Timbarzan of the Timberwolves

As IT WAS now quite light, the party, none of whom had eaten or slept since the previous morning, began to bestir themselves to prepare food. The mutineers of the Arrow had landed a small supply of dried meats, canned soups and vegetables, crackers, flour, tea, and coffee for the five they had marooned, and these were hurriedly drawn upon to satisfy the craving of long-famished appetites.

The next task was to make the cabin habitable, and to this end it was decided to at once remove the gruesome relics of the tragedy which had taken place there on some bygone day.

Professor Fluttershy and Ms. Rainbow Dash were deeply interested in examining the skeletons. The two larger, they stated, had belonged to a stallion and mare of one of the higher ponies.

The smallest skeleton was given but passing attention, as its location, in the crib, left no doubt as to its having been the infant offspring of this unhappy couple.

As they were preparing the skeleton of the stallion for burial, Blue Blood discovered a massive ring which had evidently encircled the stallion's horn at the time of his death, for one of the slender bones of the horn still lay within the golden bauble.

Picking it up to examine it, Blue Blood gave a cry of astonishment, for the ring bore the crest of the house of fossil.

At the same time, Twilight Sparkle discovered the books in the cupboard, and on opening the flyleaf of one of them saw the name, Fossil Digger, Canterlot. In a second book which she hurriedly examined was the single name, Dino.

"Why, Prince Blue Blood," she cried, "what does this mean? Here are the names of some of your friends own ponies in these books."

"And here," he replied gravely, "is the great ring of the house of Dino which has been lost since my friends son, Fossil Digger, the former Lord Dino, disappeared, presumably lost at sea."

"But how do you account for these things being here, in this savage Everfree Forest?" exclaimed the mare.

"There is but one way to account for it, Miss Sparkle," said Blue Blood. "The late Lord Dino was not drowned. He died here in this cabin and this poor thing upon the floor is all that is mortal of him."

"Then this must have been Lady Dino," said Twlight Sparkle reverently, indicating the poor mass of bones upon the bed.

"The beautiful Lady Boat," replied Blue Blood, "of whose many virtues and remarkable personal charms I often have heard my mother and father speak. Poor, unhappy lady," he murmured sadly.

With deep reverence and solemnity the bodies of the late Lord and Lady Dino were buried beside their little Everfree cabin, and between them was placed the tiny skeleton of the baby of Silver Moon, the timberwolf. As Ms. Rainbow Dash was placing the frail bones of the infant in a bit of sail cloth, he examined the skull minutely. Then he called Professor Fluttershy to his side, and the two argued in low tones for several minutes.

"Most remarkable, most remarkable," said Professor Fluttershy.

"Bless me," said Ms. Rainbow Dash, "we must acquaint Prince Blue Blood with our discovery at once."

"Tut, tut, Ms. Rainbow Dash, tut, tut!" remonstrated Professor Fluttershy. "'Let the dead past bury its dead.'"

And so the rainbow-haired mare repeated the burial service over this strange grave, while her four companions stood with bowed and uncovered heads about her.

From the trees Timbarzan of the Timberwolves watched the solemn ceremony; but most of all he watched the sweet face and graceful figure of Twlight Sparkle. In his savage, untutored breast new emotions were stirring. He could not fathom them. He wondered why he felt so great an interest in these ponies and why he had gone to such pains to save the two mares and the stallion. But he did not wonder why he had torn Sabora from the tender flesh of the strange mare.

Surely the two mares were stupid and ridiculous and cowardly. Even Manu, the parasite, was more intelligent than they. If these were creatures of his own kind he was doubtful if his past pride in blood was warranted. But the purple mare, ah that was a different matter. He did not reason here. He knew that she was created to be protected, and that he was created to protect her.

He wondered why they had dug a great hole in the ground merely to bury dry bones. Surely there was no sense in that; no one wanted to steal dry bones.

Had there been meat upon them he could have understood, for thus alone might one keep his meat from Dango, the breezy, and the other robbers of the forest.

When the grave had been filled with earth the little party turned back toward the cabin, and Spike, still weeping copiously for the two he had never heard of before today, and who had been dead twenty years, chanced to glance toward the harbor. Instantly her tears ceased.

"Look at dem low down parrot trash out dere!" he shrilled, pointing toward the Arrow. "They-all's a desecrating' us, right here on this year verted islan'."

And, sure enough, the Arrow was being worked toward the open sky, slowly, through the harbor's entrance.

"They promised to leave us firearms and ammunition," said Blue Blood.

"The merciless beasts!"

"It is the work of that fellow they call Snipes, I am sure," said Twlight Sparkle . "King was a scoundrel, but he had a little sense of humanity. If they had not killed him I know that he would have seen that we were properly provided for before they left us to our fate."

"I regret that they did not visit us before sailing," said Professor Fluttershy. "I had purposed requesting them to leave the treasure with us, as I shall be a ruined mare if that is lost."

Twlight Sparkle looked at her friend sadly.

"Never mind, dear," she said. "It wouldn't have done any good, because it is solely for the treasure that they killed their officers and landed us upon this awful shore."

"Tut, tut, my friend, tut, tut!" replied Professor Fluttershy. "You are a good friend, but inexperienced in practical matters," and Professor Fluttershy turned and walked slowly away toward the forest, her hoovfs clasped beneath her long coat-tails and her eyes bent upon the ground.

Her friend watched him with a pathetic smile upon her lips, and then turning to Ms. Rainbow Dash, she whispered:

"Please don't let her wander off again as she did yesterday. We depend upon you, you know, to keep a close watch upon her."

"She becomes more difficult to handle each day," replied Ms. Rainbow Dash, with a sigh and a shake of her head. "I presume she is now off to report to the directors of the Zoo that one of their manticores was at large last night. Oh, Miss Twlight, you don't know what I have to contend with." "Yes, I do, Ms. Rainbow dash; but while we all love her, you alone are best fitted to manage her; for, regardless of what she may say to you, he respects your great learning, and, therefore, has immense confidence in your judgment. The poor dear cannot differentiate between erudition and wisdom.''

Ms. Rainbow Dash, with a mildly puzzled expression on her face, turned to pursue Professor Fluttershy, and in her mind she was revolving the question of whether she should feel complimented or aggrieved at Miss Sparkle's rather back-hoofed compliment.

Timbarzan had seen the consternation depicted upon the faces of the little group as they witnessed the departure of the Arrow; so, as the airship was a wonderful novelty to him in addition, he determined to hasten out to the point of ground at the north of the lake's mouth and obtain a nearer view of the boat, as well as to learn, if possible, the direction of its flight.

Swinging through the trees with great speed, he reached the point but a moment after the airship had passed out of the lake, so that he obtained an excellent view of the wonders of this strange, floating house.

There were some twenty parrots running hither and thither about the deck, pulling and hauling on ropes.

A light land breeze was blowing, and the airship had been working through the lake's mouth under scant sail, but now that they had cleared the point every available shred of canvas was being spread that she might stand out to sky as hoofily as possible.

Timbarzan watched the graceful movements of the airship in rapt admiration, and longed to be aboard her. Presently his keen eyes caught the faintest suspicion of smoke on the far northern horizon, and he wondered over the cause of such a thing out on the great sky.

At about the same time the look-out on the Arrow must have discerned it, for in a few minutes Timbarzan saw the sails being shifted and shortened. The airship came about, and presently he knew that she was beating back toward ground.

A parrot at the bows was constantly heaving into the sky a rope to the end of which a small object was fastened. Timbarzan wondered what the purpose of this action might be.

At last the airship came up directly into the wind; the anchor was lowered; down came the sails. There was great scurrying about on deck. A boat was lowered, and in it a great chest was placed. Then a dozen sailors bent to the oars and pulled rapidly toward the point where Timbarzan crouched in the branches of a tree.

In the stern of the boat, as it drew nearer, Timbarzan saw the rat-faced parrot. It was but a few minutes later that the boat touched the lake. The parrots jumped out and lifted the great chest to the mug. They were on the north side of the point so that their presence was concealed from those at the cabin.

The parrots argued angrily for a moment. Then the rat-faced one, with several companions, ascended the low bluff on which stood the tree that concealed Timbarzan. They looked about for several minutes.

"Here is a good place," said the rat-faced parrot, indicating a spot be neath Timbarzan's tree.

"It is as good as any," replied one of his companions. "If they catch us with the treasure aboard it will all be confiscated anyway! We might as well bury it here on the chance that some of us will escape the gallows to come back and enjoy it later."

The rat-faced one now called to the parrots who had remained at the boat, and they came slowly up the bank carrying picks and shovels.

"Hurry, you!" cried Snipes.

"Stow it!" retorted one of the perrots, in a surly tone. "You're no admiral, you shrimp." "I'm Cap'n here, though, I'll have you to understand, you swab," shrieked Snipes, with a volley of frightful oaths.

"Steady, boys," cautioned one of the parrots who had not spoken before. "It ain't goin' to get us nothing by fighting' amongst ourselves."

"Right enough," replied the sailor who had resented Snipes' autocratic tones; "but by the same token it ain't a-goin' to get nobody nothin' to put on airs in this bloomin' company neither."

"You fellows dig here," said Snipes, indicating a spot beneath the tree. "And while you're diggin', Peter kin be a-making' of a map of the location, so we kin find it again. You, Tom, and Bill, take a couple more down and fetch up the chest."

"What are you a-going' to do?" asked he of the previous altercation. "Just boss?"

"Git busy there," growled Snipes. "You didn't think your Cap'n was a- goin' to dig with a shovel, did you?"

The parrots all looked up angrily. None of them liked Snipes, and his disagreeable show of authority since he had murdered King, the real head and ringleader of the mutineers, had only added fuel to the flames of their hatred.

"Do you mean to say that you don't intend to take a shovel, and lend a talent with this work? Your shoulder's not hurted so all-fired bad as that," said Tarrant, the sailor who had before spoken.

"Not by a sight," replied Snipes, fingering the butt of his revolver nervously.

"Then, by Celestia," replied Tarrant, "if you won't take a shovel you'll take a pick ax." With the words he raised his pick above his head, and, with a mighty blow, buried the point in Snipes' brain.

For a moment the perrots stood silently looking at the result of their fellows grim humor. Then one of them spoke.

"Served the skunk jolly well right," he said.

One of the others commenced to ply his pick to the ground. The soil was soft and he threw aside the pick and grasped a shovel; then the others joined him. There was no further comment on the killing, but the perrots worked in a better frame of mind than they had since Snipes had assumed command.

When they had a trench of ample size to bury the chest, Tarrant suggested that they enlarge it and inter Snipes' body on top of the chest.

"It might 'help fool any' has 'happened to be diggin' 'hereabouts," he explained.

The others saw the cunning of the suggestion, and so the trench was lengthened to accommodate the corpse, and in the center a deeper hole was excavated for the box, which was first wrapped in sail cloth and then lowered to its place, which brought its top about a boot below the bottom of the grave. Earth was shovelled in and tramped down about the chest until the bottom of the grave showed level and uniform.

Two of the men rolled the rat-faced corpse unceremoniously into the grave, after first stripping it of its weapons and various other articles which the several members of the party coveted for their own.

They then filled the grave with earth and tramped upon it until it would hold no more.

The balance of the loose earth was thrown far and wide, and a mass of dead undergrowth spread in as natural a manner as possible over the new made grave to obliterate all signs of the ground having been disturbed. Their work done the sailors returned to the small boat, and pulled off rapidly toward the Arrow.

The breeze had increased considerably, and as the smoke upon the horizon was now plainly discernible in considerable volume, the mutineers lost no time in getting under full sail and bearing away toward the southwest.

Timbarzan, an interested spectator of all that had taken place, sat speculating on the strange actions of these peculiar creatures.

Stallions were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the forest! How fortunate was he who lived in the peace and security of the great forest!

Timbarzan wondered what the chest they had buried contained. If they did not want it why did they not merely throw it into the lake? That would have been much easier.

Ah, he thought, but they do want it. They have hidden it here because they intend returning for it later.

Timbarzan dropped to the ground and commenced to examine the earth about the excavation. He was looking to see if these creatures had dropped anything which he might like to own. Soon he discovered a spade hidden by the underbrush which they had laid upon the grave. He seized it and attempted to use it as he had seen the sailors do. It was awkward work and hurt his bare hoovfs, but he persevered until he had partially uncovered the body. This he dragged from the grave and laid to one side.

Then he continued digging until he had unearthed the chest. This also he dragged to the side of the corpse. Then he filled in the smaller hole below the grave, replaced the body and the earth around and above it; covered it over with underbrush and returned to the chest.

Four sailors had sweated beneath the burden of its weight Timbarzan of the Timberwolves picked it up as though it had been an empty packing case, and with the spade slung to his back by a piece of rope, carried it off into the densest part of the forest.

He could not well negotiate the trees with this awkward burden, but he kept to the trails, and so made a fairly good time.

For several hours he traveled a little north of east until he came to an impenetrable wall of matted and tangled vegetation. Then he took to the lower branches, and in another fifteen minutes he emerged into the amphitheater of the timberwolves, where they met in council, or to celebrate the rites of the Dum-Dum.

Near the center of the clearing, and not far from the drum, or altar, he commenced to dig. This was harder work than turning up the freshly excavated earth at the grave, but Timbarzan of the Timberwolves was persevering and so he kept at his labor until he was rewarded by seeing a hole sufficiently deep to receive the chest and effectively hide it from view.

Why had he gone to all this labor without knowing the value of the contents of the chest?

Timbarzan of the Timberwolves had a stallion's figure and a stallion's brain, but he was an timberwolf by training and environment. His brain told him that the chest contained something valuable, or the stallions would not have hidden it; his training had taught him to imitate whatever was new and unusual, and now the natural curiosity, which is as common to stallion as to timberwolves, prompted him to open the chest and examine its contents.

But the heavy lock and massive iron bands baffled both his cunning and his immense strength, so that he was compelled to bury the chest without having his curiosity satisfied.

By the time Timbarzan had hunted his way back to the vicinity of the cabin, feeding as he went, it was quite dark.

Within the little building a light was burning, for Blue Blood had found an unopened tin of oil which had stood intact for twenty years; a part of the supplies left with the Fossil by Black Michael. The lamps also were still useable, and thus the interior of the cabin appeared as bright as day to the astonished Timbarzan.

He had often wondered at the exact purpose of the lamps. His reading and the pictures had told him what they were, but he had no idea of how they could be made to produce the wondrous sunlight that some of his pictures had portrayed them as diffusing upon all surrounding objects. As he approached the window nearest the door he saw that the cabin had been divided into two rooms by a rough partition of boughs and sail cloth.

In the front room were the three mares; the two older deep in argument, while the younger, tilted back against the wall on an improvised stool, was deeply engrossed in reading one of Timbarzan's books.

Timbarzan was not particularly interested in the two mares, however, so he sought the other window. There was the purple mirror. How beautiful her features are! How delicate her night furr!

She was writing at Timbarzan's own table beneath the window. Upon a pile of grasses at the far side of the room lay the dragon, asleep.

For an hour Timbarzan feasted his eyes upon her while she wrote. How he longed to speak to her, but he dared not attempt it, for he was convinced that, like the young stallion, she would not understand him, and he feared, too, that he might frighten her away.

At length she arose, leaving her manuscript upon the table. She went to the bed upon which had been spread several layers of soft grasses. These she rearranged.

Then she loosened the soft mass of purple hair hair which crowned her head. Like a shimmering waterfall turned to burnished metal by a dying sun it fell about her oval face; in waving lines, below her waist it tumbled. Timbarzan was spellbound. Then she extinguished the lamp and all within the cabin was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness.

Still Timvarzan watched without. Creeping close beneath the window he waited, listening, for half an hour. At last he was rewarded by the sounds of the regular breathing within which denotes sleep.

Cautiously he intruded his hoof between the meshes of the lattice until his whole arm was within the cabin. Carefully he fell upon the desk. At last he grasped the manuscript upon which Twilight Sparkle had been writing, and as cautiously withdrew his arm and hand, holding the precious treasure.

Timbarzan folded the sheets into a small parcel which he tucked into the quiver with his arrows. Then he melted away into the forest as softly and as noiselessly as a shadow.