Straight before them fell away a steep and rugged slope. Midway of the descent, with his back to a rock, crouched one of the Bow-legs, battling frantically with his club to keep off the attack of a pair of leopards. The man was kneeling upon one knee, with the other leg trailed awkwardly behind him. It seemed an altogether difficult and disadvantageous position in which to do battle.

"The fool!" said Bawr. "He doesn't know how to fight a leopard."

"He's hurt. His leg is broken!" said Grom. And straightway, a novel purpose flashing into his far-seeing brain, he ran leaping down the slope to the rescue, waving his fire-stick to a blaze as he went.

The Chief looked puzzled for a moment, wondering why the deliberate Grom should trouble to do what it was plain the leopards would do for him most effectually. But he dreaded the chance of an ambuscade. Shouting to the men behind to come on, he waved his own fire-stick to a blaze, and followed Grom.

One of the leopards had already succeeded in closing in upon the wounded Bow-leg; but at the sight of Grom and the Chief leaping down upon them they sprang back snarling and scurried off among the thickets like frightened cats. The Bow-leg lifted wild eyes to learn the meaning of his deliverance. But when he saw those two tall forms rushing at him with flame and smoke circling about their heads, he gave a groan and fell forward upon his face.

Grom stood over him, staring down upon the misshapen and bleeding form with thoughtful eyes; while the Chief looked on, striving to fathom his purpose. The warriors came up, shouting savage delight at having at last got one of their dreaded enemies into their hands alive. They would have fallen upon him at once and torn him to pieces. But Grom waved them back sternly. They growled with indignation, and one, sufficiently prominent in the tribal counsels to dare Grom's displeasure, protested hotly against this favor to so venomous a foe.

"I demand this fellow, Bawr, as my captive!" said Grom.

"It was you who took him," answered the Chief. "He is yours." He was about to add, "though I can't see what you want of him"; but it was a part of his policy never to seem in doubt or ignorance about anything that another might perhaps know. So, instead, he sternly told his followers to obey the law of the tribe and respect Grom's capture. Then Grom stepped close beside him and said at his ear: "Many things which we need to know will Bawr learn from this fellow presently, as to the dangers which are like to come upon us."

At this the Chief, being ready of wit, comprehended Grom's purpose; and, to the amazement of his followers, he looked down upon the hideous prisoner with a smile of satisfaction.

"Well have I called you the Chief's Right Hand," he answered. "I shall also have to call you the Chief's Wisdom, for in saving this fellow's life you have shown more forethought than I."

The captive's wounds having been dressed with astringent herbs, and his broken leg put into splints in accordance with the rude but not ineffective surgery of the time, he was placed on a rough litter of interlaced branches and carried back by the reluctant warriors to the Caves.

None of the warriors were advanced enough to have understood the policy of their leaders, so no effort was made by either the Chief or Grom to explain it. The Chief, doubly secure in his dominance by reason of Grom's loyal support, cared little whether his followers were content or not, and he took no heed of their ill-humor so long as they did not allow it to become articulate.

But when, after an hour's sullen tramping, they suddenly grew merry at their task, and fell to marching with a child-like cheer under their repulsive and groaning burden, he was surprised, and made inquiry as to the reason for this sudden complaisance. It turned out that one of the warriors, accounted more discerning than his fellows, had suggested that the captive was to be nursed back to health in order that he might be made an acceptable sacrifice to the Shining One. As this notion seemed to meet with such hearty approval, the wise Chief did not think it worth while to cast any doubt upon it. In fact, as he thought, such a solution might very well arrive, in the end, in case Grom's design should fail to come up to his expectations.

To the presence of the hideous and repulsive stranger in her dwelling, A-ya, as was natural, raised warm objection. But when Grom had explained his purpose to her, and the imminence of the peril that threatened, she yielded readily enough, the dread of Mawg being yet vivid in her imagination. She lent herself cheerfully to the duty of caring for the captive's wounds and of helping Grom to teach him the simple speech of the tribe.

As for the captive, for some days he was possessed by a morose anticipation of being brained at any moment—an anticipation, however, which did not seem to interfere with his appetite. He would clutch eagerly all the food offered him, and crouch, huddled over it, with his face to the rock-wall, while he devoured it with frantic haste and bestial noises. But as he found himself treated with invariable kindness, he began to develop an anxious gratitude and docility. On A-ya's tall form his little round eyes, shy and fierce at the same time, came to rest with an adoring awe. The smell of him being extremely offensive to all this cleanly tribe, and especially to A-ya and Grom, who were more fastidious than their fellows, A-ya had taken advantage of her office as priestess of the Shining One to establish a little fire within the precincts of her own dwelling, and by the judicious use of aromatic barks upon the blaze she was able to scent the place to her taste. And the Bow-leg, seeing her mastery of the mysterious and dreadful scarlet tongues which licked upwards from the hollow on their rocky pedestal, regarded her less as a woman than as a goddess—a being who, for her own unknown reasons, chose to be beneficent toward him, but who plainly could become destructive if he should in any way transgress. Toward Grom—who regarded him altogether impersonally as a means to an end, a pawn to be played prudently in a game of vast import—his attitude was that of the submitted slave, his fate lying in the hollow of his master's hand. Toward the rest of the tribe—who, till their curiosity was sated, kept crowding in to stare and jeer and curse—he displayed the savage fear and hate of a lynx at bay.

But the babe on A-ya's arm seemed to him something peculiarly precious. It was not only the son of Grom, his grave and distant master, but also of that wonderful, beautiful, enigmatic deity, his mistress, the fashioner and controller of the flames. The adoration which soon grew up in his heart for A-ya's beauty, but which his awe of her did not suffer him even to realize to himself, was turned upon the babe, and speedily took the form of a passionate and dog-like devotion. A-ya, with her mother instinct, was quick to understand this, and also to realize the possible value to her child of such a devotion, in some future emergency. Moreover, it softened her heart toward the hideous captive, so that she busied herself not only to help Grom teach him their language, but also to reform his manners and make him somewhat less unpleasant an associate. His wounds soon healed, thanks to the vitality of his youthful stock; and the bones of the broken leg soon knit themselves securely. But Grom's surgery having been hasty and something less than exact, the leg remained so crooked that its owner could do no more than hobble about with a laborious, dragging gait. It being obvious that he could not run away, there was no guard set upon him.

But it soon became equally obvious that nothing would induce him to remove himself from the neighborhood of A-ya's baby. He was like a gigantic watchdog squatting at Grom's doorway, chained to it by links stronger than any that hands could fashion. And those of the tribe who had been hoping to do honor to the Shining One, as well as to the spirits of their slain kinsmen back in the barrow on the windy hills, by a great and bloody sacrifice, began to realize with discontent that their hopes were like enough to be disappointed.

II

The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk—a clicking guttural which none but A-ya was able to master. When he had learned to make himself understood, he proved eager to repay Grom's protection by giving all the information that he possessed. Simple-minded, but with much of a child's shrewdness, he quickly came to regard himself as of some importance when both the Chief and Grom would spend hours in interrogating him. His own people he repudiated with bitterness, because, when he had fallen among the rocks and shattered his leg, his party had refused to burden their flight by helping him. It became his pride to identify himself with the interests of his master, and to call himself the slave of his master's baby.

The information which he was able to give was such as to cause the Chief and Grom the most profound disquietude. It appeared that the Bow-legs, having gradually recovered from the panic of their appalling defeat in the Pass of the Little Hills, had made up their minds that the disaster must be avenged. But no longer did they hold their opponents cheap on account of their scanty numbers. They realized that if they would hope to succeed in their next attack they must organize, and prepare themselves by learning how to employ their forces better. To this end, therefore, when Mawg and his fellow-renegades fell into their hands, instead of tearing them to pieces in bestial sport, they had spared them, and made much of them, and set themselves diligently to learn all that the strangers could teach. And Mawg, seeing here his opportunity both for vengeance on Grom and for the gratification of that mad passion for A-ya which had so long obsessed him, had gone about the business with shrewd foresight and a convincing zeal.

It was apparent from the accounts which Ook-ootsk was able to give that the invasion would take place as soon as possible after their hordes were adequately armed with the new weapons. This, said Ook-ootsk, would be soon after the dry season had set in. In any case, he said, the hordes were bound to wait for the dry season, because the way from their country to the Valley of Fire lay through a region of swamps which became impassable for any large body of migrants during the month of rains.

As the dry season was already close upon them, Bawr and Grom now set themselves feverishly to the arrangement of their defenses. Counting the older boys who had grown into sizable youths since the last great battle and all the able-bodied women and girls, they could muster no more than about six score of actual combatants. They knew that defeat would mean nothing less than instant annihilation for the tribe, and for the women a foul captivity and a loathsome mating. But they knew also that a mere successful defense would avail them only for the moment. Unless they could inflict upon the invaders such a defeat as would amount to a paralyzing catastrophe, they would soon be worn down by mere force of numbers, or starved to death in their caves. It was not only for defense, therefore, but for wholesale attack—the attack of six score upon as many thousand—that Bawr planned his strategy and Grom wove unheard-of devices.

Of the two great caves occupied by the tribe one was now abandoned, as not lending itself easily to defense. To Bawr's battle-trained eyes it revealed itself as rather a trap than a refuge, because from the heights behind it an enemy could roll down rocks enough to effectively block its mouth. But the cliff in which the other cave was hollowed was practically inaccessible, and hung beetling far over the entrance.

Into this natural fortress the tribe—with an infinite deal of grumbling—was removed. Store of roots and dried flesh was gathered within; and every one was set to the collection of dry and half-dry fuel. The light stuff, with an immense number of short, highly-inflammable faggots, was piled inside the doorway where no rain could reach it. And the heavy wood was stacked outside, to right and left, in such a fashion as to form practical ramparts for the innermost line of defense.

Directly in front of the cave spread a small fan-shaped plateau several hundred square yards in area. On the right a narrow path, wide enough for but one wayfarer at a time, descended between perpendicular boulders to the second cave. On the left the plateau was bordered by broken ground, a jumble of serrated rocks, to be traversed only with difficulty. In front there was a steep but shallow dip, from which the land sloped gently up the valley, clothed with high bush and deep thickets intersected with innumerable narrow trails.

Directly in front of the cave, and about the center of the plateau, burned always, night and day, the sacred fire, tended in turn by the members of the little band appointed to this distinguished service by the Chief. Under the Chief's direction the whole of the plateau was now cleared of underbrush and grass, and then along its brink was laid a chain of small fires, some ten or twelve feet apart, and all ready for lighting.

Meanwhile, Grom was busy preparing the device on which, according to his plan of campaign, the ultimate issue was to hang. For days the tribe was kept on the stretch collecting dry and leafy brushwood from the other side of the valley, and bundles of dead grass from the rich savannahs beyond the valley-mouth, on the other side of the dancing flames. All this inflammable stuff Grom distributed lavishly through the thickets before the plateau, to a distance of nearly a mile up the slope, till the whole space was in reality one vast bonfire laid ready for the torch.

While these preparations were being rushed—somewhat to the perplexity of the tribe, who could not fathom the tactics of stuffing the landscape with rubbish—Bawr was keeping a little band of scouts on guard at the far-off head of the valley. They were chosen from the swift runners of the tribe; and Bawr, who was a far-seeing general, had them relieved twice in twenty-four hours, that they might not grow weary and fail in vigilance.

When all was ready came a time of trying suspense. As day after day rolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dry as tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, began to doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There were murmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawr suppressed with small ceremony. But the lame Ook-ootsk, squatting misshapen in Grom's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grom, the longer the delay the greater the force which was being gathered for the assault.

Having no inkling of Grom's larger designs, he looked with distrust on the little heaps of wood that were to be fires along the edge of the plateau, and wished them to be piled much bigger, intimating that his people, though they would be terribly afraid of the Shining One, would be forced on from behind by sheer numbers and would trample the small fires out. The confidence of the Chief and Grom, and of A-ya as well, in the face of the awful peril which hung over them, filled him with amazement.

Then, at last, one evening just in the dying flush of the sunset, came the scouts, running breathlessly, and one with a ragged spear-wound in his shoulder. Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless myriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley, led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself.

"Are they as many," asked Grom, "as they who came against us in the Little Hills?"

But the panting men threw up their hands.

"As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings," they replied.

To their astonishment the Chief smiled with grim satisfaction at this appalling news.

"It is well," said he. Mounting a rock by the cave-door, he gazed up the valley, striving to make out the vanguard of the approaching hordes; while Grom, marshalling the servitors of the fire, stationed them by the range of piles, ready to set light to them on the given word.

It was nearly an hour—so swift had been the terror of the scouts—before a low, terrible sound of crashings and mutterings announced that the hordes were drawing near. It was now twilight, with the first stars appearing in a pallid violet sky; and up the valley could be discerned an obscurely rolling confusion among the thickets. Bawr gave orders, rapid and concise; and the combatants lined out in a double rank along the front of the plateau some three or four paces behind the piles of wood.

They were armed with stone-headed clubs, large or small, according to personal taste, and each carried at least three flint-tipped spears. At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave were stationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen these women because each of them had one or more young children in the cave behind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that path alive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her place was at the service of the fires.

The ominous roar and that obscure confusion rolled swiftly nearer, and Bawr, with a swing of his huge club, sprang down from his post of observation and strode to the front. Grom shouted an order, and light was set to all the crescent of fires. They flared up briskly; and at the same time the big central fire, which had been allowed to sink to a heap of glowing coals, was heaped with dry stuff which sent up an instant column of flame. The sudden wide illumination, shed some hundreds of yards up the valley, revealed the front ranks of the Bow-legs swarming in the brush, their hideous yellow faces, gaping nostrils and pig-like eyes all turned up in awe towards the glare.

The advance of the front ranks came to an instant halt, and the low muttering rose to a chorus of harsh cries. Then the tall figure of Mawg sprang to the front, followed, after a moment of wondering hesitation, by that of the head chief of the hordes, a massive creature of the true Bow-leg type, but as tall as Bawr himself, and in color almost black. This giant and Mawg, refusing to be awed by the tremendous phenomenon of the fire, went leaping along the lines of their followers, urging them forward, and pointing out that their enemies stood close beside the flames and took no hurt.

On the front ranks themselves this reasoning seemed, at first, to produce little effect. But to those just behind it appeared more cogent, seconded as it was by a consuming curiosity. Moreover, the masses in the rear were rolling down, and their pressure presently became irresistible. All at once the front ranks realized that they had no choice in the matter. They sagged forward, surged obstinately back again, then gave like a bursting dam and poured, yelling and leaping, straight onward toward the crescent of fires.

As soon as the rush was fairly begun, both Mawg and the Black Chief cleverly extricated themselves from it, running aside to the higher, broken ground at the left of the plateau whence they could see and direct the attack. It was plain enough that they accounted the front ranks doomed, and were depending on sheer weight of numbers for the inevitable victory.

Standing grim, silent, immovable between their fires, the Chief and Grom awaited the dreadful onset. In all the tribe not a voice was raised, not a fighter, man or woman, quailed. But many hearts stood still, for it looked as if that living flood could never be stayed. Presently from all along its front came a cloud of spears. But they fell short, not more than half a dozen reaching the edge of the plateau. In instant response came a deep-chested shout from Bawr, followed by a discharge of spears from behind the line of fire.

These spears, driven with free arm and practised skill, went clean home in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than a second's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded on straight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters on the plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorter range, every jagged flint-point found its mark, and the screaming victims hampered those behind. But after a moment the mad flood came on again, till it was within some thirty paces of the edge of the plateau.

Then came a long shout from Grom, a signal which had been anxiously awaited by the front line of his fighters. Each fire had been laid, on the inner side, with dry faggots of a resinous wood which not only blazed freely but held the flame tenaciously. These faggots had been placed with only their tips in the fire. Seizing them by their unlighted ends, the warriors hurled them, blazing, full into the gaping faces before them.

The brutal, gaping faces screeched with pain and terror, and the whole front rank, beating frantically at the strange missiles, wheeled about and clawed at the rank behind, battling to force its way through. But the rolling masses were not to be denied. After a brief, terrible struggle, the would-be fugitives were borne down and trodden underfoot. The new-comers were greeted with a second discharge of the blazing brands, and the dreadful scene repeated itself. But now there was a difference. For many of the assailants, realizing that there was no chance of retreat, came straight on, heedless of brand or spear, with the deadly, uncalculating fury of a beast at bay.

For some seconds, under the specific directions of the Chief on the right center and of Grom far to the left, many of the blazing brands had been thrown, not into the faces of the front rank, but far over their heads, to fall among the tinder-dry brushwood. Long tongues of flame leaped up at once, here, there, everywhere, curling and licking savagely. Screeches of horror arose, which brought all the hordes to a halt as far back as they could be heard. A light wind was blowing up the valley, and almost at once the scattered flames, gathering volume, came together with a roar. The hordes, smitten with the blindest madness of panic, turned to flee, springing upon and tearing at each other in the desperate struggle to escape.

Shouting triumph and derision, the defenders bounded forward, down over the edge of the plateau, and fell upon the huddled ranks before them. But these, with all escape cut off, and far outnumbering their exultant adversaries, now fought like rats in a pit. And the men of the caves found themselves locked in a struggle to the death just when they had thought the fight was done.

A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grom down into the thick of the reeking battle, when a scream from the cave-mouth made her whip round. She was just in time to see Ook-ootsk hurl his spear at the tall figure of Mawg, leaping down upon him from the broken slope on the left. A half score of the Bow-legs were following hard upon Mawg's heels. With a scream of warning to Grom she rushed back to the cave. But Grom did not hear her. He had been pulled down, struck senseless and buried under a writhing heap of foes.

Her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes like those of a tigress protecting her cubs, A-ya darted to the cave-door. But she did not reach it. Just outside the threshold a club descended upon her head, and she dropped. Instantly she was pounced upon, and bound. A moment later three Bow-legs, followed by Mawg, streaming with blood, came running out of the cave. Mawg swung the limp form across his shoulder with a grin of satisfaction, and the party beat a hurried retreat up the slopes.

In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of the plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children of the Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less than annihilation. The flames were raging for a mile up the valley, wherever they were not choked by the piles and windrows of the dead or dying Bow-legs. The lurid night was shaken with the incessant rising and falling chorus of shrieks, and far off under the glare rolled that awful receding wave of fugitives, with the flames leaping upon them and slaying them as they fled. Leaning upon his club and gazing thoughtfully across the scene of incredible destruction, Bawr told himself that never again, so long as the memory of this night survived, would the Bow-legs dare to come against his people.

Then wild lamentation from the women drew the Chief into the cave. Here he found that half the little ones had been killed in that swift incursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had been slaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grom's doorway, crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat of a dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk. Seeing that he still breathed, and marking the fury with which he had fought in defense of their little ones, the warriors lifted him aside gently. Beneath him, and safely guarded in the crook of his shaggy arm, they found Grom's baby, without a hurt. The women defending the head of the path on the right having seen the rape of A-ya, Bawr handed the babe to one of his own wives to cherish.

Then search was made for Grom. At first the Chief imagined that he had followed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecting her rescue alone. But they found him under a heap of dead, so nearly dead himself that they despaired of him. Realizing that it was he who had saved the tribe, they began over him that great keening lamentation hitherto reserved strictly for the funeral of the supreme Chief himself. But Bawr, his massive features furrowed with solicitude, stopped them, vowing that Grom should not die. And lifting the hero in his arms he bore him into the cave.

Grom's wounds proved to be deep, but not fatal to one of these clean-blooded sons of the open and the wind. It was some days before it was clearly borne in upon him that A-ya had been carried off alive by the Bow-legs. Then, with a great cry, he sprang to his feet. The blood spouted afresh from his wounds, and he fell back in a swoon. When he came to himself again, for days he would speak to no one, and it looked as if he would die, not of his wounds so much as of the insufficient will to live. But a chance word of the captive Ook-ootsk, who was being nursed back to life beside him, reminded him that there was vengeance to be lived for, and he roused himself a little. Then Bawr, ever subtle in the reading of his people's hearts, suggested to him that even such a feat as the rescue of the girl A-ya might not be impossible to the subjugator of the fire and the slayer of a whole people.

And from that moment Grom began climbing steadily back to life.



CHAPTER VII

THE RESCUE OF A-YA

The clay-colored, ape-like, bow-legged men squatted in council.

It was not long, as time went in the long, slow morning of the world—perhaps a half-score thousand years or so—since their ancestors, in the pride of their dawning intelligence, had swung down from their tree-tops, to walk upright on the solid earth and challenge the supremacy of the hunting beasts. Their arms were still of an unhuman and ungainly length, their short powerful legs were still so heavily bowed that they had no great speed in running; and they still had their homes high among the branches, where they could sleep secure from surprise. They were still tree dwellers; but they were men, intent upon asserting their lordship over all the other dwellers upon earth's surface.

They were not beautiful to look upon. Their squat, powerful forms, varying in color from a dingy yellow-brown to blackish mud-color, were covered unevenly with a thin growth of dark hairs. On thigh and shoulder, down the backbone, and on the outer side of the long forearm, this growth was heavier and longer, forming a sort of irregular thatch; while the hair of their heads was jet black, and matted into a filthy tangle with grease and clay. Their faces were broad and flat, with powerful protruding jaws, low and very receding foreheads, and wide noses which seemed to have been punched in at the bridge so that the flaring red nostrils turned upwards hideously.

It was but a battered and crestfallen remnant of the tribe which now took counsel over their diminished fortunes. In an irregular half-circle they squatted, pawing gingerly at their wounds or scratching themselves uncouthly, while their apish women loitered in chattering groups outside the circle, or crouched in the branches of the neighboring trees. Those who were perched in the trees mostly held babies at their breasts, and were therefore instinctively distrustful of the dangerous ground-levels. Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd, either squatting on hillocks or clinging in a tree-top, wary-eyed old women kept watch against surprise; though there were few among either beasts or men who would be likely to venture an attack upon the ferocious tribe of the Bow-legs.

On a low, flat-topped bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne, sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (which was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was far above his fellows, though similar to them in general type except for the matter of color, which was dark almost to blackness. His jaws were those of a beast, and his whole appearance was bestial beyond that of any other in the whole hideous throng—except for his eyes. These, though small and deep-set, blazed with fierce intelligence, and swept his audience with an air of assured mastery which made plain why he was chief. He was talking rapidly, with broad gestures, and in a barking, clicking speech which sounded little more than half articulate. He was working himself up into a rage; and the squatting listeners wriggled apprehensively, while they applauded from time to time with grunts and growls.

Near the end of the foremost rank of the semi-circle, very close to the haranguing Chief, sat one who was plainly of superior race to his companions. Something in the harangue seemed to concern him particularly, for he sprang to his feet and stood leaning on his club—which was longer and more symmetrically fashioned than that of the chief. In color he was manifestly white, for all that dirt and the weather could do to disguise it. He was taller even than the great Black Chief himself—but shorter in the body, and achieving his height through length and straightness of leg. He had chest and shoulders of enormous power; but, unlike the barrel-shaped Bow-legs he was comparatively slim of waist and hips. He had less hair on the body—except on the chest and forearm—than his companions; but far more on the head, where it stood out all around like an immense black-tawny mane. His face, though heavy and lowering, was a face—with square, resolute jaws, a modelled mouth, a big, fully-bridged nose, and a spacious forehead. His eyes were blue, and now, deep under their shaggy brows, glared upon the Chief with desperate defiance. Close behind his heels crouched a girl, obviously of his own race—a tall, strong, shapely figure of a woman, as could well be seen, though her attitude was one of utter dejection, her face sunk upon her knees, and half her body hidden in the tangled torrent of her dull chestnut hair.

The tall alien, so dauntlessly eyeing the Chief, was Mawg the renegade. Arrogant in his folly, he had not realized that the Tree Men would hold him to account for the calamity which he had brought upon them. He had not realized that the girl A-ya, with her straight limbs and her strong comeliness, might stir the craving of others besides himself. Now, as he listened to the fierce harangue of the Chief, as his alert ears caught the mutterings behind and about him, he saw the pit yawn suddenly at his feet. But though a brute and a traitor, he was no coward. His veins began to run hot, his sinews to stretch for the death struggle which would presently be upon him.

As for the girl, unseeing, unhearing, her head bowed between her naked knees, she cared nothing. She loathed life, and all about her, equally. Her baby and her lord, if they yet lived, were far away beyond the mountains and the swamps, in the caverned hillside behind the smoke of the fires. Her captor, Mawg, she loathed above all; but she was here behind him because he held her always within reach lest the filthy women of the Bow-legs should tear her to pieces.

Suddenly, without looking around, Mawg spoke to her, in their own tongue, which the Bow-legs could not understand. "Be ready, girl. They are going to kill me now. The Black Chief wants you. But I kill him and we run. They are all dirt. Come!"

On the word, he sprang straight at the great Black Chief, where he towered upon his rock. But the girl, though she heard every syllable, never stirred.

The spring of Mawg was like a leopard's; but the Black Chief, though slow of foot, was not slow of hand or wits. Though taken by surprise, he swung up his club in time to partly parry Mawg's lightning stroke, which would otherwise have broken his bull neck. As it was, the club was almost beaten from his grasp. He dropped it with a snarl and leaped at his assailant's throat with clutching hands.

Had it been possible to fight it out man to man, Mawg would have liked nothing better, though the issue would have been a doubtful one. But he had no mind to face the whole tribe, which was now surging forward like a pack of wolves. He had no time to repeat his blow fairly; but as he eluded the gigantic, clutching fingers he got in a light glancing stroke with the butt which laid open his adversary's cheek and closed one furious little eye. At the same instant he whirled away lithely, sprang from the rock on the further side, and ran off like a deer through the trees, cursing the girl because she had not followed him. About half the tribe went trailing after him, yelling hoarsely, while the rest drew back and waited uneasily to see what their Chief would do.

The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his wounded eye, glared after the fugitive with the other. But he knew the folly of trying to catch his fleet-footed adversary, and after a moment he dismissed him from his mind. With a grunt he stepped down from his rock, and heedless of his wound, strode over to the girl. Through all the tumult she had never lifted her head from between her knees, or shown the least sign of concern. The Chief seized her by the shoulder and shook her roughly, ordering her to come with him. She did not understand his language, but his meaning was obvious. She looked up and stared straight into his one open eye. In her own eyes shifted the dangerous, lambent flame of a beast at bay, and for a moment she was on the point of darting at his throat.

But not without reason was the Black Chief dictator of the Bow-legs. Brutal and filthy though he was, and hideous beyond description, and horrible with his gashed face and the blood pouring down over his huge and shaggy chest, he was all a man, and the mastery in him checked her. She felt the hopelessness of fighting her fate. The flame flickered out, leaving her eyes dull and leaden. She rose listlessly, and followed her new lord to the tree in which he had his dwelling of woven branches.

At the foot of the tree the Black Chief stopped, stood back, and signed the girl to ascend. A climber as expert as himself, she clutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated, and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, her late captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she had submitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He was of her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit—though she herself could not so analyze the emotion—that she hated him. But this new master was an alien, and of a lower, beastlier type. Toward him she felt a sick bodily repulsion. Behind her tight-shut lids the dark went red. She stood rigid and quivering, stormed through by a raging impulse to tear out either his throat or her own. She was herself a more advanced product of her own advanced race, and urged by impulses still new and imperfectly applied to life. But the countless centuries of submission were in her blood also; and they whispered to her insidiously that she was lawful prey. A huge hand fell significantly upon the back of her neck. She jumped, gave a sobbing cry, and sprang up into the tree. Who was she to challenge doom for an idea, a hundred thousand years before her time.

* * * * *

Some days' journey to the westward of the swampy refuge of the Bow-legs, a tall hunter was making his way warily through the forest. His color, his build, and his swift grace of movement proclaimed him of the same race as Mawg and the girl A-ya, acquitting him easily of any kinship with the People of the Trees. In height and weight he was much like Mawg, but lighter in complexion, somewhat less hairy, and of a frank, sagacious countenance. His eyes were of a blue-gray, calm and piercing, yet with a look in them as of one who broods on mysteries. He was obviously much older than Mawg, his long, thick hair and short, close-curling beard being liberally touched with gray. He carried in one hand a peculiar long-handled club, which he had fashioned by lashing, with strips of green hide, a split and jagged flint-stone into the cleft head of a stick. In the other hand he bore two long, slender spears, their tips hardened and pointed in fire.

On the day, now many weeks back, when Grom set out from the Caves behind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of the Bow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with the seeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the hearts of them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renew the vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatient spirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strength and craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon the weapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest of the Shining One.

Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those which undertook to hunt him.

He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the Bow-legs.

Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn, he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself clearly as Mawg's—for there was no such thing as confounding that arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men. Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller and slimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampings of the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the sole fugitive.

Grom sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward, had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Grom's club and his spears dropped from his nerveless hands. His interest in life sank into a sick indifference, a dull anguish which he did not even try to understand. It was well for him that no prowling beast came by in that moment of his unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, and his despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at his shaggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the great Black Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the mother of his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. Snatching up his weapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along the trampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the whole loathsome tribe. A gigantic leopard, crouching in a thicket of scarlet poinsettia beside the trail, made as if to pounce upon him as he went by—but shrank back, instead, with flattened ears, daunted by his fury.

But presently the madness burned itself out. As sanity returned he checked his rush, glanced once more watchfully about him, and at length stepped furtively into the thick of the jungle. Now more than ever was his coolest craft demanded, that A-ya might be plucked from the monster's arms.

Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grom worked his way deep into the Bow-legs' country. With all his craft and his lynx-like stealth, it was at times hair-raising work. Not only the ground thickets, but the tree-tops as well, were swarming with his keen-eyed foes. He had to worm his way between swamp-sodden roots, and sometimes lie moveless as a stone for hours, enduring the stings of a million insects. Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look about him, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell for information as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only his tireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adder or a questioning and indignant crotalus. After long swaying, poised for the death-stroke, the serpent would decide that the menacing thing before it was not alive. It would slowly dissolve its tense coils, and glide away; and Grom would resume his shadowy progress.

Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds, were early risers) of the second day after the discovery of Mawg's footprints, the patient hunter's eyes fell upon A-ya. He had crept in to within a hundred yards or so of the Council Rock, which was surrounded by a horde of the Bow-legs. Crouching low as he was, in a dense thicket, Grom's view was limited; but he could see, over the heads of the listening mob, the Black Chief seated on the rock, his ragged club in his hand. He was haranguing his warriors in rapid clicks and gutturals, which conveyed no meaning to Grom's ear. The harangue came soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted—and through the opening Grom saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over her knees, at the Chief's feet. Stepping down from the rock, the Chief seized her by the wrist and dragged her upright. She took her place at his heels, dejectedly, like a whipped dog. Grom, from within his thicket, ground his teeth, and with difficulty held himself in leash. Surrounded as A-ya was, at that moment, by the hordes of her captors, any attempt at her rescue would have been hopeless folly.

There was something going on among the bow-legged mob which Grom, from his hiding-place could not at first make out. Then he saw that the Chief was trying to instruct his powerful but clumsy followers in the handling of the club and spear. Having been taught by the white renegade, Mawg, the Chief used his massive club with skill, but he was still clumsy and absurdly inaccurate in throwing the spear. After he had split the face of one of his followers by a misdirected cast, he gave up the spear-throwing, turned to the girl, and ordered her to teach this art of her people. It was obvious that the mob had vast confidence in her powers, as one of superior race, although a mere woman, for they opened out at once on two sides to leave room for the expected display. The heart of the watcher in the thicket began to thump as he saw a way clearing itself between his hiding-place and the wild-haired woman he loved.

A-ya affected to misunderstand the Chief's orders. She took the spear, but stood holding it in stupid dejection. The Chief threatened her angrily, but she paid no attention. At this moment the whistling cry of a plover sounded from the thicket. The girl straightened herself and every muscle grew tense. The melancholy cry came again. It was a strange place for a plover to lurk in, that rank thicket of jungle; but the Bow-legs took no notice of the incongruity. Upon the girl, however, the effect of the cry was magical. She gave no glance toward the thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand the orders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of her shoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon a tree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her whole lithe body—as Grom had taught her—she made her throw. The white fungus was split in halves.

With a hoarse clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examine the fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interest of his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For a second his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light and swift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of the plover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as she ran.

With a bellow of wrath, the Black Chief, the whole mob at his heels, came pounding after her. The next instant, out from the thicket leapt Grom, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion at bay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances of battle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confronting him.

At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the Black Chief came on like a mad buffalo. Grom hurled one of his two spears. He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw high, to clear A-ya's head. The Chief saw it coming, and cunningly flung himself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, and pierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. At his yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural, barking cries. But already Grom and the girl, side by side, were fleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of still water which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grom knew that the way behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there was no chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. But in this direction there were only a few knots of shaggy women, who shrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of the bow-legged men having no great skill in the water.

All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grom and the girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them was some three or four hundred yards in width. They did not know whether it was a sluggish fenland river, or the arm of a lake; but, heedless of the peril of crocodiles and water-snakes they plunged in, and with long powerful side-strokes went surging across toward the opposite shore. They had a clear start of thirty or forty yards, and their pace in the water was tremendous. Some heavy splashes in the water behind them showed how the clumsy missiles of their foes—ragged clubs and fragments of broken branches—were falling short; and they looked back derisively.

The bow-legged, shaggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils were ranged along the shore, and the Chief was fiercely urging them into the water. They shrank back in horror at the prospect—which, indeed, seemed little to the taste of the Chief himself. Presently he seized the two nearest by their matted manes, and flung them headlong in. With yells of terror they scrambled out again, and scurried off to the rear like half-drowned hens.

The Chief screeched an order. Straightway the mob divided. One part went racing clumsily up the shore to the left, the other followed the Chief along through the rank sedge-growth to the right—the Chief, by reason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly opening up his lead.

"It's nothing but a pond," said Grom, in disgust, "and they're coming round the shore to head us off."

But the girl, her hair trailing darkly on the water behind her, only laughed. She was free at last. And she was with her man.

Suddenly Grom felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the calf of his leg. With a cry, he looked back, expecting to see a water-snake gliding off. He saw nothing. But in the next instant another stab came in the other leg. Then A-ya screamed: "They're biting me all over." A dozen stinging punctures distributed themselves all at once over Grom's body. Then he understood that their assailants were not water-snakes.

"Quick! To shore!" he ordered. Throwing all their strength into a breath-sapping, over-hand roll, they shot forward, gained the weedy shallows, and scrambled ashore. Their bodies were hung thickly with gigantic leeches.

Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood, they tore off their loathsome assailants. Then, after a few seconds' halt to regain breath and decide on their direction, they started northwestward at a rapid, swinging lope, through a region of open, grassy glades set with thickets of giant fern and mimosa.

They had run on at this free pace for a matter of half-an-hour or more, and were beginning to flatter themselves that they had shaken off their pursuers, when almost directly ahead of them, to the right, appeared the Black Chief, lumbering down upon them. Nearly half-a-mile behind, between the mimosa clumps, could be seen the mob of his followers straggling up to his support. He yelled a furious challenge, swung up his great club, and charged upon Grom. Waving A-ya behind him, Grom strode forward, accepting the challenge.

As man to man, the rivals looked not unfairly matched. The fair-skinned Man of the Caves was the taller by half a head, but obviously the lighter in weight by a full stone, if not more. His long, straight, powerfully muscled legs had not the massive strength of his bow-legged adversary's. He was even slim, by comparison, in hip and waist. But in chest, arms and shoulders his development was finer. Physically, it seemed a matter of the lion against the bear.

To Grom there was one thing almost as vital, in that moment, as the rescue of his woman. This was the slaking of his lust of hate against the filthy beast-man who had held that woman captive. Fading ancestral instincts flamed into new life within him. His impulse was to fling down spear and club, to fall upon his rival with bare, throttling hands and rending teeth. But his will, and his realization of all that hung upon the outcome, held this madness in check.

Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as if for a spring, Grom waited till his adversary was within some thirty paces of him. Then, with deadly force and sure aim, he hurled his one remaining spear. But he had not counted on the lightning accuracy, swifter than thought itself, with which the men of the trees used their huge hands. The Black Chief caught the spear-head within a few inches of his body. With a roar of rage he snapped the tough shaft like a parsnip stalk, and threw the pieces aside. Even as he did so, Grom, still voiceless and noiseless, was upon him.

Had the vicious swing of Grom's flint-headed club found its mark, the battle would have been over. But the Black Chief, for all his bulk, was quick as an eel. He bowed himself to the earth, so that the stroke whistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious, short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grom's back. But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the hairy wrists behind it, that both weapons dropped to the ground.

Neither antagonist dared stoop to snatch them up. For several seconds they stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing through clenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then they sprang at each other's throats—Grom in silence, the Black Chief snarling hoarsely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which he aimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying, straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheer strength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadful seconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grom, amazed to find that in brute force he had met his match, feigned to give way. Loosing the clutch of one arm, he dropped upon his knees. With a grunt of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head. Before he could recover himself, Grom was upon him, pinning him to the earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of Grom's neck, and began working his way in toward the artery.

At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of the Bow-legs closing in upon them from either side—the nearest not much more than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainly ordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time for obedience. She snatched up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear. Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into the side of the Black Chief's throat, and left it there. With a hideous cough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he lay quivering.

Covered with blood, Grom sprang to his feet, and turned angrily upon A-ya. "I would have killed him," he said, coldly.

"There was no time," answered the girl, and pointed to the advancing hordes.

Without a word Grom snatched up his club, wrenched the broken spear from his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, and darted for the narrowing space of open between the two converging mobs.

With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the two fugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised, therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of the Bow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open country came to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimson bloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It was a jungle of shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle though it was, Grom's sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means dense enough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, the jabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter, they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath the overshadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly—it seemed to Grom a yell of exultation—but they halted abruptly at the edge of the rosy barrier and made no attempt to follow.

"They know they can't catch us," said Grom, slackening his pace. But the girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy and made no reply.

Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light, which filtered down about them through the massed bloom overhead, they presently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries of their pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing but the soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentness of their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the hum or the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air. No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallen leaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered at the absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs and trees such as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothing anywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leaves of the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom.

Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which began to grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Then understanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grom's mind. He stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. "It is poison here. It is death," he muttered. "That's why they shouted."

"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers," whispered A-ya, and clung to him, shuddering with awe.

"Courage!" cried Grom, lifting his head and dashing his great hand across his eyes. "We must get through. We must find air."

Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains throb fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about them but the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour of that sinister rosy light. At last A-ya's steps began to lag, as if she were growing sleepy.

"Wake up!" shouted Grom, and dragged so fiercely at her arm that she cried out. But the pain aroused her to a new effort. She sprang forward, sobbing. The next moment, she was jerked violently to the left. "This way!" panted Grom, the sweat pouring down his livid face; and there, through the stems to the left, her dazed eyes perceived that the hated rosy glow was paling into the whiteness of the natural day.

It was a big white rock, an island thrust up through the sea of treacherous bloom. With fumbling, nerveless fingers they scaled its bare sides, flung themselves down among the scant but wholesome herbage, which clothed its top, and filled their lungs with the clean, reviving air. Dimly they heard a blessed buzzing of insects, and several great flies, with barred wings, lit upon them and bit them sharply. They lay with closed eyes, while slowly the throbbing in their brains died away and strength flowed back into their unstrung limbs.

Then, after perhaps an hour, Grom sat up and looked about him. On every side outspread the fatal flood of the rose-red oleanders, unbroken except toward the north-west. In that quarter, however, a spur of the giant forest, of growths too mighty to feel the spell of the envenomed blooms, was thrust deep into the crimson tide. Its tip came to within a couple of hundred yards of the rock. Having fully recovered, Grom and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pink gloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and found themselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. They went on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loading themselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wove themselves a safe resting-place among the branches.

For the next few days their journey was without adventure, save for the frequent eluding of the monsters of that teeming world. Grom had his club, A-ya her broken spear; but they were avoiding all combats in their haste to get back to their own country of the homely caves and the guardian watch-fires. At the approach of the great black lion or the saber-tooth, or the wantonly malignant rhinoceros, they betook themselves to the tree-tops, and continued their way by that aerial path as long as it served them. The most subtle of the beasts they knew they could outwit, and their own anxiety now was Mawg, whose craft and courage Grom could no longer hold in scorn. He was doubtless at large, and quite possibly on their trail, biding his time to catch them unawares. They never allowed themselves, therefore, to sleep both at the same time. One always kept on guard: and hence their progress, for all their eagerness, was slower than it would otherwise have been.

On a certain day, after a long unbroken stretch of travel, A-ya rested and kept watch in a tree-top, while Grom went to fetch a bunch of plantains. It was fairly open country, a region of low herbage dotted with small groves and single trees; and the girl, herself securely hidden, could see in every direction. She could see Grom wandering from plantain clump to plantain clump, seeking fruit ripe enough to be palatable. And then, with a shiver of hate and dread, she saw the dark form of Mawg, creeping noiselessly on Grom's trail, and not more than a couple of hundred paces behind him. At the very moment when her eyes fell upon him, he dropped flat upon his face, and began worming his way soundlessly through the herbage.

Her mouth opened wide to give the alarm. But the cry stopped in her throat, and a smile of bitter triumph spread over her face.

If Mawg was hunting Grom, he was at the same time himself being hunted. And by a dreadful hunter.

Out from behind a thicket of glowing mimosa appeared a monstrous bird, some ten or twelve feet in height, lifting its feet very high in a swift but noiseless and curiously delicate stride. Its dark plumage was more like long, stringy hair than feathers. Its build was something like that of a gigantic cassowary, but its thighs and long blue shanks were proportionately more massive. Its neck was long, but immensely muscular to support the enormous head, which was larger than that of a horse, and armed with a huge, hooked, rending, vulture's beak. The apparent length of this terrible head was increased by a pointed crest of blood-red feathers, projecting straight back in a line with the fore-part of the skull and the beak.

The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the unsuspecting Grom, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching from her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg's ears caught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With a scream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late. Before he could either strike or flee, he was beaten down again, with a smash of that pile-driving beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its victim's loins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly snapped his neck. Then it fell greedily to its hideous meal.

At Mawg's scream of terror, Grom had turned and rushed to the rescue, swinging his club. But before he had covered half the distance, he saw that the monster had done its work; and he hesitated. He was too late to help the victim. And he knew the mettle of this ferocious bird, almost as much to be dreaded, in single combat, as the saber-tooth itself. At his approach, the bird had lifted its dripping beak, half turned, and stood gripping the prey with one foot, swaying its grim head slowly and eyeing him with malevolent defiance. Still he hesitated, fingering his club; for the insolence of that challenging stare made his blood seethe. Then came A-ya's voice from the tree-top, calling him. "Come away!" she cried. "It was Mawg."

Whereupon he turned, with the content of one who sees all old scores cleanly wiped out together, and went back to gather his ripe plantains.

The peril of Mawg being thus removed from their path, they journeyed more swiftly; and when the next new moon was a thin white sickle in the sky, just above the line of saw-toothed hills, they came safely back to the comfortable caves and the clear-burning watch-fires of their tribe.



CHAPTER VIII

THE BENDING OF THE BOW

Before the Caves of the Pointed Hills the fires of the tribe burned brightly. Within the caves reigned plenty and an unheard-of security; for since the conquest of fire those monstrous beasts and gigantic carnivorous, running birds, which had been Man's ceaseless menace ever since he swung down out of the tree-tops to walk the earth erect, had been held at a distance through awe of the licking flames. Though the great battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legs had cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves were swarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grom, his Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure.

So sharp had been the lessons lately administered to the prowling beasts—the terrible saber-tooth, the giant red bear of the caves, the proud black lion, and the bone-crushing cave hyena—that even the stretch of bumpy plain outside the circle of the fires, to a distance of several hundred paces, was considered a safe playground for the children of the tribe. On the outermost skirts of this playground, to be sure, just where the reedy pools and the dense bamboo thickets began, there was a fire kept burning. But this was more as a reminder than as an actual defense. When a bear or a saber-tooth had once had a blazing brand thrust in his face, he acquired a measure of discretion. Moreover, the activities of the tribe had driven all the game animals to some distance up the valley; and it was seldom that anything more formidable than a jackal or a civet-cat cared to come within a half-mile of the fires.

It was now two years since the rescue of A-ya from her captivity among the Bow-legs. Her child by Grom was a straight-limbed, fair-skinned lad of somewhere between four and five years. She sat cross-legged near the sentinel fire, some fifty yards or so from the edge of the thickets, and played with the lad, whose eyes were alight with eager intelligence. Behind her sprawled, playing contentedly with its toes and sucking a banana, a fat brown flat-nosed baby of some fourteen or fifteen months.

Both A-ya and the boy were interested in a new toy. It was, perhaps, the first whip. The boy had succeeded in tying a thin strip of green hide, something over three feet in length, to one end of a stick which was several inches longer. The uses of a whip came to him by unerring insight, and he began applying it to his mother's shoulders. The novelty of it delighted them both. A-ya, moreover, chuckled slyly at the thought that the procedure might, on some future occasion, be reversed, not without advantage to the cause of discipline.

At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded, stung too hard for even A-ya, with all her stoicism, to find it amusing. She snatched the toy away and began playing with it herself. The lash, at its free end, chanced to be slit almost to the tip, forming a loop. The butt of the handle was formed by a jagged knot, where it had been broken from the parent stem. Idly but firmly, with her strong hands she bent the stick, and slipped the loop over the jagged knot, where it held.

Interested, but with no hint of comprehension in her bright eyes, she looked upon the first bow—the stupendous product of a child and a woman playing.

The child, displeased at this new, useless thing, and wanting his whip back, tried to snatch the bow from his mother's hands. But she pushed him off. She liked this new toy. It looked, somehow, as if it invited her to do something with it. Presently she pulled the cord, and let it go again. Tightly strung, it made a pleasant little humming sound. This she repeated many times, holding it up to her ear and laughing with pleasure. The boy grew interested thereupon, and wanted to try the new game for himself. But A-ya was too absorbed. She would not let him touch it. "Go get another stick," she commanded impatiently; but quite forgot to see her command obeyed.

As she was twanging the strange implement which had so happily fashioned itself under her hands, Grom came up behind her. He stepped carefully over the sprawling brown baby. He was about to pull her heavy hair affectionately; but his eyes fell upon the thing in her hands, and he checked himself.

For minute after minute he stood there motionless, watching and studying the new toy. His eyes narrowed, his brows drew themselves down broodingly. The thing seemed to him to suggest dim, cloudy, vast possibilities; and he groped in his brain for some hint of the nature of these possibilities. Yet as far as he could see it was good for nothing but to make a faintly pleasant twang for the amusement of women and children. At last he could keep his hands off it no longer. "Give it to me," said he suddenly, laying hold of A-ya's wrist.

But A-ya was not yet done with it. She held it away from him, and twanged it with redoubled vigor. Without further argument, and without violence, Grom reached out a long arm, and found the bow in his grasp. A-ya was surprised that such a trifle should seem of such importance in her lord's eyes; but her faith was great. She shook the wild mane of hair back from her face, silenced the boy's importunings with an imperative gesture, and gathered herself with her arms about both knees to watch what Grom would do with the plaything.

First he examined it minutely, and then he fastened the thong more securely at either end. He twanged it as A-ya had done. He bent it to its limit and eased it slowly back again, studying the new force imprisoned in the changing curve. At last he asked who had made it.

"I did," answered A-ya, very proud of her achievement now that she found it taken so seriously by one being to whom her adventurous spirit really deferred.

"No, I did!" piped the boy, with an injured air.

The mother laughed indulgently. "Yes, he tied one end, and beat me with it," said she. "Then I took it from him, and bent the stick and tied the other end."

"It is very good!" said Grom, nodding his approval musingly. He squatted down a few feet away, and began experimenting.

Picking up a small stone, he held it upon the cord, bent the bow a little way, and let go. The stone flew up and hit him with amazing energy in the mouth.

"Oh!" murmured A-ya, sympathetically, as the bright blood ran down his beard. But the child, thinking that his father had done it on purpose, laughed with hearty appreciation. Somewhat annoyed, Grom got up, moved a few paces farther away, and sat down again with his back to the family circle.

As to the force that lurked in this slender little implement he was now fully satisfied. But he was not satisfied with the direction in which it exerted itself. He continued his experiments, but was careful to draw the bow lightly.

For a long time he found it impossible to guess beforehand the direction which the pebbles, or the bits of stick or bark, would take in their surprising leaps from the loosed bow-string. But at length a dim idea of aim occurred to him. He lifted the bow—his left fist grasping its middle—to the level of his eyes, at arm's length. He got the cord accurately in the center of the pebble, and drew toward his nose. This effort was so successful that the stone went perfectly straight—and caught him fair on the thumb-knuckle.

The blow was so sharp that he dropped the bow with an angry exclamation. Glancing quickly over his shoulder to see if A-ya had noticed the incident, he observed that her face was buried between her knees and quite hidden by her hair. But her shoulders were heaving spasmodically. He suspected that she was laughing at him; and for a moment, as his knuckle was aching fiercely, he considered the advisability of giving her a beating. He had never done such a thing to her, however, though all the other Cave Men, including Bawr himself, were wont to beat their women on occasion. In his heart he hated the idea of hurting her; and it would hardly be worth while to beat her without hurting her. The idea, therefore, was promptly dismissed. He eyed the shaking shoulders gloomily for some seconds; and then, as the throbbing in the outraged knuckle subsided, a grin of sympathetic comprehension spread over his own face. He picked up the bow, sprang to his feet, and strolled over to the edge of a thicket of young cane.

The girl, lifting her head, peered at him cautiously through her hair. Her laughter was forgotten on the instant, because she guessed that his fertile brain was on the trail of some new experiment.

Arriving at the cane-thicket, Grom broke himself half a dozen well-hardened, tapering stems, from two to three feet in length, and about as thick at their smaller ends as A-ya's little finger.

These seemed to suggest to him the possibility of better results than anything he could get from those erratic pebbles.

By this time quite a number of curious spectators—women and children mostly, the majority of the men being away hunting, and the rest too proud to show their curiosity—had gathered to watch Grom's experiments. They were puzzled to make out what it was he was busying himself with. But as he was a great chief, and held in deeper awe than even Bawr himself, they did not presume to come very near; and they had therefore not perceived, or at least they had not apprehended, those two trifling mishaps of his. As for Grom, he paid his audience no attention whatever. Now that he had possessed himself of those slender straight shafts of cane, all else was forgotten. He felt, as he looked at them and poised them, that in some vital way they belonged to this fascinating implement which A-ya had invented for him.

Selecting one of the shafts, he slowly applied the bigger end of it to the bow-string, and stood for a long time pondering it, drawing it a little way and easing it back without releasing it. Then he called to mind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavy end first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end to the bow-string. Then he pulled the string tentatively, and let it go. The arrow, all unguided, shot straight up into the air, turned over, fell sharply, and buried its head in a bit of soft ground. Grom felt that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder, but durst not venture any comment when Grom was at his mysteries.

Plucking the shaft from the earth, Grom once more laid it to the bow-string. As he pulled the string, the shaft wobbled crazily. With a growl of impatience, he clapped the fore-finger of his left hand over it, holding it in place, and pulled it through the guide thus formed. A light flashed upon his brooding intelligence. Slightly crooking his finger, so that the shaft could move freely, he drew the string backward and forward, with deep deliberation, over and over again. To his delight, he found that the shaft was no longer eccentrically rebellious, but as docile as he could wish. At last, lifting the bow above his head, he drew it strongly, and shot the shaft into the air. He shouted as it slipped smoothly through the guiding crook of his finger and went soaring skyward as if it would never stop. The eyes of the spectators followed its flight with awe, and A-ya, suddenly comprehending, caught her breath and snatched the boy to her heart in a transport. Her alert mind had grasped, though dimly, the wonder of her man's achievement.

Now, though Grom had pointed his shaft skyward, he had taken no thought whatever as to its direction, or the distance it might travel. As a matter of fact, he had shot towards the Caves. He had shot strongly; and that first bow was a stiff one. Most of the folk who squatted before the Caves were watching; but there were some who were too indifferent or too stupid to take an interest in anything less arresting than a thump on the head. Among these was a fat old woman, who, with her back to all the excitement, was bending herself double to grub in the litter of sticks and bones for some tit-bit which she had dropped. Grom's shaft, turning gracefully against the blue came darting downward on a long slope, and buried its point in that upturned fat and grimy thigh. With a yell the old woman whipped round, tore out the shaft, dashed it upon the ground, stared at it in horror as if she thought it some kind of snake, and waddled, wildly jabbering, into the nearest cave.

An outburst of startled cries arose from all the spectators, but it hushed itself almost in the same breath. It was Grom who had done this singular thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old woman must have done something to make Grom angry. They were all afraid; and several, whose consciences were not quite at ease, followed the old woman's example and slipped into the Caves.

As for Grom, his feelings were a mixture of embarrassment and elation. He was sorry to have hurt the old woman. He had a ridiculous dislike of hurting any one unnecessarily; and when he looked back and saw A-ya rocking herself to and fro in heartless mirth, he felt like asking her how she would have liked it herself, if she had been in the place of the fat old woman. On the other hand, he knew that he had made a great discovery, second only to the conquest of the fire. He had found a new weapon, of unheard-of, unimagined powers, able to kill swiftly and silently and at a great distance. All he had to do was to perfect the weapon and learn to control it.

He strode haughtily up to the cave mouth to recover his shaft. The people, even the mightiest of the warriors, looked anxious and deprecating at his approach; but he gave them never a glance. It would not have done to let them think he had wounded the old woman by accident. He picked up the shaft and examined its bloodstained point, frowning fiercely. Then he glared into the cave where the unlucky victim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft to the bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with further chastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus of shrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put the shaft into the bundle under his arm, and strode back to rejoin A-ya. He had done enough for the moment. His next step required deep thought and preparation.

An hour or two later, Grom set out from the Caves alone in spite of A-ya's pleadings. He wanted complete solitude with his new weapon. Besides a generous bundle of canes, of varying lengths and sizes, he carried some strips of raw meat, a bunch of plantains, his spear and club, and a sort of rude basket, without handle, formed by tying together the ends of a roll of green bark.

This basket was a device of A-ya's, which had added greatly to her prestige in the tribe, and caused the women to regard her with redoubled jealousy. By lining it thickly with wet clay, she was able to carry fire in it so securely and simply that Grom had adopted it at once, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes of hollow bamboo.

Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Grom turned into a high, winding ravine, and was soon lost to the sight of the tribe. The ravine, the bed of a long-dry torrent, climbed rapidly, bearing around to the eastward, and brought him at length to a high plateau on a shoulder of the mountain. At the back of the plateau the mountain rose again, abruptly, to one of those saw-tooth pinnacles which characterized this range. At the base of the steep was a narrow fissure in the rock-face, leading into a small grotto which Grom had discovered on one of his hunting expeditions. He had used it several times already as a retreat when tired of the hubbub of the tribe and anxious to ponder in quiet some of the problems which for ever tormented his fruitful brain.

Absorbed in meditations upon his new weapons, Grom set himself to build a small fire before the entrance of the grotto. The red coals from his fire-basket he surrounded and covered with dry grass, dead twigs, and small sticks. Then, getting down upon all fours, he blew long and steadily into the mass till the smoke which curled up from it was streaked with thin flames. As the flames curled higher, his ears caught the sound of something stirring within the cave. He looked up, peering between the little coils of smoke, and saw a pair of eyes, very close to the ground, glaring forth at him from the darkness.

With one hand, he coolly but swiftly fed the fire to fuller volume, while with the other he reached for and clutched his club. The eyes drew back slowly to the depths of the cave. Appearing not to have observed them, Grom piled the fire with heavier and heavier fuel, till it was blazing strongly and full of well-lighted brands. Then he stood up, seized a brand, and hurled it into the cave. There was a harsh snarl, and the eyes disappeared, the owner of them having apparently shrunk off to one side.

A moment or two later the interior was suddenly lighted up with a smoky glare. The brand had fallen on a heap of withered grass which had formerly been Grom's couch. Grom set his teeth and swung up his club; and in the same instant there shot forth two immense cave-hyenas, mad with rage and terror.

The great beasts were more afraid of the sudden flare within than of the substantial and dangerous fire without. The first swerved just in time to escape the fire, and went by so swiftly that the stroke of Grom's club caught him only a light, glancing blow on the rump. But the second of the pair, the female, was too close behind to swerve in time. She dashed straight through the fire, struck Grom with all her frantic weight, knocked him flat, and tore off howling down the valley, leaving a pungent trail of singed fur on the air.

Uninjured save for an ugly scratch, which bled profusely, down one side of his face, Grom picked himself up in a rage and started after the fleeing beasts. But his common sense speedily reasserted itself. He grunted in disgust, turned back to the fire, and was soon absorbed in new experiments with the bow. As for the blaze within the cave, he troubled himself no more about it. He knew it would soon burn out. And it would leave the cave well cleansed of pestilential insects.

All that afternoon he experimented with his bundle of shafts, to find what length and what weight would give the best results. One of the arrows he shattered completely, by driving it, at short range, straight against the rock-face of the mountain. Two others he lost, by shooting them, far beyond his expectations, over the edge of the plateau and down into the dense thickets below him, where he did not care to search too closely by reason of the peril of snakes. The bow, as his good luck would have it, though short and clumsy was very strong, being made of a stick of dry upland hickory. And the cord of raw hide was well-seasoned, stout and tough; though it had a troublesome trick of stretching, which forced Grom to restring it many times before all the stretch was out of it.

Having satisfied himself as to the power of his bow and the range of his arrows, Grom set himself next to the problem of marksmanship. Selecting a plant of prickly pear, of about the dimensions of a man, he shot at it, at different ranges, till most of its great fleshy leaves were shredded and shattered. With his straight eye and his natural aptitude, he soon grasped the idea of elevation for range, and made some respectable shooting. He also found that he could guide the arrow without crooking his finger around it. His elation was so extreme that he quite forgot to eat, till the closing in of darkness put an end to his practice. Then, piling high his fire as a warning to prowlers, he squatted in the mouth of the cave and made his meal. For water he had to go some little way below the lip of the plateau; but carrying a blazing balsam-knot he had nothing to fear from the beasts that lay in ambush about the spring. They slunk away sullenly at the approach of the waving flame.

That night Grom slept securely, with three fires before his door. Every hour or two, vigilant woodsman that he was, he would wake up to replenish the fires, and be asleep again even in the act of lying down. And when the dawn came red and amber around the shoulder of the saw-toothed peak, he was up again and out into the chill, sweet air with his arrows.

The difficulty which now confronted him was that of giving his shafts a penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin to bamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needle sharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the point was necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of the flight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks, which he could split into edged and pointed fragments. He tried hardening his points in the fire; but the results were not altogether satisfactory. He thought of tipping some of the shafts with thorns, or with the steely points of the old aloe leaves; but he could not, at the moment, devise such a method of fixing these formidable weapons in place as would not quite destroy their efficiency. Finally he made up his mind that the thing to use would be bone, ground into a suitable shape between two stones. But this was a matter that would have to await his return to the Caves, and would then call for much careful devising. For the present he would perforce content himself with such points as he had fined down and hardened in the fire.

This matter settled in his mind, Grom burned to put his wonderful new weapon to practical test. He descended cautiously the steep slope from the eastern edge of his plateau—a broken region of ledges, subtropical thickets, and narrow, grassy glades, with here and there some tree of larger growth rising solitary like a watch-tower. Knowing this was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hid himself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a green glade, and waited.

He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from a runway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge, dun-colored bull, with horns like scimitars each as long as Grom's arm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, and Grom realized that he was a solitary, beaten and driven out from his herd by some mightier rival. The bull glanced warily about him, and then fell to cropping the grass.

The beast offered an admirable target. Grom's arrow sped noiselessly between the curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull's fore-shoulder. It penetrated—but not to a depth of more than two or three inches. And Grom, though elated by his good shot, realized that such a wound would be nothing more than an irritant.

Startled and infuriated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glared about him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest idea of the direction from which the strange attack had come. The galling smart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grom let drive another arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again, stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plunged headlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he went through the close-set stems. Grom heard him crashing onward down the slope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonist that might cross the mad brute's path.

This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grom one thing clearly. He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he could carry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find some shoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollow canes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully and warily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve his purpose.

But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked or gnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. It was not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urging him back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across something worth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on the mountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which had evidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious of life, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or two in height to the level of Grom's head. They were as straight and slim as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grom's satisfaction when he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that he almost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the best way to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of the fiber, where they sprang from the parent trunk or root. Having at length gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded to shape the refractory butts in the fire. As he squatted between the cave door and the fire he made his meal of raw flesh and plantains, and gazed out contemplatively over the vast, rankly-green landscape below him, musing upon the savage and monstrous strife which went on beneath that mask of wide-flung calm. And as he pondered, the fire which he had subjugated was quietly doing his work for him.

The result was beyond his utmost expectations. After judicious charring, the ends being turned continually in the glowing coals, he rubbed away the charred portions between two stones, and found that he could thus work up an evenly-rounded point. The point thus obtained was keen and hard; and as he balanced this new shaft in his hand he realized that its weight would add vastly to its power of penetration. When he tried a shot with it, he found that it flew farther and straighter. It drove through the tough, fleshy leaf of the prickly pear as if it hardly noticed the obstruction. He fashioned himself a half-dozen more of these highly-efficient shafts, and then set out again—this time down the ravine—to seek a living target for his practice.

The ravine was winding and of irregular width, terraced here and there with broken ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrow gullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was an accumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up through the fissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms of canna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a dense curtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was a region well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grom moved stealthily as a panther, keeping for the most part along the upper ledges, crouching low to cross the open spots, and slipping into cover every few minutes to listen and peer and sniff.

Presently he came to a spot which seemed to offer him every advantage as a place of ambush. It was a ledge some twenty feet above the valley level, with a sort of natural parapet behind which he could crouch, and, unseen, keep an eye on all the glades and runways below. Behind him the rock-face was so nearly perpendicular that no enemy could steal upon him from the rear. He laid his club and his spear down beside him, selected one of his best arrows, and hoped that a fat buck would come by, or one of those little, spotted, two-toed horses whose flesh was so prized by the people of the Caves. Such a prize would be a proof to all the tribe of the potency of his new weapon.

For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for his ranging eyes, as the rock on which he leaned. To a hunter like Grom, schooled to infinite patience, this was nothing. He knew that, in the woods, if one waits long enough and keeps still enough, he is bound to see something interesting. At last it came. It was neither the fat buck nor the little two-toed horse with dapple hide, but a young cow-buffalo. Grom noticed at once that she was nervous and puzzled. She seemed to suspect that she was being followed and was undecided what to do. Once she faced about angrily, staring into the coverts behind her, and made as if to charge. Had she been an old cow, or a bull, she would have charged; but her inexperience made her irresolute. She snorted, faced about again, and moved on, ears, eyes and wide nostrils one note of wrathful interrogation. She was well within range, and Grom would have tried a shot at her except for his seasoned wariness. He would rather see, before revealing himself, what foe it was that dared to trail so dangerous a quarry. The buffalo moved on slowly out of range, and vanished down a runway; and immediately afterwards the stealthy pursuer came in view.

To Grom's amazement, it was neither a lion nor a bear. It was a man, of his own tribe. And then he saw it was none other than the great chief, Bawr himself, hunting alone after his haughty and daring fashion. Between Grom and Bawr there was the fullest understanding, and Grom would have whistled that plover-cry, his private signal, but for the risk of interfering with Bawr's chase. Once more, therefore, he held himself in check; while Bawr, his eyes easily reading the trail, crept on with the soundless step of a wild cat.

But Grom was not the only hunter lying in ambush in the sun-drenched ravine. Out from a bed of giant, red-blooming canna arose the diabolical, grinning head and monstrous shoulders of a saber-tooth, and stared after Bawr. Then the whole body emerged with a noiseless bound. For a second the gigantic beast stood there, with one paw uplifted, its golden-tawny bulk seeming to quiver in the downpour of intense sunlight. It was a third as tall again at the shoulders as the biggest Himalayan tiger, its head was flat-skulled like a tiger's, and its upper jaw was armed with two long, yellow, saber-like tusks, projecting downwards below the lower jaw. This appalling monster started after Bawr with a swift, crouching rush, as silent, for all its weight, as if its feet were shod with thistledown.

Grom leapt to his feet with a wild yell of warning, at the same time letting fly an arrow. In his haste the shaft went wide. Bawr, looking over his shoulder, saw the giant beast almost upon him. With a tremendous bound he gained the foot of a tree. Dropping his club and spear, he sprang desperately, caught a branch, and swung himself upward.

But the saber-tooth was already at his heels, before he had time to swing quite out of reach. The gigantic brute gathered itself for a spring which would have enabled it to pluck Bawr from his refuge like a ripe fig. But that spring was never delivered. With a roar of rage the monster turned instead, and bit furiously at the shaft of an arrow sticking in its flank. Grom's second shaft had flown true; and Bawr, greatly marveling, drew up his legs to a place of safety.

With the fire of that deep wound in its entrails the saber-tooth forgot all about its quarry in the tree. It had caught sight of Grom when he uttered his yell of warning, and it knew instantly whence the strange attack had come. It bit off the protruding shaft; and then, fixing its dreadful eyes on Grom, it ceased its snarling and came charging for the ledge with a rush which seemed likely to carry it clear up the twenty-foot perpendicular of smooth rock.

Grom, enamored of the new weapon, forgot the spear which was likely to be far more efficient at these close quarters. Leaning far out over the parapet, he drew his arrow to the head and let drive just as the monster reared itself, open-jawed, at the wall. The pointed hickory went down into the gaping gullet, and stood out some inches at the side of the neck. With a horrible coughing screech the monster recoiled, put its head between its paws, and tried to claw the anguish from its throat. But after a moment, seeming to realize that this was impossible, it backed away, gathered itself together, and sprang for the ledge. It received another of Grom's shafts deep in the chest, without seeming to notice the wound; and its impetus was so tremendous that it succeeded in getting its fore-paws fixed upon the ledge. Clinging there, its enormous pale-green eyes staring straight into Grom's, it struggled to draw itself up all the way—an effort in which it would doubtless have succeeded at once but for that first arrow in its entrails. The iron claws of its hinder feet rasped noisily on the rock-face.

Grom dropped his bow beside him and reached for the spear. His hand grasped the club instead; but there was no time to change. Swinging the stone-head weapon in air, he brought it down, with a grunt of huge effort, full upon one of those giant paws which clutched the edge of the parapet. Crushed and numbed, the grip of that paw fell away; but at the same moment one of the hinder paws got over the edge, and clung. And there the monster hung, its body bent in a contorted bow.