'It is gone,' she said.
'Do not relax your vigilance,' I cautioned her. 'It will presumably be moving with great speed and will be some ten to fifgeen feet in the air. You will not see it, probably, given your height, and the grass, until it is within a few hundred yards of you. Even so, however, this will permit you ample reaction time. You have a great advantage, you see, in that you are expecting it.'
'I think it is gone,' she said.
'Perhaps,' I said.
'It would have come by now, surely,' she said.
'Perhaps,' I said. 'Perhaps not.'
The sky seemed placid, the clouds slowly changing their shapes in the air currents. I watched them for awhile. I supposed that a tubuk, my now, might have returned to grazing.
'It is coming!' she cried, suddenly.
'Into the pit!' I cried. 'Hurry!' There had been no mistakeing the urgency in her voice.
'I cannot move!' she cried. 'I cannot move!'
I threw myself half out of the pit and with my right hand seized her right ankle, and then, with my left, seized her left ankle. She screamed, throwing her hands before her face. Bodily I dragged her down beside me. Almost at the same instant, flashing over the opening, I saw immense, extended talons closing, and therushing passage of a huge, dark shape, the grass leaping up and seeming to almost torn up, almost uprooted, following it.
She clutched me, shuddering.
'You ahve not been pleasing,' I told her. I then thrust her from me.
'Is it gone?' She begged, sobbing.
'It will be back,' I said. 'Stay near the opening.'
I unlooped the tether on her left from the hobbling log. She watched me, frightened. Teh other end was still tied tightly on her right ankle. I then went to the other end of the pit, where the smaller opening was, and uncoiled the line which lay there, formerly atop the hobbling log.
'What do we do now?' she asked.
'Wait,' I said.
She lay downin the pit, making herself as low, and small as possible.
We did not wait long.
We heard a sudden, striking, thudding sound. It was almost as though half of a kaiila had been suddenly dropped to the earth. It was a sound which, when one has once heard it, one is not likely to mistake it for another. The vibrations were felt through the walls of the pit.
'It is here,' I said.
The girl, looking up, suddenly screamed with fear. A large, bright, round eye peered through the opening in the ceiling of the pit.
A beak, yellowish, some two feet in length, scimitarlike, poked into the pit.
It withdrew.
We heard a taloned foot cutting at the sod and poles over our head.
'We are safe here!' cried the girl.
'No,' I said.
The beak agian entered the pit and pushed downward. It poked against the girl's body. She screamed. It snapped at her and she shrank back, to the opposite end of the pit, covering her head, screaming. This excited the predator. Half of its head thrust into the pit, after her. Then it screamed, too, a shril scream, and, withdrawing its head, it began to cut and tear at the roof of the pit. I saw a talon emerge through the sod roof of the pit. I saw a talon emerge though the sod roof. I saw poles lifting and splintering.
In this moment, its attention fastened on the girl, on tearing away the obstacle which lay between him and her. I thrust through the smaller opening and, with a swirl of rope and two hitches, fastened the hoggling log on its right leg. I then screamed and thrust at it, and it spun about. I fended its beak away with my forearm.
'Well done!' cried Cuwignaka, sprining up from the grass. He interposed himself, and a lance, between me and the predator. The beak snapped the lance off short. Hci, swinging ropes, crying out, emerged, too, from the nearby grass. Cuwignaka and I backed off. The bird, smiting its wings, darted towards us but, screaming, fell short on its belly in the grass, feathers flying about. It only then realized it was impeded. It turned about, wildly, the leg, and rope, turning under him. Cuwignaka struck it on the beak with the shaft of the lance, distracting it. Hci, running up, struck it with the coils of rope in his hand. The bird, then, rising up, wings beating, took flight, jerking the hobbling log from the pit, tearing it up through the sod roof and poles.
'Strong! Strong! Marvelous!' cried Cuwignaka.
He had not understood the strength of such a creature.
Struggling, wings beating, screaming, the bird, lunging and falling, and climbing again, fought the weight. It struggled to perhaps a hundred feet in the air and then, bit by bit, the log swinging, fighting, it began to lose altitude. Cuwignaka and Hci ran beneath it, in the grass. I wiped sweat from my forehead. I was elated.
I returned to the pit, its roof now half torn away. In one end of it the girl crouched. I leaped down into the pit beside her. 'On your belly,' I told her. I then pulled her right ankle, to which the tether was still tightly attached, high, up behind her. With some of the tether, close to the knot on her right ankle, I tied her hands together behind her back. I then looked down upon her, she now on her side, with her wrists tied behind her, fastened to her right ankle, pulled up, closely behind her. She was well secured. I then, with extra ropes taken from the pit, went to aid Cuwignaka and Hci.
Chapter 38
A SLAVE IS PUNISHED
'It is a splendid catch,' I said.
Ropes bound the beak of the bird tightly shut. It la on its side. Its two feet, too, were bound together. Ropes, as well, encircled its wings, binding them to its body. Already we ad put a girth rope about it, of the sort beneath which the Kinyanpi, in flight, inserted their knees.
It was now late afternoon.
We had transported the bird to this grove of trees on a travois, drawn by two kaiila. It was only a pasang or so from the pit, which we had rebuilt.
The bird struggled, and then lay still.
'A splendid catch,' I said.
'We must try again, tomorrow,' said cuwignaka.
'Yes,' I said.
We then turned about, and walked to another part of the grove. It was in this part of the grove that we had our kaiila tethered, and had made our camp.
There, near our things, stood my slave, who had once been the lofty Lady Mira, of Venna, an agent of Kurii.
I looked at her. She lowered her eyes.
'Fetch me a coiled rope,' I told her. 'And then get on all fours.'
She did so.
'You ran twice,' I told her.
'Forgive me, Master,' she said.
'Then once, frozen with fear, you needed to be dragged, perforce, into the pit.'
'Forgive me, Master,' she begged.
'I am not pleased,' I said.
'Forgive me, Master!' she begged.
Cuwignaka and Hci stood by while the slave was beaten. Then I cast aside the coiled ropes, to a place among my other things. She lay now at my feet, on her belly, shuddering and sobbing, clutching at the grass.
