TEEKA HAD BECOME a mother. Tarzan of the Apes was intensely interested, much more so, in fact, than Taug, the father. Tarzan was very fond of Teeka. Even the cares of prospective motherhood had not entirely quenched the fires of carefree youth, and Teeka had remained a good-natured playmate even at an age when other shes of the tribe of Kerchak had assumed the sullen dignity of maturity.
She yet retained her childish delight in the primitive games of tag and hide-and-go-seek which Tarzan's fertile man-mind had evolved.
To play tag through the tree tops is an exciting and inspiring pastime. Tarzan delighted in it, but the bulls of his childhood had long since abandoned such childish practices. Teeka, though, had been keen for it always until shortly before the baby came;but with the advent of her first-born, even Teeka changed.
The evidence of the change surprised and hurt Tarzan immeasurably.
One morning he saw Teeka squatted upon a low branch hugging something very close to her hairy breast-- a wee something which squirmed and wriggled. Tarzan approached filled with the curiosity which is common to all creatures endowed with brains which have progressed beyond the microscopic stage.
Teeka rolled her eyes in his direction and strained the squirming mite still closer to her. Tarzan came nearer.
Teeka drew away and bared her fangs. Tarzan was nonplussed.
In all his experiences with Teeka, never before had she bared fangs at him other than in play; but today she did not look playful. Tarzan ran his brown fingers through his thick, black hair, cocked his head upon one side, and stared. Then he edged a bit nearer, craning his neck to have a better look at the thing which Teeka cuddled.
Again Teeka drew back her upper lip in a warning snarl.
Tarzan reached forth a hand, cautiously, to touch the thing which Teeka held, and Teeka, with a hideous growl, turned suddenly upon him. Her teeth sank into the flesh of his forearm before the ape-man could snatch it away, and she pursued him for a short distance as he retreated incontinently through the trees;but Teeka, carrying her baby, could not overtake him.
At a safe distance Tarzan stopped and turned to regard his erstwhile play-fellow in unconcealed astonishment.
What had happened to so alter the gentle Teeka? She had so covered the thing in her arms that Tarzan had not yet been able to recognize it for what it was; but now, as she turned from the pursuit of him, he saw it. Through his pain and chagrin he smiled, for Tarzan had seen young ape mothers before. In a few days she would be less suspicious.
Still Tarzan was hurt; it was not right that Teeka, of all others, should fear him. Why, not for the world would he harm her, or her balu, which is the ape word for baby.
And now, above the pain of his injured arm and the hurt to his pride, rose a still stronger desire to come close and inspect the new-born son of Taug. Possibly you will wonder that Tarzan of the Apes, mighty fighter that he was, should have fled before the irritable attack of a she, or that he should hesitate to return for the satisfaction of his curiosity when with ease he might have vanquished the weakened mother of the new-born cub; but you need not wonder. Were you an ape, you would know that only a bull in the throes of madness will turn upon a female other than to gently chastise her, with the occasional exception of the individual whom we find exemplified among our own kind, and who delights in beating up his better half because she happens to be smaller and weaker than he.
Tarzan again came toward the young mother--warily and with his line of retreat safely open. Again Teeka growled ferociously. Tarzan expostulated.
"Tarzan of the Apes will not harm Teeka's balu," he said.
"Let me see it."
"Go away!" commanded Teeka. "Go away, or I will kill you.""Let me see it," urged Tarzan.
"Go away," reiterated the she-ape. "Here comes Taug.
He will make you go away. Taug will kill you. This is Taug's balu."A savage growl close behind him apprised Tarzan of the nearness of Taug, and the fact that the bull had heard the warnings and threats of his mate and was coming to her succor.
Now Taug, as well as Teeka, had been Tarzan's play-fellow while the bull was still young enough to wish to play.
Once Tarzan had saved Taug's life; but the memory of an ape is not overlong, nor would gratitude rise above the parental instinct. Tarzan and Taug had once measured strength, and Tarzan had been victorious.
That fact Taug could be depended upon still to remember;but even so, he might readily face another defeat for his first-born--if he chanced to be in the proper mood.
From his hideous growls, which now rose in strength and volume, he seemed to be in quite the mood. Now Tarzan felt no fear of Taug, nor did the unwritten law of the jungle demand that he should flee from battle with any male, unless he cared to from purely personal reasons.
But Tarzan liked Taug. He had no grudge against him, and his man-mind told him what the mind of an ape would never have deduced-- that Taug's attitude in no sense indicated hatred. It was but the instinctive urge of the male to protect its offspring and its mate.
Tarzan had no desire to battle with Taug, nor did the blood of his English ancestors relish the thought of flight, yet when the bull charged, Tarzan leaped nimbly to one side, and thus encouraged, Taug wheeled and rushed again madly to the attack. Perhaps the memory of a past defeat at Tarzan's hands goaded him. Perhaps the fact that Teeka sat there watching him aroused a desire to vanquish the ape-man before her eyes, for in the breast of every jungle male lurks a vast egotism which finds expression in the performance of deeds of derring-do before an audience of the opposite ***.
At the ape-man's side swung his long grass rope--the play-thing of yesterday, the weapon of today--and as Taug charged the second time, Tarzan slipped the coils over his head and deftly shook out the sliding noose as he again nimbly eluded the ungainly beast.