KA-ZAR OF THE BEASTS

CHAPTER XVIII
Flowers on a Grave

D

AWN found him standing over the graves of his parents. He communed a moment with their spirits in silence and deep in his heart, renewed his vow that he would wreak vengeance on his father's slayer. Then, fortified for whatever the day might bring, he started again for the camp of the white men.

He was still some distance from it, when a crashing noise off to his left pulled him up short in mid-stride. He cocked his head to one side and listened. Most animals make little noise in their travels through the jungle. This was not the sound made by Chaka and his apes, nor Trajah, nor that of Quog and his herd passing through the brush. Only one other creature would move so clumsily--a man.

With a prayer in his heart that it might be his hated enemy, Fat-Face, Ka-Zar swung up into the trees and headed swiftly toward the noise. He could not know that the Fates still turned their faces from him; that it was not Fat-Face but Kivlin, grown yet more greedy because of his good fortune who had ventured along the course of the stream in search of more emeralds.

He could not know either, that Zar, anxious and eager to aid him, had also set out for the camp. The lion's keen nostrils had caught the scent of the hated Oman and disobeying his brother's orders he lay in wait for the foolish two-legged creature who blundered toward him.

Kivlin was not jungle-wise. Not intending to share his find, if he made one, he had left the camp without telling DeKraft. And so it was that instead of carrying a rifle, he was armed only with the heavy caliber automatic thrust in the holster at his belt. Zar, crouching behind a clump of brush at the side of the stream, saw him appear--but saw no fire-stick.

Kivlin bent over, picked up a pebble, turned it over in his fingers and then threw it away in disgust. He straightened up--and was instantly petrified with terror.

Directly in his path loomed an enormous tawny shape. To Kivlin's startled eyes, Zar appeared as huge as Trajah. The lion's shaggy mane was ruffed out into a black fringe. His fangs were bared from glistening teeth. His slitted eyes gleamed and the tuft at the tip of his tail switched angrily.

Kivlin tried to scream, but could make no sound. His numbed brain urged him to run, to bolt for his life. But his legs would not move.

A low, terrifying growl rumbled from Zar's throat. He crouched and his rippling muscles tensed for the spring. And Kivlin, coming to life in that desperate moment, flashed for his gun.

It came up in his clenched right fist, glinting ominously in the sun, and its barrel pointed full at the snarling lion. But in the split second before his finger squeezed the trigger, something thudded lightly to the ground behind him.

The sharp blade of a knife bit into the back of his neck and a warning voice hissed in his ear: "Kill the lion--and you die, also!"

Never was a man in more terrible predicament. Never had anyone such a horrible choice. Never was double jeopardy made yet more awful by such mystery.

Kivlin's nerves could stand no more. And when the voice at his ear changed suddenly to an animal growl, he wilted. His face turned ghastly and clammy beads of perspiration broke out over his body. He felt that he was going mad.

In a daze, he heard the lion growl back, then reluctantly move off to one side and watch whatever was behind the haft of that knife. Kivlin soon learned what that was. A long arm snaked around under his chin, closed like a vise about his neck. A bronzed hand shot out, wrenched the automatic from his grasp and sent it spinning into the brush.

K

ivlin's reeling senses told him that he was in the grip of a man and almost mechanically, he struggled frantically to free himself. Despite all his strength, he might have been a two-year-old. For the arms that held him were massive, with muscles like bands of flexible steel.

Kivlin was hardly conscious that the lion remained where he was. A sudden violent wrench spun him around, but one hand stayed at the nape of his neck, holding him powerless. And for the first time, seeing his captor, he realized why his struggles had been so futile.

He was staring at a tremendous, bronze giant, naked save for the skin of an animal wound about his loins. A mass of black hair whipped back from the giant's head and his amber eyes held his own with a piercing intensity that transfixed him like the point of a spear.

Kivlin found his voice at last. "Who--who are you?" he croaked.

"I am Ka-Zar," answered the bronze giant, in English that had a strange, guttural tone. "Ka-Zar, brother of Zar, the lion." He pointed to the huge beast, watching them.

Kivlin shook his head as though to awaken himself from some evil nightmare. "What are you going to do with me?"

Ka-Zar fingered his gleaming knife. "I should," he answered, "help Zar finish what he had begun."

Kivlin's face turned yet more ashen. Into his eyes came the blank look of utter despair.

Ka-Zar scowled. "But, no. Your death would avail me nothing. I will give you one more chance for your miserable life." He pointed towards the camp whence Kivlin had come. "Go back. Tell Fat-Face I warn him. Leave the jungle, you and your black brothers, at once. Unless you do, you shall all die."

He shook Kivlin once and the hapless man thought that his neck had broken. Then suddenly he released his hold and stepped back.

Zar growled a mighty protest when he realized that Ka-Zar had again shown mercy to an enemy. The sound was all that Kivlin needed to set his legs in motion. Casting fearful eyes back over his shoulder, he raced madly back the way he had come. His last glance showed him Zar and Ka-Zar, standing side by side, watching his flight. Then a bend in the stream cut them off abruptly from his view and as though the devil were at his heels, he sprinted on towards the camp.

I

t was high noon. The tropical sun beat down on the little clearing that sheltered DeKraft's camp with a fierce intentness. But despite the heat, DeKraft was forcing his natives. From the bank of the stream he towered over them, a heavy bull whip in his hand. When one faltered, the stinging bite of the lash and a savage curse would drive him on again.

To DeKraft, any life but his own was cheap. Especially those of the blacks. With a fortune to be panned out of the river he could see no sense in delaying for petty, humanitarian scruples. Even as he lashed his blacks with the whip, he, himself was driven on by greed.

The horde of emeralds was increasing. He mused regretfully that he had cut Kivlin into the venture. He had been a fool. The find had been his in the first place and he was rightfully entitled to the profits.

He fingered the automatic holstered at his hip and smiled knowingly to himself. He had lots of time. They were a thousand miles from the nearest white man and the white man's law. What happened in that jungle wildness, no one would ever know.

The sound of running footsteps across the clearing snapped his head erect. It was his guilty conscience and his own evil thoughts that made him half pull the automatic from his belt. He whirled. Kivlin was plunging across the glade towards him as if pursued by every jungle demon the blacks had ever believed in.

DeKraft's eyes were quick to note the absence of the gun at Kivlin's belt and he slipped his own gun back into its holster.

Panting, wild-eyed and ashen of face Kivlin pulled up before him.

"What's eating you?" growled DeKraft. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

Kivlin swallowed at his agitated Adam's apple and with frightened eyes looked swiftly around the clearing. "So help me," he said, "I have."

DeKraft spat disgustedly. "Either the heat's got you or you're drunk. Go back to your tent and sleep it off."

Kivlin shook his head. "I haven't had a drink all morning." He swallowed again, wet his lips. "I could use one now, though. I tell you I saw him. Him and the biggest lion God ever made."

"Saw who?" demanded DeKraft sharply.

Kivlin looked at him from wide scared eyes. "So help me, I don't know. A big tall savage--a white man from the looks of him and he spoke English. Naked as the day he was born."

DeKraft's eyes narrowed and he leaped forward. With a gnarled fist he grabbed his partner by the slack of his coat and lifted him half off his feet. "You're mad or drunk, damn you! There's no white man here. I found these emeralds and they're mine. No man can take them away from me."

Realizing that something out of the ordinary had taken place, the blacks quit their work and listened attentively. Though they could not follow the swift interchange of words between the two white men, they understood enough to sharpen their fears and apprehensions.

Kivlin struggled helplessly in DeKraft's grasp. "I tell you I saw him," he whined. "Took my gun away from me, he did. Talked to that bloody beast of a lion and the lion understood. It's got me, I tell you. It ain't natural!"

A vague, disturbing theory began to form in DeKraft's brain. Then he noted that the blacks had ceased work and were whispering furtively to one another. How much of the conversation they had heard and understood, he did not know. But whatever it was, it was too much. This crazy story of Kivlin's if it got about, would be enough to blow his camp to hell.

W

ith an oath he sprang down to the edge of the stream, brandishing his whip. He played it about him indiscriminately for a moment and the muttering natives protestingly resumed their labors. With a last warning of the evil that would befall them if they stopped work again, DeKraft returned to Kivlin.

"You've started something with your fool talk," he said savagely. "Let's get out of here." With a violent shove he propelled Kivlin forward and they made for their tent.

There in the comparative seclusion of the shelter, Kivlin told his tale, finishing with the warning that Ka-Zar had given him.

DeKraft sat for a long time in silence when the story was done. In the space of a moment his brain bridged five long years of time to another day in the jungle and to another clearing no more than three miles removed from the one he was then in. There had been a burning lean-to--a dying man on the ground with two bullets in his chest--and a cub of a kid standing against the point of a native spear.

DeKraft remembered the details of that scene clearly. He had been on the point of murdering the kid when the lion had charged. He had fired, missed and fled with the roar of the lion in his ears. Was it possible that the kid hadn't been killed? Was it possible that he had formed some strange, unbelievable pact with the lion?

DeKraft's camp stool crashed to the ground as he rose swiftly. By God! He would find out. He examined his automatic carefully; he picked up a rifle and examined that with equal thoroughness.

"Where you going?" asked Kivlin.

"You stay here," answered DeKraft as he started for the flap of the tent. "And keep your mouth shut. I'm going to lay your jungle god low."

P

repared for any emergency, DeKraft made his way cautiously through the jungle and came at last to the clearing that had been occupied by the mad hermit he had murdered five years before. Though nothing untoward had happened during his short trek, his nerves were shaky and on edge as he stood at the fringe of the encroaching forest and surveyed the small glade.

He was not bothered by the ghosts of the dead past. What worried him more were the possibilities of the immediate present and future.

Cautiously he looked about. The clearing had not changed. The charred remnants of the lean-to, overgrown with jungle grass, still stood in the center of the glade. There was not one sign of life or occupancy about the place and his spirits rose.

Kivlin was mad, he mused. The heat had gotten him, probably.

Then with rifle ready, he stepped forward to make a closer inspection of his surroundings. He had taken but two cautious strides when he stopped abruptly. For there at his very feet were two low mounds of earth and stone. They were unmistakably graves.

It was not this, so much, that startled DeKraft out of his newfound assurance. It was the fact that both graves were covered with flowers--flowers that were fresh--flowers that had been picked no more than a few hours before!

DeKraft retreated hurriedly back to the protecting shelter of the encircling trees. And he was a very thoughtful and troubled man as he made his way cautiously back to his camp.

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