ing out his insults. The worried lion looked up
and rose to his feet. His tail went stiffly erect and Taug turned in
flight, for he knew that warming signal of the charge.

From behind the lion, Tarzan ran quickly toward the center of the
clearing and the body of Mamka. Numa, all his eyes for Taug, did not
see the ape-man. Instead he shot forward after the fleeing bull, who
had turned in flight not an instant too soon, since he reached the
nearest tree but a yard or two ahead of the pursuing demon. Like a cat
the heavy anthropoid scampered up the bole of his sanctuary. Numa's
talons missed him by little more than inches.

For a moment the lion paused beneath the tree, glaring up at the ape
and roaring until the earth trembled, then he turned back again toward
his kill, and as he did so, his tail shot once more to rigid erectness
and he charged back even more ferociously than he had come, for what he
saw was the naked man-thing running toward the farther trees with the
bloody carcass of his prey across a giant shoulder.

The apes, watching the grim race from the safety of the trees, screamed
taunts at Numa and warnings to Tarzan. The high sun, hot and
brilliant, fell like a spotlight upon the actors in the little
clearing, portraying them in glaring relief to the audience in the
leafy shadows of the surrounding trees. The light-brown body of the
naked youth, all but hidden by the shaggy carcass of the killed ape,
the red blood streaking his smooth hide, his muscles rolling, velvety,
beneath. Behind him the black-maned lion, head flattened, tail
extended, racing, a jungle thoroughbred, across the sunlit clearing.

Ah, but this was life! With death at his heels, Tarzan thrilled with
the joy of such living as this; but would he reach the trees ahead of
the rampant death so close behind?

Gunto swung from a limb in a tree before him. Gunto was screaming
warnings and advice.

"Catch me!" cried Tarzan, and with his heavy burden leaped straight for
the big bull hanging there by his hind feet and one forepaw. And Gunto
caught them--the big ape-man and the dead weight of the slain
she-ape--caught them with one great, hairy paw and whirled them upward
until Tarzan's fingers closed upon a near-by branch.

Beneath, Numa leaped; but Gunto, heavy and awkward as he may have
appeared, was as quick as Manu, the monkey, so that the lion's talons
but barely grazed him, scratching a bloody streak beneath one hairy arm.

T