iliar
territory south of Sephar, taking up the trail of those Ammadians who
held Dylara.

* * * * *

Near sunset of this particular day, Tharn awoke from a nap, as it was
his practice during the baking heat of mid-afternoons. By thus
conserving his strength during the more trying portion of the days, he
was able to spend many hours after nightfall, when the air was cooler,
in pursuit of his quarry.

Rising to his feet on a softly swaying branch a full hundred feet above
the jungle floor, Tharn flexed the mighty muscles of arms and legs, his
naked chest swelling as he drew in great draughts of humid atmosphere.
The slender fingers of his strong, sun-bronzed hand pushed back the
shock of thick black hair crowning his finely shaped head and strikingly
handsome features, while the flashing, intelligent gray eyes roved
quickly over the mazes of foliage surrounding him.

Nor was it his eyes alone that probed those curtains of growing things;
ears and a nose keen as those of any jungle dweller were no less active.

He was on the point of descending to the game trail below when Siha, the
wind, brought to his sensitive nostrils the scent of man commingled with
the acrid smell of Sadu, the lion.

For the space of a dozen heartbeats he stood there, high above the
hard-packed earth, while his keen mind rapidly analyzed the message his
nose had picked up. From the strength of those scents he knew both man
and beast were not far away, while the direction of the breeze told him
their position.

Since the day Tharn, the son of Tharn, set out in search of the girl he
loved, he had encountered men on several occasions and always those
meetings were unpleasant. The Cro-Magnon tribes inhabiting the mountain
ranges between Sephar and the land of Ammad were distinguished by their
ability as fighters and an unflagging suspicion of strangers. Were it
not for Tharn's tremendous strength and incredible agility, he would
have died long ere this.

Consequently his first reaction was to let Sadu and the unknown man
settle their impending quarrel without his own intervention. But a basic
part of Tharn's character was his ready willingness to come to the aid
of the underdog, to champion the cause of the weak and oppressed. It was
a trait which had brought him to the brink of disaster more than once;
but Tharn, were he to have given the matter any thought at all, would
not have had it otherwise.

Thus it was