6

Tarzan the Terrible

by Edgar R. Burroughs

6, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE by Edgar R. Burroughs
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The Tor-o-don

PAN-AT-LEE slept--the troubled sleep, of physical and nervous
exhaustion, filled with weird dreamings. She dreamed that she
slept beneath a great tree in the bottom of the Kor-ul-gryf and
that one of the fearsome beasts was creeping upon her but she
could not open her eyes nor move. She tried to scream but no
sound issued from her lips. She felt the thing touch her throat,
her breast, her arm, and there it closed and seemed to be
dragging her toward it. With a super-human effort of will she
opened her eyes. In the instant she knew that she was dreaming
and that quickly the hallucination of the dream would fade--it
had happened to her many times before. But it persisted. In the
dim light that filtered into the dark chamber she saw a form
beside her, she felt hairy fingers upon her and a hairy breast
against which she was being drawn. Jad-ben-Otho! this was no
dream. And then she screamed and tried to fight the thing from
her; but her scream was answered by a low growl and another hairy
hand seized her by the hair of the head. The beast rose now upon
its hind legs and dragged her from the cave to the moonlit recess
without and at the same instant she saw the figure of what she
took to be a Ho-don rise above the outer edge of the niche.

The beast that held her saw it too and growled ominously but it
did not relinquish its hold upon her hair. It crouched as though
waiting an attack, and it increased the volume and frequency of
its growls until the horrid sounds reverberated through the
gorge, drowning even the deep bellowings of the beasts below,
whose mighty thunderings had broken out anew with the sudden
commotion from the high-flung cave. The beast that held her
crouched and the creature that faced it crouched also, and
growled--as hideously as the other. Pan-at-lee trembled. This was
no Ho-don and though she feared the Ho-don she feared this thing
more, with its catlike crouch and its beastly growls. She was
lost--that Pan-at-lee knew. The two things might fight for her,
but whichever won she was lost. Perhaps, during the battle, if it
came to that, she might find the opportunity to throw herself
over into the Kor-ul-gryf.

The thing that held her she had recognized now as a Tor-o-don, but
the other thing she could not place, though in the moonlight she
could see it very distinctly. It had no tail. She could see its
hands and its feet, and they were not the hands and feet of the
races of Pal-ul-don. It was slowly closing upon the Tor-o-don and
in one hand it held a gleaming knife. Now it spoke and to
Pan-at-lee's terror was added an equal weight of consternation.

"When it leaves go of you," it said, "as it will presently to
defend itself, run quickly behind me, Pan-at-lee, and go to the
cave nearest the pegs you descended from the cliff top. Watch
from there. If I am defeated you will have time to escape this
slow thing; if I am not I will come to you there. I am Om-at's
friend and yours."

The last words took the keen edge from Pan-at-lee's terror; but
she did not understand. How did this strange creature know her
name? How did it know that she had descended the pegs by a
certain cave? It must, then, have been here when she came.
Pan-at-lee was puzzled.

"Who are you?" she asked, "and from whence do you come?"

"I am Tarzan," he replied, "and just now I came from Om-at, of
Kor-ul-ja, in search of you."

Om-at, gund of Kor-ul-ja! What wild talk was this? She would have
questioned him further, but now he was approaching the Tor-o-don
and the latter was screaming and growling so loudly as to drown
the sound of her voice. And then it did what the strange creature
had said that it would do--it released its hold upon her hair as
it prepared to charge. Charge it did and in those close quarters
there was no room to fence for openings. Instantly the two beasts
locked in deadly embrace, each seeking the other's throat.
Pan-at-lee watched, taking no advantage of the opportunity to
escape which their preoccupation gave her. She watched and
waited, for into her savage little brain had come the resolve to
pin her faith to this strange creature who had unlocked her heart
with those four words--"I am Om-at's friend!" And so she waited,
with drawn knife, the opportunity to do her bit in the
vanquishing of the Tor-o-don. That the newcomer could do it
unaided she well knew to be beyond the realms of possibility, for
she knew well the prowess of the beastlike man with whom it
fought. There were not many of them in Pal-ul-don, but what few
there were were a terror to the women of the Waz-don and the
Ho-don, for the old Tor-o-don bulls roamed the mountains and the
valleys of Pal-ul-don between rutting seasons and woe betide the
women who fell in their paths.

With his tail the Tor-o-don sought one of Tarzan's ankles, and
finding it, tripped him. The two fell heavily, but so agile was
the ape-man and so quick his powerful muscles that even in
falling he twisted the beast beneath him, so that Tarzan fell on
top and now the tail that had tripped him sought his throat as
had the tail of In-tan, the Kor-ul-lul. In the effort of turning
his antagonist's body during the fall Tarzan had had to relinquish
his knife that he might seize the shaggy body with both hands and
now the weapon lay out of reach at the very edge of the recess.
Both hands were occupied for the moment in fending off the
clutching fingers that sought to seize him and drag his throat
within reach of his foe's formidable fangs and now the tail was
seeking its deadly hold with a formidable persistence that would
not be denied.

Pan-at-lee hovered about, breathless, her dagger ready, but there
was no opening that did not also endanger Tarzan, so constantly
were the two duelists changing their positions. Tarzan felt the
tail slowly but surely insinuating itself about his neck though
he had drawn his head down between the muscles of his shoulders
in an effort to protect this vulnerable part. The battle seemed
to be going against him for the giant beast against which he
strove would have been a fair match in weight and strength for
Bolgani, the gorilla. And knowing this he suddenly exerted a
single super-human effort, thrust far apart the giant hands and
with the swiftness of a striking snake buried his fangs in the
jugular of the Tor-o-don. At the same instant the creature's tail
coiled about his own throat and then commenced a battle royal of
turning and twisting bodies as each sought to dislodge the fatal
hold of the other, but the acts of the ape-man were guided by a
human brain and thus it was that the rolling bodies rolled in the
direction that Tarzan wished--toward the edge of the recess.

The choking tail had shut the air from his lungs, he knew that
his gasping lips were parted and his tongue protruding; and now
his brain reeled and his sight grew dim; but not before he
reached his goal and a quick hand shot out to seize the knife
that now lay within reach as the two bodies tottered perilously
upon the brink of the chasm.

With all his remaining strength the ape-man drove home the
blade--once, twice, thrice, and then all went black before him as
he felt himself, still in the clutches of the Tor-o-don, topple
from the recess.

Fortunate it was for Tarzan that Pan-at-lee had not obeyed his
injunction to make good her escape while he engaged the
Tor-o-don, for it was to this fact that he owed his life. Close
beside the struggling forms during the brief moments of the
terrific climax she had realized every detail of the danger to
Tarzan with which the emergency was fraught and as she saw the
two rolling over the outer edge of the niche she seized the
ape-man by an ankle at the same time throwing herself prone upon
the rocky floor. The muscles of the Tor-o-don relaxed in death
with the last thrust of Tarzan's knife and with its hold upon the
ape-man released it shot from sight into the gorge below.

It was with infinite difficulty that Pan-at-lee retained her hold
upon the ankle of her protector, but she did so and then, slowly,
she sought to drag the dead weight back to the safety of the
niche. This, however, was beyond her strength and she could but
hold on tightly, hoping that some plan would suggest itself
before her powers of endurance failed. She wondered if, after
all, the creature was already dead, but that she could not bring
herself to believe--and if not dead how long it would be before
he regained consciousness. If he did not regain it soon he never
would regain it, that she knew, for she felt her fingers numbing
to the strain upon them and slipping, slowly, slowly, from their
hold. It was then that Tarzan regained consciousness. He could
not know what power upheld him, but he felt that whatever it was
it was slowly releasing its hold upon his ankle. Within easy
reach of his hands were two pegs and these he seized upon just as
Pan-at-lee's fingers slipped from their hold.

As it was he came near to being precipitated into the gorge
--only his great strength saved him. He was upright now and his
feet found other pegs. His first thought was of his foe. Where
was he? Waiting above there to finish him? Tarzan looked up just
as the frightened face of Pan-at-lee appeared over the threshold
of the recess.

"You live?" she cried.

"Yes," replied Tarzan. "Where is the shaggy one?"

Pan-at-lee pointed downward. "There," she said, "dead."

"Good!" exclaimed the ape-man, clambering to her side. "You are
unharmed?" he asked.

"You came just in time," replied Pan-at-lee; "but who are you and
how did you know that I was here and what do you know of Om-at
and where did you come from and what did you mean by calling
Om-at, gund?"

"Wait, wait," cried Tarzan; "one at a time. My, but you are all
alike--the shes of the tribe of Kerchak, the ladies of England,
and their sisters of Pal-ul-don. Have patience and I will try to
tell you all that you wish to know. Four of us set out with Om-at
from Kor-ul-ja to search for you. We were attacked by the
Kor-ul-lul and separated. I was taken prisoner, but escaped.
Again I stumbled upon your trail and followed it, reaching the
summit of this cliff just as the hairy one was climbing up after
you. I was coming to investigate when I heard your scream--the
rest you know."

"But you called Om-at, gund of Kor-ul-ja," she insisted. "Es-sat
is gund."

"Es-sat is dead," explained the ape-man. "Om-at slew him and now
Om-at is gund. Om-at came back seeking you. He found Es-sat in
your cave and killed him."

"Yes," said the girl, "Es-sat came to my cave and I struck him
down with my golden breastplates and escaped."

"And a lion pursued you," continued Tarzan, "and you leaped from
the cliff into Kor-ul-lul, but why you were not killed is beyond
me."

"Is there anything beyond you?" exclaimed Pan-at-lee. "How could
you know that a lion pursued me and that I leaped from the cliff
and not know that it was the pool of deep water below that saved
me?"

"I would have known that, too, had not the Kor-ul-lul come then
and prevented me continuing upon your trail. But now I would ask
you a question--by what name do you call the thing with which I
just fought?"

"It was a Tor-o-don," she replied. "I have seen but one before.
They are terrible creatures with the cunning of man and the
ferocity of a beast. Great indeed must be the warrior who slays
one single-handed." She gazed at him in open admiration.

"And now," said Tarzan, "you must sleep, for tomorrow we shall
return to Kor-ul-ja and Om-at, and I doubt that you have had much
rest these two nights."

Pan-at-lee, lulled by a feeling of security, slept peacefully
into the morning while Tarzan stretched himself upon the hard
floor of the recess just outside her cave.

The sun was high in the heavens when he awoke; for two hours it
had looked down upon another heroic figure miles away--the figure
of a godlike man fighting his way through the hideous morass that
lies like a filthy moat defending Pal-ul-don from the creatures
of the outer world. Now waist deep in the sucking ooze, now
menaced by loathsome reptiles, the man advanced only by virtue of
Herculean efforts gaining laboriously by inches along the devious
way that he was forced to choose in selecting the least
precarious footing. Near the center of the morass was open
water--slimy, green-hued water. He reached it at last after more
than two hours of such effort as would have left an ordinary man
spent and dying in the sticky mud, yet he was less than halfway
across the marsh. Greasy with slime and mud was his smooth,
brown hide, and greasy with slime and mud was his beloved Enfield
that had shone so brightly in the first rays of the rising sun.

He paused a moment upon the edge of the open water and then
throwing himself forward struck out to swim across. He swam with
long, easy, powerful strokes calculated less for speed than for
endurance, for his was, primarily, a test of the latter, since
beyond the open water was another two hours or more of gruelling
effort between it and solid ground. He was, perhaps, halfway
across and congratulating himself upon the ease of the
achievement of this portion of his task when there arose from the
depths directly in his path a hideous reptile, which, with
wide-distended jaws, bore down upon him, hissing shrilly.

Tarzan arose and stretched, expanded his great chest and drank in
deep draughts of the fresh morning air. His clear eyes scanned
the wondrous beauties of the landscape spread out before them.
Directly below lay Kor-ul-gryf, a dense, somber green of gently
moving tree tops. To Tarzan it was neither grim, nor
forbidding--it was jungle, beloved jungle. To his right there
spread a panorama of the lower reaches of the Valley of
Jad-ben-Otho, with its winding streams and its blue lakes.
Gleaming whitely in the sunlight were scattered groups of
dwellings--the feudal strongholds of the lesser chiefs of the
Ho-don. A-lur, the City of Light, he could not see as it was
hidden by the shoulder of the cliff in which the deserted village
lay.

For a moment Tarzan gave himself over to that spiritual enjoyment
of beauty that only the man-mind may attain and then Nature
asserted herself and the belly of the beast called aloud that it
was hungry. Again Tarzan looked down at Kor-ul-gryf. There was
the jungle! Grew there a jungle that would not feed Tarzan? The
ape-man smiled and commenced the descent to the gorge. Was there
danger there? Of course. Who knew it better than Tarzan? In all
jungles lies death, for life and death go hand in hand and where
life teems death reaps his fullest harvest. Never had Tarzan met
a creature of the jungle with which he could not cope--sometimes
by virtue of brute strength alone, again by a combination of
brute strength and the cunning of the man-mind; but Tarzan had
never met a gryf.

He had heard the bellowings in the gorge the night before after
he had lain down to sleep and he had meant to ask Pan-at-lee this
morning what manner of beast so disturbed the slumbers of its
betters. He reached the foot of the cliff and strode into the
jungle and here he halted, his keen eyes and ears watchful and
alert, his sensitive nostrils searching each shifting air current
for the scent spoor of game. Again he advanced deeper into the
wood, his light step giving forth no sound, his bow and arrows in
readiness. A light morning breeze was blowing from up the gorge
and in this direction he bent his steps. Many odors impinged upon
his organs of scent. Some of these he classified without effort,
but others were strange--the odors of beasts and of birds, of
trees and shrubs and flowers with which he was unfamiliar. He
sensed faintly the reptilian odor that he had learned to connect
with the strange, nocturnal forms that had loomed dim and bulky
on several occasions since his introduction to Pal-ul-don.

And then, suddenly he caught plainly the strong, sweet odor of
Bara, the deer. Were the belly vocal, Tarzan's would have given a
little cry of joy, for it loved the flesh of Bara. The ape-man
moved rapidly, but cautiously forward. The prey was not far
distant and as the hunter approached it, he took silently to the
trees and still in his nostrils was the faint reptilian odor that
spoke of a great creature which he had never yet seen except as a
denser shadow among the dense shadows of the night; but the odor
was of such a faintness as suggests to the jungle bred the
distance of absolute safety.

And now, moving noiselessly, Tarzan came within sight of Bara
drinking at a pool where the stream that waters Kor-ul-gryf
crosses an open place in the jungle. The deer was too far from
the nearest tree to risk a charge, so the ape-man must depend
upon the accuracy and force of his first arrow, which must drop
the deer in its tracks or forfeit both deer and shaft. Far back
came the right hand and the bow, that you or I might not move,
bent easily beneath the muscles of the forest god. There was a
singing twang and Bara, leaping high in air, collapsed upon the
ground, an arrow through his heart. Tarzan dropped to earth and
ran to his kill, lest the animal might even yet rise and escape;
but Bara was safely dead. As Tarzan stooped to lift it to his
shoulder there fell upon his ears a thunderous bellow that seemed
almost at his right elbow, and as his eyes shot in the direction
of the sound, there broke upon his vision such a creature as
paleontologists have dreamed as having possibly existed in the
dimmest vistas of Earth's infancy--a gigantic creature, vibrant
with mad rage, that charged, bellowing, upon him.

When Pan-at-lee awoke she looked out upon the niche in search of
Tarzan. He was not there. She sprang to her feet and rushed out,
looking down into Kor-ul-gryf guessing that he had gone down in
search of food and there she caught a glimpse of him disappearing
into the forest. For an instant she was panic-stricken. She knew
that he was a stranger in Pal-ul-don and that, so, he might not
realize the dangers that lay in that gorge of terror. Why did she
not call to him to return? You or I might have done so, but no
Pal-ul-don, for they know the ways of the gryf--they know the
weak eyes and the keen ears, and that at the sound of a human
voice they come. To have called to Tarzan, then, would but have
been to invite disaster and so she did not call. Instead, afraid
though she was, she descended into the gorge for the purpose of
overhauling Tarzan and warning him in whispers of his danger. It
was a brave act, since it was performed in the face of countless
ages of inherited fear of the creatures that she might be called
upon to face. Men have been decorated for less.

Pan-at-lee, descended from a long line of hunters, assumed that
Tarzan would move up wind and in this direction she sought his
tracks, which she soon found well marked, since he had made no
effort to conceal them. She moved rapidly until she reached the
point at which Tarzan had taken to the trees. Of course she knew
what had happened; since her own people were semi-arboreal; but
she could not track him through the trees, having no such
well-developed sense of scent as he.

She could but hope that he had continued on up wind and in this
direction she moved, her heart pounding in terror against her
ribs, her eyes glancing first in one direction and then another.
She had reached the edge of a clearing when two things
happened--she caught sight of Tarzan bending over a dead deer and
at the same instant a deafening roar sounded almost beside her.
It terrified her beyond description, but it brought no paralysis
of fear. Instead it galvanized her into instant action with the
result that Pan-at-lee swarmed up the nearest tree to the very
loftiest branch that would sustain her weight. Then she looked
down.

The thing that Tarzan saw charging him when the warning bellow
attracted his surprised eyes loomed terrifically monstrous before
him--monstrous and awe-inspiring; but it did not terrify Tarzan,
it only angered him, for he saw that it was beyond even his
powers to combat and that meant that it might cause him to lose
his kill, and Tarzan was hungry. There was but a single
alternative to remaining for annihilation and that was
flight--swift and immediate. And Tarzan fled, but he carried the
carcass of Bara, the deer, with him. He had not more than a dozen
paces start, but on the other hand the nearest tree was almost as
close. His greatest danger lay, he imagined, in the great,
towering height of the creature pursuing him, for even though he
reached the tree he would have to climb high in an incredibly
short time as, unless appearances were deceiving, the thing could
reach up and pluck him down from any branch under thirty feet
above the ground, and possibly from those up to fifty feet, if it
reared up on its hind legs.

But Tarzan was no sluggard and though the gryf was incredibly
fast despite its great bulk, it was no match for Tarzan, and when
it comes to climbing, the little monkeys gaze with envy upon the
feats of the ape-man. And so it was that the bellowing gryf came
to a baffled stop at the foot of the tree and even though he
reared up and sought to seize his prey among the branches, as
Tarzan had guessed he might, he failed in this also. And then,
well out of reach, Tarzan came to a stop and there, just above
him, he saw Pan-at-lee sitting, wide-eyed and trembling.

"How came you here?" he asked.

She told him. "You came to warn me!" he said. "It was very brave
and unselfish of you. I am chagrined that I should have been thus
surprised. The creature was up wind from me and yet I did not
sense its near presence until it charged. I cannot understand
it."

"It is not strange," said Pan-at-lee. "That is one of the
peculiarities of the gryf--it is said that man never knows of its
presence until it is upon him--so silently does it move despite
its great size."

"But I should have smelled it," cried Tarzan, disgustedly.

"Smelled it!" ejaculated Pan-at-lee. "Smelled it?"

"Certainly. How do you suppose I found this deer so quickly? And
I sensed the gryf, too, but faintly as at a great distance."
Tarzan suddenly ceased speaking and looked down at the bellowing
creature below them--his nostrils quivered as though searching
for a scent. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "I have it!"

"What?" asked Pan-at-lee.

"I was deceived because the creature gives off practically no
odor," explained the ape-man. "What I smelled was the faint aroma
that doubtless permeates the entire jungle because of the long
presence of many of the creatures--it is the sort of odor that
would remain for a long time, faint as it is.

"Pan-at-lee, did you ever hear of a triceratops? No? Well this
thing that you call a gryf is a triceratops and it has been
extinct for hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen its
skeleton in the museum in London and a figure of one restored. I
always thought that the scientists who did such work depended
principally upon an overwrought imagination, but I see that I was
wrong. This living thing is not an exact counterpart of the
restoration that I saw; but it is so similar as to be easily
recognizable, and then, too, we must remember that during the
ages that have elapsed since the paleontologist's specimen lived
many changes might have been wrought by evolution in the living
line that has quite evidently persisted in Pal-ul-don."

"Triceratops, London, paleo--I don't know what you are talking
about," cried Pan-at-lee.

Tarzan smiled and threw a piece of dead wood at the face of the
angry creature below them. Instantly the great bony hood over the
neck was erected and a mad bellow rolled upward from the gigantic
body. Full twenty feet at the shoulder the thing stood, a dirty
slate-blue in color except for its yellow face with the blue
bands encircling the eyes, the red hood with the yellow lining
and the yellow belly. The three parallel lines of bony
protuberances down the back gave a further touch of color to the
body, those following the line of the spine being red, while
those on either side are yellow. The five- and three-toed hoofs
of the ancient horned dinosaurs had become talons in the gryf,
but the three horns, two large ones above the eyes and a median
horn on the nose, had persisted through all the ages. Weird and
terrible as was its appearance Tarzan could not but admire the
mighty creature looming big below him, its seventy-five feet of
length majestically typifying those things which all his life the
ape-man had admired--courage and strength. In that massive tail
alone was the strength of an elephant.

The wicked little eyes looked up at him and the horny beak opened
to disclose a full set of powerful teeth.

"Herbivorous!" murmured the ape-man. "Your ancestors may have
been, but not you," and then to Pan-at-lee: "Let us go now. At
the cave we will have deer meat and then--back to Kor-ul-ja and
Om-at."

The girl shuddered. "Go?" she repeated. "We will never go from
here."

"Why not?" asked Tarzan.

For answer she but pointed to the gryf.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the man. "It cannot climb. We can reach the
cliff through the trees and be back in the cave before it knows
what has become of us."

"You do not know the gryf," replied Pan-at-lee gloomily.

"Wherever we go it will follow and always it will be ready at the
foot of each tree when we would descend. It will never give us
up."

"We can live in the trees for a long time if necessary," replied
Tarzan, "and sometime the thing will leave."

The girl shook her head. "Never," she said, "and then there are
the Tor-o-don. They will come and kill us and after eating a
little will throw the balance to the gryf--the gryf and Tor-o-don
are friends, because the Tor-o-don shares his food with the
gryf."

"You may be right," said Tarzan; "but even so I don't intend
waiting here for someone to come along and eat part of me and
then feed the balance to that beast below. If I don't get out of
this place whole it won't be my fault. Come along now and we'll
make a try at it," and so saying he moved off through the tree
tops with Pan-at-lee close behind. Below them, on the ground,
moved the horned dinosaur and when they reached the edge of the
forest where there lay fifty yards of open ground to cross to the
foot of the cliff he was there with them, at the bottom of the
tree, waiting.

Tarzan looked ruefully down and scratched his head.