Killers Kraal | Page 3

to the high river bank. There were three tents in the clearing,
but none of his servants were there to 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