Jungle Tales of Tarzan
But today, as he sat gazing upon her, he found himself noting the beauties of Teeka’s form and features—something he never had done before, since none of them had aught to do with Teeka’s ability to race nimbly through the lower terraces of the forest in the primitive games of tag and hide-and-go-seek which Tarzan’s fertile brain evolved.
Tarzan scratched his head, running his fingers deep in to the shock of black hair which framed his shapely, boyish face—he scratched his head and sighed. Teeka’s new=found beauty became as suddenly as his despair. He envied her the handsome coat of hair which covered her body. His own smooth, brown hide he hated with a hatred born of disgust and contempt. Years back he had harbored a hope that some day he, too, would be clothed in hair as were all his brothers and sisters; but of late he had been forced to abandon the delectable dream.
Then there were Teeka’s great teeth, not so large as the males’, of course, but still mighty, handsome things by comparison with Tarzan’s feeble white ones. And her beetling, brows and broad, flat nose and her mouth! Tarzan had often practiced making his mouth into a little round circle and then puffing out his cheeks while he winked his eyes to rapidly. But he felt that he could never do it in the same cute and irresistible way in which Teeka did it.
And as he watched her that afternoon, and wondered, a young bull ape who had been lazily foraging for food beneath the damp, matted carpet of decaying vegetation at the roots of a near-by tree lumbered awkwardly in Teeka’s direction. The other apes of the tribe of Kerchak moved listlessly about or lolled restfully in the midday heatr of the equatorial jungle. From time to time one or another of them had passed close to Teeka, and Tarzan had been uninterested. Why was it then, that his brows contractedcontracted, and his muscles tensed as he saw Taug pause beside the young she-ape and then squat down close to her?
Tarzan always had liked Taug. Since childhood they had romped together. Side -by -side they had squatted near the water, their quick, strong fingers ready to leap forth and seize Pisah, the fish, should that wary denizen of the cool depths dart surfaceward to the lure of the insects Tarzan tossed upon the face of the pool.
Together they had baited Tublat and teased Numa, the lion. Why, then, should Tarzan feel the rise of the short hairs at the nape of his neck merely because Taug sat close to Teeka?
It is true that Taug was no longer the frolicsome ape of yesterday. When his snarling -muscles bared his giant fangs, no one could no longer imagine that Taug was in as playful a mood as when he and Tarzan had rolled upon the turf in mimic battle.
The Taug of today was a huge, sullen bull ape, somber and forbidding. Yet he and Tarzan never had quarreled.