King of Fang and Claw | Page 7

branches of a tall tree Nono, the monkey, saw him. Safe in the swaying tree top, he shrilled a warning to the jungle folk. Zar glanced up from slitted eyes, snarled and went on. A terrified bush rat scurried across his path and dived squeeling into the brush. Zar ignored the little creature with studied disdain.
The unfamiliar scent of man came first to warn him that he was nearing his destination. Treading yet more carefully, he wormed his way through a dense tangle and at last reached a point that gave him a broad view of the clearing.
The stricken bird still lay where it had fallen. From a queer shelter beneath its outspread wing a fascinating sound--Constance's voice--issued occasionally. Zar tilted his majestic head to one side and listened. Before the shelter the two-legged creature squatted on his haunches, busily engaged with something. And wonder of wonders, six feet away from him a smaller creature--undoubtedly the cub of the larger one--gamboled about.
Zar's keen eyes missed no detail of the scene. Thirty yards off to his left he made out the form of N'Jaga, lying crouched on his belly, his spotted shape barely distinguishable in the dense brush, his small eyes riveted on the group in the cleating. Zar was content to lie still and watch, only the very tip of his tail moving.
The strange cub continued to scurry about. His movements carried him farther and farther away from his busy father--closer and closer to the spot where N'Jaga lay like a motionless statue. Zar sensed what would happen, but he did not stir. The cub was not his. No such emotion as pity had ever stirred his stout heart. Life is cheap in the jungle and no vestige of regret marks a creature's passing.
So he watched N'Jaga tense his springy muscles, saw the stupid cub linger a fatal moment near the edge of the jungle. N'Jaga could wait no longer for the toothsome tid-bit to come even closer to his lair. With an ear-splitting scream he sprang, his sleek, spotted body hurtling out of the undergrowth.
Even as his first bound covered half the distance between him and the startled cub, a cry of terror rang out from the shelter under the wing.
"John--David! Quick!" It floated across the clearing on a quivering note.
Quicker than the lightning strikes the two-legged creature snatched up a long stick that lay near him, jumped up and pointed the stick at the bounding N'Jaga.
There was a roar and a pale flash, then a puff of smoke wafted from the end of the stick. N'Jaga halted in midstride, screamed. Zar saw a streak of bright crimson appear on his spotted hide as he whirled to face this new menace.
The two-legged creature did not run. The stick pointed at N'Jaga again. And for the first time, the leopard felt the strange fear that the wiser Zar had sensed a week before. Crouching, his tail lashing, he hesitated. And then, instead of charging in fury at the father of the cub, he suddenly wheeled around and vanished like a yellow streak.
The salty tang of blood came faintly to Zar's nostrils. Silent as a great shadow he bellied backwards. And while N'Jaga crept off to some quiet spot to nurse his wound, Zar glided back into the jungle fastness.
The scene that he had just witnessed was engraved indelibly on his memory. The stick had been pointed at N'Jaga. There had been a roar and a flash of fire. And N'Jaga had limped as he fled from the encounter. Zar had been wise, indeed, when he had been content to lie hidden and watch. His instinctive hatred for this two-legged creature was not lessened. But now it was tempered by a deep respect.
When the leopard had vanished, John Rand hurried to young David, snatched him up and carried him back to his anxious mother. To his amazement, his son looked at him from reproachful eyes.
"You hurt him," he accused. "You hurt him, daddy. Now he won't come back--never--never."
In silence, Rand looked at his child. When the huge leopard, with its jaws agape, had leaped at him, David had not shown even the slightest, instinctive fear.
Rand recalled the youngster's delight in the monkeys and birds and lizards with which the clearing abounded. And now a strange thought flitted through his mind. It was so elusive that he could not quite grasp it; but had he been able to do so, he would have realized that to young David the beasts of the jungle were companions and friends. Something within the child responded to them and he knew them, trusted and loved them.
Instead of trying to answer his son's accusation, he patted the youngster's head and for the rest of the day, he was a very thoughtful man.
And so, with death ever at