“You did need me in the battle!” answered the girl proudly.
“True!” said Grôm. “But for you I should now have been sleeping under the stones and the wind.”
He looked at her with a feeling that surprised himself, a kind of thrilling tenderness, such as he had never felt toward a woman before. His wives had been good wives and dutiful, and he had been content with them. But it occurred to him that neither of them would ever have thought to come with him on this expedition.
“I could not stay without you,” said the girl again. “Also, I was afraid of Mawg,” she added cunningly.
A wave of jealous wrath surged through Grôm’s veins.
“If Mawg had troubled you, I would have killed him!” said he fiercely. And, snatching the girl to her feet, he crushed her for a moment vehemently to his great breast.
“But why,” he went on, “did you follow me so secretly all day?”
“I was afraid you would be angry, and send me back,” she answered, with a sigh of content.
“I could not have sent you back,” said Grôm, his indifference quite forgotten. “But come, we must find a place for the night.”
And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which Grôm had already marked for his retreat. As they climbed to the upper branches, dusk fell quickly about them, some great beast roared thunderously from the depths of the forest, and from a near-by jungle came sudden crashings of the undergrowth.
For three weeks Grôm and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging north to avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy shores were trodden by monsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, no matter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be, they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerous and so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate the strange human trail.
Had Grôm been alone he would soon have been worn out for want of sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed utterly untiring, and Grôm watched her with daily growing delight. He had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this sweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.
Beyond the lake and the morasses they came to a strange, broken land, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life, but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizon ran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged against the pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murky vapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others, spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shape of a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. It filled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoid this unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grôm was filled with interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside her fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject.
In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty and spreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forest growth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled past their roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemed to offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with the delicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herself up lightly into the branches. Grôm lingered a few moments below, letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls. Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep.
While he was in this helpless position–his sleepless vigilance for the moment at fault–from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic, shaggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awful swiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, from her perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grôm bounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster–a gray bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly–was almost upon him, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. A spear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the side of the beast’s snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar, the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grôm swung himself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.
The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk and began to draw himself up. Grôm struck at him with his club, but from his difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bear hardly seemed to notice it.
“We must lead him up, then drop down and run,” said Grôm. And the two mounted nimbly.
The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously beneath his weight. Then Grôm and the girl slipped over into the next tree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, and apparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd, implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.
Grôm looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had never known before.
“Can you run, very fast?” he demanded.
The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at having once more saved him.
“I ran from the wolves,” she reminded him.
“Then we must run, perhaps very far,” answered Grôm, reassured, “till we find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope. For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuing us. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climb trees.”
When both bears were high in the two trees, Grôm and the girl slipped down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as falling. They snatched up Grôm’s two spears and A-ya’s broken one, and ran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. The bears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific, ponderous gallop.
The girl ran, as she had said, well–so well that Grôm who was famous in the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pace in her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on their pursuers, Grôm bade her slow down a little till they did no more than hold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran always a pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and her breath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge. Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For he knew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his last fight over her body.
For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signs of distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from her open lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fear at his heart, Grôm closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on his rigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to a spur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valley cleaving them midway.
“There will be ledges,” he said, “where we can defend ourselves, and where you can rest.”
Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with massive cane and thorned creepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon a space of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening of the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and bowing as if in some enchanted dance.
Grôm’s heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second he paused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her knees gave way beneath her. As she sank, Grôm’s spirit rose to the emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.
“If