Jungle Tales of Tarzan | Page 4

so large as the males, of course,
but still mighty, handsome things by comparison with Tarzan's feeble
white ones. And her beetling brows, and broad, flat nose, and her
mouth! Tarzan had often practiced making his mouth into a little round
circle and then puffing out his cheeks while he winked his eyes rapidly;
but he felt that he could never do it in the same cute and irresistible
way in which Teeka did it.
And as he watched her that afternoon, and wondered, a young bull ape
who had been lazily foraging for food beneath the damp, matted carpet
of decaying vegetation at the roots of a near-by tree lumbered
awkwardly in Teeka's direction. The other apes of the tribe of Kerchak
moved listlessly about or lolled restfully in the midday heat of the
equatorial jungle. From time to time one or another of them had passed
close to Teeka, and Tarzan had been uninterested. Why was it then that
his brows contracted and his muscles tensed as he saw Taug pause

beside the young she and then squat down close to her?
Tarzan always had liked Taug. Since childhood they had romped
together. Side by side they had squatted near the water, their quick,
strong fingers ready to leap forth and seize Pisah, the fish, should that
wary denizen of the cool depths dart surfaceward to the lure of the
insects Tarzan tossed upon the face of the pool.
Together they had baited Tublat and teased Numa, the lion. Why, then,
should Tarzan feel the rise of the short hairs at the nape of his neck
merely because Taug sat close to Teeka?
It is true that Taug was no longer the frolicsome ape of yesterday.
When his snarling-muscles bared his giant fangs no one could longer
imagine that Taug was in as playful a mood as when he and Tarzan had
rolled upon the turf in mimic battle. The Taug of today was a huge,
sullen bull ape, somber and forbidding. Yet he and Tarzan never had
quarreled.
For a few minutes the young ape-man watched Taug press closer to
Teeka. He saw the rough caress of the huge paw as it stroked the sleek
shoulder of the she, and then Tarzan of the Apes slipped catlike to the
ground and approached the two.
As he came his upper lip curled into a snarl, exposing his fighting fangs,
and a deep growl rumbled from his cavernous chest. Taug looked up,
batting his blood-shot eyes. Teeka half raised herself and looked at
Tarzan. Did she guess the cause of his perturbation? Who may say? At
any rate, she was feminine, and so she reached up and scratched Taug
behind one of his small, flat ears.
Tarzan saw, and in the instant that he saw, Teeka was no longer the
little playmate of an hour ago; instead she was a wondrous thing--the
most wondrous in the world--and a possession for which Tarzan would
fight to the death against Taug or any other who dared question his
right of proprietorship.
Stooped, his muscles rigid and one great shoulder turned toward the

young bull, Tarzan of the Apes sidled nearer and nearer. His face was
partly averted, but his keen gray eyes never left those of Taug, and as
he came, his growls increased in depth and volume.
Taug rose upon his short legs, bristling. His fighting fangs were bared.
He, too, sidled, stiff-legged, and growled.
"Teeka is Tarzan's," said the ape-man, in the low gutturals of the great
anthropoids.
"Teeka is Taug's," replied the bull ape.
Thaka and Numgo and Gunto, disturbed by the growlings of the two
young bulls, looked up half apathetic, half interested. They were sleepy,
but they sensed a fight. It would break the monotony of the humdrum
jungle life they led.
Coiled about his shoulders was Tarzan's long grass rope, in his hand
was the hunting knife of the long-dead father he had never known. In
Taug's little brain lay a great respect for the shiny bit of sharp metal
which the ape-boy knew so well how to use. With it had he slain Tublat,
his fierce foster father, and Bolgani, the gorilla. Taug knew these things,
and so he came warily, circling about Tarzan in search of an opening.
The latter, made cautious because of his lesser bulk and the inferiority
of his natural armament, followed similar tactics.
For a time it seemed that the altercation would follow the way of the
majority of such differences between members of the tribe and that one
of them would finally lose interest and wander off to prosecute some
other line of endeavor. Such might have been the end of it had the
CASUS BELLI been other than it was; but Teeka was flattered at the
attention that was