They saw Tarzan rise from the grasses and leap upon a young buck. 'His knife flashed in the sun, and both fell, disappearing in the grass. The four watchers were engrossed by this primitive drama—the primordial hunter stalking and killing his quarry. Thus it must have been ages and ages ago.
Finally Jerry said, "Well, let's get going."
"Geeze!" Shrimp exclaimed, pointing. "Lookut!"
They looked. Buto had arisen and was peering this way and that with his dull little eyes. But he was listening and scenting the wind, too.
"Don't move," whispered Jerry.
"An' they ain't no trees," breathed Shrimp. He was right. In their immediate vicinity there were no trees.
"Don't move," cautioned Jerry again. "If he's going to charge, he'll charge anything that moves."
"Here he comes," said Bubonovitch. The rhino was walking toward them. He seemed more puzzled than angry. His dim vision had, perhaps, discovered something foreign to the scene. Something he could neither hear nor smell. And curiosity prompted him to investigate.
The three men, by one accord, moved cautiously between Corrie and the slowly oncoming beast. It was a tense moment. If Buto charged, someone would be hurt, probably killed. They watched the creature with straining eyes. They saw the little tail go up and the head down as the rhino broke into a trot. He had seen them and was coming straight for them. Suddenly he was galloping. "This is it," said Jerry.
At the same instant, Shrimp leaped away from them and ran diagonally across the path of the charging brute. And the rhino swerved and went for him. Shrimp ran as he had never run before; but he couldn't run as fast as a horse, and the rhino could.
Horror-stricken, the others watched. Horror-stricken and helpless. Then they saw Tarzan. He was running to meet the man and the beast, who were headed directly toward him. But what could he do? the watchers asked themselves. What could two relatively puny men do against those tons of savage flesh and bone?
The beast was close behind Shrimp now and Tarzan was only a few yards away. Then Shrimp stumbled and fell. Come covered her eyes with her hands. Jerry and Bubono-vitch, released as though from a momentary paralysis, started running toward the scene of certain tragedy.
Corrie, impelled against her will, removed her hands from her eyes. She saw the rhino's head go down as though to gore the prostrate man now practically beneath its front feet.
Then Tarzan leaped, turning in air, and alighted astride the beast's shoulders. The diversion was enough to distract the animal's attention from Shrimp. It galloped over him, bucking to dislodge the man-thing on its back.
Tarzan held his seat long enough to plunge his knife through the thick hide directly behind the head and sever the brute's spinal cord. Paralyzed, it stumbled to the ground. A moment later it was dead.
Soon the entire party was gathered around the kill. A relieved and, perhaps, a slightly trembling party. Tarzan turned to Shrimp. "That was one of the bravest things I ever saw done, sergeant," he said.
"Shrimp didn't rate medals for nothing, Colonel," said Bubonovitch.
Chapter 10
THEY were now well supplied with meat—too well. A deer and a rhinoceros for five people seemed more than ample. Tarzan had taken some choice cuts from the young buck and cut the hump from the rhino. Now, beside the river, he had built a fire in a hole that he had dug. Over another fire, the others were grilling bits of venison.
"You ain't goin' to eat that are you?" asked Shrimp, pointing at the big hunk of rhino meat with the skin still attached. "In a couple of hours you'll eat it," said Tarzan. "You'll like it."
When he had a bed of hot coals in the bottom of the hole he had dug, he laid the hump in with the skin side down, covered it with leaves and then with the dirt he had excavated.
Taking a piece of venison, he withdrew a little from the others, squatted down on his haunches and tore off pieces of the raw flesh with his strong teeth. The others had long since ceased to pay attention to this seeming idiosyncrasy. They had, on occasion, eaten their meat raw; but they still preferred it cooked—usually charred on the outside, raw on the inside, and covered with dirt. They were no longer fastidious.
"What was on your mind, Shrimp, while you were legging it in front of Rhinoceros Dicerorhinus sumatrensis?" asked Bubonovitch. "You sure hit nothing but the high spots. I'll bet you did the hundred yards in under eight seconds."
"I'll tell you wot I was thinkin'. I'd started on Ave Maria w'en I seen it was nothin' less 'n Whirlaway on my tail. I was thinkin' if I could just finish that one Ave Maria before it caught up with me, I might have a chance. Then I stumbled. But the Blessed Mary heard me and saved me."
"I thought it was Tarzan," said Bubonovitch.
"Of course it was Tarzan; but whoinell do you suppose got him there in time, you dope?"
"There are no atheists at the business end of a rhinoceros," said Jerry.
"I prayed, too," said Corrie. "I prayed that God would not let anything happen to you who were risking you life to save ours. You are a very brave man, sergeant, for you must have known that you didn't have one chance in a million."
Rosetti was very unhappy. He wished that they would talk about something else. "You got me all wrong," he said. "I just ain't got no sense. If I had, I'd a run the other way; but I didn't think of it in time. The guy who had the guts was the colonel. Think of killin' a deer an' dat rhino wit nothin' but a knife." This gave him an idea for changing the subject. "An' think of all dat meat lyin' out there an' the poor suckers back home got to have ration coupons an' then they can't get enough."
"Think of the starving Armenians," said Bubonovitch.
"All the Armenians I ever seen could starve as far as I'm concerned," said Shrimp. He took another piece of venison and lapsed into silence.
Jerry had been watching Corrie when he could snatch a quick look without actually staring at her. He saw her tearing at the meat with her fine, white teeth. He recalled what she had said about hating the Japs: "I want to hate them. I often reproach myself because I think I am not hating bitterly enough." He thought, what kind of a woman will she be after the war—after all that she has gone through?
He looked at Tarzan tearing at raw meat. He looked at the others, their hands and faces smeared with the juices of the venison, dirty with the char of the burned portions.
"I wonder what sort of a world this will be after peace comes," he said. "What kind of people will we be? Most of us are so young that we will be able to remember little else than war—killing, hate, blood. I wonder if we can ever settle down to the humdrum existence of civilian life."
"Say! If I ever get my feet under a desk again," said Bubonovitch, "I hope God strikes me dead if I ever take them out again."
"That's what you think now, Bum. And I hope you're right. For myself, I don't know. Sometimes I hate flying, but it's in my blood by now. Maybe it isn't just the flying—it's the thrill and excitement, possibly. And if that is true, then it's the fighting and the killing that I like. I don't know. I hope not. It will be a hell of a world if a great many young fellows feel that way.
"And take Corrie. She has learned to hate. She was never made for that. That is what war and the Japs have done to her. I wonder if hate twists a person's soul out of shape, so that he's never the same as he was before—if, like an incipient cancer, it eats at the roots of character without one's being aware that one has a cancer."
"I think you need not worry," said Tarzan. "Man readily adapts himself to changed conditions. The young, especially, react quickly to changes of environment and circumstance. You will take your proper places in life when peace comes. Only the weak and the warped will be changed for the worse."
"Wit all de different ways of killin' and maimin' wot we've learnt, like sneakin' up behind a guy an' cuttin' his throat or garrotin' him an' a lot of worse t'ings than dat even, they's goin' to be a lot of bozos startin' Murder Incorporateds all over de U. S., take it from me," said Shrimp. "I knows dem guys. I didn't live all my life in Chi fer nuttin'."