She wore a dress of blue wool, dyed and woven by the Sea People into
finer material than was made by the Hunter tribe. It tended to cling as
she moved; and once Yorgh considered complimenting her on the way it
revealed the curve of her breast, but decided she might not laugh like
some of the other girls.
"And then," he finished telling his story to Puko, "when the sand
stopped blowing, I pulled myself out and came home."
"And the Old One is still there in his gully!" exclaimed the wide-eyed
boy. "Will you take me out to see, Yorgh?"
"I doubt he will," said his sister, reaching out to place Yorgh's bowl
with the others. "Yorgh will do no riding till he earns a new wolly.
Moyt says he caught a saddled animal trotting out of the hills this
morning, and that it belongs to him now."
"That Moyt!" Puko sprang up indignantly. "Why do you let him come to
our fire, Vaneen? I have heard him say he courts you only because
Tefior is chief."
"Moyt is a good hunter," retorted Vaneen, frowning, "and more
trustworthy than some I could name. Maybe if Yorgh could borrow a bow,
he could bring down a kromp tomorrow and earn a new wolly."
"He can borrow mine," cried Puko, "and I'll help him. Then he can make
a new bow of the horns."
Vaneen laughed.
"Yorgh, naturally, would never have the bad luck to get a kromp without
perfect horns. Well, anyway, he would be safer out of camp. Ahnee and
some of the other girls are angry."
"With me?" demanded Yorgh. "I must stay and hear their complaints,
since Moyt has already given me back my things. As I pointed out, my
bow would be too strong for him to draw, especially with a broken arm."
"He has a broken arm?" cried Puko, leaping up in delight.
"Well, no. But he would have, had he not persuaded me to let go by
turning temporarily honest."
Yorgh's laugh trailed off when Vaneen gave no sign of being amused, but
Puko continued to crow for some minutes.
"Then we can go tomorrow," he said at last.
He sobered at the expression on Yorgh's face.
"Don't say it was just one of your stories, Yorgh! That the sand blew
in till it filled the gully again!"
The big hunter nodded sadly.
"This morning, on the crest of the hills, I even climbed a tree to look
back, but the sand is like waves of the sea."
The firelight glinted in Vaneen's hair as she laughed scornfully.
"You don't believe me?" he asked.
"There are over three hundred men, women, and children in the tribe,"
said the girl, stretching nonchalantly and smoothing the blue dress
over her hips, "and even the tiniest babes in their mothers' arms will
tell you that Yorgh seldom speaks in earnest!"
"That was unkind!" said Yorgh, pulling down the corners of his mouth.
"But you always were too proud to be considerate, as is common with
beautiful women. Will you bet a kiss that I lie?"
"A hundred!" Vaneen waved a hand contemptuously. "And that is a bet I
would not make lightly with an honest man!"
Yorgh fumbled in his pouch for the shiny metal stick and held it up.
Puko watched eagerly.
"Well?" challenged Vaneen, watching him warily.
"As I told you, I picked up the thing that lay shining between the feet
of the skeleton. After chasing the wolly, I found it still in my hand.
Here is my proof!"
Vaneen peered at it suspiciously, being careful not to come too close
to Yorgh.
"Where did you really get it?" she asked.
"Have you no ears, woman? I just now told you that--"
"It's one of your tricks," said Vaneen, putting the fire between them.
"Look, then!" said Yorgh. "Come around a little, so you can watch the
stick against the dark."
She moved reluctantly, and Yorgh twisted the end of the metal cylinder.
The other end suddenly glowed blue-green, bringing breathless
exclamations from Puko and Vaneen.
With an air of mastery, Yorgh turned the light off and on several
times before yielding to Puko's awed plea to be allowed to touch it.
Even when the boy, at Yorgh's instructions, also worked the light, his
sister remained dubious.
"Enough!" declared Yorgh, grinning in anticipation. "You questioned me
once too often, Vaneen. Come here!"
He reached out one huge arm and swept her to him, but it suddenly
seemed he had taken hold of an untamed wolly. A hard little elbow
thudded into his stomach and he let go. That was his second mistake, he
saw a second later as he staggered back with his left ear ringing from
a man-sized slap.
Vaneen, with a swirl of blue skirt about her tanned knees, reached for
the woodpile. Yorgh changed his mind about grabbing her again to exact
his "winnings" when he saw the billet of wood in her hand.
"Your sister is a poor loser," he told Puko, rubbing his ear tenderly.
"I don't know how you made it light up," snapped Vaneen, "but as far
as I'm concerned, you haven't proved anything yet!"
"Here, you try it!" offered Yorgh. "There is no trick."
"I don't want the thing. Put it back in your belt and go show it to the
simple-minded!"
"All right," said Yorgh, with dignity. "Here--you may keep it, until
you believe me."
He tossed the metal object to the ground at her feet.
"One hundred--remember!" he warned. "Or I'll tell every young hunter in
the tribe that you are a cheat!"
He loved the way her eyes flashed at that, but did not let the sight
bemuse him when the billet of wood came whipping across the fire at
his head. He reached up one big hand and plucked it out of the air, to
Puko's admiring grunt.
"Well, if that's the way you feel ..." said Yorgh. "I'll go see
just how angry Ahnee is with me. I believe you made that up, out of
jealousy!"
He tossed the wood airily into the fire and walked away as Vaneen
clenched her fists in wordless rage.
Which, in a woman, means she's really mad, he reflected.
He turned sharply into the shadows of the nearest tent, lest another
length of wood come spinning past his ear to ruin the dignified
impression he had left behind him. Then he made for the two-wheeled
carts shared by the unmarried men, located his own tent bundle among
the baggage, and made himself comfortable for the night.
* * * * *
The next day, he rode out with Kwint, Puko, and two others. They headed
toward where the kromp herd had been reported, hoping for horn trophies
that might be traded to the Raydower tribe of the great mountains.
As with the Sea People, the Hunters relied largely upon wool from
their wollies for trading, but other items helped. The Raydowers were
sometimes difficult to get along with because of their bent toward
mysticism, but they made knives and buckles of hard bronze.
Toward noon, they brought down a loppa, a fleet animal smaller than
a wolly but excellent eating. Yorgh lost when they drew straws, and
stayed to do the skinning as the others hunted back along a brook
toward camp, having promised to send him the first cart. The plain
thereabouts was dotted by clumps of thick brush, and Yorgh decided to
have a steak after he had ridden over to the brook, two hundred yards
away, to wash up. He got out his sparking stones from the mountains and
made a fire.
He had just wiped his mouth on his wrist, careful not to soil the
sleeves of his prized crimson tunic, when a drumming thunder rolled
across the flatland. He leaped to his feet.
"Kromps!" he exclaimed.
It was the herd he had seen the day before. Something had aroused them,
and they pounded across the grassland in a black mass studded with
sweeping horns. They would go for miles, leaving a trail like a dozen
tribes on the march with all their wagons.
They're heading for the brook, Yorgh thought. If they don't cross, but
swing and follow it down to the creek and the camp--
He reached his grazing wolly in three bounds and vaulted into the
saddle. The animal protested bleatingly at the impact.
As Yorgh grabbed the end of the guide rope he saw the frenzied kromps
swerve away from the glint of water and turn parallel to the brook.
"Can't gain fast enough to ride ahead," he muttered. "Why in the name
of the Three Moons do they act so scary, when every other thing on The
World is scared of them?"
Reaching down from the saddle, he pulled up a handful of the long grass
already turning brown from the summer rays of The Star. When he held it
over the fire, it flared into ashes too quickly.
With one hand, Yorgh tore loose the cloak rolled at the back of his
saddle; with the other he unslung the spear hanging down beside his
mount's first pair of shoulders.
The cloak took fire and burned well as he forced the reluctant wolly
into a dash for the brook. With fifty yards to spare, he crossed in
front of the kromp herd and rode ahead of it.
Occasional branches of trees growing along the brook whipped across
his chest or face, but Yorgh hardly felt them. He was trying to judge
how long his cloak would last. He slowed the wolly, which now displayed
commendable willingness to run.
The kromp leading the side of the charge nearest the brook was a young
bull whose rear pair of horns had not yet grown to sweep out and
forward around the smaller pair. Yorgh hoped that he might not be as
stubborn as an older specimen.
He held the flaming cloak out on the head of his spear as the animals
came up with him.
The young bull snarled at him, almost like a ponadu. Kromps did not
bleat like the loppas and wollies they resembled in many other ways.
Too mean, decided Yorgh. He doesn't like this, though!
The young bull edged away from the flame. A branch snapped across
Yorgh's leading shoulder, and he almost lost his grip on the spear.
Then he missed the rustle of the bushes, and realized that the herd had
swerved very slightly away from the brook.
He waved his disintegrating cloak before the eyes of the young bull
again, and was sure the direction of the charge shifted a bit more. The
kromp rolled reddened eyes at him and snarled again.
Seeing that the last shreds of the cloak were slipping from the
spearhead, Yorgh wiped them off across the muzzle of the beast, and let
the kromp have a smart jab behind the second pair of legs as it passed
him.
He started to pull up, but suddenly saw that he was not entirely in the
clear. An old bull, lumbering among the dust to the rear, had veered
wide of the herd and was outside Yorgh. It panted up alongside, and the
hunter's wolly lost its head and tried to run with the kromp.
Yorgh gripped the point of the rough, battle-chipped horn that suddenly
appeared beside his ribs, and leaned his weight upon it in hopes of
guiding the bigger animal past. Then he caught a fleeting glimpse of a
dense clump of scrub growth thrusting out from the vegetation screening
the brook.
Before he could shift his weight, his wolly swerved to the right. Yorgh
found himself supported in the air by only a one-handed grip on the
kromp's horn.
He let his feet bounce against the ground once, reaching for the horn
with his other hand. Then the bull tossed his heavy head, and the man
sailed high into the air.
* * * * *
Time hung motionless for an instant, during which there floated to his
ears the irritable sounds made by the kromp as it blundered at full
speed through the brush.
Then Yorgh crashed into the dense thicket on his back, with a ripping
and tearing of cloth and a loud yell as some thorny shrub raked his
ribs. He thudded straight through to the ground, but with his speed
fortunately reduced.
"By Kloto, by Lax, and by the seldom-seen Atropo of legend!" he swore.
"And if The World has any more moons, by them too! I had done better to
stand squarely in their path!"
He wiped blood from his left cheek and wriggled about until he thought
all his clothing was free. The dark red tunic was shredded, and the
heavier wool of his pants was gashed and torn.
He loosed a pronged burr from his beard, pulled out a long splinter
lodged in the back of his right thigh, and squirmed through the
undergrowth on hands and knees until he came to an open swath trampled
straight through the hundred-foot clump.
The kromp bull had not permitted a little jungle to hinder him.
Yorgh pulled himself to his feet and limped back along the freshly
made trail to the open. In the distance, he could hear the herd still
stampeding. He hoped he had turned it enough so that the kromps'
propensity for straight-line charges would cause them to miss the camp.
"Well, I'd better see to myself," he sighed. "Left on foot twice in
three days! Some will have a good time with me over that. Ouch! That
knee feels skinned."
He made his way to the brook, where he stripped and bathed. As the
water stung them, he discovered nicks and scratches he had not known he
had, but he felt better after dressing again.
He patched the worst slashes in his pants with a long thorn and a
bit of vine, but the proud crimson tunic was a tattered wreck. It
fluttered on his shoulders as he walked out into the open again.
On the ground, his sharp eye noticed trampled splinters of wood.
"The spear!" he muttered. "Funny--I can't even remember when I dropped
it."
He searched the area, and finally dug up the copper spearhead with
the toe of his boot. He put it in his belt and walked out to his fire
beside the carcass of the loppa, feeling fairly fit although he knew he
would be stiff and sore the next day. His fire still smouldered, and he
piled on some dry sticks.
As The Star drifted lower on the sky, he began to worry.
"Someone should have come for me by now," he told himself. "Unless--"
He finally banked the fire with turf and started out on foot for the
junction of the brook and the creek. Walking made it seem quite a
distance, and The Star was still lower, painting the eastern mountains
gold and red, before he came in sight of the camp.
"Ho! It's still there!" he exclaimed in relief.
Someone had seen him, for when he had gone a little way further, a
figure showed against the dark tents, walking toward Yorgh. He wondered
where all the carts were.
He was still a quarter of a mile from camp when the lone figure met
him. It was Kwint, and he had changed somewhat in the four hours or so
since they had parted. He wore a discolored swelling beneath his left
eye, over which he peered at Yorgh.
"You can't come back!" he said glumly.
"What?"
"Tefior sent me out to say they don't think your latest joke was funny.
They won't let you come back."
"Joke? What do you talk of, man?" demanded Yorgh.
"I suppose you meant just a little scare with that stampede, but it
passed right below camp--where the wollies were kept!"
Yorgh realized then why Kwint had walked out to meet him. The tribe's
animals must have run their best as soon as the picket line went down,
and it would take time to catch them.
He explained what had happened.
"Well ... seeing the condition of you," admitted Kwint, examining the
tattered giant before him, "I myself believe it was really that way.
But you know, Yorgh, it is said of you--"
"That I seldom speak in earnest," Yorgh finished for him. "But I did
what I could! Look at me! I am practically naked to the rays of The
Star!"
Kwint was silent.
"Well, say something!" roared Yorgh.
The other kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot.
"Even so," he murmured, "it would be best to stay out a few days, till
we can tell your side of it around. They wanted to kill you!"
"_Kill me!_" gasped Yorgh.
It was a rough life they led, with brawling and even wounds when
tribes mingled, but the one strict taboo was that no human might kill
another--at least, not completely. It was the law of all tribes, handed
down with legends that they had come to The World from the stars and
were once as numerous as the stars.
"I tried to quiet Moyt with my spear butt," said Kwint, "for he was
talking for hanging; but he is almost as big as you and knocked me
down, as you can see. Then the boy came charging out of his father's
tent and pushed the cooking pot over on Moyt, for which Tefior beat him
and tied him to the tent pole. And--this hurts me to say--the water
wasn't even hot!"
"And they all believed it of me?" said Yorgh despondently.
"Not all. Vaneen, I must say, tried to speak for you with others of us.
But we were few to the numbers whose saddles you have greased or whose
girls you have frightened out of swimming holes. Besides, we can't find
the wollies."
"So they sent you to tell me not to come back?"
"Yes. I tried to bring my bow and a quiver of arrows for you when I saw
how things were, but Tefior had them taken away."
Yorgh's face flushed, and he tugged angrily at his beard.
"I will go in and knock the old man's jaw loose from his head!" he
growled. "Even if it does lose me all hope of his daughter. He has no
right!"
In the end, however, Kwint dissuaded him. Yorgh was touched to find
that his friend had brought his own cloak together with a bag of salt
and a water-skin. They parted, and Yorgh trudged out to his fire again.
On the way, he cut a tall, straight sapling by the brook, about two
inches thick, which he trimmed with his knife as he walked.