Edgar Burroughs - The Red Hawk

“Dirty Yank!” cried one and struck me in the face with his open palm.

His companion laid a hand upon his arm. “Hold, Tav,” he expostulated, “he put up a good fight against great odds.” The speaker was a man of about my own height and might have passed as a full-blood Yank, though, as I thought at the time, doubtless he was a half-breed.

The other gestured his disgust. “A dirty Yank,” he repeated. “Keep him here, Okonnor, while I find Raban and ask what to do with him.” He turned and left us.

We had halted at the foot of a low hill upon which grew tremendous old trees and of such infinite variety that I marveled at them. There were pine, cypress, hemlock, sycamore and acacia that I recognized, and many others the like of which I never before had seen, and between the trees grew flowering shrubs. Where the ground was open it was carpeted with flowers-great masses of color; and there were little pools choked with lilies and countless birds and butterflies. Never had I looked upon a place of such wondrous beauty.

Through the trees I could see the outlines of the ruins of one of the stone tents of the ancients sitting upon the summit of the low hill. It was toward this ruined structure that he who was called Tav was departing from us.

“What place is this?” I asked the fellow guarding me, my curiosity overcoming my natural aversion to conversation with his kind.

“It is the tent of Raban,” he replied: “Until recently it was the home of Or-tis the Jemadar-the true Or-tis. The false Or-tis dwells in the great tents of The Capitol. He would not last long in this valley.”

“What is this Raban?” I asked.

“He is a great robber. He preys upon all and to such an extent has he struck terror to the hearts of all who have heard of him that he takes toll as he will, and easily. They say that he eats the flesh of humans, but that I do not know-I have been with him but a short time. After the assassination of the true Or-tis I joined him because he preys upon the Kalkars.

“He lived long in the eastern end of the valley, where he could prey upon the outskirts of the Capitol, and then he did not rob or murder the people of the valley; but with the death of Or-tis he came and took this place and now he preys upon my people as well as upon the Kalkars, but I remain with him since I must serve either him or the Kalkars.”

“You are not a Kalkar?” I asked, and I could believe it because of his good old American name, Okonnor.

“I am a Yank, and you?”

“I am Julian 20th, The Red Hawk,” I replied.

He raised his brows. “I have heard of you in the last few days,” he said. “Your people are fighting mightily at the edge of The Capitol, but they will be driven back-the Kalkars are too many. Raban will be glad of you if the stories they tell of him are true. One is that he eats the hearts of brave warriors that are unfortunate enough to fall into his hands.”

I smiled. “What is the creature?” I asked again. “Where originates such a breed?”

“He is only a Kalkar,” replied Okonnor, “but even a greater monstrosity than his fellows. He was born in The Capitol of ordinary Kalkar parents, they say, and early developed a lust for blood that has increased with the passing years. He boasts yet of his first murder-he killed his mother when he was ten.”

I shuddered. “And it is into the hands of such that a daughter of the Or-tis has fallen,” I said, “and you, an American, aided in her capture.”

He looked at me in startled surprise. “The daughter of an Or-tis?” he cried.

“Of the Or-tis,” I repeated.

“I did not know,” he said. “I was not close to her at any time and thought that she was but a Kalkar woman. Some of them are small, you know-the half-breeds.”

“What are you going to do? Can you save her?” I demanded.

A white flame seemed to illumine his face. He drew his knife and cut the bonds that held my arms behind me.

“Hide here among the trees,” he said, “and watch for Raban until I return. It will be after dark, but I will bring help. This valley is almost exclusively peopled by those who have refused to intermarry with the Kalkars and have brought down their strain unsullied from ancient times. There are almost a thousand fighting men of pure Yank blood within its confines. I should be able to gather enough to put an end to Raban for all time, and if the danger of a daughter of Or-tis cannot move them from their shame and cowardice they are hopeless indeed.”

He mounted his horse. “Quick!” he cried. “Get among the trees.”

“Where is my horse?” I called as he was riding away. “He was not killed?”

“No,” he called back, “he ran off when you fell. We did not try to catch him.” A moment later he disappeared around the west end of the hill and I entered the miniature forest that clothed it. Through the gloom of my sorrow broke one ray of happiness-Red Lightning lived.

About me grew ancient trees of enormous size with boles of five to six feet in diameter and their upper foliage waving a hundred and more feet above my head. Their branches excluded the sun where they grew thickest and beneath them baby trees struggled for existence in the wan light, or hoary monsters, long fallen, lay embedded in leaf mould marking the spot where some long dead ancient set out a tiny seedling that was to outlive all his kind.

It was a wonderful place in which to hide, although hiding is an accomplishment that we Julians have little training in and less stomach for. However, in this instance it was in a worthy cause-a Julian hiding from a Kalkar in the hope of aiding an Or-tis! Ghosts of nineteen Julians! to what had I, Julian 20th, brought my proud name?

And yet I could not be ashamed. There was something stubbornly waging war against all my inherited scruples and I knew that it was going to win-had already won. I would have sold my soul for this daughter of my enemy.

I made my way up the hill toward the ruined tent, but at the summit the shrubbery was so dense that I could see nothing. Rose bushes fifteen feet high and growing as thickly together as a wall hid everything from my sight. I could not even penetrate them.

Near me was a mighty tree with a strange, feathery foliage. It was such a tree as I had never seen before, but that fact did not interest me so much as the discovery that it might be climbed to a point that would permit me to see above the tops of the rose bushes.

What I saw included two stone tents, not so badly ruined as most of those one comes across, and between them a pool of water-an artificial pool of straight lines. Some fallen columns of stone lay about it and the vines and creepers fell over its edge into the water, almost concealing the stone rim.

As I watched a group of men came from the ruin to the east through a great archway, the coping of which had fallen away. They were all Kalkars, and among them was Raban. I had my first opportunity to view him closely.

He was a most repulsive appearing creature. His great size might easily have struck with awe the boldest heart, for he stood a full nine feet in height and was very large in proportion about the shoulders, chest and limbs. His forehead was so retreating that one might with truth say he had none, his thick thatch of stiffly erect hair almost meeting his shaggy eyebrows.

His eyes were small and set close to a coarse nose, and all his countenance was bestial. I had not dreamed that a man’s face could be so repulsive. His whiskers appeared to grow in all directions and proclaimed, at best, but hearsay evidence of combing.

He was speaking to that one of my captors who had left me at the foot of the hill to apprise Raban of my taking-that fellow who struck me in the face while my hands were bound and whose name was Tav. The giant spoke in a roaring, bull-like voice which I thought at the time was, like his swaggering walk and his braggadocio, but a pose to strike terror in those about him.