Chapter II: Garram Finds Trouble

Garram had first been attracted to hunting by the thrill of the risk, by the pitting of skill against skill. He had now, for some time, given up the noisy, ineffectual hunts of the other youths of the tribe, who were led by that clumsy boaster, Menud.

Solo hunts with their greater risks but greater gains had become essential. Somehow, he knew he must prepare for the time when, on the death of Warok, his father, he would be the next candidate for chieftainship of the tribe of Hillmen. He would then be expected to offer great feasts of oxen and much beer brewed from the native corn. By exchanging with neighboring villages meat and skins from his game Garram had accumulated a hidden store of brass rods and rolls of native cloth, the currency of the country.

The young hunter was at work even before Kon arrived. With the point of his knife he slit the skin along chest and belly and up the inside of each leg. Fine tawny skin, verging on white on the underside, soft to the touch and in excellent condition. Had Kon been an ordinary village dog he would have sprung upon the game or run around barking in excitement. But careful training had made him as silent and undemonstrative as his master. Noise has no place in serious hunting.

The same careful training now showed in another way. As the huge dog stood waiting, Garram held out a fold of the skin which he had been working loose.

As he worked at the skinning, deftly and with no waste movement, Garram’s thought turned to the past, to those happenings which had made him train Kon by contraries so that he seemed the most disobedient dog in the village. He had trained him to come to heel when waved forward, and to rush forward when called to heel. So now, as they worked, an order to pull meant to let go, and “Let go” resulted in the dog’s digging in his paws and pulling the hide away while Garram’s knife eased it from the underlying tissue.

“_Let go!_” Garram ordered and Kon caught hold and began to pull, as the young hunter eased the skin loose with the knife point. Then another whisper: “_Pull!_” and, the need for assistance over, the huge jaws relaxed, and the dog sat back on his haunches again, waiting for the next order.

Twice before Garram had trained dogs in the ordinary way. The first was, perhaps, stolen by a stranger but the second, adopted as a stray and starving puppy, had almost reached Kon’s perfection of understanding when Menud, relying on his clumsy strength and his following of loutish village youths, had stepped in and appropriated him.

That was the last Garram had seen of his dog. Later he had been killed by a chance arrow in one of those hunting parties of yapping curs and still noisier half-grown men which Garram despised.

The boy’s face took on the hard outline and fixed expression of a grown man as, with recollection, anger rose within him. Some time surely would come a day of reckoning for this and many other wrongs he had endured at Menud’s hands.

Meanwhile the skin had come clear and was spread out on the ground, hair downward. The hunter was now occupied partly with knife, partly with hunting ax, dismembering the joints in the manner of a professional butcher. Kon, useless at this work, lay in the deeper shade some paces away, having a noisy but a most enjoyable time with a bone.

After a night and a day spent over the drying fire, Garram wrapped the meat, much reduced in weight and size, in the skin, and tied it with long slivers of supple bark torn from near-by trees. Even then it was a heavy load he carried in to a distant village, where he exposed it for sale beneath a shady tree in the market place.

Sale was slow and tedious. No native buys more meat than his personal needs for the day, and Kon, though asleep most of the time, looked so threatening on account of his huge size, that the meat was safe from a thieving villager or half-starved cur. Garram woke up from time to time just sufficiently to exchange a few words with his customers and effect a sale.

The chattering market was breaking up, and it was evening before the meat was all gone. The proceeds were stowed securely in the worn leather of Garram’s hunting bag. But the air was cooling now, and their seemingly slow trot covered the ground with surprising speed on their homeward journey. Refreshed by their long sleep they had reached the spot halfway up the hillside where, in a cave, Garram had his cache of riches, before the sun began to sink behind the Hills.

Above them but out of sight was the cluster of huts which was the principal village of the Hillmen. Here ruled Warok the Leopard, Garram’s father. Far below them the gray granite hillside dipped into the plain which stretched, far as the eye could see, toward the Great River of the east. From the height where Garram and Kon strode, the forest of the Plains looked like smooth-spread moss. Somewhere in this the boy and dog had made their successful hunt, but already the Plains lay in the shadow of the Hills, and nothing could be distinguished.

Now something more urgent than the view suddenly gripped Garram’s attention. Here a turned pebble, there a bent grass showed that someone had approached his cave. Cautiously the boy skirted the bush which hid the opening and entered. For perhaps a minute he remained out of sight. As he reappeared Kon greeted him with a wagging tail, then, at sight of the hunter’s face, was still. Someone, obviously no beast, had robbed the hiding place of all its wealth.

Garram stood thinking for a moment, balancing on one leg, the bare big toe of the other scratching ruminatively at an instep. Frowning a little, he rubbed one hand over his smooth-shaved head as if to aid thought.

“No one of our tribe would rob another of our tribe,” he informed Kon. The dog, gravely regarding, seemed to agree. “Yet who is it we have seen watching us from a distance? Several times. Who but Menud? Menud, _always_ Menud!”

After another visit to the cave to make sure that nothing remained, not a copper rod, not a stitch of cloth, the two started again on the long bare climb.

Here and there was a tuft of moss-like vegetation in the hollow of the rock. Less frequently a rod of green cactus forced its way up between boulders from some hidden pocket of soil far below. The bare granite was still hot from the all-day blaze, and the cooler evening breeze seemed painfully long in coming. Garram, with set and angry face, marched steadily upward. The dog was openly panting and lolling out his tongue as he toiled up the long ascent.

Then quickly Kon’s tongue was withdrawn, the panting ceased, and nervously he began to sniff the air. At first Garram did not notice his strange behavior. Kon was hanging back, sniffing uneasily, as though some danger threatened from the front. Then, tail between legs, he gallantly overcame his fear sufficiently to catch up with his young master.

Sickened by the loss of the profits of several years’ hard work, Garram had put out his hand to pull Kon’s ears, wanting to feel the touch of a sympathizer. But at the touch the dog, hackles up, pointed. They were facing a small cave in the side of the hill. Garram stopped.

Then, shifting the hunting ax from his shoulder, his face set with the grim killing urge, the boy went in.

THE CULPRIT