Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One)

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

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.

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.

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.