Killers Kraal | Page 3

help him. Soon he would be driven over the bank to plunge to his death on the rocks below.
The Jungle Queen unslung her bow. But even as she notched the arrow she saw Rick go down under a terrific blow from a club that smashed through his pith-helmet with a dull, sickening sound. The striker, a squat, powerful-looking fellow with a queer headdress of turcan feathers, uttered a yell of triumph, and whirled his club around his head to strike again. And then Sheena's bow twanged, and the strange warrior fell across Rick's body with the arrow between his shoulders up to the feather. His companions, yelping and rushing in for the kill like wild dogs of the veldt, were suddenly silent and motionless, like wooden men holding weapons poised to strike. There was a moment of gaping wonderment, then the deadly twang of the bow again, and another of their number gasped, clutched at the shaft in his breast, staggered back and fell over the bank with a long-drawn shriek.
For a short time the others stood, half crouched, looking around with their mouths agape, their eyes roiling like white balls in their sockets. They could see no enemy; and, as winged death out of nowhere struck a third man, they made a frantic rush for the cover of the bush.
Wise in the ways of the forest people, Sheena did not come down at once. Long ago she had learned that when danger stalks in the jungle no creature is ever caught off guard twice. She waited until she saw a dugout shoot out from the river bank and go lurching dangerously downstream to the uneven paddle strokes of its panic-stricken occupants. Then she dropped to the ground and ran across the clearing to Rick. She dragged the dead native from his back with an amazing display of strength, then rolled Rick over and fell to her knees beside him.
II
HIS DARK curls were matted with blood, his breathing so faint that at first she was sure that he could not live for more than a few minutes. But when she put her ear to his breast and heard the strong beat of his heart, she knew that his helmet had absorbed the shock of the blow, and that his skull was not broken. She deemed it safe to move him, and soon had him under the mosquito netting on his canvas cot.
Leaving Chim to watch Rick she went to gather the leaves of the baobab, the root of the mebila and other herbs. Back in the camp, she made a paste of these as Ebid Ela had taught her to do, omitting only the incantations the old woman had been wont to mutter over her bubbling pots. Rick did not open his eyes as she cleansed and poulticed his wound. When she had finished it was dark, and she went out to look around the deserted camp.
The half-cooked food in the pots, and the fact that everything had been left behind, told her that Rick's servants had left in a great hurry, probably at the first sight of trouble; and, since they were sure to be men from one of the coast villages, that did not surprise her. She shared the Abamas' contempt for the cowardly coast people. Uppermost in her mind was the question: Who were these warriors who had dared to attack a safari on her side of the Kwango? Whence had they come? Certainly they were not neighbors of the Abamas. They had looked like Kalundas, a once powerful people who lived beyond the mountains, but whose stock was now debased by cross-breeding with the dwarf-people who ranged the jungles between the Kwango and the Buffalo Mountain. But she could not be sure of this, because only once had she ventured into the Kalunda and seen one of their villages, and that from a great distance. Their huts, she remembered, were not placed in a circle as was the style among the Bantu-speaking people, but in long, straight aisles, and it was said that they were maneaters, sometimes even eating their own dead. For this reason the Abamas would have nothing to do with them.
A snarl and a sudden flurry of sound out in the bush sent a tingle down her spine. Jackals, with the smell of the dead in their nostrils. She did not want them howling around the camp all night, and went to roll the bodies over the bank and into the river. She was moving back to Rick's tent when her eye was caught by the glint of steel amid the grass. She bent to pick up a knife which evidently had been dropped by one of the men who had attacked the camp. The blade was double-edged, curved, and twice the span