In the afternoon of the third day Waldo came to the forest opposite the cliffs where lay the home of Nadara. Cautiously he stole from tree to tree until he could look out unseen upon the honeycombed face of the lofty escarpment.
All was lifeless and deserted. The cave mouths looked out upon the valley, sad and lonely. There was no sign of life in any direction as far as Waldo could see.
Coming from the forest he crossed the clearing and approached the cliffs. His eye, now become alert in woodcraft, detected the young grass growing in what had once been well-beaten trails. He needed no further evidence to assure him that the caves were deserted, and had been for some time.
One by one he entered and explored several of the cliff dwellings. All gave the same mute corroboration of what was everywhere apparent—the village had been evacuated without haste in an orderly manner. Everything of value had been removed—only a few broken utensils remaining as indication that it had ever constituted human habitation.
Waldo was utterly confounded. He had not the remotest idea in which direction to search. During the balance of the afternoon he wandered along the various ledges, entering first one cave and then another.
He wondered which had been Nadara’s. He tried to imagine her life among these crude, primitive surroundings; among the beast-like men and women who were her people. She did not seem to harmonize with either. He was convinced that she was more out of place here than Flatfoot would have been in a Back Bay drawing-room.
The more his mind dwelt upon her the sadder he became. He tried to convince himself that it was purely disappointment in being thwarted in his desire to thank her for her kindness to him, and demonstrate that her confidence in his prowess had not been misplaced; but always he discovered that his thoughts returned to Nadara rather than to the ostensible object of his adventure.
In short he began to realize, rather vaguely it is true, that he had come because he wanted to see the girl again; but why he wanted to see her he did not know.
That night he slept in one of the deserted caves, and the next morning set forth upon his quest for Nadara. For three days he searched the little valley, but without results. There was no sign of any other village within it.
Then he passed over into another valley to the north. For weeks he wandered hither and thither without being rewarded by even a sight of a human being.
Early one afternoon as he was topping a barrier in search of other valleys he came suddenly face to face with a great, hairy man. Both stopped—the hairy one glaring with his nasty little eyes.
“I can kill you,” growled the savage.
Waldo had no desire to fight—it was information he was searching. But he almost smiled at the ready greeting of the man. It was the same that Sag the Killer had accorded him that day he had gone down to the sea for the last time.
It came as readily and as glibly from these primitive men as “good morning” falls from the lips of the civilized races, yet among the latter he realized that it had its counterpart in the stony stares which Anglo Saxon strangers vouchsafe one another.
“I have no quarrel with you,” replied Waldo. “Let us be friends.”
“You are afraid,” taunted the hairy one.
Waldo pointed to his sable garment.
“Ask Nagoola,” he said.
The man looked at the trophy. There could be no mightier argument for a man’s valor than that. He came a step closer that he might scrutinize it more carefully.
“Full-grown and in perfect health,” he grunted to himself. “This is no worn and mangy hide peeled from the rotting carcass of one dead of sickness.
“How did you slay Nagoola?” he asked suddenly.
Waldo indicated his spear, then he drew his garment aside and pointed to the vivid, new-healed scars that striped his body.
“We met at dusk at a cliff-top. He was above, I below. When we reached the bottom of the ravine Nagoola was dead. But it was nothing for Thandar. I am Thandar.”
Waldo rightly suspected that a little bravado would make a good impression on the intellect primeval, nor was he mistaken.
“What do you here in my country?” asked the man, but his tone was less truculent than before.
“I am searching for Flatfoot and Korth—and Nadara,” said Waldo.
The other’s eyes narrowed.
“What would you of them?” he asked.
“Nadara was good to me—I would repay her.”
“But Flatfoot and Korth—what of them?” insisted the man.
“My business is with them. When I see them I shall transact it,” Waldo parried, for he had seen the cunning look in the man’s eyes and he did not like it. “Can you lead me to them?”
“I can tell you where they are, but I am not bound thither,” replied the man. “Three days toward the setting sun will bring you to the village of Flatfoot. There you will find Korth also—and Nadara,” and without further parley the savage turned and trotted toward the east.
VIII
Nadara Again
Waldo watched him out of sight, half minded to follow, for he was far from satisfied that the fellow had been entirely honest with him. Why he should have been otherwise Waldo could not imagine, but nevertheless there had been an indefinable suggestion of duplicity in the man’s behavior that had puzzled him.
However, Waldo took up his search toward the west, passing down from the hills into a deep valley, the bottom of which was overgrown by a thick tangle of tropical jungle.
He had forced his way through this for nearly half a mile when he came to the bank of a wide, slow-moving river. Its water was thick with sediment—not clean, sparkling, and inviting, as were the little mountain streams of
