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My rifle was at my hip at the ready. He was so close that I did not need to raise it
to my shoulder, having but to pull the trigger to send him into Kingdom Come
whenever I chose; but yet I hesitated. It was difficult to bring myself to take a
human life. I could feel no enmity toward this savage barbarian who acted
almost as wholly upon instinct as might a wild beast, and to the last moment I
was determined to seek some way to avoid what now seemed inevitable. Ajor
stood at my shoulder, her knife ready in her hand and a sneer on her lips at his
suggestion that he would take her with him.
Just as I thought I should have to fire, a chorus of screams broke from the
women beneath us. I saw the man halt and glance downward, and following his
example my eyes took in the panic and its cause. The women had, evidently,
been quitting the pool and slowly returning toward the caves, when they were
confronted by a monstrous cave-lion which stood directly between them and their
cliffs in the center of the narrow path that led down to the pool among the
tumbled rocks. Screaming, the women were rushing madly back to the pool.
"
"
It will do them no good," remarked the man, a trace of excitement in his voice.
It will do them no good, for the lion will wait until they come out and take as
many as he can carry away; and there is one there," he added, a trace of sadness
in his tone, "whom I hoped would soon follow me to the Kro-lu. Together have we
come up from the beginning." He raised his spear above his head and poised it
ready to hurl downward at the lion. "She is nearest to him," he muttered. "He
will get her and she will never come to me among the Kro-lu, or ever thereafter. It
is useless! No warrior lives who could hurl a weapon so great a distance."
But even as he spoke, I was leveling my rifle upon the great brute below; and as
he ceased speaking, I squeezed the trigger. My bullet must have struck to a hair
the point at which I had aimed, for it smashed the brute's spine back of his
shoulders and tore on through his heart, dropping him dead in his tracks. For a
moment the women were as terrified by the report of the rifle as they had been by
the menace of the lion; but when they saw that the loud noise had evidently
destroyed their enemy, they came creeping cautiously back to examine the
carcass.
The man, toward whom I had immediately turned after firing, lest he should
pursue his threatened attack, stood staring at me in amazement and admiration.
"
"
Why," he asked, "if you could do that, did you not kill me long before?"
I told you," I replied, "that I had no quarrel with you. I do not care to kill men
with whom I have no quarrel."
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