d," remarked the man, a trace of excitement in
his voice. "It will do them no good, for the lion will wait until they
come out and take as many as he can carry away; and there is one
there," he added, a trace of sadness in his tone, "whom I hoped would
soon follow me to the Kro-lu. Together have we come up from the
beginning." He raised his spear above his head and poised it ready to
hurl downward at the lion. "She is nearest to him," he muttered. "He
will get her and she will never come to me among the Kro-lu, or ever
thereafter. It is useless! No warrior lives who could hurl a weapon
so great a distance."
But even as he spoke, I was leveling my rifle upon the great brute
below; and as he ceased speaking, I squeezed the trigger. My bullet
must have struck to a hair the point at which I had aimed, for it
smashed the brute's spine back of his shoulders and tore on through his
heart, dropping him dead in his tracks. For a moment the women were as
terrified by the report of the rifle as they had been by the menace of
the lion; but when they saw that the loud noise had evidently destroyed
their enemy, they came creeping cautiously back to examine the carcass.
The man, toward whom I had immediately turned after firing, lest he
should pursue his threatened attack, stood staring at me in amazement
and admiration.
"Why," he asked, "if you could do that, did you not kill me long
before?"
"I told you," I replied, "that I had no quarrel with you. I do not
care to kill men with whom I have no quarrel."
But he could not seem to get the idea through his head. "I can believe
now that you are not of Caspak," he admitted, "for no Caspakian would
have permitted such an opportunity to escape him." This, however, I
found later to be an exaggeration, as the tribes of the west coast and
even the Kro-lu of the east coast are far less bloodthirsty than he
would have had me believe. "And your weapon!" he continued. "You
spoke true words when I thought you spoke lies." And then, suddenly:
"Let us be friends!"
I turned to Ajor. "Can I trust him?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "Why not? Has he not asked to be friends?"
I was not at the time well enough acquainted with Caspakian ways to
know that truthfulness and loyalty are two of the strongest
characteristics of these primitive people. They are not sufficiently
cultured to have become adept in hypocrisy, treason and dissimulation.
There are, of course, a few exc
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