Chapter 7

People Out of Time

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER 7, PEOPLE OUT OF TIME by Edgar R. Burroughs
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To run up the inclined surface of the palisade and drop to the
ground outside was the work of but a moment, or would have been
but for Nobs. I had to put my rope about him after we reached
the top, lift him over the sharpened stakes and lower him upon
the outside. To find Ajor in the unknown country to the north
seemed rather hopeless; yet I could do no less than try,
praying in the meanwhile that she would come through unscathed
and in safety to her father.

As Nobs and I swung along in the growing light of the coming
day, I was impressed by the lessening numbers of savage beasts
the farther north I traveled. With the decrease among the
carnivora, the herbivora increased in quantity, though anywhere
in Caspak they are sufficiently plentiful to furnish ample food
for the meateaters of each locality. The wild cattle,
antelope, deer, and horses I passed showed changes in evolution
from their cousins farther south. The kine were smaller and
less shaggy, the horses larger. North of the Kro-lu village I
saw a small band of the latter of about the size of those of
our old Western plains--such as the Indians bred in former days
and to a lesser extent even now. They were fat and sleek, and
I looked upon them with covetous eyes and with thoughts that
any old cow-puncher may well imagine I might entertain after
having hoofed it for weeks; but they were wary, scarce
permitting me to approach within bow-and-arrow range, much less
within roping-distance; yet I still had hopes which I never discarded.

Twice before noon we were stalked and charged by man-eaters;
but even though I was without firearms, I still had ample
protection in Nobs, who evidently had learned something of
Caspakian hunt rules under the tutelage of Du-seen or some
other Galu, and of course a great deal more by experience.
He always was on the alert for dangerous foes, invariably warning
me by low growls of the approach of a large carnivorous animal
long before I could either see or hear it, and then when the
thing appeared, he would run snapping at its heels, drawing the
charge away from me until I found safety in some tree; yet
never did the wily Nobs take an unnecessary chance of a mauling.
He would dart in and away so quickly that not even the
lightning-like movements of the great cats could reach him.
I have seen him tantalize them thus until they fairly screamed
in rage.

The greatest inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay,
for they have a nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or
more if balked in their designs; but at last we came in sight
of a line of cliffs running east and west across our path as
far as the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that
we reached the natural boundary which marks the line between
the Kro-lu and Galu countries. The southern face of these
cliffs loomed high and forbidding, rising to an altitude of
some two hundred feet, sheer and precipitous, without a break
that the eye could perceive. How I was to find a crossing I
could not guess. Whether to search to the east toward the
still loftier barrier-cliffs fronting upon the ocean, or
westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question
which baffled me. Were there many passes or only one? I had
no way of knowing. I could but trust to chance. It never
occurred to me that Nobs had made the crossing at least once,
possibly a greater number of times, and that he might lead me
to the pass; and so it was with no idea of assistance that I
appealed to him as a man alone with a dumb brute so often does.

"Nobs," I said, "how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs?"

I do not say that he understood me, even though I realize that
an Airedale is a mighty intelligent dog; but I do swear that he
seemed to understand me, for he wheeled about, barking joyously
and trotted off toward the west; and when I didn't follow him,
he ran back to me barking furiously, and at last taking hold of
the calf of my leg in an effort to pull me along in the
direction he wished me to go. Now, as my legs were naked and
Nobs' jaws are much more powerful than he realizes, I gave in
and followed him, for I knew that I might as well go west as
east, as far as any knowledge I had of the correct direction went.

We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance.
The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing
animals, alone, in pairs and in herds--a motley aggregation of
the modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A huge woolly
mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant
fern--a mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him
grazed an aurochs bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a
lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison,
horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time,
and at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its
huge tail and massive hind feet to tear the leaves from a
tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with the present--
while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of
pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed
scarce sixty years old. Nobs was a parvenu; but it failed to
worry him.

As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and
several great amphibians, but none of them attacked us. As we
were topping a rise in the middle of the afternoon, I saw
something that brought me to a sudden stop. Calling Nobs in a
whisper, I cautioned him to silence and kept him at heel while
I threw myself flat and watched, from behind a sheltering
shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the south.
I could see that they were Galus, and I guessed that Du-seen
led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and so
had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no
great distance away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.

The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming
from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the
defile formed by this overlapping the party filed. I could see
them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they
disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from
sight, I rose and bent my steps in the direction of the
pass--the same pass toward which Nobs had evidently been
leading me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the
party might have halted to rest. If they hadn't halted, I had
no fear of being discovered, for I had seen that the Galus
marched without point, flankers or rear guard; and when I
reached the pass and saw a narrow, one-man trail leading upward
at a stiff angle, I wished that I were chief of the Galus for a
few weeks. A dozen men could hold off forever in that narrow
pass all the hordes which might be brought up from the south;
yet there it lay entirely unguarded.

The Galus might be a great people in Caspak; but they were
pitifully inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics.
I was surprised that even a man of the Stone Age should be so
lacking in military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far below
par in my estimation as I saw the slovenly formation of his
troop as it passed through an enemy country and entered the
domain of the chief against whom he had risen in revolt; but
Du-seen must have known Jor the chief and known that Jor would
not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he took
unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I
could have conquered Caspak.

Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw
the party defiling into the Galu country, the level of which
was not, on an average, over fifty feet below the summit of the
cliffs and about a hundred and fifty feet above the adjacent
Kro-lu domain. Immediately the landscape changed. The trees,
the flowers and the shrubs were of a hardier type, and I
realized that at night the Galu blanket might be almost
a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated among the trees;
yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fir and hemlock.
The tree-life was riotous. The forests were dense and peopled
by enormous trees. From the summit of the cliff I could see
forests rising hundreds of feet above the level upon which I
stood, and even at the distance they were from me I realized
that the boles were of gigantic size.

At last I had come to the Galu country. Though not conceived
in Caspak, I had indeed come up cor-sva jo--from the
beginning I had come up through the hideous horrors of the
lower Caspakian spheres of evolution, and I could not but feel
something of the elation and pride which had filled To-mar and
So-al when they realized that the call had come to them and
they were about to rise from the estate of Band-lus to that of
Kro-lus. I was glad that I was not batu.

But where was Ajor? Though my eyes searched the wide landscape
before me, I saw nothing other than the warriors of Du-seen and
the beasts of the fields and the forests. Surrounded by
forests, I could see wide plains dotting the country as far as
the eye could reach; but nowhere was a sign of a small Galu
she--the beloved she whom I would have given my right hand to see.

Nobs and I were hungry; we had not eaten since the preceding
night, and below us was game-deer, sheep, anything that a
hungry hunter might crave; so down the steep trail we made our
way, and then upon my belly with Nobs crouching low behind me,
I crawled toward a small herd of red deer feeding at the edge
of a plain close beside a forest. There was ample cover, what
with solitary trees and dotting bushes so that I found no
difficulty in stalking up wind to within fifty feet of my
quarry--a large, sleek doe unaccompanied by a fawn. Greatly then
did I regret my rifle. Never in my life had I shot an arrow,
but I knew how it was done, and fitting the shaft to my string,
I aimed carefully and let drive. At the same instant I called
to Nobs and leaped to me feet.

The arrow caught the doe full in the side, and in the same
moment Nobs was after her. She turned to flee with the two of
us pursuing her, Nobs with his great fangs bared and I with my
short spear poised for a cast. The balance of the herd sprang
quickly away; but the hurt doe lagged, and in a moment Nobs was
beside her and had leaped at her throat. He had her down when
I came up, and I finished her with my spear. It didn't take me
long to have a fire going and a steak broiling, and while I
was preparing for my own feast, Nobs was filling himself with
raw venison. Never have I enjoyed a meal so heartily.

For two days I searched fruitlessly back and forth from the
inland sea almost to the barrier cliffs for some trace of Ajor,
and always I trended northward; but I saw no sign of any human
being, not even the band of Galu warriors under Du-seen; and
then I commenced to have misgivings. Had Chal-az spoken the
truth to me when he said that Ajor had quit the village of
the Kro-lu? Might he not have been acting upon the orders of
Al-tan, in whose savage bosom might have lurked some small
spark of shame that he had attempted to do to death one who had
befriended a Kro-lu warrior--a guest who had brought no harm
upon the Kro-lu race--and thus have sent me out upon a
fruitless mission in the hope that the wild beasts would do
what Al-tan hesitated to do? I did not know; but the more I
thought upon it, the more convinced I became that Ajor had
not quitted the Kro-lu village; but if not, what had brought
Du-seen forth without her? There was a puzzler, and once again
I was all at sea.

On the second day of my experience of the Galu country I came
upon a bunch of as magnificent horses as it has ever been my
lot to see. They were dark bays with blazed faces and perfect
surcingles of white about their barrels. Their forelegs were
white to the knees. In height they stood almost sixteen hands,
the mares being a trifle smaller than the stallions, of which
there were three or four in this band of a hundred, which
comprised many colts and half-grown horses. Their markings
were almost identical, indicating a purity of strain that might
have persisted since long ages ago. If I had coveted one of
the little ponies of the Kro-lu country, imagine my state of
mind when I came upon these magnificent creatures! No sooner
had I espied them than I determined to possess one of them; nor
did it take me long to select a beautiful young stallion--a
four-year-old, I guessed him.

The horses were grazing close to the edge of the forest in
which Nobs and I were concealed, while the ground between us
and them was dotted with clumps of flowering brush which
offered perfect concealment. The stallion of my choice grazed
with a filly and two yearlings a little apart from the balance
of the herd and nearest to the forest and to me. At my
whispered "Charge!" Nobs flattened himself to the ground, and I
knew that he would not again move until I called him, unless
danger threatened me from the rear. Carefully I crept forward
toward my unsuspecting quarry, coming undetected to the
concealment of a bush not more than twenty feet from him.
Here I quietly arranged my noose, spreading it flat and open
upon the ground.

To step to one side of the bush and throw directly from the
ground, which is the style I am best in, would take but an
instant, and in that instant the stallion would doubtless be
under way at top speed in the opposite direction. Then he
would have to wheel about when I surprised him, and in doing
so, he would most certainly rise slightly upon his hind feet
and throw up his head, presenting a perfect target for my noose
as he pivoted.

Yes, I had it beautifully worked out, and I waited until he
should turn in my direction. At last it became evident that he
was doing so, when apparently without cause, the filly raised
her head, neighed and started off at a trot in the opposite
direction, immediately followed, of course, by the colts and
my stallion. It looked for a moment as though my last hope was
blasted; but presently their fright, if fright it was, passed,
and they resumed grazing again a hundred yards farther on.
This time there was no bush within fifty feet of them, and I
was at a loss as to how to get within safe roping-distance.
Anywhere under forty feet I am an excellent roper, at fifty
feet I am fair; but over that I knew it would be a matter of
luck if I succeeded in getting my noose about that beautiful
arched neck.

As I stood debating the question in my mind, I was almost upon
the point of making the attempt at the long throw. I had
plenty of rope, this Galu weapon being fully sixty feet long.
How I wished for the collies from the ranch! At a word they
would have circled this little bunch and driven it straight
down to me; and then it flashed into my mind that Nobs had run
with those collies all one summer, that he had gone down to the
pasture with them after the cows every evening and done his
part in driving them back to the milking-barn, and had done it
intelligently; but Nobs had never done the thing alone, and it
had been a year since he had done it at all. However, the
chances were more in favor of my foozling the long throw than
that Nobs would fall down in his part if I gave him the chance.

Having come to a decision, I had to creep back to Nobs and get
him, and then with him at my heels return to a large bush near
the four horses. Here we could see directly through the bush, and
pointing the animals out to Nobs I whispered: "Fetch 'em, boy!"

In an instant he was gone, circling wide toward the rear of
the quarry. They caught sight of him almost immediately and
broke into a trot away from him; but when they saw that he was
apparently giving them a wide berth they stopped again,
though they stood watching him, with high-held heads and
quivering nostrils. It was a beautiful sight. And then Nobs
turned in behind them and trotted slowly back toward me. He did
not bark, nor come rushing down upon them, and when he had come
closer to them, he proceeded at a walk. The splendid creatures
seemed more curious than fearful, making no effort to escape
until Nobs was quite close to them; then they trotted slowly
away, but at right angles.

And now the fun and trouble commenced. Nobs, of course,
attempted to turn them, and he seemed to have selected the
stallion to work upon, for he paid no attention to the others,
having intelligence enough to know that a lone dog could run
his legs off before he could round up four horses that didn't
wish to be rounded up. The stallion, however, had notions of
his own about being headed, and the result was as pretty a race
as one would care to see. Gad, how that horse could run! He seemed
to flatten out and shoot through the air with the very minimum
of exertion, and at his forefoot ran Nobs, doing his best to
turn him. He was barking now, and twice he leaped high against
the stallion's flank; but this cost too much effort and always
lost him ground, as each time he was hurled heels over head by
the impact; yet before they disappeared over a rise in the ground
I was sure that Nob's persistence was bearing fruit; it seemed
to me that the horse was giving way a trifle to the right.
Nobs was between him and the main herd, to which the yearling
and filly had already fled.

As I stood waiting for Nobs' return, I could not but speculate
upon my chances should I be attacked by some formidable beast.
I was some distance from the forest and armed with weapons in
the use of which I was quite untrained, though I had practiced
some with the spear since leaving the Kro-lu country. I must
admit that my thoughts were not pleasant ones, verging almost
upon cowardice, until I chanced to think of little Ajor alone
in this same land and armed only with a knife! I was
immediately filled with shame; but in thinking the matter over
since, I have come to the conclusion that my state of mind was
influenced largely by my approximate nakedness. If you have
never wandered about in broad daylight garbed in a bit of
red-deer skin in inadequate length, you can have no conception
of the sensation of futility that overwhelms one. Clothes, to
a man accustomed to wearing clothes, impart a certain
self-confidence; lack of them induces panic.

But no beast attacked me, though I saw several menacing forms
passing through the dark aisles of the forest. At last I
commenced to worry over Nobs' protracted absence and to fear
that something had befallen him. I was coiling my rope to
start out in search of him, when I saw the stallion leap into
view at almost the same spot behind which he had disappeared,
and at his heels ran Nobs. Neither was running so fast or
furiously as when last I had seen them.

The horse, as he approached me, I could see was laboring hard;
yet he kept gamely to his task, and Nobs, too. The splendid
fellow was driving the quarry straight toward me. I crouched
behind my bush and laid my noose in readiness to throw. As the
two approached my hiding-place, Nobs reduced his speed, and the
stallion, evidently only too glad of the respite, dropped into
a trot. It was at this gait that he passed me; my rope-hand
flew forward; the honda, well down, held the noose open,
and the beautiful bay fairly ran his head into it.

Instantly he wheeled to dash off at right angles. I braced
myself with the rope around my hip and brought him to a
sudden stand. Rearing and struggling, he fought for his liberty
while Nobs, panting and with lolling tongue, came and threw
himself down near me. He seemed to know that his work was done
and that he had earned his rest. The stallion was pretty well
spent, and after a few minutes of struggling he stood with feet
far spread, nostrils dilated and eyes wide, watching me as I
edged toward him, taking in the slack of the rope as I advanced.
A dozen times he reared and tried to break away; but always I
spoke soothingly to him and after an hour of effort I succeeded
in reaching his head and stroking his muzzle. Then I gathered
a handful of grass and offered it to him, and always I talked
to him in a quiet and reassuring voice.

I had expected a battle royal; but on the contrary I found his
taming a matter of comparative ease. Though wild, he was
gentle to a degree, and of such remarkable intelligence that
he soon discovered that I had no intention of harming him.
After that, all was easy. Before that day was done, I had taught
him to lead and to stand while I stroked his head and flanks, and
to eat from my hand, and had the satisfaction of seeing the light
of fear die in his large, intelligent eyes.

The following day I fashioned a hackamore from a piece which I
cut from the end of my long Galu rope, and then I mounted him
fully prepared for a struggle of titanic proportions in which I
was none too sure that he would not come off victor; but he
never made the slightest effort to unseat me, and from then on
his education was rapid. No horse ever learned more quickly
the meaning of the rein and the pressure of the knees. I think
he soon learned to love me, and I know that I loved him; while
he and Nobs were the best of pals. I called him Ace. I had a
friend who was once in the French flying-corps, and when Ace
let himself out, he certainly flew.

I cannot explain to you, nor can you understand, unless you too
are a horseman, the exhilarating feeling of well-being which
pervaded me from the moment that I commenced riding Ace. I was
a new man, imbued with a sense of superiority that led me to
feel that I could go forth and conquer all Caspak single-handed.
Now, when I needed meat, I ran it down on Ace and roped it, and
when some great beast with which we could not cope threatened us,
we galloped away to safety; but for the most part the creatures
we met looked upon us in terror, for Ace and I in combination
presented a new and unusual beast beyond their experience and ken.

For five days I rode back and forth across the southern end of
the Galu country without seeing a human being; yet all the time
I was working slowly toward the north, for I had determined to
comb the territory thoroughly in search of Ajor; but on the
fifth day as I emerged from a forest, I saw some distance ahead
of me a single small figure pursued by many others. Instantly I
recognized the quarry as Ajor. The entire party was fully a
mile away from me, and they were crossing my path at right angles.
Ajor a few hundred yards in advance of those who followed her.
One of her pursuers was far in advance of the others, and was
gaining upon her rapidly. With a word and a pressure of the
knees I sent Ace leaping out into the open, and with Nobs
running close alongside, we raced toward her.

At first none of them saw us; but as we neared Ajor, the pack
behind the foremost pursuer discovered us and set up such a
howl as I never before have heard. They were all Galus, and I
soon recognized the foremost as Du-seen. He was almost upon
Ajor now, and with a sense of terror such as I had never before
experienced, I saw that he ran with his knife in his hand, and
that his intention was to slay rather than capture. I could
not understand it, but I could only urge Ace to greater speed,
and most nobly did the wondrous creature respond to my demands.
If ever a four-footed creature approximated flying, it was Ace
that day.

Du-seen, intent upon his brutal design, had as yet not noticed us.
He was within a pace of Ajor when Ace and I dashed between them,
and I, leaning down to the left, swept my little barbarian into
the hollow of an arm and up on the withers of my glorious Ace.
We had snatched her from the very clutches of Du-seen, who halted,
mystified and raging. Ajor, too, was mystified, as we had come
up from diagonally behind her so that she had no idea that we
were near until she was swung to Ace's back. The little savage
turned with drawn knife to stab me, thinking that I was some
new enemy, when her eyes found my face and she recognized me.
With a little sob she threw her arms about my neck, gasping:
"My Tom! My Tom!"

And then Ace sank suddenly into thick mud to his belly, and
Ajor and I were thrown far over his head. He had run into one
of those numerous springs which cover Caspak. Sometimes they
are little lakes, again but tiny pools, and often mere
quagmires of mud, as was this one overgrown with lush grasses
which effectually hid its treacherous identity. It is a wonder
that Ace did not break a leg, so fast he was going when he
fell; but he didn't, though with four good legs he was unable
to wallow from the mire. Ajor and I had sprawled face down in
the covering grasses and so had not sunk deeply; but when we
tried to rise, we found that there was not footing, and
presently we saw that Du-seen and his followers were coming
down upon us. There was no escape. It was evident that we
were doomed.

"Slay me!" begged Ajor. "Let me die at thy loved hands rather
than beneath the knife of this hateful thing, for he will kill me.
He has sworn to kill me. Last night he captured me, and when
later he would have his way with me, I struck him with my
fists and with my knife I stabbed him, and then I escaped,
leaving him raging in pain and thwarted desire. Today they
searched for me and found me; and as I fled, Du-seen ran after
me crying that he would slay me. Kill me, my Tom, and then fall
upon thine own spear, for they will kill you horribly if they
take you alive."

I couldn't kill her--not at least until the last moment; and I
told her so, and that I loved her, and that until death came, I
would live and fight for her.

Nobs had followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at
first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could
only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen
and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp.
I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors.
The alliance against Jor the chief had, therefore, been
consummated, and this horde was already marching upon the
Galu city. I sighed as I thought how close I had been to saving
not only Ajor but her father and his people from defeat and death.

Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this,
we would have been safe; but it might as well have been a
hundred miles away as a hundred yards across that hidden lake
of sticky mud. Upon the edge of the swamp Du-seen and his
horde halted to revile us. They could not reach us with their
hands; but at a command from Du-seen they fitted arrows to
their bows, and I saw that the end had come. Ajor huddled
close to me, and I took her in my arms. "I love you, Tom," she
said, "only you." Tears came to my eyes then, not tears of
self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart filled
with a great love--a heart that sees the sun of its life and
its love setting even as it rises.

The renegade Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for
the word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche
of death upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the
swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of
man--the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired
rapidly at will. Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like
tenpins before that deadly fusillade.

What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was
that Hollis and Short and the others had scaled the cliffs and
made their way north to the Galu country upon the opposite side
of the island in time to save Ajor and me from almost certain death.
I didn't have to have an introduction to them to know that the
men who held those rifles were the men of my own party; and when,
a few minutes later, they came forth from their concealment,
my eyes verified my hopes. There they were, every man-jack of
them; and with them were a thousand straight, sleek warriors of
the Galu race; and ahead of the others came two men in the garb
of Galus. Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled;
yet they differed as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen
of another species. As they approached the mire, Ajor held forth
her arms and cried, "Jor, my chief! My father!" and the elder
of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other
came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide, and
mine too, and I cried: "Bowen! For heaven's sake, Bowen Tyler!"

It was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company
and the man we had searched a new world to find. They cut
saplings from the forest and laid a road into the swamp before
they could get us all out, and then we marched back to the city
of Jor the Galu chief, and there was great rejoicing when Ajor
came home again mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion Ace.

Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans
nearly worked our jaws loose on the march back to the village,
and for days afterward we kept it up. They told me how they had
crossed the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-four
hours a day in three eight-hour shifts with two reliefs to each
shift alternating half-hourly. Two men with electric drills
driven from the dynamos aboard the Toreador drilled two
holes four feet apart in the face of the cliff and in the same
horizontal planes. The holes slanted slightly downward. Into these
holes the iron rods brought as a part of our equipment and for
just this purpose were inserted, extending about a foot beyond
the face of the rock, across these two rods a plank was laid,
and then the next shift, mounting to the new level, bored two
more holes five feet above the new platform, and so on.

During the nights the searchlights from the Toreador were
kept playing upon the cliff at the point where the drills were
working, and at the rate of ten feet an hour the summit was
reached upon the fifth day. Ropes were lowered, blocks lashed
to trees at the top, and crude elevators rigged, so that by the
night of the fifth day the entire party, with the exception of
the few men needed to man the Toreador, were within Caspak
with an abundance of arms, ammunition and equipment.

From then on, they fought their way north in search of me,
after a vain and perilous effort to enter the hideous
reptile-infested country to the south. Owing to the number of
guns among them, they had not lost a man; but their path was
strewn with the dead creatures they had been forced to slay to
win their way to the north end of the island, where they had
found Bowen and his bride among the Galus of Jor.

The reunion between Bowen and Nobs was marked by a frantic
display upon Nobs' part, which almost stripped Bowen of the
scanty attire that the Galu custom had vouchsafed him. When we
arrived at the Galu city, Lys La Rue was waiting to welcome us.
She was Mrs. Tyler now, as the master of the Toreador had
married them the very day that the search-party had found them,
though neither Lys nor Bowen would admit that any civil or
religious ceremony could have rendered more sacred the bonds
with which God had united them.

Neither Bowen nor the party from the Toreador had seen any
sign of Bradley and his party. They had been so long lost now
that any hopes for them must be definitely abandoned. The Galus
had heard rumors of them, as had the Western Kro-lu and Band-lu;
but none had seen aught of them since they had left Fort Dinosaur
months since.

We rested in Jor's village for a fortnight while we prepared
for the southward journey to the point where the Toreador
was to lie off shore in wait for us. During these two weeks
Chal-az came up from the Krolu country, now a full-fledged Galu.
He told us that the remnants of Al-tan's party had been slain
when they attempted to re-enter Kro-lu. Chal-az had been made
chief, and when he rose, had left the tribe under a new leader
whom all respected.

Nobs stuck close to Bowen; but Ace and Ajor and I went out upon
many long rides through the beautiful north Galu country.
Chal-az had brought my arms and ammunition up from Kro-lu with
him; but my clothes were gone; nor did I miss them once I
became accustomed to the free attire of the Galu.

At last came the time for our departure; upon the following
morning we were to set out toward the south and the Toreador
and dear old California. I had asked Ajor to go with us; but
Jor her father had refused to listen to the suggestion. No pleas
could swerve him from his decision: Ajor, the cos-ata-lo,
from whom might spring a new and greater Caspakian race, could
not be spared. I might have any other she among the Galus;
but Ajor--no!

The poor child was heartbroken; and as for me, I was slowly
realizing the hold that Ajor had upon my heart and wondered how
I should get along without her. As I held her in my arms that
last night, I tried to imagine what life would be like without
her, for at last there had come to me the realization that I
loved her--loved my little barbarian; and as I finally tore
myself away and went to my own hut to snatch a few hours' sleep
before we set off upon our long journey on the morrow, I
consoled myself with the thought that time would heal the wound
and that back in my native land I should find a mate who would
be all and more to me than little Ajor could ever be--a woman
of my own race and my own culture.

Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and
breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ajor. It was best, I thought,
that I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell.
The party formed for the march, an escort of Galu warriors
ready to accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace's
corral and bid him farewell. The night before, I had given him
to Ajor, and now in my mind the two seemed inseparable.

And so we marched away, down the street flanked with its stone
houses and out through the wide gateway in the stone wall which
surrounds the city and on across the clearing toward the forest
through which we must pass to reach the northern boundary of
Galu, beyond which we would turn south. At the edge of the
forest I cast a backward glance at the city which held my
heart, and beside the massive gateway I saw that which brought
me to a sudden halt. It was a little figure leaning against
one of the great upright posts upon which the gates swing--a
crumpled little figure; and even at this distance I could see
its shoulders heave to the sobs that racked it. It was the
last straw.

Bowen was near me. "Good-bye old man," I said. "I'm going back."

He looked at me in surprise. "Good-bye, old man," he said, and
grasped my hand. "I thought you'd do it in the end."

And then I went back and took Ajor in my arms and kissed the
tears from her eyes and a smile to her lips while together we
watched the last of the Americans disappear into the forest.