,
if we are wise, we will run."

Nels led, all the way; and they were barely under cover, when the earth
indeed shook. The stone walls of the building rocked; the dull thunder
of a solid, continuous impact of dense water upon its roof, filled
their ears. The light of the sun was cut off.

"Bhanah, you and Nels will camp with me to-night. This has been the
hunting cheetah-day of my life; and--Nels is responsible that he didn't
get me."

"My master is the heart of kindness."

While Bhanah was busy, later, Skag laughed:

"I'm remembering that you said Nels did it _soon_. How did he do it?"

"By the drive of his weight against the cheetah's body; and the
strength of his limbs, in the action my master saw."

They had eaten and Nels was properly cared for, when Bhanah spoke
softly:

"Shall we have tales, Sahib?"

Skag roused from a moment's abstraction to answer:

"Bhanah, I don't remember anything I could talk about to-night, but the
hunting cheetah--Nels got."

"The hunting cheetah is one, Sahib; _there are many_. Telling is in
knowledge and in speech; finding is in the man. I will tell, if the
Sahib pleases; but he shall find."

So they had tales that night.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Monster Kabuli_

Skag had learned, in finding Carlin, that it wasn't like a man in America
finding the one particular and inimitable girl, not even if she were the
_laurus nobilis_ and he the eagle of the same coin. In India, where
people have pride of race, and time to keep it shining, there are
formalities. . . . The two had arranged to meet in the jungle--not deep
in the glen where the tiger had coughed, but at the edge toward Hurda,
when Skag returned from Poona. He was to go straight into the jungle
from the railway station. Carlin would be watching and follow
there. . . .

Sanford Hantee of the Natural Research Department, after much opportunity
to wrestle with the subtle and gritty and hard-testing demon of delay,
came at last to Hurda again, and stepped out of the coach with a throb in
his chest and a knot in his throat which only the best and bravest
soldiers have brought in from the field. As the moments of waiting at
the edge of the jungle passed, it dawned upon him that something had
happened, or Carlin already would be with him, at least crossing the big
sun-shot area from the walled city. . . . What had happened is this
story of the monster Kabuli, which is an animal story even without the
ent