Timbarzan of the Timberwolves

As THE LITTLE expedition of sailors toiled through the dense forest searching for signs of Twlight Sparkle, the futility of their venture became more and more apparent, but the grief of the old man and the hopeless eyes of the young a Equestrianstallion prevented the kind hearted Captain Solano from turning back.

She thought that there might be a rare possibility of finding her body, or the remains of it, for she was positive that she had been devoured by some beast of prey. She deployed his parrots into a skirmish line from the point where Spike had been found, and in this extended formation they pushed their way, sweating and panting, through the tangled vines and creepers.

It was slow work. Noon found them but a few miles inland. They halted for a brief rest then, and after pushing on for a short distance further one of the parrots discovered a well marked trail.

It was an old sea serpent track, and Solano after consulting with Professor Fluttershy and Blue Blood decided to follow it.

The path wound through the forest in a northeasterly direction, and along it the column moved in single fde.

Lieutenant mohawk was in the lead and moving at a quick pace, for the trail was comparatively open. Immediately behind him came Professor Fluttershy, but as she could not keep pace with the younger perrot Solano was a hundred yards in advance when suddenly a half dozen ponies warriors arose about him.

Solano had a warning shout to her column as the ponies closed on her, but before she could draw her revolver she had been pinioned and dragged into the forest.

Her cry had alarmed the sailors and a dozen of them sprang forward past Professor Fluttershy, running up the trail to their officer's aid.

They did not know the cause of his outcry, only that it was a warning of danger ahead.

They had rushed past the spot where Solano had been seized when a spear hurled from the forest transfixed one of the perrots, and then a volley of arrows fell among them.

Raising their rifles they fired into the underbrush in the direction from which the missiles had come.

By this time the balance of the party had come up, and volley after volley was fired toward the concealed foe. It was these shots that Timbarzan and Twlight Sparkle had heard.

Lieutenant boyle , who had been bringing up the rear of the column, now came running to the scene, and on hearing the details of the ambuscade ordered the parrots to follow him, and plunged into the tangled vegetation.

In an instant they were in a hoof-to-talent fight with some fifty zebra warriors of Mbonga's village. Arrows and bullets flew thick and fast. everfree knives and Frenchperrot gun butts mingled for a moment in savage and bloody duels, but soon the natives fled into the forest, leaving the Frenchperrot to count their losses.

Four of the twenty were dead, a dozen others were wounded, and Lieutenant Captain Solano was missing. Night was falling rapidly, and their predicament was rendered doubly worse through the fact that they could not even find the sea serpent trail which they had been following.

There was but one thing to do, make camp where they were until daylight. Lieutenant mohawk ordered a clearing made and a circular abatis of underbrush constructed about the camp.

This work was not completed until long after dark, the perrots building a huge fire in the center of the clearing to give them light to work by.

When all was safe as could be made from the attack of wild beasts and savage zebras, Lieutenant mohawk placed sentries about the little camp and the tired and hungry perrots threw themselves upon the ground to sleep.

The groans of the wounded, mingled with the roaring and growling of the great beasts which the noise and firelight had attracted, kept sleep, except in its most fitful form, from the tired eyes. It was a sad and hungry party that lay through the long night praying for dawn.

The zebras who had seized Captain Solano, had not waited to participate in the fight which followed, but instead had dragged their prisoner a little- way through the forest and then struck the trail further on beyond the scene of the fighting in which their fellows were engaged.

They hurried him along, the sounds of battle growing fainter and fainter as they drew away from the contestants until they suddenly broke upon Captain Solano's vision a good sized clearing at one end of which stood a thatched and palisaded village.

It was now dusk, but the watchers at the gate saw the approaching trio and distinguished one as a prisoner when they reached the portals.

A cry went up within the palisade. A great throng of mares and foils rushed out to meet the party.

And then began for the Frenchperrot officer the most terrifying experience which mare can encounter upon earth the reception of a pony prisoner into a village of everfree cannibals.

To add to the fiendishness of their cruel savagery was the poignant memory of still cruder barbarities practiced upon them and theirs by the pony officers of that arch hypocrite, King Sombra II of the Crystal empire, because of whose atrocities they had fled the everfree State a pitiful remnant of what once had been a mighty tribe.

They fell upon Captain Solano tooth and nail, beating her with sticks and stones and tearing at her with claw-like hoovfs. Every vestige of clothing was torn from her, and the merciless blows fell upon her bare and quivering feathers. But not once did the Frenchperrot did not cry out in pain. A silent prayer rose to her Maker that she be quickly delivered from her torture.

But the death she prayed for was not to be so easily had. Soon the warriors beat the mares away from their prisoner. She was to be saved for no bler sport than this; and the first wave of their passion having subsided they contented themselves with crying out taunts and insults, and spitting upon her.

Presently they gained the center of the village. There Captain Solano was bound securely to the great post from which no live creatur e had ever been released.

A number of the mares scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled while the balance would be slowly dried in strips for future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many prisoners. The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the strange parrots, so that it was quite late when all were in the village, and the dance of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.

Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, Captain Solano watched from beneath half closed lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrible night-mare from which she must soon awake.

The bestial faces, daubed with color the huge mouths and flabby hanging lips the yellow teeth, sharp filed the rolling, demon eyes the shining naked bodies the cruel spears. Surely no such creatures really existed upon earth she must indeed be dreaming.

The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth and touched her arm. The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling blood assured her of the awful reality of her hopeless position.

Another spear and then another touched her. She closed her eyes and held her beak firm set he would not cry out.

She was a soldier of Franceperrots, and she would teach these beasts how an officer and a gentleperrot died.

Timbarzan of the Timberwolves needed no interpreter to translate the story of those distant shots. With Twlight Sparkle's kisses still warm upon his lips he was swinging with incredible rapidity through the forest trees straight toward the village of Mbonga.

He was not interested in the location of the encounter, for he judged that that would soon be over. Those who were killed he could not aid, those who escaped would not need his assistance.

It was to those who had neither been killed or escaped that he had tened. And he knew that he would find them by the great post in the center of Mbonga 's village.

Many times had Timbarzan seen Mbonga 's zebras raiding parties return from the northward with prisoners, and always were the same scenes enacted about that grim stake, beneath the flaring light of many fires.

He knew, too, that they seldom lost much time before consummating the fiendish purpose of their captures. He doubted that he would arrive in time to do more than avenge.

Timbarzan had looked with complacency upon their former orgies, only occasionally interfering for the pleasure of baiting the zebras; but heretofore their victims had been stallionsof their own kind.

Tonight it was different perrot, parrot of a different race- might be even now suffering the agonies of torture in that grim, forest fortress.

He sped. Night had fallen and he traveled high along the upper terrace where the gorgeous tropic moon lighted the dizzy pathway through the gently undulating branches of the tree tops.

Presently he caught the reflection of a distant blaze. It lay to the right of his path. It must be the light from the camp fire the two perrots had built before they were attacked Timbarzan knew nothing of the presence of the sailors.

So sure was Timbarzan of his forest knowledge that he did not turn from his course, but passed the glare at a distance of a half mile. It was the camp fire of the Frenchperrot.

In a few minutes prior Timbarzan swung into the trees above Mbonga 's village. Ah, he was not quite too late! Or, was he? He could not tell.

The figure at the stake was very still, yet the zebra warriors were but pricking it.

Timbarzan knew their customs. The death blow had not been struck. He could tell almost to a minute how far the dance had gone.

In another instant Mbonga's knife would sever one of the victim's ears that would mark the beginning of the end, for very shortly after only a writhing mass of mutilated furr would remain.

There would still be life in it, but death then would be the only charity it craved.

The stake stood forty hoof from the nearest tree. Timbarzan coiled his rope. Then there rose suddenly above the fiendish cries of the dancing demons the awful challenge of the timberwolf-stallion.

The dancers halted as though turned to stone.

The rope sped with singing whir high above the heads of the zebras. It was quite invisible in the flaring lights of the camp fires.

Captain Solano opened her eyes. A huge zebra, standing directly before her, lunged backward as though felled by an invisible hoof.

MeStruggling and shrieking, her body, rolling from side to side, moved quickly toward the shadows beneath the trees.

The zebras, their eyes protruding in horror, watched spellbound.

Once beneath the trees, the body rose straight into the air, and as it disappeared into the foliage above, the terrified stripe horses, screaming with fright, broke into a mad race for the village gate.

Captain Solano was left alone.

She was a brave perrot, but she had felt the short feather bristle upon the nape of her neck when that uncanny cry rose upon the air.

As the writhing body of the as the zebra soared, as though by unearthly power, into the dense foliage of the forest, Captain Solano felt an icy shiver run along his spine, as though death had risen from a dark grave and laid a cold and clammy finger on her feathers.

As Captain Solano watched the spot where the body had entered the tree she heard the sounds of movement there.

The branches swayed as though under the weight of a stallion's body- there was a crash and the zebra came sprawling to earth again to lie very quietly where he had fallen.

Immediately after him came a white body, but this one alighted erect. Captain Solano saw a clean limbed young giant emerge from the shadows into the firelight and come quickly toward him.

What could it mean? Who could it be? Some new creature of torture and destruction, doubtless.

Captain Solano waited. Her eyes never left the face of the advancing stallion. Nor did those frank, clear eyes waver beneath her fixed gaze.

Captain Solano was reassured, but still without much hope, though she felt that that face could not mask a cruel heart.

Without a word Timbarzan of the Timberwolves cut the bonds which held the Frenchperrot. Weak from suffering and loss of blood, she would have fallen but for the strong arm that caught her.

She felt herself lifted from the ground. There was a sensation as if flying, and then she lost consciousness.

To be continued