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Updated: May 21, 2025
The trail was as clear as daylight to him. Suddenly he heard voices, several of them, guttural and squealing, and stopped again as if turned to stone. Then another voice, at which he started in amazement. It was Mawg's, speaking quietly and confidentially. Mawg, then, had gone over to the Bow-legs! Grôm's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had been right. He ought to have killed the traitor.
The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the unsuspecting Grôm, 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.
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.
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.
A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grôm 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.
And he strode off toward his cave door. Grôm picked up his club and spear. And the girl, with a haughty indifference she was far from feeling, strolled off toward the cave of certain old women, kinsfolk of the Chief. But as the meaning of the Chief's words penetrated Mawg's dull wits he gave vent to a great bellow of rage, and snatched up a spear to hurl at Grôm.
Angry jeers came from Mawg's corner, but Grôm smiled coldly, and went on: "Not till near evening of the second day, when she was chased by wolves, did she reveal herself to me. And when I understood why she had come, I looked on her, and I saw that she was very fair and very brave. And I took her. So that now she is my woman, and I hold to her, Chief!
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, Grôm had turned and rushed to the rescue, swinging his club.
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