Back to the Stone Age p-5 Read online

  "If you heard all of my name, that might sound strange to you."

  "Is there more than Von?"

  "Very much more."

  "Tell it to me."

  "My name is Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst."

  "Oh, I could never say all that. I think I like Von."

  He wondered why he had told her that Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst was his name. Of course he had used it for so long that it seemed quite natural to him; but now that he was no longer in Germany, perhaps it was senseless to continue with it. Yet what difference did it make in the inner world? Von was an easy name to pronounce, an easy one to remember—Von he would continue to be, then.

  Presently the girl yawned. "I am sleepy," she said. "I shall go to my cave and sleep. Why do you not sleep at the same time; then we shall be awake at the same time, and—why, I can show you about your work."

  "That's a good idea," he exclaimed, "but will they let me sleep now? I just started to work."

  "They let us sleep whenever we wish to, but when we awaken we have to come right back to work. The women sleep in a cave by themselves, and there is a Basti woman to watch them and see that they get to work as soon as they are awake. She is a terrible old thing."

  "Where do I sleep?" he asked.

  "Come, I'll show you. It is the cave next to the women's."

  She led the way out onto the ledge and along it to the mouth of another cave. "Here is where the men sleep," she said. "The next cave is where I sleep."

  "What are you doing out here?" demanded a guard.

  "We are going to sleep," replied La-ja.

  The man nodded; and the girl went on to her cave, while von Horst entered that reserved for the men slaves. He found a number of them asleep on the hard floor, and was soon stretched out beside Dangar, who had accompanied them.

  How long he slept, von Horst did not know. He was awakened suddenly by loud shouting apparently directly outside the entrance to the cave. At first he did not grasp the meaning of the words he heard; but presently, after a couple of repetitions, he was thoroughly awake; and then he grasped their full import and recognized the voice of the speaker.

  It was Skruf; and he was shouting, over and over, "Come out, La-ja! Skruf has brought you the head of a tarag. Now you belong to Skruf."

  Von Horst leaped to his feet and stepped out onto the ledge. There, before the entrance to the adjoining cave, lay the rotting head of the tarag; but Skruf was nowhere in sight.

  At first von Horst thought that he had entered the cave in search of La-ja; but presently he realized that the voice was coming from below. Looking over the edge of the ledge, he saw Skruf standing on a ladder a few feet below. Then he saw La-ja run from the cave, her countenance a picture of tragic despair.

  He had stepped to the head of the ladder, beside which lay the tarag's head, and so was directly in front of the mouth of the cave as La-ja emerged. Something about her manner, her expression, frightened him. She did not seem to see him as she ran past him toward the edge of the cliff. Intuitively, he knew what was in her mind; and as she passed him, he threw an arm about her and drew her back.

  "Not that, La-ja," he said quietly.

  She came to herself with a start, as though from a trance. Then she clung to him and commenced to sob. "There is no other way," she cried. "He must not get me."

  "He shall not," said the man; then he looked down upon Skruf. "Get out of here," he said, "and take your rotten head with you." With his foot, he pushed the mass of corruption over the edge of the ledge so that it fell full upon Skruf. For an instant it seemed that it had toppled him from the ladder, but with agility of a monkey he regained his hold.

  "Go on down," directed von Horst, "and don't come up here again. This girl is not for you."

  "She belongs to me; Frug said I could have her. I'll have you killed for this." The man was almost frothing at the mouth, so angry was he.

  "Go down, or I'll come down there and throw you down," threatened von Horst.

  A hand was laid on his shoulder. He swung around. It was Dangar who stood beside him. "Here comes the guard," he said. "You are in for it now. I am with you. What shall we do?"

  The guard was coming along the ledge, the same big fellow that had received them. There were other guards in the several caves that were being excavated, but so far the attention of only this one seemed to have been attracted.

  "What are you doing, slave?" he bellowed. "Get to work! What you need is a little of this." He swung a club in his hairy right fist.

  "You're not going to hit me with that," said von Horst. "If you come any closer, I'll kill you."

  "Your pistol, Von," whispered Dangar.

  "I can't waste ammunition," he replied.

  The guard had paused. He seemed to be attempting to discover just how the slave intended killing him and with what. To all appearances the man was unarmed; and while he was tall, he was far from being as heavy a man as the guard. Finally the fellow must have concluded that von Horst's words were pure bluff, for he came on again.

  "You'll kill me, will you?" he roared; then he rushed forward with club upraised.

  He was not very fast on his feet, and his brain was even slower—his reactions were pitifully retarded. So when von Horst leaped forward to meet him, he was not quick enough to change his method of attack in time to meet the emergency. Von Horst stepped quickly to one side as the fellow lunged abreast of him; then he swung a terrific blow to the Bastian's chin, a blow that threw him off balance on the very brink of the ledge. As he tottered there, von Horst struck him again; and this time he toppled out into space; and, with a scream of fright, plunged down toward the bottom of the cliff a hundred feet below.

  Dangar and the girl stood there, wide-eyed in consternation. "What have you done, Von!" cried the latter. "They will kill you now—and all on my account."

  Even as she spoke, another guard emerged from one of the caves farther along the ledge; and then the remaining two came from the other caves in which they had been directing the work of the slaves. The scream of the fellow that von Horst had knocked from the ledge had attracted their attention.

  "Get behind me," von Horst directed La-ja and Dan-gar, "and fall back to the far end of the ledge. They can't take us if they can't get behind us."

  "They'll have us cornered then, and there will be no hope for us," objected the girl. "If we go into one of the caves where it is not so light and where there are loose bits of rock to throw at them we may be able to hold them off. But even so, what good will that do? They will get us anyway, no matter what we do."

  "Do as I tell you," snapped von Horst, "and be quick about it."

  "Who are you to give me orders?" demanded La-ja. "I am the daughter of a chief."

  Von Horst wheeled and pushed her back into Dangar's arms. "Take her to the far end of the ledge," he ordered; then he fell back with them, as Dangar dragged the furious La-ja along the ledge. The guards were advancing toward the three. They did not know exactly what had happened, but they knew that something was wrong.

  "Where is Julp?" demanded one.

  "Where you will be if you don't do as I tell you," replied von Horst.

  "What do you mean by that, slave? Where is he?"

  "I knocked him off the ledge. Look down."

  The three paused and peered over the edge. Below them they saw the body of Julp, and now the angry voices of those who had gathered about it rose to them. Skruf was there. He alone could surmise what had befallen Julp, and he was telling the others about it in a loud tone of voice as Frug joined the group.

  "Bring that slave down to me," Frug shouted to the guards on the ledge.

  The three started forward again to seize von Horst. The man whipped his pistol from its holster. "Wait!" he commanded. "If you don't wish to die, listen to me. There is the ladder. Go down."

  The three eyed the pistol, but they did not know what it was. To them it was nothing more than a bit of black stone. Perhaps t
hey thought that von Horst purposed throwing it at them or using it as a club. The idea made them grin; so they came on, contemptuously.

  Now, the woman who guarded the women slaves came from their cave, attracted by all the commotion outside, and joined the men. She was an unprepossessing slattern of indeterminate age with a vicious countenance. Von Horst guessed that she might be even more formidable than the men, but he shrank from the necessity of shooting down a woman. In fact, he did not wish to shoot any of them—poor ignorant cave dwellers of the stone age—but it was their lives or his and Dangar's and La-ja's.

  "Go back!" he cried. "Go down the ladder. I don't wish to kill you."

  For answer, the men laughed at him and came on. Then von Horst fired. One of the men was directly behind the leader, and at the shot they both collapsed, screaming, and rolled from the ledge. The other man and the woman stopped. The report of the pistol would alone have been sufficient to give them pause, so terrifying was it to them; but when they saw their comrades pitch from the ledge their simple minds were overwhelmed.

  "Go down," von Horst commanded them, "before I kill you, too. I shall not give you another chance."

  The woman snarled and hesitated, but the man did not wait. He had seen enough. He sprang toward the ladder and hastened to descend, and a moment later the woman gave up and followed him. Von Horst watched them; and when they had reached the next ledge below, he motioned Dangar to him. "Give me a hand with this ladder," he said, and the two dragged it up to the ledge on which they stood. "This will stop them for awhile," he remarked.

  "Until they bring another ladder," suggested Dangar.

  "That will take a little time," replied von Horst, "—a long time if I take a shot at them while they are doing it."

  "Now, what are we to do next?" inquired Dangar.

  La-ja was eyeing von Horst from beneath lowering brows, her eyes twin pits of smoldering anger; but she did not speak. Von Horst looked at her and was glad that she did not. He saw trouble ahead in that beautiful, angry face—beautiful even in anger.

  The other slaves were now coming fearfully from the caves. They looked about for the guards and saw none; then they saw that the ladder had been drawn up.

  "What has happened?" one asked.

  "This fool has killed three guards and driven the others away," snapped La-ja. "Now we must either remain here and starve to death or let them come up and kill us."

  Von Horst paid no attention to them. He was looking up, scanning the face of the cliff that inclined slightly inward to the summit about thirty feet above him.

  "He killed three guards and drove the others off the ledge?" demanded one of the slaves, incredulously.

  "Yes," said Dangar; "alone, he did it."

  "He is a great warrior," said the slave, admiringly.

  "You are right, Thorek," agreed another. "But La-ja is right, too; it is death for us now no matter what happens."

  "Death but comes a little sooner; that is all," replied Thorek. "It is worth it to know that three of these eaters of men have been killed. I wish that I had done it."

  "Are you going to wait up here until you starve to death or they come up and kill you?" demanded von Horst.

  "What else is there to do?" demanded a slave from Amdar.

  "There are nearly fifty of us," said von Horst. "It would be better to go down and fight for our lives than wait here to die of thirst or be killed like rats, if there were no other way; but I think there is."

  "Your words are the words of a man," exclaimed Thorek. "I will go down with you and fight."

  "What is the other way?" asked the man from Amdar.

  "We have this ladder," explained von Horst, "and there are other ladders in the caves. By fastening some of them together we can reach the top of the cliff. We could be a long way off before the Bastians could overtake us, for they would have to go far down the gorge before they came to a place where they could climb out of it."

  "He is right," said another slave.

  "But they might overtake us," suggested another who was timid.

  "Let them!" cried Thorek. "I am a Mammoth Man. Should I fear to fight with my enemies? Never. All my life I have fought them. It was for this that my mother bore me and my father trained me."

  "We talk too much," said von Horst. "Talk will not save us. Let those who wish to, come with me; let the others remain here. Fetch the other ladders. See what you can find with which to fasten them together."

  "Here comes Frug!" shouted a slave. "'He is coming up with many warriors."

  Von Horst looked down to see the hairy chief climbing upward toward the ledge; behind him came many warriors. The man from the outer crust grinned, for he knew that his position was impregnable.

  "Thorek," he said, "take men into the caves to gather fragments of rock, but do not throw them down upon the Bastians until I give you the word."

  "I am a Mammoth Man," replied Thorek, haughtily. "I do not take orders from any but my chief."

  "Right now I am your chief," snapped von Horst. "Do as I tell you. If each of us tries to be chief, if no one will do as I order, we may stay here until we rot."

  "I take orders from no man who is not a better man than I," insisted Thorek.

  "What does he mean, Dangar?" asked von Horst.

  "He means you'll have to fight him—and win—before he'll obey you," explained the Sarian.

  "Are all the rest of you fools too?" demanded von Horst. "Do I have to fight each one of you before you will help me to help you escape?"

  "If you defeat Thorek, I will obey you," said the man from Amdar.

  "Very well, then," agreed von Horst. "Dangar, if any of these idiots will help you, go in and get rocks to hold off Frug until the matter is settled. Just try to keep them from setting up another ladder to this ledge. Thorek, you and I will go into one of the caves and see who is head man. If we tried to decide the matter out here, we'd probably both wind up at the bottom of the cliff."

  "All right," agreed the Mammoth Man. "I like your talk. You will make a great chief—if you win; but you won't. I am Thorek, and I am a Mammoth Man. "

  Von Horst was almost amused by the evidences of haughty pride that these primitive people revealed. He had seen it in La-ja in an exaggerated form and now, again, in Thorek. Perhaps he admired them a little for it—he had no patience with spineless worms—but he felt that they might have mixed a little common sense with it. He realized, however, that it reflected a tremendous ego, such as the human race must have possessed in its earliest stages to have permitted it to cope with the forces that must constantly have threatened it with extinction.

  He turned to Thorek. "Come," he said; "let's get it over, so that something worth while can be done." As he spoke, he entered one of the caves; and Thorek followed him.

  "With bare hands?" asked von Horst.

  "With bare hands," agreed the Mammoth Man.

  "Come on, then."

  Von Horst, from boyhood, had been a keen devotee of all modes of defense and offense with various weapons and with none at all. He had excelled as an amateur boxer and wrestler. Heretofore it had availed him little of practical value, other than a certain prideful satisfaction in his ability; but now it was to mean very much indeed. It was to establish his position in the stone age among a rugged people who admitted no superiority that was not physical.

  At his invitation, Thorek charged down upon him like a wild bull. In height they were quite evenly matched, but Thorek was stockier and outweighed von Horst by ten or fifteen pounds. Their strength was, perhaps, about equal, though the Pellucidarian looked far more powerful because of his bulging muscles. It was skill that would count, and Thorek had no skill. His strategy consisted in overwhelming an antagonist by impetus and weight, crushing him to earth, and pummeling him into insensibility. If he killed him in the process—well, that was just the other fellow's tough luck.

  But when he threw himself at von Horst, von Horst was not there. He had ducked beneath the flailing arms and sidestep
ped the heavy body; then he had landed a heavy blow at Thorek's jaw that had snapped his head and dazed him. But the fellow still kept his feet, turned, and came lumbering in again for more; and he got it. This time he went down. He tried to stagger to his feet, and another blow sent him sprawling. He didn't have a chance. Every time he got part way to his feet, he was knocked flat again. At last he gave up and lay where he had fallen.

  "Who is chief?" demanded von Horst.

  "You are," said Thorek.

  VII – FLIGHT OF THE SLAVES

  AS VON HORST turned and ran out of the cave, Thorek rose groggily to his feet and followed him. On the ledge a number of the slaves were lined up with Dangar ready to hurl rocks on the ascending Bastians, who von Horst saw had reached the second ledge below that occupied by the slaves.

  He looked about and saw Thorek emerging from the cave. "Take some men and get the ladders," von Horst directed his late antagonist.

  The other slaves looked quickly at the Mammoth Man to see how he would accept this command. What they saw astonished them. Thorek's face was already badly swollen, there was a cut above one eye and his nose was bleeding. His whole face and much of his body were covered with blood, which made his injuries appear graver than they really were.

  Thorek turned toward the other slaves. "Some of you go into each cave and bring out the ladders," he said. "Let the women find thongs with which to bind them together."

  "Who is chief?" asked one of the men so addressed.

  "He is chief," replied Thorek, pointing at von Horst.

  "He is not my chief, and neither are you," retorted the man, belligerently.

  Von Horst was suddenly hopeless. How could he get anywhere, how could he accomplish anything, with such stupid egotists to contend with? Thorek, however, was not at all discouraged. He suddenly leaped upon the fellow; and before the man had time to gather his slow wits, lifted him above his head and hurled him from the cliff. Then he turned to the others. "Get the ladders," he said, and as one man they set about doing his bidding.

  Now von Horst turned his attention again to Frug and the other warriors below. They offered an excellent target; and he could easily have driven them back had he cared to, but he had another plan. In low tones he issued instructions to his companions, having them line up along the ledge while the Bastians climbed to that directly below. In the meantime the ladders had been carried out; and the women were busy lashing several of them together, making two long ladders.