ure of leafy
branch and looped and festooned creepers, brushing ebon shoulders
against gorgeous blooms which inscrutable Nature has seen fit to lavish
most profusely farthest from the eye of man.

As Tarzan watched, through narrowed lids, the last of the warriors
disappear beyond a turn in the trail, his expression altered to the
urge of a newborn thought. A slow, grim smile touched his lips. He
looked down upon the frightened, bleating kid, advertising, in its fear
and its innocence, its presence and its helplessness.

Dropping to the ground, Tarzan approached the trap and entered.
Without disturbing the fiber cord, which was adjusted to drop the door
at the proper time, he loosened the living bait, tucked it under an arm
and stepped out of the cage.

With his hunting knife he quieted the frightened animal, severing its
jugular; then he dragged it, bleeding, along the trail down to the
drinking hole, the half smile persisting upon his ordinarily grave
face. At the water's edge the ape-man stooped and with hunting knife
and quick strong fingers deftly removed the dead kid's viscera.
Scraping a hole in the mud, he buried these parts which he did not eat,
and swinging the body to his shoulder took to the trees.

For a short distance he pursued his way in the wake of the black
warriors, coming down presently to bury the meat of his kill where it
would be safe from the depredations of Dango, the hyena, or the other
meat-eating beasts and birds of the jungle. He was hungry. Had he
been all beast he would have eaten; but his man-mind could entertain
urges even more potent than those of the belly, and now he was
concerned with an idea which kept a smile upon his lips and his eyes
sparkling in anticipation. An idea, it was, which permitted him to
forget that he was hungry.

The meat safely cached, Tarzan trotted along the elephant trail after
the Gomangani. Two or three miles from the cage he overtook them and
then he swung into the trees and followed above and behind
them--waiting his chance.

Among the blacks was Rabba Kega, the witch-doctor. Tarzan hated them
all; but Rabba Kega he especially hated. As the blacks filed along the
winding path, Rabba Kega, being lazy, dropped behind. This Tarzan
noted, and it filled him with satisfaction--his being radiated a grim
and terrible content. Like an angel of death he hovered above the
unsuspecting black.

Rabba Kega, knowing that the village was but a short distan