eltering shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the
south. I could see that they were Galus, and I guessed that Du-seen
led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and so had
overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no great
distance away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.

The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming from the
east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the defile formed by
this overlapping the party filed. I could see them climbing upward for
a few minutes, and then they disappeared from view. When the last of
them had passed from sight, I rose and bent my steps in the direction
of the pass--the same pass toward which Nobs had evidently been leading
me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the party might have
halted to rest. If they hadn't halted, I had no fear of being
discovered, for I had seen that the Galus marched without point,
flankers or rear guard; and when I reached the pass and saw a narrow,
one-man trail leading upward at a stiff angle, I wished that I were
chief of the Galus for a few weeks. A dozen men could hold off forever
in that narrow pass all the hordes which might be brought up from the
south; yet there it lay entirely unguarded.

The Galus might be a great people in Caspak; but they were pitifully
inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics. I was
surprised that even a man of the Stone Age should be so lacking in
military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far below par in my estimation
as I saw the slovenly formation of his troop as it passed through an
enemy country and entered the domain of the chief against whom he had
risen in revolt; but Du-seen must have known Jor the chief and known
that Jor would not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he
took unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I
could have conquered Caspak.

Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw the
party defiling into the Galu country, the level of which was not, on an
average, over fifty feet below the summit of the cliffs and about a
hundred and fifty feet above the adjacent Kro-lu domain. Immediately
the landscape changed. The trees, the flowers and the shrubs were of a
hardier type, and I realized that at night the Galu blanket might be
almost a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated among the
trees; yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fi