Classic Audiobook Collection - Rain Magic by Erle Stanley Gardner ~ Full Audiobook [adventure]

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

Rain Magic by Erle Stanley Gardner audiobook. Genre: adventure In Rain Magic, Erle Stanley Gardner (best known for Perry Mason) turns to fast-moving pulp adventure with a strange, half-believed tale that begins in the California desert. A drifter is found exhausted and nearly dead, and when he revives he insists he has just returned from tropical Africa - carrying a story so vivid and bizarre that listeners are left wondering how much is truth, how much is invention, and why it still terrifies him. His account plunges into shipwreck and survival, where hostile terrain is matched by human danger: wary villagers, rival groups at the edge of conflict, and ruthless opportunists who will kill for a rumor. Somewhere beyond the next stretch of jungle lies a secret worth risking everything for - a hidden gold ledge guarded by traps, superstition, and a kind of natural menace that feels almost intelligent. As the narrator pushes deeper into unfamiliar country, he must decide whom to trust, how far to bargain with local power, and whether any treasure is worth the price of getting out alive. Rain Magic blends lost-world peril, greed, and uncanny atmosphere into a breathless expedition story. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:09:05) Chapter 02 (00:21:17) Chapter 03 (00:38:50) Chapter 04 (00:55:25) Chapter 05 (01:06:55) Chapter 06 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chapter 1 of Rain Magic by Earl Stanley Gardner Read by Ben Tucker Chapter 1 Through the Breakers No, no, no more coffee. Thanks. Been asleep, huh? Well, don't look so worried about it. Mighty nice of you to wake me up. What day is it? Thursday, huh? I've been asleep two days then. Oh, it is. Then it's been nine days. That's more like it.

It was the rain, you see. I tried to get back up. to my tent but the storm came up too fast. It's the smell of the damp green things in a rain. The doctors tell me it's auto-hypnosis. They're wrong. Magamba told me I'd always be that way when I smelled the jungle smell. It's the sleeping sickness in my veins. That's why I came to the desert. It doesn't rain out here more than once or twice a year. When it does rain, the jungle smells come back and the sleeping sickness gets me. Funny how my memory comes back after those long sleeps. It was the drugged bread, King Key, they called it. But the

language ain't never been written down. Sort of a graduated monkey talk it was. It's hot here. Come over in the shadow of this Joshua palm. That's better. Ever been to see? No? Then you won't understand. It was down off the coast of Africa. Anything can happen off the coast of Africa. After the storms, the Sahara dust comes and paints the rigging white. Yes, sir. Three hundred miles out to sea, I've seen it. And for a hundred miles, you can get the smell of the jungles, when the wind's right.

It was an awful gale. You don't see them like it very often. We tried to let go the deckload of lumber, but the chains jammed. The Dutchmen took to the rig and jabber in prayers. They were a weak need lot. It was the Irishman that stayed with it. He was a cursing devil. He got busy with an axe.

The load had listed, and we was hilled over to port. The Dutchman and the rigan praying and the Irishman down the... on the lumber cursing. A wave took him over and then another wave washed him back again. I seen it with my own eyes. He didn't give up. He just cursed harder than ever. And he got the chains loose too. The deckload slid off and she righted. But it was heavy weather and it got worse. The sky was just a massive whirling wind and the water came over until she didn't get rid of one wave before the next bunch of green water was on top of her. The rudder carried away. I thought everything was gone, but she lived through it.

We got blown in almost on top of the shore. When the gale died, we could see it. There was a species of palms sticking up against the sky. Tall trees, they were. And below them was a solid mass of green stuff, and it stunk. The whole thing was decaying and steaming, just like the inside of a rotten, damp log. The old man was a bad one.

It was a hell ship, and no mistake. I'd been Shanghai'd and I wanted back. Thirty pound I had in my pocket when I felt a drink rocking in my head. I knew then. but it was too late. The last I remembered was the grinning face of the tout smiling at me through a blue haze. The grub was rotten. The old man was a devil when he was sober and worse when he was drunk.

The Irish mate cursed all the time, cursed and worked. Between them, they drove them in. Drove us like sheep. The moon was half full. After the storm, the waves were rolling in on a good sea breeze. There wasn't any white caps. The wind just piled the water up until the breakers stood 14 feet high. before they curled and raced up the beach.

But the breakers didn't look so bad from the deck of the ship, not in the light of the half-moon they didn't. We'd been at work on the rudder and there was a raft over the side. I was on watch and the old man was drunk, awful drunk. I don't know when the idea came to me, but it seemed to have always been there. It just popped out in front when it got a chance. I was halfway down the rope before I really knew what I was doing. My bare feet hit the raft and my sailor knife was working on the rope

before I had a chance to even think things over. But I had a chance on the road in, riding the breakers. I had a chance even as soon as the rope was cut. The old man came and stood on the rail looking at the weather, too drunk to know what he was looking at, but cocking his bleary eye at the sky out of habit. He'd have seen me, drunk as he was, if he had looked down, but he didn't. If he had caught me, I'd have been flayed alive.

He'd have sobered up just special for the occasion. I drifted away from him. The moon was on the other side of the hole, leaving at just a big black blotch of shadow, rippling on the water, heaving up into the sky. Then I drifted out of the shadow and into golden water. The moon showed over the top of the boat,

and the sharks got busy. I'd heard they never struck at a man while he was struggling. Maybe it's true. I kept moving, hands and feet going. The raft was only an inch or two out of water, and it was narrow. The sharks cut through the water like hissing shadows. I was afraid one of them would grab a hand or a foot and drag me down, but they didn't.

I could keep the rest of me out of the water, but not my hands and feet. I had to paddle with them to get into shore before the wind and tide changed. I didn't want to be left floating around there with no sail nor food, nothing but sharks. From the ship, the breakers looked easy and lazy-like. When I got in closer, I saw they were monsters. They'd rise up and blot out all the land, even the tops of the high trees. Just before they'd break, they'd send streamers a spray high up in the heavens. Then they'd come down with a crash.

But I couldn't turn back. The sharks in the wind and the tide were all against me, and the old man would have killed me. I rode in on a couple of breakers, and then the third one broke behind me. The rafted me, and maybe the sharks all got mixed up together. My feet struck the sand, but they wouldn't stay there. The strong undertow was cutting the sand out from under me. I could feel it racing along over my toes,

and then I'd started back and down. The undertoes sucked me under in another wave, something alive, brushed against my back, and then tons of water came down over me. That time I was on the bottom, and I rolled along with the sand and water being pumped into my innards. I thought it was the end, but there was a lull in the big ones, and a couple of little ones came and rolled me up on the beach. I was more dead than alive. The water had made me groggy, and I was sore from the pummlin I'd got. I staggered up the strip of sand and into the jungle.

A little ways back was a cave, and into the cave. and into the cave I flopped. The water oozed out of my insides like from a soaked sponge. My lungs and stomach and ears were all full. I tried to get over a log and let her drain out, but I was too weak. I felt everything turning black to me. The next thing I knew, it was getting dawn and shadowy shapes were flitting around. I thought they was black angels, and they was going to smother me.

They stunk with a musty smell, and they settled all over me. Then I could feel the blood running over my skin. It got a little lighter, and I could see it. see. I was in a bat cave and the bats were coming back. They'd found me and were settling on me in clouds, sucking blood. I tried to fight them off, but it was like fighting the fog. Sometimes I'd hit them, but they'd just sail through the air and I couldn't hurt them. All the time, they was fluttering their wings and looking for a chance to get more blood. I got the weight of them off, though, and I staggered out of the cave. They followed me for a ways, but when I got out to where

it was getting light, they went back in the cave. It gets light quick down there in the tropics and the light hurt their eyes. I rolled into the sand and went to sleep. When I woke up, I heard marching feet. It sounded like an army. They was coming regular like, slow, unhurried, deliberate. It made the chills come up my spine just to hear the boom, boom, boom, boom with those feet. I crawled deeper into the sand under the shadows of the overhanging green stuff.

Naked men and women filled out onto the beach. I watched them. Chocolate-colored they were, and they talked to a funny, squeaky talk. I found afterwards some of the words was Fanti and some was a graduated monkey talk Fanti ain't never been written down It's one of the she languages The Ashanti's and the Fanties

And one or two other tribes speak branches of the same lingo But these people spoke part Fenty and part graduated monkey talk And among them was a monkey man He was a funny guy There was coarse hair all over him And he had a stub of a tail His big toes weren't set like mine But they was twisted like a foot thumb

No, I didn't notice the toes at the time. I found out later while he was sitting on a limb getting ready to shoot a poison arrow at me. I thought every minute was my last, and then was when I noticed the way his foot thumbs wrapped around the limb. Funny how a man will notice little things when he's near death. Anyway, this tribe came down and marched in the water, men, women, and children. They watched themselves up to the hips, sort of formal, like it was a ceremony. The rest of them, they didn't get water on at all.

They came out and rubbed sort of an oil on their arms, chests, and faces. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Rain Magic by Earl Stanley Gardner. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2. Life or Death. Finally, they all went away, all except a woman and a little kid. Woman was looking for something in the water. Fish, maybe.

The kid was on a rock about eight feet away. A little shaver he was. and he had a funny pot belly. I looked at him and I looked at her. I was sick and I was hungry and I was bleeding from the bats. The smell of the jungle was in my lungs so I couldn't tell whether the air was full of jungle or whether I was breathing in jungle stuff with just a little air.

It's a queer sensation. Unless you've been through it, you wouldn't understand. Well, I felt it was everything or nothing. The woman couldn't kill me and the kid couldn't. And I had to make myself known and get something to eat. I straightened out of the sand. "'Hello?' said I. The kid was squatting on his haunches.

He didn't seem to understand he just flew through the air and he sailed right onto his mother's back. His hands clung to her shoulders and his head pressed tight against her skin, the eyes rolling at me, but the head never moving. The mother made three jumps right up the sand, and then she sailed into the air and caught the branch of a tree. The green stuff was so thick that I lost sight of them both right there. I could hear a lot of jabber and monkey talk in the trees

and then I heard the squeaky voice of the woman talking back to the monkeys. I could tell the way she was going by the jabber or the monkey talk. No, I can't remember words of monkey talk. I never got so I could talk to the monkeys, but the people did, and I'm going to tell you about that. I'm explaining about the sleeping sickness and about how the memories come back to me after I've been asleep. Maybe they're dreams, but maybe they ain't. If they're dreams, how comes that when I got to Cape Coast Castle, I couldn't remember where I've been. It brought me in there on stretchers, and nobody knows how far they brought me.

They left me in the dead of night, but the next morning there were the tracks, and they were tracks like nobody there had ever seen before. There's strange things in Africa, and this was when I was a young blood. Remember that. I was an upstanding youngster, too. I'd tackle anything, even the west coast of Africa on a raft, and the Fante Warriors. But I'm coming to that directly. Well, the woman ran away, and the monkeys came. They stuck around on the trees and jabbered monkey talk at me.

I wish I'd been like the woman and could have talked to them. But the monkeys ain't got so many words. There's a lot of it that's just toned stuff. It was the ants that could speak, but they rubbed feelers together. Oh, yes, there was ants. Great woolly ants, two inches long. Ants that built houses out of sticks. They built them 30 feet high, and some of the sticks was half an inch round

and six or eight inches long. They had the ants garden in the gold ledge, and nobody except the feeder, and the goldsmith could come near there. The goldsmith was nothing but a slave anyway. They'd captured him from a slaver that went ashore. Others died of the fever, but the natives gave the goldsmith some medicine that cured him. After that he couldn't get sick.

They could have done the same by me too, but the monkey man was my enemy. He wanted kick-kick for himself. Finally I heard the tramp of feet again, and the warriors of the tribe came out. They had spears and little bows, long arrows. The arrows were as thin as a pencil. They didn't look like they had hurt anything, but there was a funny color on the points, a sort of shimmering something. I found out afterward that was where they'd coated them with poison and baked the poison into the wood.

One scratch with an arrow like that and a man or a beast would die. But it didn't hurt the flesh and none for eating. Either a man or beast it didn't. They ate them both. I saw it was up to me to make a speech. The men all look serious and dignified. That is, they all did except a monkey man. He capered around on the outside.

His balance didn't seem good on his two feet, so he'd stupid. over and use the backs of his knuckles to steady himself. He could hitch along on the ground like the wind. His arms were long, long and hairy, and the inside of his palms was all wrinkled, thick and black. Anyhow, I made a speech. I told him that I was awful tough and that I was thin, and maybe the bat bites had poisoned me, so I wouldn't advise him to cook me. I told him I was a friend, and I didn't come to bother him, but to get away from the big ship

that was laying offshore. I thought they understood me because some of them was looking at the ship, but I found out afterward they didn't. They'd seen the ship and they'd seen me and they'd saw the dried salt water on my clothes and they'd figured it out for themselves. I finished with my speech. I didn't expect them to clap their hands because they had spears and bows, but I thought maybe they'd smile. They was a funny bunch, all gathered around there in a circle, grave and naked like, and they all had three scars on each side of their cheekbones.

It made them look tough. Then the monkey man gave a sort of a leap and lit in the trees. and the monkeys came around and jabbered, and he jabbered, and somehow I thought he was telling the monkeys about me. Maybe he was. I never got to know the monkey talk. And then from the jungle behind me I heard a girl's voice, and it was speaking good English.

Be silent, and I shall speak to my father, she said. You can imagine how I felt hearing an English voice from the jungle that way, and knowing it was a girl's voice. But I knew she wasn't a white woman. I could tell that by the sound of the voice, sort of the way the tongue didn't click against the roof of the, mouth, but the lips made the speech soft like. And then there was a lot of squeaky talk from the jungle's back of me.

There was silence after that talk, and then I heard the girl's voice again. They've gone for the goldsmith. He'll talk to you. I didn't see who had gone, and I didn't know who the goldsmith was. I turned around and tried to see into the jungle, but all I could see was leaves, trunks, and fine stems. There was a wispy blue vapor that settled all around, and overhead the air was white, way, way up. white with Sahara dust But down low the jungle odor

Hung around the ground Around me the circle stood naked and silent Not a man moved Who was the goldsmith? I wondered Who was the girl? Then I heard the steps behind me In the jungle parted

I smelled something burning It wasn't tobacco Not the kind we have But it was a sort of a tobacco flavor A man came out into the circle Smoking a pipe How are you? He says and sticks forward a hand

He was a white man, part-wide anyway, and he had on some funny clothes. They were made of skins, but they was cut like a tailor would cut him. He even had a skin hat with a stiff brim. He'd made the stiff brim out of green skin with the hair rubbed off. He was smoking a clay pop, and there was a vacant look in his eyes, a blank something like a man who didn't have feelings anymore, but was just a man-machine. I shook hands with him.

Are they going to eat me? I asked. He smoked a while before he spoke, and then he takes the pipe out of his mouth and nods his head. Sure, he says. It wasn't encouraging. Have hope, came the voice of the jungle, the voice of the girl. She seemed to be standing close, close and keeping in one place, but I couldn't see her.

I talked to the man with a pipe. I made him a speech. He turned around and talked to the circle of men, and they didn't say anything. Finally, an old man grunted, and like the grunt was in order, they all squatted down on their haunches, all of them facing me. Then the girl in the jungle made squeaky noises. the old man seemed to be listening to her. The others didn't listen to anything.

They were just staring at me, and the expression on all the faces was the same. It was sort of a curiosity, but it wasn't a curiosity to see what I looked like. I felt it was a curiosity to see what I'd taste like. Then the goldsmith rubbed some more brown leaf into the pipe right on top of the coals of the other pipe full. The girl's claiming you was a slave.

Who was the girl? I asked him. Kick, kick, he says, and I didn't know whether he was getting. giving me a name or a warning to keep quiet. Well, I figured I'd rather be a slave than a meal, so I kept quiet. Then the monkey man in the tree began to jabber. They didn't look up at him, but I could see they were listening. When he got done, the girl squeaked some more words.

Then the monkey man made some more talk, and the girl talked. The fellow with the pipe smoked and blew the smoke out of his nose. His eyes were weary and puckered. He was an odd fellow. Finally, the old man that had grunted and made him squat, gave another grunt. They all stood up. This is the showdown, I says to myself. It's either being a white slave or being a meatloaf.

The old man looked at me and blinked. Then he sucked his lips into his mouth until his face was all puckered into wrinkles. He blinked his lidless eyes some more and then grunted twice, and all the men marched off. I can hear their feet booming along the hard ground in the jungle on a path that had been beaten down hard by millions of bare feet. I found out afterward that same path had been used for over a hundred years, and the king made a lot. had to be traveled every day. That was the only way they could keep the ground hard. I guess I'm a meal, I thought to myself.

I figured the goldsmith would have told me if I'd been going to be a slave, but he had moved off with the rest, and he hadn't said a word. The monkey man kept talking to the bunch. He didn't walk along the path, but he moved through the trees, keeping up in the branches, right over the heads of the others and talking all the time, and his words didn't seem happy words. I sort of felt he was scolding like a monkey that's watching, you eat a coconut. But the old man grunted at him and he shut up like a clam. He was mad, though.

I could tell that, because he set off through the trees tearing after a couple of monkeys. And he pretty nearly caught him. They sounded like a whirlwind tearing through the branches. Then the sounds got fainter and finally everything was still. I looked around. There was nobody in sight. I was there on the fringe of the beach right near the edge of jungle and everything was still and silent. And there came a rustling of the jungle stuff and she came out. She had on a scurril. Her grass stuff and her eyes were funny. You know how monkeys' eyes are.

They're round. They don't squint up at any of the corners. And they're sort of moist and glistening on the surface. It's a kind of a liquid expression. Her eyes were like that. For the rest, she was like the others. Her skin was dusky, but not black, and it was smooth. It was like a piece of chocolate silk.

I'm Kukuk, the daughter of the Yikik, and the keeper of the golden lead. she said, I have learned to speak the language of the goldsmith. You two speak the same language. You are my slave. Thank God I ain't a meal, I said. That was before the doctor guys discovered these here calories and food, but right then I didn't feel like a half a good-sized calorie,

much less a fit meal for a native warrior. You will be my slave, she said, but if you pay skins to my father, you can buy your freedom, and then you will be a warrior. I ain't never been a slave to a woman, I told her. me being one of the kind that had always kept from being led to the altar, but I'd rather be a slave to you than the old man on the boat out yonder. There was something half shy about her, and yet something proud and dignified.

I have promised my father my share of the next hunt in order to purchase you from the tribe, she went on. Thanks, I told her, knowing it was up to me to say something, but sort of wondering whether a free white man should think a woman who had made a slave out of him. Come, she said, and turned away. I had more of a chance to study her back. She was lithe, graceful, and she was a well-turned lass. There was a set to her head, a funny little twist of her shoulders when she walked that showed she was royalty and noted.

Funny how people get that little touch of class, no matter where they are or what stock. Just as soon as they get royal blood in them, they get it. I've seen them everywhere. I followed her into the jungle, down under the branches, where there wasn't sunlight anymore, but the day was just filled with green light. Finally, we came through the jungle and into the big clearing. There were huts around the clearing and a big fire. The people of the tribe were here, going about their business and knots of two and three,

just like nothing had happened. I was a member of the tribe now, the slave of KickKik. Most of the women stared and the kids scampered away when they seen me looking toward them. But that was all. Men took me for granted. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Of Rain Magic by Earl Stanley Gardner

The Slibrovox recording is in the public domain Read by Ben Tucker Chapter 3 Guardians of Gold The girl took me to a hut In one corner was a frame of wood With animal skins stretched over it There were all kinds of skins

Some of them I knew, more of them I didn't She squeaked out some words And then there was some more jabber and a quavering voice and an old woman came and brought me fruits. I squatted down on my hills the way the natives did and tried to eat the fruit. My stomach was still pretty full of salt water and sand, but the fruit tasted good. Then they gave me a half a coconut shell filled with some sort of creamy liquid that had bubbles coming up in it. It tasted sort of sour, but it had a lot of authority.

Ten minutes after I drank it, I felt my neck snapped back. It was the delayed kick, and it was like the hind leg of a mule. Come, said the Jane, and led the way again out and... of the opening. I followed her across the opening into the jungle along a path, past the shore of a lagoon, and up into a little canyon. Here the trees were thicker than ever, except on the walls of the canyon itself. There'd been a few dirt slides in that canyon, and in one or two places the rock had been stripped bare. After a ways, it was all rock. And then we came to something that made my eyes stick out. There was a ledge of rock and a vein of quartz in it. The vein was just shot with

gold and in the center it was almost pure gold. The quartz was crumbly and there were pieces of it scattered around on the ground. The foliage had been cleared away and the ground was hard. There was a fire going near the ledge and some clay crucibles were there. Then there was a great bellows affair made out of thick oiled leather. It was a big thing, but all the air came out of a little piece of hollow wood in the front. I picked up one of the pieces of quartz. The rock could be crumbled between the fingers and it left the gold in my hand. The gold was just like it showed in the rock. spreading out to form sort of a tree. There must have been $50 worth in the piece of rock that I crumbled up in my fingers.

I moved my hands around fast and managed to slip the gold in my torn shirt. The girl was watching me with those funny liquid eyes of hers, but she didn't say a word. There was a great big pile of small sticks between me and the ledge of gold. I figure it was kindling wood that they kept for the fire, but finally my eyes got loose from the ledge of gold, and what should I see, but the sticks moving. I looked again, and then I saw something else. It was a big ant heap made out of sticks and sawdust. Some of those sticks were eight or ten inches long and half an inch around.

And the whole place was swarming with ants. They had their heads sticking out of the little holes between the sticks. They must be big ants, I thought. But I was interested in that gold ledge. There must have been millions of dollars in it. I took a couple of steps toward it, and then the ant heap just swarmed with life. There were big ants covered with sort of white wool, and they came out of there like somebody had given them an order.

The girl shrieked something. in a high-pitched voice, but I didn't know whether it was at me or the ants. The ants swarmed into two columns of maybe eight or ten abreast in each column, and they started for me, swinging out in a big circle, as though one was going to come up on one side and one on the other. And then they stopped. The girl ran forward and put her arms on my shoulders and started caressing me, patting my hair, cooing soft noises in my ears. I thought maybe she'd gone cuckoo, and I looked into her eyes,

but they weren't looking at me. They were looking at the ants, and they were wide with fear. And the ants were looking at her. I could see the big eyes gazing steady-like at her. Then something else must have been said to him, although I didn't hear anything. But all at once, just like an army presenting arms in response to an order, they threw up their long feelers and waved them gently back and forth.

Then the girl took me by the arm and moved me away. I should have told you, she said. Never go past the line of that path. The ants guard the yellow metal, and when one comes nearer than that, they attack. There is no escape from those ants. I took you to them so you could help me with the feed. Now we will feed them.

That all sounded sort of cuckoo to me, but the whole business was cuckoo anyway. Look here, I tells us, Jane. I'm willing to be the slave of Chief's daughter for a while, but I ain't going to be slave to no ant hill. That is not expected, she said. It is an honor to assist in feeding the ants, a sacred right. You only assist me. Never again must you come so near the ants.

I did a lot of thinking. I wasn't hankering to come into an argument with those ants, but I was figuring to take a closer slant at that gold ledge. She took me away into the jungle where there was a pile of fruit drying in the sun. It was a funny sort of fruit and smelled sweet like orange blossoms, only there was more of a honey smell to it. Take your om's fool, she said. Well, it was my first experience being a slave,

but I couldn't see as it was much different from being a sailor, only the work was easier. I scooped up both arms full of the stuff. The smell made me a little dizzy at first, but I soon got used to it. The girl picked up some too, and she led the way back to the ant pile. She had me put my load down and showed me how to arrange it in a long semicircle. I could see the ants watching from out of the holes in the ant pile, but they didn't do anything except watch. Finally, the girl made a queer clicking sound with her tongue and teeth, and the ants commenced to boil out again.

This time they made for the fruit, and they went in order, just like the girl. a bunch of swell passengers on one of the big ocean liners. Some of them seemed to hold first meal ticket while the others remained on guard, and there must have been some signal from the ants because the girl didn't say a word, but all of the first bunch of ants fell back and stood guard, and the second bunch of ants moved forward. They repeated that a couple of times. I watched him, too fascinated to say a word.

After a while, I heard steps, and the old goldsmith came along, puffing his pipe regular, a puff for every two steps. He reminded me of a freight engine, boiling along on a downgrade. hitting her up regular. He didn't say a word to me, nor to the ants. But the ants heard him coming, and they all formed into two lanes with their feelers waving, and the goldsmith walked down between those lanes and up to the gold ledge. There he stuck some more wood on the fire, wrecked away some ashes, and pawed out a bed of coals.

Then I saw he had a hammer and a piece of metal that looked like a reddish iron. He pulled a skin away, and I saw lots of lumps and stringers of pure gold. It was a yellow, frosty-looking sort of gold, it was so pure it glistened. He picked up some of the pieces and commenced to hammer him into ornaments. What do you do with that stuff? I asked the girl waving my hand careless like so she wouldn't think I was much interested. We trade it to the Fanti tribes, she said.

It is of no use too soft to make weapons, too heavy for arrow points, but they use it to wear around their fingers and ankles. They give us many skins for it, and sometimes they try to capture our territory and take the entire ledge. If I had my way, we would stop making the ornaments our people do not like the metal and never use it. Having it here just makes trouble for us, and the fantis are fierce people.

They are killing off our entire tribe. I nodded as wise as a dozen hours on a limb. Yeah, I told her. The stuff always makes trouble. Seems to me it'd be better to get rid of it. The old goldsmith raised his head, twisted his pipe in his mouth, and screwed his roomy eyes on me.

For a minute or two, he acted like he was going to say something, and then he went back to his work. It was a close call. Right then I knew I'd been going too fast, but I had my eye on that ledge of gold. I guess it was a fainty that saved my life. If it hadn't been for seeing him, the ants would have got me for sure. Those ants looking pretty fierce when I saw them boiling out in military formation. But by the time it came dark, they didn't seem so much.

I got the thinking things over. Being a slave wasn't near so bad as it might be, and one of these days I was going to get away in the jungle and work down to a port. All I needed was to have about 90 pounds of pure gold on my back when I went. out, and I wouldn't be working as a sailor no more. Sitting there in the warm night while the other folks had all rolled into their huts, I got the thinking things over. As a slave, I wasn't given a hunt.

I could sleep out. If the animals got bad, I could either build up the fire or climb a tree. But there was 50 or 60 other slaves, mostly captured warriors of other tribes, and it wasn't so bad. There was a place in the jungle where the heels formed a bottleneck, and there was a tribe kept sentry so the fanties couldn't get in and so the slaves couldn't get out. Getting through the jungle where there wasn't a trail

was plain impossible. I picked up a lot of this from the girl and a lot from using my eyes. Night time the ants didn't seem so much and the gold seemed a lot more. I wondered how I could work it and then a scheme hit me. I'd go out and make a quick run for the ledge, chop off a few chunks of quartz and then beat it back quick.

I'd be in and out before the ants could come boiling out of their 30-foot ant-hill. It seemed to cinch. I sneaked away and managed to find my way down the trail to the gold ledge. It was dark in the jungle. The stars were all misty and a squall was working somewhere as out to sea. I could hear the thunder of the surf and smell the smells of the jungle. There wasn't any noise outside of the pounding surf.

I'd taken my shoes off when I dropped onto the raft, and they got lost while I was rolling around in the water, so I was barefoot. The ground had been beaten hard by millions of bare feet, and so I made no noise. The hard part was telling just when I got to. to the gold ledge because I didn't want to steer a wrong course and fetch up against the ante-heed. I needn't have worried. I smelled the faint smell of smoke and then a pile of coals gleamed red against the black of the jungle night. It was the coals of the goldsmith's fire. I chuckled to myself. What a simple bunch of people this tribe was. And then all of a sudden I knew someone else was there

in the jungle. It was that funny feeling that a man can't describe. It wasn't a sound because there wasn't any sound. It wasn't anything I could see because it was as dark as the inside of a pocket, but it was something that just tingled on my skin and made my hair bristle. I slipped back from the path and into the dark of the jungle. Six feet from the trail and I was hidden as well as though I'd been buried. I got my eye up against the crack and the leaves and watched the coals of the campfire trying to see if anything moved. All of a sudden those coals just blotted out. I thought maybe a leaf or bind had got in front of my eyes, but there wasn't. It was just something moving between me and the fire.

And then it stepped on one side, and I saw it. A black man, naked, rushing into the cliff of gold. He worked fast, that boy. The light from the cold showed me just a blur of black motion as he chipped rocks from the ledge. Then he turned and sprinted out. I chuckled to myself. The boy had got my system. It was a cinch, nothing to it.

And then there came a yell of pain. The black man began to do a devil's sense. dance, waving his hands and legs. He got right in front of me, within ten feet he was, and I could just make him out when he moved. From the ground there came a faint whispering noise, and I could sense things crawling. I felt my blood turned to lukewarm water, and I thought of the danger I was in. If those ants found me there.

I was afraid to move, and I was afraid to stand still. But the black boy solved the problem for me. He made for a tree, climbing up a creeper like a monkey. Up in the tree I could hear the hands going as he tried to brush the ants off. and he kept a low moaning noise, sort of a chatter of agony. I couldn't tell whether the ants were leaving him alone or whether they were watching the bottom of the tree waiting for him. But the creeper he'd climbed up, stretched against the starlit sky

almost in front of my nose. I could see it faintly outlined against the stars, and then I noticed that it was rippling and swaying. For a minute, I couldn't make it out. Then I saw that those ants were swarming up the tree. That was the end. The moaning became a yelling, and then things began to thud to the ground.

That must be the gold rock the fellow had packed away with him, probably in a skin bag slung over his shoulder. Then the sand was quit. Everything was silent, but I sensed the jungle was full of activity, a horrid activity that made me want to vomit. I could smell something that must have been blood and there was a drip drip from the tree branches. Then the coals flickered up and I could see a little more.

The ground was black, swarming. The ants were going back and forth up and down the creepers, up into the tree. Finally, something fell to the ground. Couldn't have been a man because it was too small, hardly bigger than a hunk of deer meat, but the firelight flickered on it and I could see that the heap was all of a quiver.

And it kept getting smaller and smaller. Then I knew the ants were finishing their work. I held my hands to my eyes, but I couldn't shut out the sight. If I had moved, I was afraid the ants would turn to me. I hadn't been across the dead. but would the ants know it? I shuddered and turned sick. After a while I looked out again.

The ground was bare. All the ants were back in their pile of sticks. The last of the firelight flickered on a bunch of white bones. Nearby was the gleam of yellow metal. Gold from the rocks the fanti had stolen. Sick. I went back along the trail. Back to the camp, not telling anybody where I'd been or what I'd seen.

I still wanted that gold, but I didn't want it the one. way I figured I did. I didn't sleep much. It gave me a tan skin for a bed and that was all. It was up to me to make myself comfortable on the ground. The ground was hard, but my bunk on the ship had been hard. It was the memory of that little black heap that kept getting smaller and smaller that tortured my mind.

I lived through the night and I live through the days that followed, but I saw a lot that a white man shouldn't see. After all, I guess we think too much of life. Life didn't mean so much. much of those people and they didn't feel it was so blamed precious. And I worked out a cinch scheme for the gold ledge. As a slave of Kit Kik, I had to assist her in feeding the ants. Every night I had to bring up some of the fruit. Kikik wouldn't let me feed it to him. It was the custom of the tribe that only the daughter of the chief could feed the ants,

but I got close enough to find out a lot. Those ants were trained. Kikik could walk among them and they took no notice of her. She was the one who fed him. The old Goldsmith could walk through him whenever he wanted to and they didn't pay any attention to him. They'd been trained that way. But nobody else could cross the deadline. Let anyone else come closer than that and they'd swarm out and get started with their sickening business. Once they started, there was no getting away.

I saw him at work a couple of times in the next week. They always managed to get behind the man at the gold ledge. Then they closed in on him. No matter how fast he ran, they'd swarm up his legs as he went through him. Enough would get on him so he couldn't go far. and there was always a solid formation of two-inch ants swarming behind ready to finish the work. But they fed him only one meal a day in the afternoon. I got to figuring what would happen if there should be two feeders.

They couldn't tell which was the official feeder, and they'd been trained to let the official feeder to go to the gold ledge. I knew where they kept the pile of dried fruits that the ants liked so well, and I started going out to the ant pile just before daybreak and giving them a breakfast. I'd take out a little of the fruit so there wouldn't be any crumbs, left by the time the goldsmith came to work. At first I could see the ants were suspicious, but they ate the fruit. There was one long woolly fellow that seemed to be the big boss, and he reported to a glossy-backed

ant that was a king or queen or something. I got to be good friends with the boss. He'd come and eat out of my hand. Then he'd go back and wave his feelers at the king or queen, whichever it was, and finally the old boy or old girl got so it was all right. There was nothing to it. I was a jakemillion, one of the regular guys. I could tell a hundred little things, the way they waved their feelers, the way they came for the food.

Well, I got to know them pretty well. All of this time, Kikik was teaching me things about the life and customs of the tribe. I could see she was friendly. She had to learn the language of the goldsmith so that if anything should happen to him, she could educate another one as soon as the tribe captured him. For the tribe, I didn't have no particular love. You should have seen him in some of their devil-devil dances, or seen him in the full moon when they gave a banquet to their cousins.

the monkeys. Nope, I figured that anything I could do to the tribe was something well done. But for KickKick, I had different feelings, and I could see that she had different feelings for me. And all this time, the Monkey Man was jealous. It was as plain as the nose on my face. Not the nose on his, because his nose was flattened out like a monkey's nose, just two holes in his face with a black ring around it.

But he was in love with KickKik, and he wanted to buy her. In that country, the woman didn't have anything to say about who she married, or whether she was wife number one or number 50. A man got his wife's about buying him, and he could have as many as he could buy and keep. After a couple of weeks, I commenced taking the gold. First, I just got closer and closer to the deadline. I can yet feel the cold sweat there was on me the first time I crossed it.

But the ants figured I was a regular guy, part of the gang. They never said a word. Finally, I walked right up to the ledge, watching the ground behind me like a hawk. I scooped out some of the crumbly courts and worked the gold out of it. After that, it was easy. I didn't take much at any one time because I didn't want the goldsmith to miss anything.

I wasn't any hog, 90 pounds I wanted, and 90 pounds was all I was going to take. But I wasn't a fool. I was going to take it a little at a time. End of chapter three. Chapter 4. Of Rain Magic by Earl Stanley Gardner. This Liverfox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 4 A Fante Raid Then came the night of the big fight. I was asleep wrapped up in my skin robes, not because of the cold, because the nights are warm and steamy down there, but to keep out as much of the damp as I could and to shut out the night insects that liked my soft white skin. There came a yell from a century up the pass, and then a lot of whooping and then all hell broke loose.

There was a little moon and the light of that moon I could see things happening. Our warriors came boiling out of their huts. One thing, they didn't have to dress. All a guy had to do was grab a spear and shield or climb up a tree with a bow and arrow, and that was all there was to it. He was dressed and ready for business. They evidently had the thing all rehearsed

because some of them guarded the trail with spears and used thick shields to ward off the poisoned arrows, and others swarmed up in the trees and shot little poisoned arrows into the thick of the mass of men that were running down the trail. It was a funny fight. There wasn't any banging a fight. firearms. But there was a lot of yelling, and in-between yells could be heard the whispers of the

arrows as they flitted through the night. After a while, I could see that our men were getting the worst of it. I was just a slave, and when a fight started, the women watched the slaves to see they didn't make a break for liberty or start attacking our boys from the rear. Maybe I'd like to escape plenty, but I wanted to do it my own way, and sticking a spear in the back of one of our boys didn't seem the way to do it. Then again, I wouldn't be any better off after I had escaped. My white skin would make trouble for me with the others. I wasn't the same as the other slaves, most of whom were fanties anyway. They could make a break and be among friends. If I made a hop, I'd just be out of the frying pan and in the fire. But I wasn't used to being a spectator on the sidelines when there was a

fight going on, so I took a look at the situation. When the alarm came in, the fire watchers had piled a lot of faggots on the big blaze and all the fight was going on by what light came from the fire. The faggots had burned off in the center and there was a lot of flaming ends fire on the one side stick on the other. I whispered a few words to kick-kick, and then we charge the fire, picking out the sticks, whirling them and throwing them into the mass of savages that was boring into our men. She had said something to the slaves, and they was all lined up, throwing sticks, too. They wasn't throwing as wholeheartedly as kick-kick and me was, but they was throwing them, and together we managed to keep the air full of brands. It was a weird

sight. Those burning embers whirling and spiraling through the air over the heads of our boys and plumb into the middle of the fancy outfit. I seemed that I'd missed a bet at that, though, because we was really tearing the fire to pieces, and it was going to get dark in a few minutes, with the blaze all being thrown into the air that way. One of our warriors had collected himself a poisoned arrow, and he was sprawled out, shield and arrow lying aside of him.

The arrows were whispering around pretty lively, and I'd seen a couple of our slave fellas crumple up in a heap. That shield looked good to me, and while I was reaching for it, I got to wondering, why not take the spear too? There wasn't anybody to tell me not to, so I grabbed them both, and then I charged into the melee. Them savages fought more or less silent after the first rush. There was plenty of yells, but they were individual isolated yells, not no steady war cries.

I picked a good time to strut my stuff because there was more or less of a lull when I started my charge. My clothes had been torn off my back. What few rags remained, I'd thrown away wanting to get like the natives as fast as possible. my skin was still white, although it had tanned up a bit, but there wasn't any mistaken me. Our boys had got accustomed to the idea of a white man being a slave, and they hadn't run into the white men like the fantee outfit had. Those fanties had probably had a little white meat on their bill affair for a change of diet, and some expedition or other had come along and mopped up on them. Anyhow, the idea of a white man as a fighting machine had registered good and strong with them.

So when they heard one awful yell and seen a naked white man charging down on him with a spear and shield, yelling like a maniac, and with all the whirling firebrands sailing through the air, they thought it was time to quit. There's something funny about a nigger. They can say all they want to, but his fears are the big part of him, no matter how brave he gets. Those whirling brands of fire wasn't making him feel any too good, and then when I come charging down on him hell-bent for election, it was too much. They wavered for a second, then gave a lot of yells on their own,

and started pell-mell down the trail, each one trying to walk all over the heels of the boy in front. Funny thing about a bunch of men once turning tail to a fight. When they do it, they get into a panic. It ain't fear like one man or two men would feel fear. It's a panic. A blind something that keeps them from thinking or feeling. All they want to do is run. There ain't any fight left in them.

It was awful what our crowd done to those boys. As soon as they started to run, the laddies with the spears started making corpses. And I was right in the lead of our bunch. Don't ask me how I got them. I don't know. I only know I was yelling and charging when the whole fancy. outfit turned tail. And there I was, playing pig sticking with the backs of a lot of running Fante warriors for targets. We gave up to chase after a while. We'd done enough damage, and there

was a chance of trouble running too far into the jungle. The crowd ahead might organize and turn on us, and we got pretty well strung out along the jungle trail. I heard of the boys back, and there was a regular road of Fanty dead between us and where the main part of the battle had taken place. Well, they called a big powwow around the campfire after that. I seen KitKake talking to her old man, Yik Yik, and I guess she was pretty proud of her slave. Anyhow, Yik Yik sucked his lips into his mouth like he did when he was thinking, and then he called to me. He got me in a ring of warriors before the fire, and he made a great speech. Then he handed me a bloody spear and shield and daubed my chest with some sort of paint,

and painted a couple rings around my eyes and put three stripes of paint on my cheeks. Then all the warriors started jumping around the fire, stamping their feet, wailing some sort of weird chant. Every few steps they'd all slam their feet down on the hard ground in unison, and the leaves on the trees rattled with their stamping. It was a wild night. Kick Kick was interpreter. She told me they were giving me my liberty and adopted me into the tribe as a great warrior. It wasn't right that such a mighty fighter should be the slave of a woman, she told me.

Well, there's something funny about women the world over. They all talk peace and coo and dove stuff, but they all like to see a son of a gun of a good scrap. Kick-k's eyes were soft and glowing with pride, and I could see she was as proud of me as though she'd been my mother or sweetheart or something. And seeing that look in her eyes did something to me. I'd been getting sort of sweet on KickKick without knowing it. She was a pretty enough lass for all her chocolate color,

and she was a square shooter. She'd stuck up for me from the first, and if it hadn't been for her, I'd have been a meal instead of a slave. It was only natural that I should get to like her more and more. Then when I'd got used to the native ideas and all that, she got to looking pretty good to me. Anyhow, there I was in love with her. Yes, and I'm still in love with her.

Maybe I did go native. What of it? There's worse things. And Kick Kick was a square shooter. I don't care what color her skin was, and remember that she was the daughter of a king. There was royal blood in her veins, and that makes a difference, race or color or whatnot.

Anyhow, like it or not, I was in love with her, and I still am. Oh, I know I'm an old man now. Kickik is awful old now. she's living because those natives get old quickly. And I ain't no spring chicken myself, but I love her just the same. Well, a white man's funny about his women. He ain't got no patience. When he falls in love, he falls strong and he wants his girl. I didn't have patience like the monkey man had. I couldn't wait around. I went to KickKick the next day and told her about it. It was at the ant meal time when we was packing fruit to him. I was still helping her even if I wasn't

slave anymore. I did it because I wanted to. Well, I told her. Her eyes got all shiny, and she dropped the dried fruit in a heap and threw her arms around my neck, and she cried a bit and made soft noises in the graduated monkey talk that is the real language of the tribe. Being all excited that way, she forgot the language of the goldsmith and went back to the talk of her folks. The ants came and got the fruit, and they crawled all over our feet eating it. If she hadn't been so happy, and if I hadn't been so much in love, we'd both or realize what it meant. The ants crawling over us that way and not offering to bite me or acting hostile at a little. all. It showed that I'd been making friends with him on the side. Well, after a while, she broke away, and then she did some more crying and explained that

she was the daughter of the chief. The man that married her would be the chief of the tribe someday. That is, he'd be the husband of the tribe's queen. Now, in that tribe, the men bought their wives. The man who married Kikik was the man who'd buy her hand from her old man. But being as she was the daughter of the chief and the future queen of the tribe, it'd take more wealth to buy her hand than any single man in the tribe could muster. She told me how many skins and how many hogs and how many dried meat and how many bows and arrows and spears and how many pounds of the native tobacco and all that would be required. I didn't pay much attention to the long list of stuff she rattled off. I had over 60 pounds of pure gold cashed then and I felt like a

millionaire. After all, what was all this native stuff compared with what I had? I was a rich man for a common ordinary sailor. I could take that gold right then and walk into any. of the world's marketplaces and buy what I wanted. Yes, and there's even been cases of women of the higher muck and mucks selling themselves or their daughters in marriage for less than 60 pounds of pure gold. Well, I laughed at Kikik and told her not to worry. I'd buy her hand from the old man, I didn't worry about the price. I was a sailor lad, and I had the hot blood of youth in my veins, and I was in love with Kikik, and she was standing there with her eyes all limpid and misty in her arms around my neck, and I had 60 pounds of pure gold. What more could a man

want. And then I heard a noise and looked up. There was the monkey man, squatting on the branch of a tree and looking at us. And his lips were working back and forth from his teeth. He wasn't saying a word, but his lips worked up and down, and every time they'd work, his teeth showed through. I stiffened a bit, although it wasn't that I was afraid. Right then, I felt that I could lick all the monkey men in the world, either one at a time or all together. Kikik was frightened. I could feel the shivers running up and down her arms, and she made little scared noises with her lips. But the monkey man didn't say anything. When he saw that we knew he was watching, he reached up his great arms, caught the branch of a tree above him,

swung off into space, caught another limb with his great feet, and swirled off into the forest. All that was left was the twilight and the chattering of a bunch of monkeys and the whimper and noises kick-kick was making. I patted the girl on the shoulder. Let the monkey man storm around through the tree-tops. A lot of good that would do him. He wasn't in the position to buy the hand of kick-kick, and he wasn't likely to be in the position.

I had a big chunk of pure gold stored up. I didn't think it'd be any trick at all to complete the purchase. By next day, though, I knew I was up against a funny problem. I had all the gold I could carry, but gold wasn't any good. I had enough of it to purchase a whole tannery full of choice skins, but I couldn't trade the gold for skins. The tribe I was with didn't care anything for the gold except as something to trade to the Fante Boys.

and all the trading was done by the chief. The tribal custom prohibited the others from doing any trading, even from having any of the gold. I commenced to see it wasn't as simple as I thought it was going to be, and all the while I got more and more in love with Kickkick. She was just the sort of woman, a real adventuring man wants. She'd keep her head in any emergency. She was strong and tender.

There wasn't an ache nor a pain in her system. When she moved, she walked like it wasn't any effort at all. If the trees look easier in the trail, she'd swing up in them and go from branch to branch, light as a feather drifting down wind. I'm telling you, she was strong as an ox and as graceful as a panther. A woman like that would go with a man anywhere, and she was sweet and tender. When she thought I was blue for the white race and home and all that, she draw my head down against her breast and crooned to me as soft and low as the wind signed

through the tops of the jungle trees. I wanted to take her way with me. Anyone could see the tribe was doomed, The very gold that gave them their trading power was their curse. The Fanties desired that gold. They might get beat in one battle. Might get beat in a thousand, but as long as the ledge was there,

they'd be an invaders fighting to get possession of it. It'd only be a question of time until the tribe was wiped out, defeated, captured, and the women turned into slaves. They couldn't stand the climate in the interior. Four or five miles back from the ocean was their limit. The Fanties wanted that gold ledge. Every so often there'd be a battle,

and when it was over, they'd be dead and wounded. There was always plenty more of the enemy, but there was a few less of our boys after every fight. If I could get away and take kick-kick with me and pack a load of gold when I could carry and what kick-kick could carry, we'd be fixed for life. We could go out into the cities

and hold up her heads with any of them. But I knew I was going to have trouble getting kick-kick-kick to see things that way. I might get her to leave with me, but she'd been brought up with the idea that her obligation to the tribe was sacred. She wouldn't take any of the gold. You see, she had never had to deal with money,

and she did what she thought was right, not what she thought would make the most money for her. While I was thinking things over, the monkey man comes swinging into the council and tells him he's going to buy the hand of KickKick at the next full moon, that was all he said. He wouldn't tell him where he was going to get the stuff or anything. But it was enough to get me worried,

and I could see it bothered Kit Kik. There was lots of wild rumors going along in those days. There was a report that, to Ashantes and the fantis were getting together for a joint attack. They was determined to get that gold ledge. I tried to get kick-hick to advise the tribe to leave the thing. Without that gold, they'd be safe from attack, and the gold didn't mean so much to them anyhow.

But they were just like the rest of the nations. If a man could compare a savage tribe with a nation, they wanted their gold, even when it wasn't doing the rank and file of them any good. They were going to fight for it, lay down their lives for it if they had to. And all the time, only the ruler had any right to use the gold to trade with. They knew they could have peace by going away. They must have seen. They couldn't last long stay in there.

Every battle left them a little weaker. But no, they must stay and die for their ledge of gold, and they didn't even know the value of it. It's funny about gold that way. There was another rumor going around that made me do a lot of thinking, and that was of a white man that was camped a couple days march away. He had a big outfit with him, and he was shooting big game and prospecting around in general.

A wild idea got into my head that if I could sneak away and get to him with 50 or 60 pounds of gold, I could trade it for mirrors, guns, blankets, and whatnot that would look like a million dollars to the old chief. Then I could buy KickKick, and maybe I could talk her into going away with me. I really had enough gold, but I was getting a little hogish. I wanted more. The love of a woman like Kikik had ought to make a man richer than the richest king in the world, but I was a white man, and I'd been taught. to worship gold along with God.

In fact, I'd only had that God worship idea taught me on Sundays when I was a kid. On weekdays, the God was gold. My folks had been rated as being pretty religious as common folks go, but even they hadn't tried to carry religion past Sunday. Gold was the god six days of the week, and I'd been brought up with the white man's idea.

So I had to get me a little more gold. I wanted it so I could go to the white man's camp with all the gold I could carry and still have as much left behind, hidden in the ground waiting for me to come back. The next morning I decided to take a chance and scoop out a big lot of quartz. I got out with the food for the ants all right. I hadn't even thought about trouble with them for a long while.

They quit being one of my worries. I walked over to the ledge and dug into the quartz. And then something funny struck me. It was a feeling like something was boring into my back. I whirled around and there was the monkey man sitting on a limb watching me. He was up in a tree, squatted on the limb, his hand. hands holding the bow with one of them poison arrows on the string.

And it was then I noticed the way his toes came around under the side of the limb and held him firm. Funny how a fellow noticed things like that when he's figuring he has an appointment and eternity right away. End of chapter four. Chapter 5

of rain magic by Earl Stanley Gardner. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. The Monkey Man. I stared into the monkey man's eyes and he stared back. I'd read somewhere that a white man always has the advantage over the other races because there's some kind of a racial inferiority that the other fellows develop in a pinch.

Maybe it's true and maybe it ain't. I only know I stared at the monkey man and he fidgeted his fingers around on the bowstring. I was caught red-handed. One of those poison arrows would almost drop me in my tracks. I wouldn't have a chance to get outside of the deadline. It looked like curtains for me. Then a funny thing happened. I thought at the time it was because of my staring eyes and the racial inferiority and whatnot.

Now I know the real reason. But the monkey man lowered the bow, blinked his eyes a couple of times, just like a monkey puzzling over a new idea. And then he reached up one of those long paws, grabbed a branch overhead, swung up into the higher tree and was off. It looked like he'd gone to get some witnesses, and it was up to me to bury my gold and be snappy about it. I could see the ants were finishing up the last of the feet I'd given them,

and I wouldn't have to be afraid of some of that being left. I took the gold and sprinted for the place where I kept it hid. I buried the new batch with the other, and then strolled back to the clear and trying to look innocent. I felt a big weight on my chest. Somehow I felt a monkey man was going to get me. If he could make his charges stick, I was sure due to be a meal before night. But the funny part of it was that he didn't make any charges.

He even wasn't there at all. Funny, I walked around and passed a few words of the language I picked up with some of the warriors, and then I saw kick-kick. It was sort of a lazy life living there that way. The trade and power of the gold ornaments gave the triumph the bulge on things. They didn't have to work so awful hard. Funny, too, they didn't savvy rightly about the gold. They thought it wasn't the metal, but the way the goldsmith worked it up into rings and bracelets and such that made it valuable. Gold as such, they couldn't understand.

And anyhow, the warriors didn't have anything to do except a little hunting once in a while. The women did all the real work, and there wasn't much of that. Kick-kick and me walked down to the beach, and I watched the green surf under and in. Her arm was nestled around me, and her head was up against my shoulder. I felt a possessory sort of feeling like I owned the whole world. I patted her head and told her there wasn't anything to be afraid of that I was going to make good on buying her and that I'd boost any price the monkey man was able to raise. She felt curious, but when she seen I didn't want to answer questions.

She let things go without talking. She was a wonderful girl, the kind that any man could be proud of, particularly a rough seafaring man that had sailed all the seas of the world and knocked about in all sorts of weather. I broke away from her when the sun was well up. I knew she'd go down to the ocean with a tribe for her bath. That was my chance. I raced into the jungle to the place where I'd left my gold.

All that a man could pack away was gone. There wasn't over 20 pounds left. The ground had been dug up and the gold rooted up. It was there in the sun, glistening soft and yellow against the green of the jungle and the rich brown of the earth. For a minute my heart made a flip-flop and then I knew. The monkey man hadn't given the alarm at all. He'd come to know something of the power of the gold.

And when he saw me feeding the ants and helping myself at the gold ledge, he realized I must have a bunch of it cashed away. That had been why he hadn't shot me with a poisoned arrow. He'd swung up out of sight in the high trees And waited for me to lead him to a place where I'd buried the gold With his training and slipping through the branches of the trees There hadn't been anything to it He followed me as easy as a bird could flip through the branches

Now he'd taken all the gold he could carry He'd been in a hurry He hadn't stopped to bury the rest someplace else even Or to cover it over with earth Why? There was only one answer He'd made a bluff about buying Kikikik from her old man And he wanted to make good He'd heard about the white man in his camp

And he'd got the same idea I'd had, and it got a head start on me. I had a skin pouch with a couple of straps going over the shoulders. I loaded the gold that was left in and made my start. I neither would be trouble getting past the sentries at the bottleneck, but I couldn't wait for night. The monkey man could slip through in the trees. I'd have to rely on bluff and nerve. It wasn't getting past him that was the hard part. It was carrying the gold out. As a warrior, I was entitled to go out in the jungle to hunt, to come and go as I pleased. It was what was in that skin pouch that would make the trouble. Then I got another idea.

There'd been a kill the day before, some little sort of an antelope that ran around the jungle. I knew where some of the meat was. The gold didn't amount too much in size, and I'd raced over and stuffed some animal meat on top of it. It was sink or swim, and I couldn't wait to fix up any fancy plan. I grabbed a spear and a shield and started down the path. The sentries flashed their white teeth at me and blinked their round eyes. Then one of them noticed a pack on my back, and he flopped his spear down while he came over to investigate. I didn't act like I was the least bit for.

frightened. I even opened the sack myself and I made a lot of motions. I pointed to the sun and I swung my hand up and down four times, telling them I'd be away four days. Then I pointed to the meat and to my mouth, explaining that it was for food. I threw in a little comic stuff and had him laughing. They laughed easy, those jungle men who were so blamed ignorant and they didn't know the power of gold. It was a cinch. I was on my way heading into hostile territory, knowing that the fanties were in the country and that I'd be a fine meal for them. It's a funny sensation, figuring that you're only valuable for the meat you can be made into, estimating your calorie value on the hoof.

Anyhow, the thing had been started, and I had to see it through. After I got into the country where the white men went, the color of my skin should protect me from the tribes. The white man gets respect from the blacks. He kills a lot of blacks to do it, but he gets results. It was the first few miles that had me worried. I had to go through the ESO country and into the Nichwa country, and I wasn't in a hurry.

I couldn't go slow and cautious, and I couldn't take to the trees like the monkey man could. The first day I almost got caught. A bunch of Fante warriors came down the trail. I swung off to one side, working my way into the thickest of the jungle and hiding in the shadows. I thought sure I was caught

because those boys of eyes that can see in the dark, but I got by. The second day I didn't see a soul. I was getting into a more open, rolling country, and I only had a general idea where I was going. There was a hill that stood up pretty well over the rest of the country, and I got up on that and climbed a tree.

Just at dusk, I see them. Hundreds of fires twinkling through the dusk like little stars. I figured that'd be the camp of the white man. It ain't healthy to go through the jungle at night. There are too many animals who have picked up the habits of a man and figured it turnabout's fair play. They relish the flesh of a man, more particularly a white man, is a rare delicacy.

We don't think nothing of stalking a nice buck and having our mouth water and thinking how tasty he's going to be broiled over a bed of coals. But if the buck turns around, and start stalking us and licking his chops over how nice we're going to taste. It's a different affair altogether. I know because for two hours I worked through the country with eyes glaring out of the jungle all around, and soft steps falling into the trail behind me. They were animals stalking along behind, a little afraid of the white man's smell,

hesitating a bit about closing the gap and making a supper out of me, but feeling their mouth water at the thought. Yes, sir, I know how it feels to be hunted by something that's just figuring how nice you're going to taste after he's got his paws on you. Well, finally I came to the camp of the white man. I could see him sitting there all bearded and tanned. He was wearing white clothes and sitting before a fire with a lot of native servants waiting around with food and drinking whatnot.

I walked up to him, pretty well all in, and motioned to my mouth. I'd been so used to talking to the natives that way that for a moment I forgot this man talked my language. Then I told him, I come to trade, I says, and dumped out the gold on the ground. He went up out of the canvas chair like he'd been shot. Another one, he yelled. And this one's white.

Then he clapped his hands, and black man came running up and grabbed me. Where'd you get it? Where is it? Is there any more? How long will it take to get there? He yells at me, his face all purple, with the veins standing out and the eyes bulging. I'd forgotten how excited white man get at the side of gold. Gold, gold! he goes on. The country must be lousy with gold.

There was a big ape hanging around camp this morning. He seemed a higher species of ape, almost human. I stalked him and shot him for a specimen. Can you imagine my surprise when I found that he was carrying a skin filled with gold? And this is the same gold. I'd recognize it anywhere. Come, my good man. Come, my good man. Come and tell me if you've ever seen a similar creature to this great ape.

I have preserved him in alcohol and intend to carry him intact to the British Museum. I could feel myself turning sort of sick at the idea, but there was nothing for it. He was dragging me along to a big bat. There was the monkey man. A bullet hole in his... back, in his back, mind you. He hadn't even shot him from the front, but it sneaked around to the rear. The specimen was floating around in the alcohol. I turned away. Tell me, tell me, pleads the guy. Do you know him? Your gold comes from the same source. Perhaps you have seen

others of the same species. After I shot him, I was overcome with remorse because he might have showed me the way to the gold deposit if I had merely captured him, but I shot him before I knew of the gold. I did some rapid things. If this bird thought I knew where the gold came from, he'd forced me to show him, or perhaps he'd kill me and stick me in alcohol. So I looked sad. No, I don't know, I tells him. I saw this man monkey carrying a skin full of something heavy. I followed along until he sat down the sack and went to sleep.

Then I sneaked up, seen it was gold, and figured a monkey man didn't have no use for gold. He nods his head. Quite right, my friend, quite right. A monkey can have no use for gold. And how about yourself? You possibly have no use for it? At any rate, you admit it was part of the gold that belonged to the monkey, so you should restore it to the original pile, and I will take charge of it.

I seen this bird was one of the kind that wants everything for nothing and insists that a guy mustn't hold out on him. I told him that I'm only too glad to oblige, but I want some calicoes and some mirrors and blankets and a gun and some ammunition and some hunting knives and beads. After that, he can have the gold. We'd diggered for a while, and finally I'd dust it out, taking two porters with me, frightened to death, but loaded down with junk.

I was carrying the rifle and I was watching my back trail. The old boy might figure I was a specimen. I got back all right. We had one brush with the fante outfit, but the roar of the gun made them take to the tall timber. I had the porters lay the junk down about two miles from the place where our tribe was camped, and I sneaked it up to the bottleneck myself carrying three loads of it. Then I came on up to the sentries, shook hands, walked past,

and got a couple of warriors to help me with the plunder. Kick kick was there all dolled up in refinery parading around the village. That's a custom they got from the fan. When a girl is offered for sale in marriage, she decks herself out with everything the family's got and parades around the village. That's a notice to bidders. I knew KickKick was doing it for me. She had to comply with the customs of the tribe, but she figured I was the only bird that can make the grade, and she trusted to my resourcefulness to bring home the bacon.

End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Rain Magic by Earl Stanley Gardner. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6. African Justice My stuff was a riot. When I had the fellas spread it out on the ground, the boy's eyes stuck out until their foreheads bulge. Most of them had never seen the trade goods of the white man. They'd been kept pretty well isolated with the hostile fainty outfit, him and men by land, and the open ocean thundering on the beach. The knives made the hit. The warriors were hunters enough to appreciate a keen-edge bit of shiny steel. The blankets didn't take very well, neither did the capital.

but the knives, the mirrors, and the heads were drawing cards that couldn't be beat. Old Yick-Yik, screwed up his eyes and sucked in his mouth the way he had when he was thinking, and then he jabbers out a bunch of graduated monkey talk. The goldsmith was there, and he blinks his roomy eyes and sticks out his hand. The old bird says you've bought the girl, he tells me. I can feel my heart do a flip-flop. It was all matter of fact to him. The buying of a wife, even if she did happen to be the future queen of the tribe,

but to me there was only one kick-kick in the world, and now she was to be mine. The only man that knew my secret was the monkey man, and he was floating around in a bad alcohol. I could settle down in the tribe and be happy the rest of my life. But in spite of it all, I was feeling off color. My head felt light. When I'd turn it quick, it seemed to keep right on going for a couple revolutions. And my feet felt funny as though they wasn't setting firm on the ground. But what of it?

Wasn't I going to Mary Kit-Kick? What was a little billiessness more or less? And then there was a bunch of yelling. I looked up and seen a couple of the centuries, bringing in a captive. Another meal I thought to myself, wondering if maybe he'd be in time to furnish the spread at the wedding feast. I looked again, and then my mouth got all dry and fuzzy. It was one of the porters that had carried out my stuff. Probably he had sneaked back to try and find the gold, or else some of the hunters had caught him.

In either event, my head. hash was cooked. When he told him what I'd traded to the white man, I strained in my ears. Some of our crowd talked fainty and maybe the porter talked to, he did. I heard him jabbering away, and the porter pointed at me and at the stuff on the ground. I stole a look at yik-yik. His eyes was as hard as a couple of glass beads, and his lips was all sucked in until his mouth was just a network of puckered wrinkles. He spits out some words and a circle forms around me. The goldsmith was still there, and he kept right on acting his and his own. interpreter, but I didn't need to follow half of what he said. And then all of a sudden, I

stiffened up to real attention. It seemed the old man was accusing Kikik of betraying the tribe. For a minute or two, I thought he'd gone clean kookoo, and then I seen just how it looked to him. Kikik was in love with me. The monkey man, who she didn't like, had threatened to buy her. There was a white man in the country. What was more likely than she'd slip me out a bunch of gold. I tried to tell him, but they would not listen. Kikik looked all wide around the gills for a minute, and then she walked over to my side. We shall meet death together, she said. Dignified as a queen had ought to be, but I wasn't going to stand for it. I tried to tell them about how I had the ants trained. I volunteered to show them. I tried to get them to feed me to the ants, but they wouldn't listen to me.

Kikik was the only one they'd listened to, and she wouldn't say a word. She wanted to die with me. Then was when I knew I was sick. The whole ground started reeling around, and I was. I felt so drowsy I could hardly hold my eyes open. My head was burning and throbbing, and it seemed as though the damp odors of the jungle was soaked all through my blood and was smothering me under a blanket, a jungle mist. Their voices sounded farther and farther away.

I heard the goldsmith telling me the sentence the chief was pronouncing. He had to lean up against my ear and shout to make me understand. It seemed they had a funny bread made out of some berries and roots. When a fella ate it, he lost a little. his memory. The old king had decided not to kill us, but to feed us this bread and banish us from the tribe. Since we'd committed the crime against the tribe, because we wanted to marry it, seemed like proper justice for the old boy to feed us king key, the bread of forgetfulness, so we wouldn't ever remember about the other. It was a horrible punishment. If I hadn't been

coming down sick, I'd have made a break and forced him to kill me, or turned loose with a rifle and seen if I couldn't have escaped with kick-kick. But I was a little. I was a little bit of a sick man. I felt him stuffing something in my mouth and I swallowed mechanically and cried for water. Then I remembered seeing Kit Kick's eyes, all misty and floating with tears bending

over me. Then I sank into a sleeper stupor. Everything snuffed out like a candle going out. Lord knows how much later I began to come to. I was in Cape Coast Castle. They told me some natives that brought me on a stretcher. Sat me down

before the door of the building where they kept medicines and gone away. It had been done at night. They found me there the next morning sick with the sleeping sickness. When I woke up, I couldn't tell them who I was, where I'd been, or how I got there. I only knew I wanted something and couldn't tell what it was. A boat came in and they shipped me on her. The surgeon aboard got interested in my case. Every time it rained, I'd sleep. There was something in the smell of dampness in the air. He treated me like I'd been a king and took me to Boston. There was some German doctor there that had specialized on tropical fevers. They had me there for six months study in my case.

The doctor told me I was a victim of what he called auto-hypnosis. He said the only reason I went to sleep when it rained was because I thought of sleep when it rained. I told him it was the fever in my blood coming out when it got damp, but he just shook his head and said auto-hypnosis, whatever that mean. He tried for six months to get me over it and he gave it up as a bad job. He said for me to come to California or Arizona and get out in the desert where it only rained once or twice a year and to always be in my tent when it rained. I followed his advice.

For 50 years now, I've been living out here in the desert. Every time it rains and I smell the damp air, it acts on me like the jungle smells when I had the sleeping sickness and I go to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep and don't waken for two weeks at a stretch. But it's funny about me. Now that I'm getting old, my memory. he's coming back to me. Particularly after I wake up, I can recall everything like I just told it to you. Of course, I'm an old man now. Nothing but a bum of a desert rat out here, scratching around in the sand and sagebrush for a few colors of gold. I got me a place that staked out over there at the

base of that hill. Ain't it funny that I have to spend my life looking for gold when it was grabbing the gold and big chunks that made all my troubles? Oh well, it's all in a lifetime. Of course, I'm too old to be thinking of such things now, but I get awful lonesome for kick-kick. I can see her around liquid eyes shining at me whenever I wake up from one of these long sleeps. I wonder if she's got her memory coming back now that she's getting old, and I wonder if she ever thinks of me. Yes, sir.

Thank you, sir. Another cup of that coffee will go kind of good. When a man's been asleep for eight or nine days, he wakes up sort of slow. I'll drink this coffee, and then I'll be heading over toward my place or claim. I'm sorry I bothers you, folks, but that rain came up mighty sudden, and the first thing I knew I was soaking wet and sleepy, smelling the damp smell of the earth and the desert stuff. I crawled in this bunch of Joshua palms,

and that's the last I remember until you came along and poured the hot coffee down me. No, thanks. I don't believe I'll stay any longer. My tent's fixed up, mighty comfortable over there, and when I wake up this way, it seems. Seems like I've been with Kick Kick-K in a Dream World. I like to think about my lost sweetheart. So long, boys. Thanks for the coffee.

End of Chapter 6. And End of Rain Magic. By Earl Stanley Gardner.