re one of Hooja's people we might kill you, for all
Hooja's people are bad people; but you say you are an enemy of Hooja.
You may not speak the truth, but until we learn that you have lied we
shall not kill you. You shall work."

"If you hate Hooja," I suggested, "why not let me, who hate him, too,
go and punish him?"

For some time Gr-gr-gr sat in thought. Then he raised his head and
addressed my guard.

"Take him to his work," he ordered.

His tone was final. As if to emphasize it he turned and entered his
burrow. My guard conducted me farther into the mesa, where we came
presently to a tiny depression or valley, at one end of which gushed a
warm spring.

The view that opened before me was the most surprising that I have ever
seen. In the hollow, which must have covered several hundred acres,
were numerous fields of growing things, and working all about with
crude implements or with no implements at all other than their bare
hands were many of the brute-men engaged in the first agriculture that
I had seen within Pellucidar.

They put me to work cultivating in a patch of melons.

I never was a farmer nor particularly keen for this sort of work, and I
am free to confess that time never had dragged so heavily as it did
during the hour or the year I spent there at that work. How long it
really was I do not know, of course; but it was all too long.

The creatures that worked about me were quite simple and friendly. One
of them proved to be a son of Gr-gr-gr. He had broken some minor
tribal law, and was working out his sentence in the fields. He told me
that his tribe had lived upon this hilltop always, and that there were
other tribes like them dwelling upon other hilltops. They had no wars
and had always lived in peace and harmony, menaced only by the larger
carnivora of the island, until my kind had come under a creature called
Hooja, and attacked and killed them when they chanced to descend from
their natural fortresses to visit their fellows upon other lofty mesas.

Now they were afraid; but some day they would go in a body and fall
upon Hooja and his people and slay them all. I explained to him that I
was Hooja's enemy, and asked, when they were ready to go, that I be
allowed to go with them, or, better still, that they let me go ahead
and learn all that I could about the village where Hooja dwelt so that
they might attack it with the best chance of success.

Gr-gr-gr's son seemed much impressed