Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One) Read online

  They called James Allenvale Gunn ‘Bunduki’, the Swahili word for firearm of any kind. He and Dawn Drummond-Clayton should have been killed when their Land Rover plunged into the Gambuti Gorge. Instead, Bunduki woke to find himself in a primeval jungle and armed with primitive weapons. Dawn came to her senses on a game-haunted plain. Guided by subconscious suggestion, they set out to find each other. To do so, they had to transverse terrain populated by many kinds of wild animals and savage people. Before they were reunited, both had to face danger and death many times.

  Fortunately for Dawn and Bunduki, they were respectively the adoptive great-granddaughter and son of Lord Greystoke—who is better known as Tarzan of the Apes ...

  BUNDUKI

  By J. T. Edson

  First Published by Transworld Publishers in 1975

  Copyright © 1975, 2015 by J. T. Edson

  First Smashwords Edition: December 2015

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2015 by Tony Masero

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book ~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the world’s greatest action-escapism-adventure writer—EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

  Author’s Note

  I would like to extend my gratitude to Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., for their kindness in allowing me to introduce Dawn and Bunduki, adoptive great-granddaughter and adopted son of Lord Greystoke, TARZAN OF THE APES. I would also like to thank Philip Jose Farmer, whose book TARZAN ALIVE supplied much useful information and details of the Greystoke family’s lineage. Also Fred Bear of Grayling, Michigan, Ben Pearson of Pine Bluff, Arkansas and William D. Randall of Orlando, Florida {listed alphabetically) for supplying my heroine’s and hero’s bows, arrows and knives. I wanted them to have the best.

  Chapter One – Where Is Dawn?

  The screaming of monkeys aroused James Allenvale Gunn, better known throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia as ‘Bunduki’—the Swahili word which means a firearm of any kind—as he lay on a crotch formed by the junction of two thick branches. Like a wild animal, or a man who had lived long under dangerous conditions, he came from the depths of sleep to instant and complete wakefulness without any dull-witted, fumbling transitory period. With an agile movement, he rose to his feet. Balancing himself instinctively, he looked around him so as to find out what, if anything, had disturbed the monkeys.

  Suddenly, a realization of what he was seeing flooded through him!

  It was followed by amazement and disbelief!

  Shaking his head, as if to try and clear it, he discovered that his first impressions were unchanged.

  He really was standing high in a tree, surrounded by what was obviously a tropical jungle!

  Surely his eyes must be playing tricks upon him?

  Even as that thought came, it was replaced by other and more alarming questions!

  Where was the Land Rover, with old M’Bili slumped dead over the steering wheel, the struggling, terror-stricken impala ram and the sheer walls of the Gambuti Gorge into which they had all been tumbling?

  And, infinitely more important, where could Dawn be?

  Bunduki recollected with frightening clarity that his adoptive cousin had been with him, helping to restrain the impala, when their vehicle had toppled over the edge of the Gorge to what ought to have been certain destruction.

  Yet Dawn was nowhere in sight!

  Only the leaves, branches, creepers, trees and undergrowth of the jungle met his searching eyes.

  There was, as Bunduki had good cause to know, no such jungle anywhere within five hundred miles of the Ambagasali Wild Life Reserve.

  Holding his churning emotions in check with an effort of will, Bunduki took stock of his surroundings and drew certain conclusions.

  According to the position of the sun, the time was early morning. That suggested a night had passed since his last conscious memory. Or it could have been longer, he had no way of knowing.

  Yesterday afternoon, if that was when it had been, Dawn and Bunduki had been carrying out a routine patrol of the Reserve. It had been the normal, practically every day task for him in his capacity as Chief Warden; except that his adoptive cousin did not often have the opportunity to accompany him. As the University of Ambagasali—at which she was a physical education instructress—was on vacation, she had taken advantage of it to spend a few days with him. Accompanied by the Head Ranger, M’Bili, they had been checking on the condition of the animals and searching for evidence that poachers had been at work.

  Circling vultures had guided them to where an impala ram was struggling in the clutch of a wire snare. Its body had been cut badly, but they had felt that it could be healed. So they had freed it and carried it to the vehicle.

  Fate had started to weave its web from that moment!

  When loading the Land Rover that morning, M’Bili had forgotten to include the first aid bag. So they had not been carrying the means to render the frightened animal unconscious. Telling the aged Head Ranger to drive, Bunduki had ridden in the back with Dawn. It had required both their efforts and knowledge of wild creatures to control the terrified animal and prevent its struggles from inflicting further injuries upon itself. If it had not been for that, they would have been occupying the front seat.

  They had been returning to Headquarters along the trail which ran parallel to the edge of the Gambuti Gorge and the charge from a shotgun had torn through the windshield of the Land Rover. The attack had probably been the work of a native poacher who had seen and identified the official vehicle and was afraid that his own presence would be detected.

  Caught in the head by some of the buckshot balls, M’Bili had collapsed on to the steering wheel. At the same time, he had inadvertently turned the vehicle towards the Gorge and had trodden upon the accelerator. Before Bunduki or Dawn—neither of whom had been hit by the missiles—could make a move to avert the catastrophe, the speeding Land Rover had carried them over the edge.

  They had been falling to their deaths!

  Over three hundred feet below, the jagged rocks and raging current of the Gambuti River had been awaiting their arrival. If one failed to kill them, the other was certain to do it.

  Yet, as Bunduki was still alive, it appeared that neither the rocks nor the swiftly flowing water had done its work.

  Where was his adoptive cousin?

  ‘Dawn!’ Bunduki bellowed, with all the power and volume he could muster. ‘Dawn, can you hear me?’

  There was no reply!

  The silence was only broken by the sudden rustling, crackling, crashing and shaking of the foliage above him as the monkeys fled.

  Instinctively, Bunduki looked upwards. He hoped that he might learn something from the animals’ behavior which would help him to understand the almost inexplicable situation in which he found himself. Using their long tails as aids to their hands and feet, the reddish-brown colored monkeys went racing nimbly away through the foliage. Unless he missed his guess, it had been his voice and nothing else that had frightened them away.

  For all that, something was wrong!

  A moment’s consideration informed Bunduki what it was.
<
br />   No species of monkey in Africa had a prehensile tail, such a thick reddish coat, beard and body shape.

  If Bunduki did not know it was impossible, he would have sworn that the departing animals were red howler monkeys.

  A species found only in South America!

  Staring with greater concentration, Bunduki double-checked the details of the creatures’ appearances. They had not gone far, but had come to a halt in a nearby tree and were staring back with an equal curiosity. No matter how much he sought for evidence to the contrary, he found only further proof that he was correct. They were a family of Alouatta Seviculus, the South American red howler monkey.

  Frowning in bewilderment, Bunduki raised his right hand with the intention of thrusting back his hair. It was an instinctive gesture which he always employed when perturbed or puzzled. However, on this occasion, it went unfinished.

  As the hand came into his range of vision, he saw that it was covered by the ventilated pigskin glove which he always wore when hunting with his bow and arrows.

  The discovery caused other sensations to register in his mind.

  His feet were bare!

  The slight breeze felt as if it was blowing on predominantly naked flesh!

  Looking down, so as to ascertain the reason for this phenomenon, Bunduki could not prevent a startled exclamation from bursting out of his lips.

  The garments which he had been wearing in the Land Rover—a khaki bush-shirt, slacks and calf-high hunting boots—were all gone. Instead, he had on the glove, a brown leather archer’s arm guard strapped to his left wrist i and a loincloth made from a leopard’s skin and held up by a two-and-a-quarter-inch broad leather belt. In its sheath, on the left side of the belt, hung a big knife that looked very familiar.

  Drawing the knife, Bunduki stared in puzzlement at it. There was no doubt why he recognized it. It had been presented to him on his twenty-first birthday by his adoptive parents, Lord and Lady Greystoke. Made by the master cutler, W. D. Randall Jr., of Orlando, Florida, it was called a Model 12 ‘Smithsonian Bowie’. Weighing forty-three ounces, it had an overall length of sixteen and a half inches. Its eleven inches long, two-and-a-quarter-inches wide, clip pointed ii blade was three-eighths of an inch thick at the stock and had been modeled on the original weapon made in the 1820’s by the Arkansas blacksmith, James Black, for the legendary James Bowie. iii

  A slight movement to Bunduki’s left attracted his attention. Instinctively, as he turned his head to investigate, his right hand crossed to grasp the concave ivory hilt—the lugged guard, scalloped collar and butt cap of which were made of brass—ready to draw the knife if necessary. He did not find any danger was threatening him, only the cause of yet another puzzle. Suspended from a broken branch, close above where he had been lying, were a bow and a quiver filled with arrows.

  And not just any bow!

  It was Bunduki’s own, produced to his specifications by the Bear Archery Division of Grayling, Michigan. Sixty inches long, it was a black Super Kodiak with fiberglass limbs that gave a draw of one hundred pounds. Attached to its right side was a bow-quiver holding eight arrows. Their buff colored fiberglass shafts told him that each had a Bear Four-Blade Razorhead hunting point.

  The same applied to the fourteen arrows in the leather back-quiver that was hanging alongside the bow. All were equipped with hunting heads. There was not one of the type he used when catching animals alive for examination. Out of curiosity, he opened the pouch on the front of the quiver. He found that it held the stone which he used for keeping exceptionally sharp edges on the points of his hunting arrows. There were also six new, double-loop, braided black Dacron bowstrings. While he always carried the stone, he could not recollect having put the spare strings in the pouch.

  Nor, if it came to that, had he been carrying his archery equipment with him when he and his adoptive cousin had set off on the fateful patrol.

  Where is Dawn?

  The question returned to take precedence over all others.

  Compared with the very deep concern that Bunduki was experiencing over his adoptive cousins welfare, the strange situation in which he found himself was of minor importance.

  Slowly, but inexorably, a thought began to creep into Bunduki’s mind. It refused to be ignored and suggested that Dawn had been rescued in that same unexplained, practically miraculous fashion as himself. Not only that. She was somewhere to the northwest—taking the position of the sun as an aid to compass directions—alive, uninjured—but possibly in great danger!

  Bunduki was at a loss to explain the reason for the feeling that he was experiencing. Certainly it was something completely outside all his previous knowledge and nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He could not shake off the compulsion to go and investigate the validity of the thought.

  Nor did he try to do so.

  Dawn was alive and might be in peril!

  Bunduki needed to know no more than that!

  For the time being, nothing else mattered!

  How the rescue had been performed, by whom, for what purpose—the way in which he was dressed and armed implied that it was probably for more than reasons of humanity—even where Dawn and he had been transported, all faded into unimportance.

  Dawn was not dead!

  So Bunduki must go and find her!

  Once they were reunited, they could try to discover the answers to the questions which must be plaguing her as well as himself.

  Taking down the quiver, Bunduki swung its strap over his head and settled it on his back so that the arrows would be readily accessible to his gloved hand as it reached over his right shoulder. Then he lifted the immensely powerful, recurved iv hunting bow from the branch. It was already strung, which suggested that whoever had rescued him must have considerable knowledge of archery. Even a new string had been fitted. Never had the smooth, carefully contoured hardwood of the handle-riser felt so comforting as when his left thumb and forefinger enfolded it.

  No matter who, or what, Bunduki’s saviors proved to be, he considered that they had given him adequate means of survival in any kind of jungle that he had ever seen. It was almost as if they had known his skills and capabilities, and had supplied him with what, in his case, were the basic necessities to stay alive.

  Standing on the crotch, Bunduki looked ideally suited to meet the challenge of his surroundings. Six-foot three-inches in height, he had blond hair taken straight back and a tanned, exceptionally handsome face. While his blue eyes could twinkle with merriment, they were at that moment as cold and chilling as a June sky just before a storm. He had a tremendous spread to his shoulders, with massive biceps and forearms to match. His bronzed torso slimmed down at the waist, with the stomach ridged by cords of powerful muscles, then spread to long legs that were so well developed that they could carry his two hundred and twenty pounds weight with a light-footed and effortless-seeming agility.

  For all his great size and enormous strength, Bunduki could have come close to world record class as a sprinter, long distance runner, swimmer and gymnast. There was, however, more than sheer physical prowess to his makeup. Most of his education and upbringing had been a superb preparation for whatever might lie ahead.

  Having learned that a gang of Mau Mau terrorists were planning to attack their friend Major Roger Gunn’s farm, Lord Greystoke, his son, Sir Paul John Clayton—Clayton being the Greystoke’s family name—adopted son, Sir John Drummond-Clayton and his son, Armand John Drummond-Clayton, v had rushed to the rescue. Unfortunately, by the time they had arrived, Major Gunn and his wife had been murdered. Bunduki, then only three years old, had been saved by a loyal servant. With her usual compassion, Lady Jane Greystoke had adopted the orphan and he was raised as one of their family.

  During the years which had followed, Bunduki was given a very thorough formal and practical education. However, he had become disenchanted with the so-called permissive society in England. So, instead of entering a university after he had left Eton, he had returned to Ken
ya. From there, he had accompanied Lord Greystoke, Sir Paul, Sir John and Armand Drummond-Clayton on the various expeditions—which had taken them into many primitive parts of the world—undertaken on behalf of bodies like the International Union for Conservation and Natural Resources.

  While travelling and when at home on the Greystokes’ property in Kenya, even before leaving school, Bunduki had gained a vast amount of experience in a variety of subjects. In his hands, the Smithsonian bowie knife was an even more effective weapon than James Bowie had found the original to be. Armand had taught him the techniques employed by British Commandos, American Rangers and European resistance fighters in World War II, but which had been unknown in Bowie’s day. With his bow and arrows he had performed many of the feats attributed to Robin Hood. Although his mysterious rescuers had not provided him with either, he could handle an assegai—short, stabbing spear—and shield like a Zulu warrior, or hurl a mkuki—long, throwing spear—as well as any Masai or Samburu moran. vi His instructor, Muviro, chief of the Waziri—who had served with members of all three nations in the Kings African Rifles and had learned their fighting arts—had also taught him the use of a simi vii , battle-axe and war club. He was also well versed in boxing, judo, karate and plain, old-fashioned roughhouse brawling.

  From the male members of his adopted family, experts all, Bunduki had learned to read tracks that were barely discernible to less skilled eyes. He had been taught how to move as silently as any great cat, even through thick undergrowth. He also knew much about animals; how to hunt them for food when necessary, or how to avoid becoming a meal for a predator.

  So a jungle, even such a one as he awoke to find himself in, held no terrors for a man who had been raised by John Clayton, Lord Greystoke—who was far better known as Tarzan of the Apes.

  Looking at his weapons, Bunduki hoped that his unknown rescuers had equipped his adoptive cousin at least as well. Given her Ben Pearson Marauder Take-Down hunting bow—custom built to a draw weight of seventy pounds—a supply of arrows and the Randall Model 1 Fighting knife which he had brought her as a Christmas present, Dawn could feed and, to a certain extent, protect herself until he could find her. The blood of Sir John and Lady Meriem Drummond-Clayton flowed through her veins and their jungle knowledge was bettered only by that of Lord and Lady Greystoke. viii Always a tomboy, Dawn had been on several of the family’s expeditions before taking up her post at the University of Ambagasali and was capable of taking care of herself.