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V--THE FIGHT IN THE LION'S THICKET
Ugh-lomi lay still, his back against an alder, and his thigh was a red
mass terrible to see. No civilised man could have lived who had been so
sorely wounded, but Eudena got him thorns to close his wounds, and
squatted beside him day and night, smiting the flies from him with a fan
of reeds by day, and in the night threatening the hyænas with the first
axe in her hand; and in a little while he began to heal. It was high
summer, and there was no rain. Little food they had during the first two
days his wounds were open. In the low place where they hid were no roots
nor little beasts, and the stream, with its water-snails and fish, was
in the open a hundred yards away. She could not go abroad by day for
fear of the tribe, her brothers and sisters, nor by night for fear of
the beasts, both on his account and hers. So they shared the lion with
the vultures. But there was a trickle of water near by, and Eudena
brought him plenty in her hands.
Where Ugh-lomi lay was well hidden from the tribe by a thicket of
alders, and all fenced about with bulrushes and tall reeds. The dead
lion he had killed lay near his old lair on a place of trampled reeds
fifty yards away, in sight through the reed-stems, and the vultures
fought each other for the choicest pieces and kept the jackals off him.
Very soon a cloud of flies that looked like bees hung over him, and
Ugh-lomi could hear their humming. And when Ugh-lomi's flesh was already
healing--and it was not many days before that began--only a few bones of
the lion remained scattered and shining white.
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