Part 4 (1/2)

III

For three weeks Grom and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging north to avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy sh.o.r.es were trodden by monsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, no matter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be, they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerous and so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate the strange human trail.

Had Grom been alone he would soon have been worn out for want of sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed utterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. He had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this sweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.

Beyond the lake and the mora.s.ses they came to a strange, broken land, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life, but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizon ran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged against the pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murky vapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others, spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shape of a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. It filled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoid this unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grom was filled with interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside her fears and a.s.sumed a like eagerness on the subject.

In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty and spreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forest growth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled past their roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemed to offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with the delicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herself up lightly into the branches. Grom lingered a few moments below, letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls.

Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep.

While he was in this helpless position--his sleepless vigilance for the moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic, s.h.a.ggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awful swiftness, like a grey bowlder das.h.i.+ng down a hillside. The girl, from her perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grom bounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a gray bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost upon him, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. A spear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the side of the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar, the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grom swung himself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.

The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk and began to draw himself up. Grom struck at him with his club, but from his difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bear hardly seemed to notice it.

”We must lead him up, then drop down and run,” said Grom. And the two mounted nimbly.

The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously beneath his weight. Then Grom and the girl slipped over into the next tree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, and apparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd, implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.

Grom looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had never known before.

”Can you run, very fast?” he demanded.

The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at having once more saved him.

”I ran from the wolves,” she reminded him.

”Then we must run, perhaps very far,” answered Grom, rea.s.sured, ”till we find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope.

For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuing us. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climb trees.”

When both bears were high in the two trees, Grom and the girl slipped down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as falling. They s.n.a.t.c.hed up Grom's two spears and A-ya's broken one, and ran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. The bears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific, ponderous gallop.

The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grom who was famous in the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pace in her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on their pursuers, Grom bade her slow down a little till they did no more than hold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran always a pace behind her, admonis.h.i.+ng her how to save her strength and her breath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge.

Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For he knew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his last fight over her body.

For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signs of distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from her open lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fear at his heart, Grom closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on his rigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to a spur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valley cleaving them midway.

”There will be ledges,” he said, ”where we can defend ourselves, and where you can rest.”

Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with ma.s.sive cane and thorned creepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon a s.p.a.ce of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening of the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and bowing as if in some enchanted dance.

Grom's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second he paused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her knees gave way beneath her. As she sank, Grom's spirit rose to the emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.

”If they are G.o.ds, those bright, dancing things,” said Grom, with a confidence he was far from feeling, ”they will save us. If they are devils, I will fight them.”

A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, an opening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of this opening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. The runners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.

It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed her utterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fell in a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her up into his arms, but as he did so he looked back.

The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they had stopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous forms from side to side in angry irresolution.