They came up to her smiling and friendly. "You sure had a narrow squeak," said Spike. "We seen it from the top of that rise, but we couldn't have done nothing to help you even if we'd had guns-we was too far away."
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"We was tryin' to find our way to railhead," explained Spike. "We been lost fer weeks."
Troll was recovering the gun and ammunition from the dead gunbearer, and Spike was eyeing the splendid rifle that Gonfala carried.
"We're on our way to railhead," she explained. "You can come back to camp with me and go on to railhead with us."
"Won't that be nice!" exclaimed Spike. "Say, that's a fine gun you got there. Lemme see it a minute." Thoughtlessly, she handed the weapon over to him; then she stepped over to the body of the dead gunbearer.
"He's quite dead," she said. "It's too bad. Your men can carry him back to camp."
"We ain't goin' back to your camp," said Spike.
"Oh," she exclaimed. "Well, what am I to do? I can't take him back alone."
"You ain't goin' back neither."
"What do you mean?"
"Just wot I says: You ain't goin' back to your camp. You're comin' with us."
"Oh, no I'm not."
"Listen, Gonfala," said Spike. "We don't want no trouble with you. We don't want to hurt you none; so you might as well come along peaceful like. We need you."
"What for?" Her voice was brave, but her heart sank within her.
"We got the Gonfal, but we can't make it work without you."
"Work?"
"Yes, work. We're goin' to set ourselves up like Mafka did and be kings-just as soon as we find a piece o' country we like. We'll live like kings, too, off the fat of the land. You can be queen-have everything you want. Maybe, even, I'll marry you." He grinned.
"The hell you will," snapped Troll. "She belongs to me as much as she does to you."
Gonfala cringed. "I belong to neither of you. You are both fools. If you take me away, you will be followed and killed; or, at the least, both I and the Gonfal will be taken from you. If you have any sense you will let me go; then you can take the Gonfal to Europe. They tell me that there the money that it would bring would buy you anything that you wanted all the rest of your lives."
"A fat chance we'd have gettin' rid o' that rock in Europe," said Troll. "No, sister, we got it all figgered out. You're comin' with us, an' that's that."
Chapter 15. Clews
VAN EYK DROPPED his lion with the second shot, and a few minutes later he heard the three shots fired by Gonfala. Wood, having had no luck and attracted by the report of van Eyk's gun, joined him. He was still apprehensive concerning Gonfala's safety; and now that van Eyk had his trophy, he suggested that they send the carcass back to camp while they joined Gonfala. Van Eyk agreed, and they set out in the direction from which they had heard the shots.
They searched for two hours without result, often calling her name and occasionally discharging their rifles; then, more by chance than design, they stumbled upon the little swale where Gonfala had come upon her lion. There it lay upon the body of the dead gunbearer, but Gonfala was nowhere to be seen.
The ground was hard and stony, giving no indication to the untrained eyes of the white men that others beside Gonfala and her gunbearer had been there; so they assumed that, having no one to cut off or carry the head of the lion back to camp, the girl had returned there herself alone; and that, having come from another direction, they had missed her. They were, therefore, not unduly apprehensive until after they reached the camp and discovered that she had not returned.
By that time it was late in the afternoon; but Wood insisted upon taking up the search at once, and van Eyk seconded the suggestion. They divided the safari into three sections. Van Eyk and Wood each heading one set out on slightly diverging trails in the general direction that Gonfala had taken in the morning, while the third, under a headman, was ordered to remain in camp, keeping a large fire burning and occasionally discharging a rifle to guide Gonfala if she should return toward camp without meeting either Wood or van Eyk. And all during the night Gonfala and her captors heard the faint report of rifles far to the south.
It was around noon of the following day that, exhausted and disheartened, Wood and van Eyk returned to camp.
"I'm afraid it's no use, old man," said the latter, sympathetically; "if she'd been alive she'd have heard our rifles and replied."
"I can't believe that she's dead," said Wood; "I won't believe it!"
Van Eyk shook his head. "I know it's tough, but you've got to face facts and reason. She couldn't be alive in this lion country now."
"But she had two guns," insisted Wood. "You saw that she took the gun and ammunition from the gunbearer after he was killed. If she'd been attacked by a lion, she'd have fired at least once; and we never heard a shot."
"She might have been taken unaware-stalked after dark and struck down before she knew a lion was near. You've seen 'em charge; you know it's all over in a second if you aren't ready for 'em."
Wood nodded. "Yes, I know. I suppose you're right, but I won't give up-not yet."
"Well, Stan, I've got to get back home. If I thought there was the slightest chance I'd stay, but I know there's not. You'd better come along and try to forget it as soon as you can. You might never, here; but back home it'll be different."
"There's no use, Van; you go along. I'm going to stay."
"But what can you do alone?"
"I won't try to do anything alone. I'm going back and find Tarzan; he'll help me. If any one can find her or where she was killed it's he."
Ten days later Wood plodded wearily into the camp that he had not left except in daily fruitless searches for his Gonfala. He had not gone back to enlist Tarzan's aid; but had, instead, sent a long letter to the ape-man by a runner. Every day for ten days he had combed the country for miles around, and each day he had become more convinced that Gonfala was not dead. He had found no trace of a human kill by lions, no shred of clothing, no sign of the two guns or the ammunition that Gonfala had had with her; though he had found plenty of lion kills-zebra, antelope, wildebeest. But he had found something else that gave support to his belief that Gonfala might be alive-the camp of Spike and Troll. It lay only a short distance north from his own camp. Gonfala must have pressed close to it the morning that she started out to hunt. What type of men had camped there, he could not know; but he assumed that they were natives; for there were no signs of white men-no empty tins, no discarded scrap of clothing, no indications that a tent had been pitched.
Perhaps, then, Gonfala's fate had been worse than the merciful death the king of beasts would have accorded her. That thought goaded him to desperation, and filled his mind with red imaginings of vengeance. Such were his thoughts as he threw himself upon his cot in hopeless bafflement to reproach himself as he had a thousand thousand times for having permitted Gonfala to hunt alone that day-how long ago it seemed, how many ages of bitter suffering!
A figure darkened the doorway of the tent, and Wood turned to look. Wood sprang to his feet. "Tarzan! God, I thought you'd never come."
"I came as soon as I got your letter. You have been searching, of course; what have you found?"
Wood told him of his failure to find any evidence that Gonfala had fallen prey to lions but that he had found a camp in which there had been men recently.
"That is interesting," commented Tarzan. "It is too late now to investigate that today; tomorrow I'll have a look at it."
Early the next morning Wood and the ape-man were at the camp from which Spike and Troll had been attracted by the campfire that had led them to the discovery of the presence of Gonfala. Tarzan examined the ground and the surroundings minutely. His lifetime of experience, his trained powers of observation, his sensitive nostrils revealed facts that were a sealed book to the American. The charred wood in the dead fires, the crushed grass, the refuse each told him something.