Jongor- the Complete Tales

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  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Magazine-published Novels

  The Return of Jongor, Fantastic Adventures, April 1944

  Jongor Fights Back!, Fantastic Adventures, December 1951

  Novelette

  Jongor of Lost Land, Fantastic Adventures, October 1940

  “BUT what on earth is the matter with our carriers?” Ann Hunter said desperately. “I’m paying them excellent wages. And even if they were reluctant to enter this country, once they started they came willingly enough. Yesterday they seemed in excellent spirits. And last night they sang around the campfires—”

  “That was last night,” Richard Varsey interrupted.

  Clutching his heavy rifle nervously, he peered from close-set eyes down the little hill on which he and Ann Hunter were standing to the cluster of natives in the glade below them. The Blackfellows had been employed as carriers. But this morning they had refused to pick up their loads.

  “Hofer is talking to them,” Varsey continued. “He knows their lingo and he’ll find out what’s the matter with them. I might mention, Ann, that this fellow Hofer is a damned good man. You were lucky when he came to you and offered to guide this expedition.”

  Down below them the girl could see Hofer talking to the natives. They were answering him sullenly, or—and this was more often the case—not answering him at all. They squatted on their heels and looked at the ground. Ann Hunter did not miss the fact that their weapons were near at hand. Long knives, spears, and bows and arrows were within easy reach.

  Hofer was talking to them. They were paying no attention to him. Instead they were glancing, surreptitiously arid uneasily, at the country around them.

  It was a wild mountainous section. The peaks were not particularly high, but they were broken and battered in hundreds of places. Giant knife gashes cut the soil. Ancient lava flows were everywhere. Not far to the south was the great desert of Australia, on the fringes of which the Bushmen and the Blackfellows found a precarious existence.

  “Do—do you think there is danger they will attack?” the girl asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” Varsey nervously answered.

  Ann Hunter looked at him. She saw the nervous tension of the man. Somehow she had never liked Richard Varsey. She liked him less than ever now. He looked as if he would go to pieces any minute. A sweat-clotted beard covered his face. He constantly fingered his rifle.

  But she said nothing. After all, she was indebted to Varsey. For it was Varsey who had brought her news that Alan Hunter might still be alive in Lost Land.

  Alan Hunter was her twin brother. Two years previously, at the age of twenty, he had left college and had gone on an exploring expedition—and had not returned.

  Instead Richard Varsey had come to Ann Hunter at her home in New York, to tell her: “Your brother is held captive by the natives. I was with him. I barely managed to escape with my life, but in spite of all I could do, the natives captured your brother.”

  Ann Hunter had not hesitated. Her parents were dead, her brother was all the family she had. Born and reared in all the luxury that wealth could buy, nevertheless, she started out to face the wildest wilderness on the face of the globe. Death, or worse than death, might easily be waiting for her. Ann Hunter would never hesitate. Clad in whipcord breeches, light but serviceable boots, wearing a cork helmet, with a light caliber but extremely hard-hitting sporting rifle in her sun-browned hands, she looked at Varsey.

  He flushed under her gaze. “Sorry, Ann,” he mumbled. “But I’ve been in this country before. And I tell you there are things here that the rest of the world doesn’t know about.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  HE moved restlessly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s superstition, but there is something dark and mysterious and deadly in this part of the world. It’s a feeling in the air, mostly, but I always have the impression there is somebody behind me watching everything I do. I turn and look and there is never anything.”

  “Fever?” she queried.

  “No. We’re past the fever country now. Look!” He broke off. “Hofer has quit talking to them. He’s coming up here. I don’t like the looks of this, Ann. I don’t like it a little bit.”

  The guide was coming up the little rise toward them. Short in stature and strongly built, he seemed very calm. But there was an air of alertness about him.

  He clumped up to them. “Sorry,” he said, wiping perspiration from, his face. “The black devils have decided not to go any farther. And there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it. I even offered to increase their wages, but they wouldn’t begin to listen.” His face was dark with anger.

  Hofer’s clothing and equipment were the plainest and cheapest obtainable. His rifle, however, was an excellent piece, a foreign gun. Although he was a guide, the occasional sentences he let drop betrayed he was well educated. He was neither British nor Australian, as would have been expected. Ever since she had hired him, Ann had wondered why he was content to be a guide in a country where chances of employment were extremely small.

  “What’s the matter with the carriers?” she questioned. “Haven’t they been well treated?”

  “They’ve been treated well enough,” Hofer snorted. “Too damned well, if anything. If I had my way, these natives would mend their manners in a hurry. No, it’s not the treatment. It’s something else.” He hesitated and glanced at the girl.

  “You can speak plainly,” she said. “What is it?”

  “It’s damned foolishness,” he apologized. “They’re lying to me. But they say a voice from the air came to them in the night. It told them not to go on. That’s why they won’t move.”

  “A voice from the air!” Varsey ejaculated. “That’s ridiculous! They’re stalling. They know we have to have carriers, so they’re holding us up.” Hofer shook his head. The man seemed worried. But there was an air of eagerness about him, of suppressed excitement, as if he were on the verge of some tremendous discovery.

  “It’s more than that,” he said. “They really believe this thing happened. And they’re scared, badly scared—What in the hell is that?”

  A yell had come from below them. The natives had dropped to their knees and were rubbing their noses in the dirt.

  “That’s the way they act when one of their chiefs comes,” Hofer muttered. “But no one is coming.”

  ANN saw the guide look quickly to the right and the left. She followed his gaze. The actions of the natives indicated they expected someone. But she saw no one. And who could possibly be traveling through this remote section? There wasn’t another white person within hundreds of miles, unless it was her brother Alan.

  “Listen!” Varsey rasped. “Do you hear that?”

  Ann Hunter caught the sound. It sent a chill of sudden fear down her spine. She gasped in startled dismay.

  A voice was speaking from the air! It seemed to come from everywhere and from nowhere. It was a harsh, droning murmur, speaking in drumming gutturals that Ann recognized as vaguely resembling the language of the Blackfellows. And it was coming from no recognizable source!

  She looked wildly around. “There must be someone hidden near here,” she whispered. “Perhaps the speaker is concealed behind the rocks. He’s throwing his voice.”

  “It isn’t that,” Hofer shook his head.

  THE harsh gutturals grew louder and clearer.

  “It’s talking to the natives!” Hofer hissed, mad excitement and fear mingled in his
voice. “Be quiet so I can understand what it is saying.”

  An instant later the guide jerked around. “It’s telling the natives to attack us!” he rasped. “Quick! Jump in behind those rocks. The Blackfellows are going to charge!”

  Varsey did not need to be told what to do. He scrambled madly to the protection of a series of large boulders. The girl followed. Her lips tightened as she took in Varsey’s flight.

  “Here they come!” Hofer called. His rifle spoke.

  Now the voice had ceased. It had vanished as quickly and as abruptly as it had come, going back into nowhere with an abruptness that was as, spine-chilling as its appearance had been. The instant the voice ceased, the natives leaped for their weapons. They came up the hill toward the shelter where the three white people crouched.

  To Ann Hunter, her rifle firm against her cheek as she peered over the top of the boulder, the natives looked like dancing, woolly-headed devils. She could see the bones thrust through their matted hair, the daubs of paint on their faces. She could hear the screech of their battle cries. But mostly she could see the spears in their hands, the long, ugly knives, the bending bows.

  An arrow flashed over Ann’s head. She drew a quick bead on the bowman. Her rifle crashed. The savage dropped the bow as though it were a hot rivet, and stared stupidly at the torn fingers of his hand. The bullet had struck his fingers where they held the bow.

  Ann knew, without stopping to think, what little chance they had. Although they had repeating rifles, there were over forty of the natives. The three rifles mowed them down. But they kept on coming.

  “Never saw ’em face a gun like this before,” Hofer panted, as he reloaded. “That voice raised them to a frenzy. They thought their god was speaking to them.”

  The guide was savage and grim. His gun roared methodically. And each time he fired a native went down. He took slow, steady aim, driving his shots home with a savagery for which even the fact that he was fighting for his life could not account.

  “Why did I ever come back to this damned hell hole?” Varsey wailed. “I got out of here once and I ought to have been glad I saved my life!”

  The natives were less than a hundred yards away. Their charge was continuing. But they no longer leaped blindly forward. Instead they were taking advantage of every spot of cover, leaping from boulder to clump of shrubbery to stone outcropping. The air was crisscrossed with spears. Arrows were leaping upward in a flashing stream.

  The Blackfellows were dying. Some of them. But three rifles cannot simultaneously hit forty dodging, ducking targets. And the fact that their comrades were dying did not deter the natives in the least.

  Ann Hunter found herself thinking, “I’m going to die here, on a rocky ledge in Australia. I’m going to die. It’s only a matter of minutes now. They will slice me to pieces with those huge knives. I’m going to die here . . .”

  Her face was stained with powder-smoke. She did not stop firing, methodically slipping cartridges into the magazine of her rifle. She saw a woolly head come up over a rock not ten feet away. The fellow had a spear. Yelling, he drew back his arm to throw it. Ann heard the yell gurgle in his throat as her bullet knocked him backward.

  BUT another leaped to take his place.

  And another. And still another. She heard Hofer panting. Varsey was screaming as he tried to fill his magazine. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw he was trying to put the cartridges in backward, he was that hysterical.

  A huge native armed with a knife came leaping forward. Ann Hunter drew a bead on him, pulled the trigger. The rifle clicked. Empty! It was the end. Ann lifted the clubbed rifle to try to ward off the descending knife.

  Something throbbed in the air. Ann Hunter was tensely waiting for the charge of the savage with the knife. Oddly and inexplicably, she saw he was no longer coming. And she was wondering why he wasn’t coming.

  The feathered tip of an arrow protruded from his chest!

  Another native took up the charge. Something throbbed in the air again. A hissing streak went past the girl’s head, coming from behind. The arrow caught this fellow in the throat.

  Dazedly Ann Hunter turned to see what was happening. It was the first time that she saw Jongor.

  He was there on a rock ledge above them, a brown-skinned giant. Clad in a leopard skin, a huge black bow in his hand, tips of arrows protruding from the quiver slung over his shoulder, a knife thrust through his belt, Jongor stood there. The string of his bow was humming a steady song of death. It was this bowstring she had heard throbbing. From the bow, arrow after arrow was leaping downward.

  The natives had already been terribly mauled by the three rifles. The appearance of this giant on the ledge above their three intended victims startled the savages. This new enemy looked like a god of vengeance to them. The arrows that leaped downward startled them more. They broke and ran.

  A heavy, unreal silence hung over the three whites. Open-mouthed, they stared upward at their deliverer.

  Jongor dropped lithely from the ledge and came toward them.

  Varsey stared at him from terror-filled eyes. His mouth hung open. He swallowed convulsively, as though to clear a choking obstruction from his throat.

  What Varsey was doing neither Ann nor Hofer noticed. They were busy staring at this giant, leaping lithely from boulder to boulder toward them.

  Varsey’s face was a mask of fear. He flung up his gun, which he had finally succeeded in reloading. The rifle roared as he pressed the trigger. Off among the rocks there came a groan and a sound as of a body falling.

  Ann and Hofer whirled at the sound of the rifle. Ann was the nearest. She knocked the smoking gun from Varsey’s hands.

  “You fool!” she snapped at him. “That man saved our lives—and you shot him!”

  “He ordered the natives to attack us in the first place,” Varsey argued incoherently. “Sure I shot him. He had it coming!”

  HE looked at Hofer as if he expected to find support from that quarter. The guide didn’t say a word. His pale blue eyes—the washed-out blue eyes of the natural-born killer—drilled into Varsey’s. Richard Varsey quailed away.

  “I thought he was attacking us,” he quavered. “Damn you, Hofer, don’t look at me like that! You know as well as I do—”

  “Shut up!” said Hofer icily. “That man saved our lives. If you lose your head again, I’ll put a bullet through you myself.”

  The guide turned on his heel. But Jongor had disappeared.

  Ann Hunter was already running toward the spot where the giant had fallen after Varsey’s bullet had gone winging toward him. She thought he had fallen among the rocks. She was crying as she searched for him.

  They didn’t find Jongor. There was a bright splotch of blood on the rocks. But Jongor was gone.

  “He’s wounded,” Ann said accusingly to Varsey. “You shot him!”

  CHAPTER II

  Jongor

  “I’M for getting out of here,” said Varsey bluntly.

  The man was still white and shaken. His lips were blue with fear.

  “Our carriers have deserted. We don’t stand a chance in the world of getting into that hell hole of Lost Land without carriers. I’m for gathering what supplies we can and getting out while the getting is good. What do you say, Ann—Miss Hunter? You’re the boss.”

  “I’m not backing out now,” the girl said firmly. “We must be near Lost Land. Entering it will be no more difficult than attempting to return. And I’m not leaving while there is still a chance of finding my brother. He may be a captive of the natives, held in some dirty hut, forced to work as a slave. His life depends on our finding him. I’m going forward, into Lost Land—if I can get there.”

  “But it may mean death to continue,” Varsey argued heatedly. “And we haven’t a chance of succeeding, now. I’ll leave it to Hofer,” he said, turning to the silent guide. “You’ve had experience in this sort of thing. We haven’t a hope of getting through without our carriers, have we? You think we should turn back, do
n’t you?”

  Hofer shook his head. “We didn’t kill all the natives. Some of them escaped. They will return to their people and tell them what happened.

  If we attempt to return, we will find the Blackfellows waiting for us. We’re certain to be ambushed. Our best chance and about our only chance—is to continue forward.”

  “But that voice we heard!” Varsey pleaded. “That voice coming from nowhere, telling the natives to attack us. And that giant with the bow and arrow! He may be up there ahead of us somewhere. And no telling what else!”

  “Yes,” the guide said eagerly. “That voice from the air—maybe the explanation for that is to be found somewhere ahead of us. There is little doubt about it. The explanation must be somewhere in Lost Land. I’m going forward,” he ended decisively.

  “But—”

  “If you do not choose to accompany us you can, of course, return by yourself,” Hofer said flatly, his pale blue eyes flicking contemptuously over Varsey.

  The latter flushed angrily. He started to say something, but caught Hofer’s eye on him again, and quickly changed his mind. His mouth set in a flat line that was like the blade of a knife.

  JONGOR watched. When Varsey had thrown up his rifle, Jongor had caught the movement. He did not know much about guns, but he did know—with the certainty of one whose life has been spent in the midst of unrelenting danger—that his life was being threatened. He had seen the Blackfellows go down under the savage thunder of the rifles.

  His movement, when Varsey threw up his rifle to fire, had been the wary, instinctive movement of the jungle beast. He had thrown himself down and to one side. The bullet had barely scratched his shoulder. The wound had already stopped bleeding.

  He had dropped behind a boulder, and had then run, as silently as the shadow of a moving cloud, among the rocks. When Ann and Hofer arrived at the place where Jongor had dropped from sight, he was gone.

  Now he watched. From the shelter of a fold of rock, he saw the two men and the woman arguing. They eventually went down to the packs the carriers had dropped. From the mass of supplies, they made three bundles small enough to be carried on the back. Hofer’s pack was small. He took only the absolute necessities, salt, a tiny medical kit, a little food. Of cartridges for his rifle, he took plenty.