y
outcroppings, and presently where it rounded sharply the projecting
shoulder of a cliff the stranger came suddenly face to face with one
who was ascending the gorge.

Separated by a hundred paces the two halted simultaneously. Before him
the stranger saw a tall white warrior, naked but for a loin cloth,
cross belts, and a girdle. The man was armed with a heavy, knotted club
and a short knife, the latter hanging in its sheath at his left hip
from the end of one of his cross belts, the opposite belt supporting a
leathern pouch at his right side. It was Ta-den hunting alone in the
gorge of his friend, the chief of Kor-ul-ja. He contemplated the
stranger with surprise but no wonder, since he recognized in him a
member of the race with which his experience of Tarzan the Terrible had
made him familiar and also, thanks to his friendship for the ape-man,
he looked upon the newcomer without hostility.

The latter was the first to make outward sign of his intentions,
raising his palm toward Ta-den in that gesture which has been a symbol
of peace from pole to pole since man ceased to walk upon his knuckles.
Simultaneously he advanced a few paces and halted.

Ta-den, assuming that one so like Tarzan the Terrible must be a
fellow-tribesman of his lost friend, was more than glad to accept this
overture of peace, the sign of which he returned in kind as he ascended
the trail to where the other stood. "Who are you?" he asked, but the
newcomer only shook his head to indicate that he did not understand.

By signs he tried to carry to the Ho-don the fact that he was following
a trail that had led him over a period of many days from some place
beyond the mountains and Ta-den was convinced that the newcomer sought
Tarzan-jad-guru. He wished, however, that he might discover whether as
friend or foe.

The stranger perceived the Ho-don's prehensile thumbs and great toes
and his long tail with an astonishment which he sought to conceal, but
greater than all was the sense of relief that the first inhabitant of
this strange country whom he had met had proven friendly, so greatly
would he have been handicapped by the necessity for forcing his way
through a hostile land.

Ta-den, who had been hunting for some of the smaller mammals, the meat
of which is especially relished by the Ho-don, forgot his intended
sport in the greater interest of his new discovery. He would take the
stranger to Om-at and possibly together the two would find som