Free Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 by The Last Mammoth (v1.1) Page A

glanced back as he ran. The huge beast had seized the rifle in his
trunk. He wagged it over his head like a baton, then slammed it to earth, pawing at it with a forefoot. Finally he hurled it from
him and again thundered in pursuit of Sam, just as Sam gained the mouth of the
trail.
                Sam was a runner, by nature and by
training. Few young men of Brooke’s Fort or of the other settlements he had
visited could beat him in a fair race. Yet, as he fled for his life along that
trail, Giluhda rushed from behind to overtake him, and Sam knew that the
monster narrowed the gap with every swift stride of those thick legs. As he
forced himself to utmost speed, Sam expected to feel the grip of the snaky
trunk upon his neck or shoulder. He darted between two big oak trees, and
suddenly knew that he was safe for the moment.
                Driving blindly after him, Giluhda
had jammed his broad shagginess into the space between those oaks, and he was
wedged there. Sam heard the angry, snorting squeal, the frenzied thrashing of
legs and shoulders. He fled toward an upstanding maple. With a leap and clutch
he caught a lower branch and pulled himself up.
                Giluhda raged and strove between
those imprisoning trees. By sheer angry strength he forced his way forward
through the pinching passage, and ran to catch Sam. But the young hunter was
already high up into the maple, well beyond the uppermost stretch of the
straining trunk-tip.
                “He can’t reach me,” exulted Sam—too
soon.
                Giluhda caught the branch by which
Sam had climbed, and ripped it away as a man pulls a fig from a bush. He dashed
it down, then reached for a larger branch and pulled. The entire maple tree
swayed and creaked. As he pulled, Giluhda’s broad face tilted up toward Sam.
Blood smeared his shaggy brow. The tiny eyes stared, furious but intelligent.
Suddenly Sam believed all he had heard of the monster’s strange wisdom. In
those eyes he read murder.
                Giluhda let go of the branch and
slowly circled the maple tree. From his vantage point, Sam could see that the
big back sloped both ways from the spinal ridge, like a peaked roof. Finally
Giluhda turned his massive forehead toward the trunk, moved close, and pushed.
                He leaned his tremendous weight into
the effort, digging in his basket-sized feet as a horse drives his hoofs down
to pull a plough after him. Thick and strong as the maple was, it bent before
that surging pressure. Sam, clinging in the branches, felt as though he was
tossing in a gale. His elation over apparent safety departed. Holding on tight,
he looked down at his huge foe.
                Giluhda drew back and prodded a root
with his trunk. He walked around the tree once more. Plainly he sought a point
from which to attack more successfully. A second time he bowed his great head
against the maple. Sam heard him grunt as he flung his weight forward.
                The thick stem creaked and sighed. A
sickening pop sounded—a root had broken. Sam groaned under his breath. That
great hairy elephant-thing would push the maple down. Then, before Sam could
wriggle out of the branches
                “Hai! Hai!”
                It was Otter’s voice, raised in a
shrill war whoop.
                Giluhda paused, listening with
foreward-bent ears. Then he returned to his ramming attack.
                “Hai!” whooped Otter again.
Sam saw his shaven head lift among some bushes, not thirty feet away. Otter
held his bow in his left hand, and against its stave his fist clamped an arrow,
parallel with the bow. A second arrow he poised ready, notched on the string.
                Rising, Otter drew the arrow to its
very head. Even above the creaking complaint of the maple tree, Sam heard the
twang of the bowstring. The arrow soared like a humming