Transition Plan Chapter 36 - First Homecoming Part23: Mud Pies

The freighter with d'Arnot's sailors and other Clan Greystoke loyalists would be coming in only a few more weeks. Tarzan and Jane needed to find out more about what they were up against to urge the intruders to leave when they faced them as 'just' the Count and Countess. It was six months since their last knowledge of the oilmen and Kirok had said they kept a very wide berth from the humans.

There was the easy way - that they would obey the Count's orders to get off his land - and the hard way, in which they would battle each other, being loyal to the end to Cedric, whether he was dead or not. Tarzan and his jungle friends had to be prepared for the hard way. Greed made some men do terrible things.

Tarzan and Jane prepared to go to the oil drilling site. Having seen the guards' guns months before, they assumed they were dealing with accomplished marksmen, who now had six months experience in the jungle hunting and defending their settlement from the jungle animals. Peering at the encampment from the trees would reveal them to any competent gunmen searching the trees or the surrounding land. So they tried something that d'Arnot and Archimedes told them about – a means to conceal themselves in broad daylight by using kind of a body covering that mimicked the colors of the trees, ground, and greenery. Archimedes explained that the British Army started developing drab uniform colors since their observations of the 1861 American Civil War proved that armies standing volley after volley against each other in colorful uniforms were foolish as guns got more lethal. The British had worked the concealment methods to a science in the 1902 Boer War. The French military was not far behind in development, and had a more elegant word for the method of blending people into backgrounds – camouflage.

The family was worried the pair needed to reconnoiter the oil enclave alone and first hand far outnumbered against men with weapons, but trusted their decision. The family watched mesmerized as Jane and Tarzan prepared their mud bath by damming up a section of a small creek.

"Are you ready for this?" Tarzan asked.

"Absolutely. You forget I just did this to get ready to dance for you," she snickered.

"I will never forget that night, Jane dear," he smiled, remembering the sight of her erotic dance with the Nigerian women and the passionate climax later that night in their cabin.

They held hands, and jumped feet first into the mucky pool. They were quickly completely covered in mud, even their faces and hair, and laughed at their completely brown overall color. They couldn't resist flinging a few mud balls at each other, and curious Terk and the others looked on in disbelief.

Terk was embarrassed for them, "Hey! Stop that, you two. You'd think you were both a couple of warthogs carousing in the mud or something. No self respecting gorilla would ever do that."

"Party pooper!" Jane teased, and threw a mud ball directly into Terk's face. It splattered everywhere, and she shrieked. It was great payback for that story about Tarzan. The rest of the family guffawed.

Terk, complained loudly, and was very distracted and blinded, so with a grin Tarzan yanked her into the mud bog, and he and Jane leaped on her tickling her and slathering her with the rich mud. Kirok and Jana stood by, very amused at this turn of events.

Sopping wet and drenched in the mud dripping from her fur, she was very unhappy, "Ohhh my… Yuck… I'm a total mess. Tarzan! Jane! You guys! I'll never get all this mud off of me in a year. Help me get out of here and clean up, Kirok. Right now!"

But instead of helping, Kirok decided to 'join the party' and did a cannon ball into the mud pond, covering Jane, Tarzan, and Terk in a huge wave of mud, causing the humans to laugh and Terk to groan further, and little Jana followed both parents, splashing and throwing mud at her parents and her 'aunt and uncle'. Jana discovered she loved playing in the mud. Seeing the mud-caked cute smile on her daughter's face, Terk reluctantly decided she liked the mud bath too, and soon they were all laughing and throwing mud balls at each other. Terk dunked her mate under the mud, but he came up sputtering mud right at Terk, "Ewww! Kirok!"

Jana giggled at her silly-looking parents and her relatives, "Dirty apes, ma-ma!" she exclaimed innocently.

The rest of the family was amused but no one else was brave enough to join these completely brown human and ape families. It was amazing how much Tarzan and Jane resembled Terk and Kirok, now all completely covered in the same brown/tan mud covering.

Amidst the laughter and playfulness, Jane had to remind them all of the serious business of the day.

"You're spoiling all the fun, sister," Terk said, but knew what had to be done.

All of them got out of the mud bog. While Terk's family found a way to rinse all the mud off them, Tarzan and Jane let the thick, sticky mud cake and partially dry on them, and at Jane's direction, Tarzan gathered and crushed a number of plants, fruit, and vegetable pods and stalks, pouring the multiple shades of green and brown fluids from the vegetation into cracked coconut shells like bowls. Tarzan also crushed some soft black shale along the creekside with his knife handle, and made a slurry of the rocks with oily plants. Using her artistic skills, Jane took some of each different color, and applied swatches of the colors and slurry to their bodies over the brown mud base covering, even across their faces and hair. The effect of her art left leaf and branch-like patterns all over themselves, as well as counter-shaded and splintered blotches of color, creating a perfect jungle camouflage over their previously unclad bodies. It was perfect body paint, and as effective as any modern military uniforms. Just standing there motionless, they blended into the deep jungle. Tarzan helped cover her pretty face in the colors, and the parts of her body she could not reach due to her pregnant shape. Had this not been a more serious time, they could have easily gotten sidetracked with all the personal touching. Tarzan could not help tease his wife.

"Jane? Jane? Where are you?" Tarzan looked all around and feigned that he'd lost sight of her.

Standing with her hands on her wide hips, shaking her head. She waved and responded, "Very funny Tarzan. I'm right here. But I agree it looks like this will work very well for our 'up close and personal' encounter with the humans."

Tarzan paused for a moment to praise her, "You know Jane, camouflaged and covered from head to toe in mud and plant dye, you are still beautiful."

"Thank you husband," she said as she kissed him lightly in order to not remove any mud or color from his face.

Tarzan took a good overall look at himself and worried for just a moment, "I hope all this dye will wash off."

Jane couldn't resist and gave him a snarky, pondering puzzled look with her index finger on her chin, "Yes it will. The 'never come off until you die' plant dye pods are over there. At least I think they were. Or were they over here? Hmmm. I can never remember."

In response he just gave her a fake disdainful look, "My wife: the absent-minded scientist. I thought you got good grades in botany and know all these plants?"

She got very close to him and whispered, "Look on the bright side. If they are permanent colors, at least when we make love no one will see us, dear…"

"You always know how to get to me," he snickered.

They were about ready to go.

"Got your bow?"

She looked to the side and picked it up, which was also camouflaged, especially the metal points, and noted, "Yes, although if I have to use this we've failed. One last thing, Tarzan. We must cover our rings. If they glint we're dead."

They dipped their ring fingers in a heavier mud coating and wrapped them with a leaf. They were not about to take them off and risk losing them.

"Let's go," Tarzan urged.

"Be careful you too. Umm, don't get yourselves hurt or anything like that," Terk cautioned in her own way, not trying to show her great concern. She was genuinely worried.

They swung to the site together. Jane insisted she could do that without straining herself or the baby, but promised that he could carry her home.

They were perched behind deep foliage about 50 feet up and as close as the tree line would permit them to be to the site. It was mid day, so it was the hottest. They would blend in the best this way with the sun beating straight down, with no back lighted silhouettes of their human shapes. There were about fifty of the men, with at least a dozen guards – more than they thought. Most of them walked a patrol pattern which they watched for timing, and hoped to witness a change of guards. They were fortunate to see the guards shift, taking note of the oilmen's vulnerabilities.

The oil exploration site was bigger than they remembered. It was roughly rectangular, with wickedly sharp barbed wired fence erected around the perimeter. Three oil derricks dominated the land, as tall as the tallest trees, but only one appeared to be operationally drilling. The complex was completely barren of its once-beautiful wavy grasses. The open land was scarred now - a grimy mix of dirt, mud, oil, stumps of destroyed trees, and other noxious wastes. Smoldering, stinking trash fires were flickering. The compound was dotted with several buildings. They were a mix of wood and rusted metal sheeting. One was obviously a bunk house, another a kitchen/dining hall, a main office, equipment hut, and a couple that were of uncertain purpose. A smoky pall of exhaust from the engines that powered everything hung over the site and their noses rejected the smells.

They got all the information that they needed for now over a period of two hours of observation, and not wanting any risk of discovery, they departed, but not directly back to the family nest. They made a quick stop at the treehouse and got her drawing pad, and she sketched everything they saw. She folded it and put it in her quiver. Then she sketched the two of them as the camouflaged infiltrators and left it in the treehouse in commemoration of their latest adventure.

"I'm glad you are drawing again. It's been awhile. I see you've created something for our children to remember," Tarzan observed.

He admired her rendering of them, with their weapons drawn, and the camouflage patterns that adorned their natural forms, and scoffed, "We have anything but a normal English lifestyle, don't we? I can see them now reviewing the family album with our grandchildren: 'Here's your 'Gramma' and 'Gran'pa' - stark naked and body-camouflaged - armed to the hilt and infiltrating the oil field shortly before they and their jungle horde destroyed the place.'"

She giggled heartily, "You have a point there, Jonathan. But don't forget that portrait of your Count and Countess ancestors in nothing but druidic blue body paint armed with with spears and bows taking on the British in the takeover of Scotland centuries ago..."

"It does seem this kind of behavior runs in the family. It's a perfect picture, Jane. As always," he joked as he kissed her, leaving a new smudge on her mud and dye-covered face. It was lip-shaped.

Seeing the new smudge on her cheek, admiring it in their mirror, she said demurely, "I hope that kiss print is the 'never come off' kind of dye, Jonathan."

They hugged, closed up the treehouse, and he carried her in his arms as promised back to the family nest to clean up and enjoy the rest of their day with the family. The first secret observation of the oilmen went perfectly.