Juju by Murray Leinster (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Murray Leinster
Book online «Juju by Murray Leinster (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗». Author Murray Leinster
I told myself sternly that, no matter how she felt about her fiancé, she was engaged to him, and I had better forget that she was delightful to look upon and an amazingly good companion. I could not manage it, however, and the last week of the trip was not easy for me. I had to be friendly and no more.
In a way I was very glad when we saw two khaki sun helmets coming toward us, though I was much depressed at the thought of parting from Alicia. I had sent a runner on ahead, and Graham and his brother met us some four miles down the trail. I was pleasantly surprised at the sight of Graham's brother. Years before he had been at a little English seaside resort where I was spending the summer and we had grown very friendly. He kissed Alicia in a brotherly fashion and shook hands with me.
"I perpetrate a bromide," he said quizzically. "The world is a small place."
"Arthur Graham!" I exclaimed. "I knew you in Clovelly six years ago."
"You're right," he said cheerfully. "How are you now? Then you were flirting mildly with a buxom Devon lassie."
"And now we meet in darkest Africa," I said, smiling. "Let's move on."
We went forward again, Alicia, in the ox cart, gayly retailing to the two brothers our adventures on the trip up. I was rather surprised to notice that both of them were heavily armed, and it bothered me a little. It looked as if there were trouble with the natives. Each of the two brothers carried a heavy repeating rifle besides an automatic pistol in his belt, and Arthur looked decidedly worn, though I saw that he was trying to conceal it from Alicia.
My suspicion was confirmed when I observed that, though he tried not to let Alicia see it, he was keenly searching the way ahead of us with his eyes. He seemed particularly worried when we passed near a tree and his grasp on his rifle tightened. Even after we were well away from it, he looked back nervously.
We passed around the village and reached the casa by another route, Alicia chatting cheerfully with all of us from her seat in the cart. Evan Graham seemed quite at ease and entered into her talk with real interest, but Arthur—who as her fiancé should have been overjoyed to see her—was nervous and preoccupied. His rifle was never far from a position in readiness to fling it to his shoulder, and his eyes roved restlessly about with a species of dread in them. I walked close to him.
"Arthur," I said in a low tone that Alicia would not catch. "You're nervous. Natives?"
"They're acting queerly, but it's worse than that," he said in the same low tone, glancing at Alicia to make sure her attention was elsewhere. "I'd give anything I possess to have Alicia somewhere else. I'll tell you later. Just keep your eyes open and, if you see anything, shoot quickly."
Evan did not seem to be worried. He was strolling leisurely along, using his rifle as a walking stick, talking casually to Alicia. His manners were very good and his voice was soft, very unlike the rasping snarl I had heard him use to his servants. Looking closely at him, I could see unmistakable signs that he had been drinking heavily of late. He seemed quite sober to-day, though. The contrast between his careless attitude and Arthur's worried air was striking. We saw one or two natives on our way to the house, and they promptly hid themselves in the bush. Arthur paid no attention to them. Whatever the trouble might be, it was not the blacks that he feared, though he had said they were acting queerly.
He led me aside almost as soon as we reached the casa. I told Mboka to pile and count the loads, and sent the carriers to the quarters they would find ready for them. Evan was inside the house, installing Alicia and Mrs. Braymore in their rooms, and showing them the servants who would wait on them. Arthur came over to me with a worried frown.
"I say, Murray," he told me nervously. "I'd ask you to take Alicia back to the coast to-morrow if I dared, but she's here now, and it would be just as dangerous for her to go back."
"What's the matter?" I demanded. "It isn't the natives. What is the matter?"
He looked about anxiously. "I shot a female gorilla up in the Kongo," he said jerkily, "and her mate got away. He's followed my caravan ever since, up to two weeks ago. Then I hit him with a lucky shot, but he escaped. You know they will try to kill the slayer of their mate."
"I know," I replied. "One of them followed me for three weeks once, until I bushwhacked and killed him."
"I shot this female," said Arthur quickly. "I shot her through the hip and she screamed for her mate. She couldn't get away. He came crashing through the trees, and I fired at him. I thought he'd vanished and went up to the female. I finished her off, and then the male came for me. I shot him through the arm and he made off. All that night he moaned and shrieked around my camp. My boys were badly frightened. Next morning he dropped from a tree inside the camp, knocked the heads of two of my carriers together, and crushed in their skulls. I rushed out with a gun and he disappeared. Three days later he dropped straight out of a tree almost over my head and made for me. One of my boys was cleaning a spear, directly in the path of the gorilla. He tried to run the beast through, but it stopped long enough to break his neck and by that time I'd got a gun. The gorilla disappeared again. From that time on it haunted me. If one or two of my boys strayed from the camp, they didn't come back. The beast has killed six of my best carriers and my gun bearer. And I never got a fair shot at it! I fired at it two weeks ago and I found blood where it had been, but no sign of the beast itself. Since then I've been left in peace."
"The animal may have dropped the trail, or it may be dead," I commented thoughtfully, "but I don't blame you for wanting to be careful."
"The thought of that huge ape perhaps lurking outside, perhaps about to drop down at any moment, with Alicia here," said Arthur desperately, "it's enough to drive a man insane. You know they carry off native women sometimes. We've got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it doesn't matter. Evan won't believe it's around. He's going armed to humor me, but the beast is near; it's somewhere about."
I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and beckoned to us.
"We'll not mention this—yet," said Arthur, as we went up.
I nodded. Alicia was all enthusiasm about the comforts Evan had managed to put into his house so far inland, and when we sat down to dinner, the bright silver and white tablecloth did give an effect of civilization. When one looked at the black faces of the servants who waited on us, and at the tattooing and nose rings that disfigured them, however, the illusion vanished at once.
I was a long time getting to sleep that night. The next morning would see me going on my way into the interior, and I would in all likelihood never see Alicia again. When I at last fell asleep, I was uneasy, and when I woke, it was in a strangely silent house. Evan Graham's voice aroused me. He was calling me to get up. His ease of manner and absence of worry had vanished. Arthur, over his shoulder, looked even more apprehensive than before.
"Get up," said Evan briefly. "The servants skipped out during the night. Your boys have gone, too. There's juju business going on. And the oxen that pulled Alicia's cart have been clubbed to death in their stalls."
The servants had fled from the house. There was not another white man within a hundred and fifty miles. All about us were natives who might fear Evan Graham but certainly hated him, and somewhere in the woods, we had reason to believe, a monstrous ape lurked, awaiting an opportunity to wreak his bestial vengeance upon the slayer of his mate.
EVAN'S SORTIE.
We explored the house first and came upon a surprise. The native girl I had seen conducted to the house by the juju procession two months before crouched in one corner. She was too much frightened to give any coherent account of the other servants' leaving.
They had simply gone, she said. No one had said anything to her, and she had been left behind. The oxen lay in their stalls, their heads beaten in with blows from a heavy iron bar that lay bent on the ground beside them. Even my own boys had vanished. That struck me most forcibly of all, because I had treated them well and had thought I could count on as much loyalty from them as any white man can expect from the average native.
Mboka's defection really bothered me. I had believed well of him and was in a way genuinely fond of him. He had gone with the rest, though. The loads of the carriers lay in a huge pile. Small and precious possessions of my boys lay about them. That was perhaps the queerest part of the whole affair. In leaving secretly in the middle of the night, the servants had not stopped to steal, or even to take with them what was their own. They had apparently risen and stolen away in shivering fear.
We went back to the house from the servants' quarters full of rather uneasy speculations. Juju was obviously at the bottom of whatever was happening, and there is no telling what may enter the head of a juju doctor. Passing through the rear rooms, Evan paused to order the solitary native girl to prepare food for us. We went on to find Alicia and Mrs. Braymore up and curious. They were on the front porch when they heard us, and Alicia came inside to smile at all of us and ask questions.
"Where are all the servants, Evan?" she demanded. "We had not a drop of water this morning. And what's happened to the native village? On the way up here we saw lots of villages, but none of them were quite like yours."
We looked down at the squalid huts of the village. Not a sign of life could be seen. Not one of the usually innumerable tiny fires of a native village was burning, and the single street was absolutely deserted.
"We'll take a look at it," said Arthur grimly. "I don't like this business. Murray, you'll come?"
I picked up my rifle and moved forward. As we walked across the clearing before the casa, Arthur turned to me.
"Don't forget about that big ape, either. He's probably waiting for a chance to drop out of a tree on top of us."
It was a pleasant prospect. If we went down the cleared way toward the village, we would be perfect targets for bowmen or spear throwers from the bush on either side. If we went through the bush, we ran an amazingly good chance of running up against the gorilla. And the gorilla had learned cunning, too, and would not expose himself to a shot if he could help it. He would wait patiently until the chance came for him to rush upon us and crack our skulls together without our having time to raise a firearm, or else, until he could reach a hairy arm down and seize us——
I have seen iron bars bent and twisted by the hands of those big apes. A sudden thought came to me. The iron bar in the stables, with which the oxen had been clubbed to death!
We made our way cautiously down to the center of the cleared space, searching the bush on either side with our eyes, but affecting an unconcerned air in case hidden watchers saw us. We came to the village and strolled inside. It was absolutely deserted. Not one man, woman, or child remained within it. Their possessions were undisturbed, save that all their arms were gone, but cooking pots, carved stools, skin robes, ornaments, minor fetishes, children's
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