Tarzan and the Valley of Gold by Fritz Leiber

Author:Fritz Leiber [Leiber, Fritz]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Midnight Publishing
Published: 2014-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Tarzan had been awake for an hour before dawn, thinking and also inspecting by touch the hardware he had lugged with him from the kidnappers' camp. He had brought the two submachine guns chiefly to keep them from falling into the hands of some possible unkilled enemy. Not too much sense to that, he decided now in the mentally stimulating predawn chill—an additional enemy would have his own weapons. Still these were beautiful pieces, each with a half magazine, or less, unfired—six cartridges for the Thompson, eight for the Sten. He handled the two weapons with sensations of both respect and revulsion. Tarzan admired immensely the good workmanship of the Age of Steel, but he detested the way such guns made people rely on their machines and armies, not on the strength of their own bodies…and on the wit of their own minds. If such guns, and even wickeder ones, were in the hands of their own soldiers, they believed themselves safe—that was all they cared.

He touched his knife and his lariat. Those were better weapons. They kept a man in touch with the things he was doing. He tied two slip knots at the ends of the lariat—there could be times such would be helpful.

The radio was something else. He might be able to use it to annoy and even unnerve Vinaro—bait him a little, as Manolecito did the bulls. Tarzan was skilled in the tactics of harassing a powerful column as it moved through the jungle.(*) With a heavily modern-armed group like Vinaro's, he could hardly hope to use bow and arrow and then "melt" back into the jungle—a jungle which would be shattered by rapid-fire weapons a few seconds later. Any attack using Major would doubtless meet with a similar reception—the lion might strike down a man or two, but would perish escaping. Perhaps harassment-at-a-distance was indicated, and for that the radio could be excellent. Also, he might be able to use the instrument to contact Juarez and Talmadge.

And certainly it would be an advantage to locate Vinaro's column before they located him.

Despite that, it was more important to reach Tucumai first than to locate or harass Vinaro. And to do that, what guidance Ramel could give him was all-important. In the paling night he looked at the boy, cheeks still stained by tear tracks, sleeping back to back for warmth with the chimpanzee Dinky. It made Tarzan smile that the two anthropoids had slept on the opposite side from the lion Major, who was snoring faintly yet majestically—evidently both boy and chimp were timid about the huge feline.

He dragged toward him his third metallic trophy from the kidnappers' camp—a gunny sack of corned beef tins—and began to twist one of them open. The faint ripping sound of the metal did not disturb any of the three sleepers, but then the odor of the beef, preserved in spices and brine and later desalted and cooked, reached their nostrils. The lion writhed his great lips and opened a slit-pupiled eye, instantly directed at the can Tarzan was opening, as if by some radar of odor.

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