.l!"

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 Coutla.s.s. "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 Coutla.s.s 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.

Coutla.s.s 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!"

"Maybe he knows by now that box is empty!" said I. "He'll stalk us on the way back!"

"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 Coutla.s.s' 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 Coutla.s.s 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.

"Schillingschen has three cartridges,"' sad Will. "One each for you, me and Fred Oakes! I'll stay and trick him some more. I'll think up a new plan. I don't care if he gets me. I'd hate to face Fred without my rifle, and have to tell him the enemy is laying for him with it through my carelessness."

It was my first experience of Will with hysteria, for it amounted to that. I remembered that to cure a bevy of school-girls of it one should rap out something sharply, with a cane if need be. Yet Will was not like a school-girl, and his hysteria took the pseudo-manly form of refusal to retreat. I yearned for Fred's camp-fires, and Fred's laugh, hot supper, or breakfast, or whatever the meal would be, and blankets.

Will, with a ruthless murderer stalking him in the dark, yearned only for self-contentment. All at once I saw the thing to do, and thrust my rifle in his hands.

"Take it," I said. "Hunt Schillingschen all night if you want to. I'm going back to tell Fred I've lost my rifle, and was afraid to face you for fear you'd laugh at me. Go on--take it! No, you've got to take it!"

I let the rifle fall at his feet, and he was forced to pick it up. By that time I was on my way, and he had to hurry if he hoped to catch me.

I kept him hurrying--cursing, and calling out to wait. And so, hours later, we arrived in sight of Fred's fires and answered his cheery challenge:

"Halt there, or I'll shoot your bally head off!"

Lions had kept him busy making the boys pile thornwood on the fires.

He had shot two--one inside the enclosure, where the brute had jumped in a vain effort to reach the frantic donkeys. We stumbled over the carca.s.s of the other as we made our way toward the gate-gap, and dragged it in ignominiously by the tail (not such an easy task as the uninitiated might imagine).

Once within the enclosure I left Will to tell Fred his story as best suited him, Fred roaring with laughter as he watched Will's rueful face, yet turning suddenly on Brown to curse him like a criminal for laughing, too!

"Go and fetch that Mauser of yours, Brown, and give it to Mr. Yerkes in place of what he's lost! Hurry, please!"

It was touch and go whether Brown would obey. But he happened to be sober, and realized that he had committed tho unpermissible offense.

Fred might laugh at Will all he chose; so might I; either of us might laugh Fred out of countenance; or they might howl derisively at me.