her thought.
"What the devil----" His voice trailed away in stunned silence.

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning
jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth
wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a
thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans
clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and
dripped from the huge mouth.

The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a
long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after
it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan,
a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish
belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher
than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that
of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.

"Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him.
"I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind-legs and reach
us----"

With a snapping and rending of bushes and saplings the monster came
hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before him like
leaves blown before a wind. As Valeria plunged into the leafy screen a
backward glance showed her the titan rearing up fearsomely on his
massive hind-legs, even as Conan had predicted. The sight sent panic
racing through her. As he reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than
ever; his snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conan's iron hand
closed on her wrist and she was jerked headlong into the blinding welter
of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the
monster fell forward with his front feet on the crag with an impact that
made the rock vibrate.

* * * * *

Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they
looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed
among the green leaves, eyes flaming, jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks
clashed together futilely, and after that the head was withdrawn,
vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.

Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it
squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly
up at them.

Valeria shuddered.

"How long do you suppose he'll crouch there?"

Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn s