Ajor stood at my shoulder, her knife ready in her hand and a sneer
on her lips at his suggestion that he would take her with him.
Just as I thought I should have to fire, a chorus of screams broke
from the women beneath us. I saw the man halt and glance downward,
and following his example my eyes took in the panic and its cause.
The women had, evidently, been quitting the pool and slowly returning
toward the caves, when they were confronted by a monstrous cave-lion
which stood directly between them and their cliffs in the center of
the narrow path that led down to the pool among the tumbled rocks.
Screaming, the women were rushing madly back to the pool.
"It will do them no good," remarked the man, a trace of excitement
in his voice. "It will do them no good, for the lion will wait until
they come out and take as many as he can carry away; and there is
one there," he added, a trace of sadness in his tone, "whom I hoped
would soon follow me to the Kro-lu. Together have we come up from
the beginning." He raised his spear above his head and poised it
ready to hurl downward at the lion. "She is nearest to him," he
muttered. "He will get her and she will never come to me among
the Kro-lu, or ever thereafter. It is useless! No warrior lives
who could hurl a weapon so great a distance."
But even as he spoke, I was leveling my rifle upon the great brute
below; and as he ceased speaking, I squeezed the trigger.
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