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

bird.
                Loud rang the shrill, furious squeal
of Giluhda, and once more the great brown bulk stamped backward from the maple.
One wide, flapping ear was skewered by Otter’s shaft. Giluhda spun with uncouth
speed on his four big feet and flung up his trunk as though to charge.
                But Otter had whipped his second
arrow across the bow-stave, and it, too, whizzed through the air, smiting
sharply into Giluhda’s lifted trunk, halfway between root and tip.
                Wide gaped Giluhda’s big red mouth,
and loud he screamed. He lumbered ferociously at the bushes from which Otter
had launched his arrows, smashing them underfoot like grass. He raged and
trampled murderously. Then, on some pain-maddened impulse, he charged through
the woods, splintering small trees in his way.
                “Come down.” It was Otter, stealing
forward to the foot of the maple. “Giluhda will be back when he does not find
me, and will try to break this tree down. Let him use his strength on it. We
will be far away.”
                Sam fairly tumbled down through the
branches. Otter tested the wind with a wet finger, and pointed the way it blew.
They ran off that way, so that no current of air would carry back their scent.
                “Go to the river,” panted Otter. “We
will do as we did before. We will wade in the water, and he cannot sniff out
our tracks.”
                They doubled toward the river, found
the trail along which Sam had fled from Giluhda, and came again to the edge of
the cleared ground by the drinking place.
                “I must find my fire-weapon,” said
Sam, searching along the hard earth scuffed and torn by Giluhda’s stamping
feet. There was no sign of the rifle.
                “Did he throw it among the trees?”
Sam asked Otter.
                “I did not see where he threw it,”
said Otter. “It will be hard to find. We cannot wait; Giluhda may come back. We
will come and look for your fire- weapon when Giluhda is somewhere else.”
                Into the river they waded, moving
upstream among a scatter of rocks. They splashed along for half an hour, and
came out to sit on a log before a low, rocky bluff.
                “There’s a cave,” said Sam, pointing
to a narrow opening the height of a man. “If Giluhda had chased us here, we
could have gone into it. He could not have followed us.”
                “But he could wait outside until we
starved,” reminded Otter.
                Sam looked into the cave while they
caught their breath. It seemed fairly roomy. He would remember that refuge.
They waited a few minutes, but no crashing sound of pursuit came to them, and
they were thankful.
                “Brother,” Sam said gratefully, “you
told your people that I saved your fife. Now I will tell them that you saved
mine.”
                “It was no more than I should do,”
replied Otter. “When we are together in danger, each fights with his brother’s
strength and thinks with his brother’s wisdom. That way, each is as strong and
wise as two men.”
                “You speak good words,” applauded
Sam. “Let’s go back to Twilight Town .”
                They made the rest of their journey
home without other adventure. As they crossed the cornfields toward the gate,
they saw men and women watching from inside.
                “You have come back very soon,” said
a warrior as they entered the stockade. “White hunter, you do not have your
fire-weapon.”
                “I lost it,” said Sam, shamefaced.
“I will find it again.”
                Woodpecker limped eagerly toward
them. “Did you meet Giluhda, my son?” he asked Sam.
                Sam found it hard to reply, and
Otter spoke for him.
                “Chief,