hances? Sus-marie-hosep! Some of those pigs almost ran up
my breeches!" He was as nearly excited as Lindsey had ever seen him,
and they had served together in a Kansas regiment.

"Lindsey, I'm sure glad you asked me to come--I've seen something
worth seeing. I've seen him shoot!"

He pointed to Terry. His borrowed rifle stood nearby against a tree
and he was busy clipping fresh ammunition into his pistol magazines.
Five wild pigs lay in front of him near the opposite side of the
clearing. Lindsey looked his unbelief.

"Yes, he did!" asserted the Major. "I watched him do it--that's why I
drew a blank. Five pigs, five shots,--and after each shot he holstered
the gun till the next pig hove in sight! I've seen good shooting, but
such drawing--such certainty--

"Sus-marie-hosep!" he wound up, lamely.

Terry, having replenished his magazine, clipped it into the big
automatic with a deft snap, and turned round toward them. Noting their
attitude, he colored boyishly.

"Pretty lucky, wasn't I?" he said.

"Yes," agreed the Major, drily, "you were pretty lucky!"

The beaters had come up. Lindsey ordered them to carry the game for
distribution among his villagers. The sun was dipping behind the hills
as the three started back the trail through the dense woods, Lindsey
leading the way and searching for signs of the wounded boar. Every few
rods he found a pool of blood where it had paused in flight.

They entered the deep shadow cast by the spread of a great banyan tree
from whose thick branches a score of accessory trunks were sent down
to seek root in the soil. Rooting, they grew into smooth, heavy
supports for the wide-spread limbs which towered above the surrounding
forest. Terry paused a moment in the twilight of the tree, studying
appreciatively the miniature forest of trunks parented by the one
ancient growth. Suddenly a warning cry escaped his lips as he saw one
of the long dark trunks, a foot in diameter, loosen from a branch
where it hung suspended high over the Major's head.

"LOOK OUT, MAJOR!"

He leaped forward, expecting to find the Major crushed, but
involuntarily halted midway in his stride as the heavy trunk, landing
at the Major's feet with a slithering thud, writhed a terrible length
into massive folds. No eye could follow the inconceivably swift
contortions that wrapped the Major in a triple fold.

Two heavy coils prisoned his legs, a third passed round his back up
over his right shoulder to curve t