Killers Kraal | Page 2

silence--"Boom-tack-tack-boom! Tack-tack-boom-tack--"
The Jungle Queen stood tense, listening, her expression changing
rapidly from concentrated interest to annoyance, and finally to settle
into one of profound puzzlement. She never failed to locate a drum by
its tone, but the voice of this one was as elusive as the code was strange
to her ears.
"Boom-tack-boom-tack-boom-tack--" The indecipherable message
came from everywhere at once--far off, diffused, a rippling cascade of
sound seeming to spill out of the clouds immediately above her head,
and yet each note distinct.
And then silence, with not a twig or a leaf in motion. For at sundown
the wind dies and a moment of absolute quiet comes to the jungle. The
reed-buck stands spellbound beside a pool. The cruel claws of the
leopard are sheathed, its spring arrested as if by magic. The song of the
birds is hushed, and the melody of running water swells like an organ
in fortissimo, and a paen rises to the high mountain-seats of pagan
gods.
No village drum answered the mysterious call. It was as if the booming
notes had filled the jungle with evil tidings, shocking all to awful
silence. The effect of all this was so strong that the Jungle Queen stood
utterly motionless, her gaze fixed upon the Buffalo Mountain, her
sudden impulse to flight forgotten.

Slowly the sky lost its blood-red glow. A thunder-mutter rolled behind
the mountains. A cool breeze came sliding down their slopes, and the
tall reeds along the river banks whispered and quivered in sudden
trepidation.. And it seemed to Sheena, as the area of shadows deepened,
that the mountains became phantom shapes whose aspect took on
something of aloof secretiveness, and something of menace.
A whimper from Chim broke the spell. She looked up and spoke softly
to him, as was her habit:
"So, you do not like this strange voice in the jungle, little one?" Chim
grimaced at her, and swung to a higher branch. But she clapped her
hands, calling him down. "Come!" she called. "We must cross the river
before dark."
A short distance below the krantz the river entered a gorge, roared for a
mile between rocky pinnacles, and came out to spill, feather-white,
over steep terraces of rock. A native tie-tie bridge, as delicate-looking
as a spider's web, spanned the gorge at its narrowest point. Sheena
knew that Rick would camp below the rapids. Also she knew that he
would abandon his heavy dugout there and push on to the first Abama
village above the gorge to trade for another canoe. It occured to her that
she could block his further progress into Abama country by simply
telling the villagers not to trade with him. And the more she thought of
this new idea the better she liked it. She could avoid meeting him face
to face, and yet, if he attempted to force a path through the jungle on
foot, she could put all manner of obstacles in his way. Truly, she
thought with an amused smile, such a trek would test the strength of his
desire. Oh yes, he would soon come to cursing the day that he had set
eyes upon Sheena, Golden Goddess of all the Jungles.
As sure footed as an ape she started across the lagging bridge. She was
swaying fifty feet above the rapids, when, faintly above the roar of the
water, she heard a shot, then another, and another. The echos were still
bouncing from one side of the gorge to the other, when she reached the
opposite shore, and went flashing down the steep trail like a golden
streak.

Around the first limit of sight she saw the peak of a tent, gleaming
white amid the low bush of a small clearing. Without pausing in her
stride she leaped for the low branch of a tree. Then, with the effortless
ease of a monkey, she went through the close-packed foliage which
surrounded the clearing, sometimes leaping from the branch of one tree
to another, sometimes swinging through the air on vines as thick as her
wrist and as tough as a wire cable. She heard shouts as she came to
stand on the gnarled limb of an ajap tree. Her lofty perch gave her a
clear view of the camp, and her eyes took in the scene below in one
swift, all-inclusive glance.
Rick Thorne was fighting for his life, beating off the attack of a
half-dozen natives who kept circling around him and rushing at him,
now one, now another, to thrust with a spear, or to strike with a heavy
knobkerry. He was armed only with a club, which he evidently had
wrested from one of his attackers, and he was fighting with the
last-ditch ferocity of a wounded leopard. But they were slowly forcing
him back