Doc Savage - 047 - Land Of Long Ju Ju, page 1
047 - Land Of Long Ju Ju
By Robeson, Kenneth
Table of Contents
Doc Savage 047 - Land Of Long Ju Ju
by
Kenneth Robeson
Chapter I. RUNNERS TO DEATH
Chapter II. WHITE MAN'S VOICE
Chapter III. THE SEALED BOX
Chapter IV. THE BLACK HIDE-OUT
Chapter V. DEAD MEN SIT UP
Chapter VI. TWO LIVING HEADS
Chapter VII. SHRINE OF LONG JUJU
Chapter VIII. WHEN THE BOX OPENED
Chapter IX. THREE BLACK HEARSES
Chapter X. SOME STRANGE CRAFT
Chapter XI. LAND OF LONG JUJU
Chapter XII. THE KING IS DYING
Chapter XIII. FEAR OF THE PEOPLE
Chapter XIV. RAID OF THE SHIMBA
Chapter XV. THE BAREFOOTED ARMY
Chapter XVI. THE BURNING "WING"
Chapter XVII. KING UDU'S RESURRECTION
Chapter XVIII. THE ARMY STRIKES
Chapter XIX. THE BURNING KING
Chapter XX
THE END
Doc Savage 047 - Land Of Long Ju Ju
by
Kenneth Robeson
Chapter I. RUNNERS TO DEATH
Two weird figures came running in the white fog. Their queer garments flapped like the sheets of ghosts. Runners of the jungle should not have been so dressed. The togalike attire was pulled above bony knees, but the garments were hampering. Any white man who had been in Abyssinia would have identified these sheets as the chamma. This was distinctive of royal or official rank.
These grotesquely clad runners were far south of Abyssinia. They were now below the great Taveta forest of Central East Africa, in the foothills of the Parri Mountains. It was a green, fog-soaked wilderness of silence just now.
Doubtless the place was too silent in the judgment of the taller of the two runners. The pair was approaching a water hole.
The taller runner halted suddenly. He held up one long, skinny arm. The other runner became motionless. Both listened intently.
There came only a strange, distant throbbing; like the hard heel of a human hand beating upon some hollow vessel. The runners knew the sound for a drum. The stretched skin of a kuda, the great antelope of the country, over the end of a hollowed senecio log.
The runners had been hearing the drum talk for two days and two nights. Five days and nights before, when they had started, there had been six runners. Only these two had survived to reach this place.
"Safi maji. "
whispered the tallest runner hoarsely.
He meant the pool contained clean water. Some other pools had been poisoned. Two of the original six runners had drunk of these pools.
These two had remained behind.
The taller runner directed his companion to drink while he kept watch. The skin drum continued to throb.
The shorter runner dropped to his hands and knees. He crept through the white fog to the pool. His brown hands divided the broad leaves of a senecio tree.
No sound had been given forth by the fog-drenched leaves. The taller runner rasped a warning. The shorter runner stretched on his stomach. His tongue lapped up water where his hand had pushed away the scum.
Then he made a sudden, violent effort as if to rise. His neck seemed incapable of lifting his head. His face splashed into the pool. Air bubbles arose around the man's head.
The tall runner made no effort to rescue his companion. He whispered a word.
"Okoyong." Then he added, "Masai, the Long Juju."
The tall runner seemed almost to dissolve into the wall of the jungle. His companion was already a stiffening body. A small dart had appeared behind one ear of the runner who had died beside the pool.
Though he had been running for five days and nights, halting only when overpowered by sleep, the tall man slipped through the tangled vines of the liana with amazing speed.
THE tall figure was the last of the six runners. On the shoulders of this single man rested the burden of the message that had been carried by six.
Whatever the encircling menace, the runner escaped temporarily. He carried but a single weapon. This was a sharp-bladed, short-hafted stabbing spear.
He had said, "Okoyong" and "Masai." No fiercer tribes dwelt in all of Africa. The Masai were blood-drinkers and head-hunters of this interior central country. The Okoyong were from a distant place. They had come into the land of Kilimanjaro, bringing witchcraft, the worship of the Long Juju.
Perhaps the tall runner had no hope of escaping with his life. But his message must be delivered verbally.
More than one drum was talking now. The taut skins throbbed from four points of the compass.
The runner's face was different from that of other tribes in the Kilimanjaro and Taveta forest country. His skin was lighter than the smoky black mostly to be found. The nose was thin and hawklike, an arching bone that might have belonged to an ancient Roman rather than to a native of Africa.
The thin nostrils now were twitching. The runner's keen olfactory sense told him he was not far from his goal. The odor was that of meat being cooked as only an inglesi would want it. All white men were inglesi, or Englishmen.
The runner came to a wide, open glade beside a flowing stream of white water. His thirst was very great, almost unendurable.
The man hesitated for less than five seconds. His long legs plunged him forward into the open space. Then he cried out, only once. The impeding chamma fell down around his knees and entangled his legs. The stabbing spear flew from his hand.
The man lay still, except for a twitching of his muscles. From his back, between the shoulder blades, protruded a long spear haft. Ostrich feathers, dyed red with ochre, quivered in the wind.
"IT was in this direction I heard it," spoke a deep, resonant voice in English with a broad American accent.
A white man pushed aside the vines. He started into the open space where the sheeted figure lay with a spear in his back.
A big native, wearing only a garment of colobus monkey fur, thrust an ebony arm in front of the white man.
"No like, b'wana!" he grunted. "Me first go see!"
But the white man was bigger. He pushed past the restraining arm. He looked like a giant beside the other. His figure was huge, an immense bulk of perhaps more than two hundred and fifty pounds.
"Thunderation, Souho!" he boomed. "That fellow's still living! Maybe we can save him! Here, grab a hatful of water!"
The huge white man swept off his helmetlike, tropical hat and thrust it into the native's hands.
"Hurry, Souho!" he commanded. "We'll see what we can do!"
"Will make do, B'wana Renwick," muttered the native.
Souho obeyed the order of B'wana Renwick. He reached the stream by keeping close to the jungle wall.
"Come, give me a hand, Mapanda," said B'wana Renwick. "I've got a hunch that fellow was trying to get to our safari. Maybe he's from old King Udu himself."
A quick-moving youth with a yellowish skin and snapping black eyes moved behind the white man. Mapanda was of an Arabian cast, probably from one of the upper coastal tribes.
B'wana
Renwick had faced too many dangers in too many outlandish places to betray any fear.
For the white man was Colonel John Renwick, world famous engineer. To thousands he was known simply as "Renny." He was one of the world's most noted group of adventurers.
Clark Savage, Jr., known to the world as Doc Savage, was soon to know of this dead native runner in the African jungle. For, as Renny lifted the head of the dying native in the strange chamma, Doc Savage, in New York, was attempting to get in touch with the giant engineer over the world's most powerful short-wave radio.
WHEN Souho, the native hunter, brought the hat filled with water, the dying runner gulped some of it. Renny lifted the man in his arms. Death was certain. The blade of the spear had pierced the man's body.
"B'wana--B'wana Renwick?" whispered the dying man. "It is good you come--Rag Udu--the king of Koko is going--"
The runner's head dropped. Renny quickly produced a small hypodermic syringe. In a few seconds, the man opened his eyes. Whispered speech came to his lips through bloody foam.
Renny held him in his arms. The words were partly English and partly a native patois.
"Yes?" he said, when the runner halted and choked. "King Udu wants the railroad? And what is this other?"
The runner could say only a few words. His speech ended. Renny pulled the chamma over the man's face.
"Doc's got to know about this," he said slowly to himself. "Come, Souho! Mapanda! We'll take the body to camp! He must be buried!"
Souho and Mapanda, Renny's head carrier, did not relish this task. Souho, the hunter, was a brave man. He had faced a man-eating simba, the great lion of the Taveta, with only his spear. But he carried the body of the dead runner as if it were some dangerous high explosive.
Equatorial night descended upon Renny's camp as they arrived with the body. Already the carrier boys had a great fire going.
The skin drums had never ceased talking. The throbbing was spaced between beats like dots and dashes of the regular Morse telegraph code.
The carriers were eating. Their meal was a delicacy with them. It consisted of elephant feet baked for two days in a hot pit.
"Hyrax no make much talk, B'wana Renwick," said Souho. "The spear is of Masai, b'wana. It means they make do war."
The night was oppressive. There had been no visit of the small colobus monkeys. Renny had been on this railroad survey for nearly six weeks. The small monkeys had followed the camp.
Only an engineer of outstanding ability could have plotted the line of steel from Muoa Pemba, on the Indian Ocean south of Mobasi, through the Parri Mountains to the great Taveta country. The line was intended to open up the rich lands of the Kilimanjaro mountains.
Renny believed their camp was being closely watched. The silence of the hyrax and the absence of the monkeys in the dense jungle could mean only one thing. Many men must be close to the camp.
RENNY brought from his tent a huge square box. From this he produced a radio transmitter. The transmitter was one of Doc Savage's system. Its short wave made it possible for his men to reach him across many hundreds of miles.
Renny set the dials to the wave lengths employed by the Doc Savage group. Mapanda's black eyes glittered. To this native's mind, B'wana Renwick was a greater sorcerer than the most powerful Juju priests.
The generator started humming. Still the drums were talking.
Suddenly one of the carriers let out a wild screech. Others of the native boys threw aside their platters of elephant feet.
The screech became a death scream. A native boy arose. His bony body teetered back to its heels. He fell in the edge of the big fire. His flesh burned sickeningly.
The blade of a long spear stuck through the carrier's throat. Before Renny could get to his feet, two more native boys were impaled. The other carriers howled and dashed toward the denser jungle.
"Come back, you fools!" roared Renny. "Make cover here!"
Renny was whispering into his tent. Screams of agony came from the jungle. Souho, the hunter, threw himself flat on the ground. His hands had grabbed the most powerful gun.
This was a .450 Express, a British model. Souho exploded the big-game killer. But its high-velocity bullets only clipped leaves from the jungle where no one seemed to be moving.
Renny came out with a clumsy looking weapon. It was a superfire machine pistol, loaded with a drum of quick-firing bullets. The pistol made a noise like an immense bullfiddle. But its slugs only mowed a path a little to one side of where the carrier boys were running.
Perhaps most of the score of native boys had been killed. The others had slithered away. Renny muttered grimly.
"Holy cow!" boomed Renny. "If I could only get an eye on some of them devils!"
While the guns were whooping and banging, no more spears had fallen. If three boys had not been lying transfixed by the murderous blades, it would have seemed there had been no attack.
This was amazing. The tribal warriors usually accompany their attacks with much shouting.
Chapter II. WHITE MAN'S VOICE
ONLY Souho and Mapanda had remained with Renny. The big engineer ordered them behind the tents. A faint moaning came from the jungle bush.
Renny judged this must be one of his carrier boys. He was about to investigate, when Souho interfered.
"Masai make some trick, b'wana," he warned. "Him be Juju voice. Most good stay now."
Renny, always ready for an open scrap, was somewhat bewildered. He listened carefully. Souho's warning had been well judged. The moaning voice was not that of a man in pain.
Renny started to pull away the body of the dead carrier closest to the fire. A whistling wind fanned his head. A long spear, ornamented with red-dyed ostrich feathers, jammed its blade into the ground.
Around the haft of the spear a white paper was tied. Renny unrolled the white paper. There was a note printed in English:
COLONEL RENWICK MUST LEAVE THIS LAND AT ONCE. THE RAILROAD WILL NEVER BE BUILT. THIS WILL BE THE ONLY WARNING.
"So there is a white man mixed up in this," growled Renny. "That poor devil they got was right. This is something Doc must know at once!"
Renny whipped back toward his tent. He twisted the dials of the radio transmitter.
Possibly the leader of the natives concealed in the jungle had never seen a radio broadcast from so small an instrument. Renny started speaking. Almost at once, a low but penetrating voice replied.
"Doc speaking, Renny. I can hear you clearly."
The voice of Doc Savage never was raised. It had a peculiar timbre, a great carrying quality.
"Doc, there's trouble breaking over here!" boomed Renny. "The richest region in Central Africa is about to be invaded. King Udu of Kokoland sent six runners to me. Only one arrived, and he was dying."
Souho gripped Renny's arm. The hunter raised the heavy express rifle. He was pointing it at the thick foliage beyond the fire. More than leaves had suddenly appeared. Red ostrich plumes suddenly marked the green wall.
"Don't shoot!" snapped Renny, catching Souho's arm.
"Doc--I've gotta talk fast--I've been ordered out--this King Udu has a son, Prince Zaban, in New York--the kingdom is about to be overthrown!"
GUTTERAL, snarling cries came from the bush. A fantastic figure dressed in the hide and the mane of a lion, leaped into the circle of the fire. Souho's rifle exploded.
One of the red blotches came from the wall. A huge warrior with a red ostrich headdress slammed on his face.
"They're on top of us, Doc!" roared Renny. "King Udu has sent men to guard his son in New York--one of his former subjects lives there--he is called Logo--King Udu has sent him a--"
Spears hissed across the fire. Renny paused to pull the transmitter out of immediate range of the spears.
"What did King Udu send?" came Doc's clear voice.
"King Udu has sent the kingdom's royal--"
Souho roared with pain. The haft of a spear had struck him over one ear. Two luridly painted warriors sprang from between the tents. They were dragging Mapanda between them.
"Holy cow, Doc!" shouted Renny. "See Prince Zaban---he'll know--the Long Juju has--"
Renny was completely ringed by the attackers. In the language of the Masai, a white man's voice emanated from the lion's head.
"Seize him! Break up that box!"
Half a dozen warriors hurled themselves back of the tents.
Renny heaved to his feet. He was suddenly facing a ring of long-bladed spears.
"If you are wise," said the lion-clad man in English, "you will not resist. We want only that you should forget this crazy railroad and leave the country."
"Not in a thousand years!" bellowed the enraged engineer.
He sprang between two of the spear blades. One fist, many pounds in weight, mangled the headdress of the nearest warrior into his skull.
Renny hurled himself straight toward the English-speaking leader. He saw only what looked like the shadow of some flying object. A war club covered with painted knobs cracked across the back of Renny's thick neck. As he fell, Renny let out one thunderous roar. He was close to the radio transmitter.
