CHAPTER XI
Two or three hours had passed before Ru would venture away from the shelter of the lake. And when finally he paddled to land, he chose a point a mile or more from the scene of the conflict—a secluded little inlet not far below the mouth of the Harr-Sizz River. Here, he knew, he was secure from the gaze of his foes, even had they been watching for him. But he could not be sure that others of their kind were not lurking in the woods; and it was with extreme caution that he took his way along the beaches and around the dense clumps of greenery, his club gripped in readiness for immediate action.
No sign of anything hostile appeared, however, save now and then a serpent squirming out of his path. Neither wild beast nor wild man seemed to be abroad; he gained the Harr-Sizz River unmolested; and, with tension relaxed, followed its turbulent course toward the spot where his tribe had crossed.
This point proved to be somewhat farther than he had expected. More than once, as he glided through the seemingly endless woods just above the river bank, he asked himself whether he might not be following the wrong stream by mistake. But he continued in spite of his doubts; and at last, shortly before sundown, his efforts were rewarded. Rounding an abrupt turn in the river, he recognized all of a sudden the scene of his recent misfortune, the fording place of his people.
After a few minutes' search, he found the clear marks of their passage. Innumerable tracks stared at him from the soft soil, as plainly as if made only that day—tracks of all sizes, which wandered from the river bank into the shadowy wilderness, trampling down the grass and underbrush and curving through the open spaces in long meandering loops.
It was with mixed feelings that Ru read these silent messages from his kinsmen. He had something of the feelings of an exile who beholds from afar the shore-line of his country; the full bitterness of his loneliness flooded back over him again, the sense of isolation and of loss, mingled with renewed anger that—through no fault of his own—he should have been subjected to such humiliation, suffering, and peril. But, above all, the remembrance of Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed came back to him. Useless for him to reflect that she was unworthy of his attention, that she would only laugh at his wretchedness, ridicule his misfortunes, and contemptuously forget him were he to die—the thought of her filled him at once with fury and with a deep but tender emotion.
Yet Ru lost no time in idle ruminations. Having found his people's tracks, he followed them as far as the waning daylight permitted, then warily set about the business of finding a tree for the night.
This time he was to be disturbed by no mysterious screams. There were only the usual night noises—the cry of some nocturnal bird, the far-off call of some predatory beast, the stirring and the rustling of the breeze amid the foliage.
The following morning he awakened in happier spirits. Now, for the first time, he felt that he was actually on the way back to his people! He realized, to be sure, that they had preceded him by nearly three days; but, retarded as they were by implements and provisions, by women with babes in arms and by the younger children, they could travel no farther in two hours than he could travel in one.
For many miles he followed hopefully on their trail, which ran through the forest up a slope that ascended first gently and then with bold and difficult grades, until Ru realized with apprehension that he was climbing a mountainside. Enormous boulders littered his way, and there were places where he had to crawl on hands and knees up the steep and jutting rocks; a tumultuous stream ran at his side, foaming in loud rapids or plunging in cascades; above him, through rifts in the woods, he caught glimpses from time to time of appalling slopes of white. Had his people mounted straight into that snowy desolation? He could not believe they had; but that they had passed this way was all too evident, not only from their tracks where the soil was damp and leaf-matted, but from the clues they had left even in the rockier places—here a flint tool that had been unwittingly dropped; there the rib of a buffalo or wild boar, chewed and discarded; yonder the torn-off strip of a deerskin robe.
Once or twice, indeed, Ru did fear that he had lost the tracks, and for a while wandered about aimlessly amid a stony wilderness. But always, after a few minutes, he discovered some reassuring token, and continued on his way. The sun stood about midway in the heavens when at length, to his relief, the trail swerved and led him over an open shoulder of the mountain, then down toward a gently sloping wooded valley, so wide that the farther end was lost in a blue haze.
Not far below the divide, and just above the border of the woods, Ru paused in sudden consternation. His watchful eyes had detected a little reddened bit of stone in a crevice between two boulders—one of the flint knives used by his people! Stooping down eagerly and seizing the implement, he examined it in uncertainty—could the clotted blood on the edge be that of some slaughtered beast? There was no possibility of proof; but Ru remembered once more the man-eating savages he had encountered, and wondered with what bloodthirsty foe his tribe had clashed.
A few yards farther down the slope he found other signs to confirm his misgivings. From a clump of dense brush he observed a bit of fur protruding; and he pulled forth a long strip of bison hide of the size of one of his tribesmen's robes! In the center it was pierced as by some half blunt implement; and on the ragged edge of the cut were streaks and blots of crimson.
As if this evidence were not sufficient, the very ground beneath him bore witness to a conflict. In places the weeds and shrubs had been crushed or uprooted, and lay torn and broken in withering masses; in places even the stones seemed to have been dislocated, and sharply outlined holes in the soil testified to where large rocks had been; while in one spot there was a blur of footprints, crowding on top of each other, and most of them half obliterated—some pointing up-hill and some down-hill, as though from the mad surging of a multitude.
Half persuaded that some dire fate had overtaken his people, Ru hastened on into the woods, guided by a swarm of tracks, which might have been those of his tribesmen and might have been those of their foes. What terrific struggle had taken place during his absence? He asked himself again and again, as he glided noiselessly through those dim winding forest spaces. In his mind there was no longer a doubt that his people had battled some strange tribe; but what the issue of the conflict had been, and how many of his kinsmen had survived to tell the tale, were questions for which he could have no answers.
Nor did he expect an answer for several days—if at all. If the Umbaddu had fled before some marauding foe, they must already be many hours away. And what if the enemy barred the path between him and his people, so that he would have no way of reaching them?
But a great surprise lay in store for him. Approaching a break in the forest not half a dozen miles below the scene of the ominous footprints, he was startled by hearing a faint murmuring of voices, which gradually grew louder as he stole warily forward through the shadows, until it was recognizable as the gibbering of a multitude.
A shudder of fear shot through Ru's heart. Might he not again be approaching a settlement of the man-eaters? Halting abruptly, he stood as though petrified; his impulse was to flee while flight might still be of avail. Yet once again curiosity mastered him—curiosity, and a glad surmise which seemed too fantastic to be true. Cautious not to expose his presence by a sound or a gesture, he crept forward inch by inch like a prowling cat, his shoulders bent far toward the ground, his arms reaching down beneath his knees, his frightened gray eyes alert for the least suspicious sound or movement.
But there was nothing suspicious to interrupt his progress. And at length, after a few minutes that seemed interminable, he reached the final line of the bushes; at length he was able to push the concealing leaves gently aside, and to peer out upon the meadow from which the gibbering voices still proceeded.
At the first glance, he uttered a low exclamation of relief. And impetuously he rose to his full height—the need for concealment was over!
Sprawled in a rude circle by the banks of a river, were scores of familiar fur-clad figures!
Trembling with happiness, Ru strode forward to meet them. "My people! My people!" it was on his lips to say, when he observed that his arrival was creating a peculiar effect.
Immediately upon his emergence, some of the nearer tribesmen had sprung to their feet, startled and amazed—as well they might be! As if at an electrical signal, others followed their example, with little shocked and horrified exclamations, until, almost in a flash, the entire tribe stood confronting him speechlessly.
Overpowered though he was by his own astonishment, Ru could see that the eyes of some were distended with terror; that the limbs of others were quivering; that the lips of one were moving silently as if in frightened prayer.
Before he could find words to demand the reason for this strange reception, the explanation was shrilled into his ears.
"It's Ru! It's the Sparrow-Hearted! It's his dead spirit come back!" shrieked one of the younger tribesmen, taking to his heels. And the others took up his cry, "It's his dead spirit come back!" until those fearsome words echoed and reechoed in a terrified din, and on all sides the panic-stricken people were fleeing toward the woods.
For an instant the bewildered Ru did not quite grasp what was happening. Then, as full understanding came to him, his paralyzed tongue was loosened, and he shouted, at the top of his voice, "It is no spirit you see! It is I, Ru! It is Ru come back to you!"
But so thoroughly alarmed were the people that most of them continued full-tilt toward the woods, as if the shouted words only confirmed their belief that they had seen a ghost.
Yet two or three, less timorous than their fellows, did turn at the sound of Ru's voice. While he continued to cry, "It is only I come back! I will not harm you!" they seemed half convinced that he spoke the truth, and began tentatively and hesitatingly to approach.
By some peculiar chance, these audacious spirits were all women. And among them Ru recognized, with a tremor of delight, Zubu the Prattling Brook and Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed!
It did not now seem to matter that the tribe had fled. As Yonyo drew near, Ru entirely forgot his vanished kinsmen under the fascination of those glittering black eyes.
"So the Sparrow-Hearted has come back?" she called, striding ahead of her more cautious tribeswomen, and coming almost within touching distance of the supposed phantom. "For three days already we have believed the Sparrow-Hearted drowned." And half tauntingly, and with an admonishing smile, she added: "It is not right to pretend to pass the great mountains of the dead."
"Oh, Yonyo, I did not pretend!" he pleaded. And then, as she came within arm's grasp and halted, he felt once more the full fury of his loneliness and of his longing for her.
"Are you not glad to see me back, Yonyo?" he cried. "Do you have no word of joy for me? Is it nothing to you that I have been saved from the wild beasts, and from men more savage than wolves? Oh, Yonyo, do you not care?"
One of her most taunting, tantalizing smiles overspread her face; and he could not be certain whether she intended to reassure him or to dash all hope from his heart.
But her reply, although trembling on her lips, was never to be spoken, for at that instant Zubu the Prattling-Brook came panting up to him; and, scarcely taking time to regain her breath, burst into a storm of questions.
"Ru, where have you been all these days? Have you not been drowned, as Kuff and Woonoo said? Have you not gone beyond the mountains of the sky, where those spirits live who can never come back? Or have you been there and escaped? Have you done that wonderful deed? Have you been dead, Ru, and walked down from the sky?"
"Yes, I have been dead, and walked down from the sky," he assured her, on an impulse that startled even himself. And as an awestricken light came into her eyes, he felt an audacious plan gathering form and power within him.
"I have been dead, and come back!" he repeated, with a boldness born of the effect his words had produced. "I am the only man who has ever escaped from the great wind-spirit that blows beyond the last mountains. Woonoo and Kuff spoke truth when they said they saw me drowned. For a whole day my body lay under the water, and I could not move nor speak; and in that day my spirit flew far, far away, and saw things that no man has ever seen before. But of all that I shall tell you later."
By this time two or three more women, observing that the apparition had not harmed Yonyo or Zubu, had approached and silently joined the group. They too gaped in wide-eyed wonder; but not a murmur of doubt or incredulity escaped their lips.
"Tell us more!" they begged, when Ru cut his recitation short. "Do not wait! Tell us more, Ru! We want to know what happened to you beyond the last mountains!"
"I cannot tell you until all our people are here to listen," declared Ru, with finality. "Go, call the people—and when they are all here, I shall speak of the strange things that happened to me."
And while several of the women hastened away to reassemble their frightened tribesfolk, Ru's imagination was busy constructing a story fitted to astound his kinsmen.
But even as he reflected, he took care to observe his surroundings; his eyes traveled appraisingly from detail to detail of the landscape. He noted that he stood in the midst of a small tract of grassland, bounded on three sides by the woods, and on the fourth by the river; and he was surprised to see how wide was the stream—wider than he had ever known any man to swim, so wide that the trees on the opposite bank made little more than a dim blur. Near the edge of the waters, whose current was so slow as to be barely perceptible, he beheld the ashes of three or four camp-fires, one of which was still smoldering feebly; while in several spots were unsightly piles of picked bones or of the discarded entrails of animals.
Glancing out across the broad reaches of the river, Ru could surmise the reason why his tribe had halted. But there was much about their recent adventures that he could not surmise—much that perplexed and troubled him, particularly since he saw several of his tribesmen returning with red gashes in their heads and foreheads, or with broken arms dangling limply from their shoulders.
Hence, while he stood awaiting his people's return, he asked Yonyo to relate all that had happened during his absence.
To his disappointment, it was not Yonyo that replied. A faint smile came into her eyes, though whether of acquiescence or refusal he could not say; but, almost before she had had time to speak, Zubu the Prattling-Brook—evidently thinking the question addressed to her—launched into an eager recital.
"Ever since we left the Harr-Sizz River," she said, "bad spirits have been with us. When we had gone as far from the stream as a man can run at top speed, an evil sign appeared: a strange beast, with great paws and growling lips, and two teeth as long as your arms. At this terrible sight, we all ran for the trees. But before we could get there, we heard a woman cry out horribly; and we saw the beast sneaking away into the woods, trailing the body of poor old Awoo.
"When Zunzun the Marvel-Worker heard about this, he looked very sad, and said that evil days were ahead. He thought that the good spirits were angry because we had left our cave; and he told us the bad spirits would come and take many more of us away. And he began to groan and grumble, and I heard him say we should all turn around and go back to our cave.
"But Grumgra the Growling Wolf swung his club very heavily, and there was no one that would cry out when he was near. For a while we all trembled and were much afraid, and there was nothing we could do. But Zunzun the Marvel-Worker was right when he said we should go back to our cave, for at last a terrible thing was made known. We had climbed a long mountain and were on an open space near the top, when we all stopped and Mumlo the Trail-Finder looked around him as if he did not know whether to go up or down. Then someone heard him say we had gone the wrong way! He did not think he had ever seen this mountain before! And no one knew where we were or where we were going!"
Zubu paused, and her tiny black eyes were softened momentarily with a sad expression. Then, while several of her kinsmen silently came up and joined the group, she continued:
"You do not know, Ru, what a bad time we had then. You should have seen the way Grumgra howled and swung his club, so that Mumlo had to keep hidden all the time. Nearly everyone was screaming like a frightened animal, but Grumgra's voice was the loudest of all. He cried out that we must keep on toward the noonday sun even if we did not know the way. And everyone was afraid to say no, until suddenly there came a yell from one corner of our camp—and we saw the beast with the teeth as long as a man's leg; and he ran away with another of our people.
"Some of us now cried out that this was a sign from the gods of the woods that we must not go on. And Zunzun said they would punish us, and turn us all into meat for the wild beasts; and then all the people were so frightened that they were like wild beasts themselves. Many of us shouted that we would not go on and let ourselves be eaten by the evil things of the woods; and we said that we wanted to go back again to our old cave. Then came Grumgra, swinging his club; and he roared that we must go on; but this time we were too frightened to do as he told us. Some of the other men swung their clubs and growled when Grumgra came their way—yes, growled and swung their clubs against Grumgra himself!"
"And what then?" demanded Ru, in breathless interest, when the Prattling-Brook came to a sudden stop. "Did the Growling Wolf have to do as they wanted?"
"The Growling Wolf never does as anyone wants," pointed out Zubu; and her eyes shone with admiration of the leader. "There was a fight—but do we not know how any fight will end when Grumgra is in it? There was much swinging of clubs, and much throwing of stones, and striking of heavy blows, and shouting and hissing of oaths; and some were on Grumgra's side, and some on Zunzun's side, and some on neither side—they just fought for the fun of fighting. All the while half of us women stood watching, and crying out for our own men to win; but the other half did not want to watch, but left their babes and fought with the men—and very good fighters they were, too!
"When at last everything was over, two of our people lay bleeding on the ground, and could not rise again; and most of the rest of us were hurt on the arms or legs or shoulders. But those on Grumgra's side were not hurt so much as those on Zunzun's, for many a man had known the touch of Grumgra's club. And in the end we all cried out that we would do as Grumgra said, since one so mighty as he could not be wrong. And then Grumgra and Zunzun were friends once more, and the Marvel-Worker said we should go with Grumgra anywhere, for he was stronger than the beast with the teeth as long as a man's whole body.
"Yet"—here Zubu hesitated perceptibly, and her face was overspread by a rueful smile—"they have not been able to go with him past this river. It is very deep, and so wide we cannot swim across, and no man knows what to do, whether to go along its banks, or turn back, or—"
"Then did you meet no tribes of wild men?" interrupted Ru, unable to suppress the question that had been uppermost in his mind for hours. "You only fought with yourselves? You saw no men that eat other men?"
"Men that eat other men?" echoed several of the hearers, bursting into laughter. And, remembering the old discredited legends about human man-eaters, one of the women muttered to herself, "Ru has been hearing silly stories!" And one or two nudged their neighbors and murmured slyly, but loud enough for Ru to hear, "The Sparrow-Hearted is having dreams again!"
But before Ru could frame a retort, a great lumbering figure burst into view from a recess in the woods, and began to approach at a brisk pace. And a silence fell across the little assemblage, for who could be merry when Grumgra the Growling Wolf was drawing near?