"Will the apes come after us?" Jean asked Tarzan.
"No," Tarzan said. "There are rifles here. They know what rifles do. They lose interest rather quickly, as well. They will be fighting amongst themselves to establish a new king."
Jean considered what Tarzan had said. She began to understand what all the fighting had been about. One ruler had been usurped, only to be defeated by Tarzan.
At that moment, Jad-bal-ja entered the campsite. He padded over to Tarzan and lay down at his feet, and put his great head between his paws.
"He looks mopey," Jean said.
"He wanted to fight the great apes," Tarzan said. "That and eat one. He is hungry."
"Then it would not be a good idea to pet him right now," Jean said.
"It is never a good idea," Tarzan said. "He is a lion, and a lion is always a lion."
"I've never seen anything like it," Jean said. "You were actually communicating with those apes, weren't you?"
"Yes," said Tarzan. "I was raised by a tribe not unlike them."
"You're kidding," said Hanson.
"No," said Tarzan. "I am not kidding."
Hanson studied Tarzan a moment. "No. I can see you aren't.
"You communicate with the lion, too," Jean said. "Do you think he fully understands you?"
"I know he does," Tarzan said. "I speak to him in the language of the great apes. My first language."
Hanson thought that explained Tarzan's stiff almost formal use of English. His strange accent-the accent of the beasts.
Jean was warming to the subject, excited. "What about other animals?" she asked. "Can you speak with them? Are they ... your friends?"
"Animals in their native state," replied Tarzan, "make few friends in the sense that humans do, even among their own kind. But I have friends among them." Tarzan waved a hand at the golden lion. "Jad-bal-ja here would fight to the death to protect me. And I him. Tantor the elephant is my friend, as is Nkima."
"Nkima?" Jean asked.
"A small monkey that is usually with me," Tarzan said. "Where he is now, I can't say. He often wanders off. But when he gets in trouble, or is afraid, he often comes racing to me for protection. He is a coward, and an outrageous braggart, but I'm fond of him."
"You seem to prefer animals to humans," Jean said.
"I do."
"But that's because you've had unpleasant experiences with men," Hanson said. "Am I right?"
"You are," Tarzan said. "But let me remind you that you, as of recent, have had some very unpleasant experiences with men."
"That's true," Jean said. "But I wouldn't call my experience with the apes a picnic."
Tarzan smiled. "Ultimately, man and beast are not all that different."
Hanson said, "It's amazing. Everything they say about you ... the legends ... they're true."
Tarzan smiled, and this time it was a true smile. "Nothing is ever completely true about a legend," he said.
Chapter 5
WILSON LAID THE bundle on the ground in front of Gromvitch and Cannon and removed the oilcloth from the rifles, ammunition, and supplies. There were four rifles, two handguns, a limited supply of ammunition, some basic rations, and a canteen of water.
"We do some hunting, find some water, there's enough ammunition there to get us to the coast," Gromvitch said.
"I'm not going to the coast," Wilson said. "You do what you want. I'm going after this guy that kicked my butt. I don't take kindly to it. I was a heavyweight contender. I figure I can give him a little more for his money next time."
"I don't know," Gromvitch said. "Way I look at it is, what the hell? We got some guns, some food. We didn't desert the Legion post just to hike around in the jungle."
Wilson said, "We were going to check out that story Blomberg told us, remember? Make some dough, pool our resources. That way, when we left Africa, it would be with more than what's left of our uniforms."
"Yeah," Cannon said, "and now we don't got to split nothing with Talent."
Wilson glared at him. "That makes you pretty happy."
"Well, we won't," Cannon said. "I didn't kill him. It's just he's dead and now we get everything. We split three ways. I didn't like him anyway. Way he held his head and stuff, kind of gave me the creeps."
"I say we're splittin' nothing," Gromvitch said. "We haven't got anything to prove Blomberg wasn't nothin' more than wind. That talk sounded pretty good back at the Legion post, but now, with him dead and just having general directions, and us being in the actual jungle, I don't know."
"He got himself killed 'cause he was a fool," Cannon said.
"He got himself killed 'cause Talent killed him," Gromvitch said. "Carved him like a turkey."
"That was unfortunate," Wilson said. "But I still believe Blomberg's story."
And he did. Wilson had listened to Blomberg talk about the lost city at the Legion post. Blomberg claimed to have been there before becoming a Legionnaire. He wanted to desert and go back there, plunder the place, and become rich. He claimed there were people living there, mining gold, and had been for well over a couple hundred years.
Blomberg said he had been on an ivory-hunting safari, and had gotten lost and stumbled upon the city, had been taken captive by the natives who were mining it, but escaped. He had a handful of gold nuggets to prove it.
That's why Wilson had been eager to leave the Legion post. Blomberg was going to lead them there and they were all going to become rich together. But then Talent and Blomberg had gotten into it over a can of beans-a can of beans! And Talent, in a moment of mindless savagery, had cut Blomberg from gut to gill. Their living map had bled out his knowledge on the jungle floor.
"You got to think about it," Gromvitch said. "That story of his. A lost city of gold, mined by natives. How many times you heard that one? How come we got to believe this story? Blomberg, he didn't strike me as a man that got his feelings hurt when he told a lie."
"What about them nuggets?" Cannon said.
"Man can come by gold lots of ways," Gromvitch said.
"I believe him," Wilson said again. "I got nothing outside, or inside Africa 'less I come out of here with some jack. I don't find any city, I can maybe hunt some ivory. Make enough to get to the States, maybe have a little in the kitty when I get there. I go out now, all I got is the rags on my back. I might as well go back to the Legion post."
"Since I figure they'll hang me if I do go back," Gromvitch said, "that's an option I'm rulin' out. But the way I see it, we got nothin'. Don't know there's nothin' out there, and nothin' split four ways or three or two, it's all the same. It comes up nothin'. Nothin' plus nothin' times three, that's nothin'. Right now, we got a little food, and guns to get some more, and I say we head for the coast."
"It's not just the gold," Wilson said. "I want this guy who kicked my face. And I want to kick his face. Maybe stomp it a little."
"No offense," Gromvitch said, "but havin' been there, I'd just as soon we not see that guy again. He tore us apart like paper, and I don't even think he was good and mad."
"I'm with Wilson," Cannon said. "That damn wild man and his lion. Who does he think he is, ordering us out of Africa like he owned it? Besides, I don't like no guy in his underwear beatin' me up. Somehow that ain't decent, you know?"
Wilson took some dried meat from the oilcloth wrapping, passed it around to the others. He said, "What I know is this. All the landmarks Blomberg talked about... Ones I remember. We've come to 'em. And the land's slopin' like he said. It's such a gradual drop, unless you're lookin' for it, you might not notice it right away. It's just like Blomberg said."
"Maybe," Gromvitch said.
"Other night," Wilson said, "before all this bad business, I climbed a tree and looked, and I tell you, the land's slopin'. It's fallin' in the north. That makes me think Blomberg wasn't just tellin' us a windy. And I don't think he'd have stumbled around out here with us all that time if he hadn't been tellin' the truth."