"Better hurry," he said."The things may be dangerous when one of 'em's been killed."
Nawputta murmured vaguely that he'd have the skeleton cleaned in a few minutes. He was normally no more insensitive to danger than the guide, but in the presence of this scientific wonder, a complete Man, the rest of the world had withdrawn itself into a small section of his mind.
Chujee, still peering into the forest, growled: "It's funny that Nguchoy didn't say anything to us about the Men. That is, unless he wanted us to be eaten by the things. And why should he want that? Say, isn't that pounding louder? I'll bet it's a Man pounding a hollow log for a signal. If Nguchoy wanted to get rid of us, he picked an ingenious method. He and his partner kill some of the Men, and we come along just when they've got nicely stirred up and are out for Jmu blood. Let's get out of here!"
Nawputta was finished at last. They packed the skin and skeleton of the Man, mounted, and rode back the way they had come, glancing nervously into the shadows around them. The pounding was louder.
They had gone a couple of miles and were beginning to relax, when something soared over their heads and buried itself quivering in the ground. It was a crude wooden spear. Chujee fired his rifle into the underbrush in the direction from which the spear had come. A faint rustle mocked him. The pounding continued.
The notch loomed high before them, though still several miles away. The timber was smaller here, and there was more brush. They had originally come along the river, and followed game trails up the side of the gorge at this point. They hesitated whether or not to go back the same way.
"I don't like to let them get above me," complained Nawputta.
"We'll have to," argued Chujee."The sides of the notch are too craggy; we'd never get the agoutis over it."
They started down the slope, on which the trees thinned out. A chorus of yells brought them up sharply. The hairless things were pouring out of the deep woods and racing toward them.
"The agoutis won't make it with those loads," snapped Chujee, and he flung himself off his mount.
Nawputta did likewise, and his rifle crashed almost as soon as the guide's. The echoes of their rapid fire made a deafening uproar in the gorge. Nawputta, as he fired and worked the lever of his gun, wondered what he'd do when the magazine was empty.
Then the Men were bounding back into the shelter of the woods, shrieking with fear. They vanished. Two of their number lay still, and a third thrashed about in a raspberry bush and screeched.
"I can't see him suffer," said Nawputta. He drew a bead on the Man's head and fired. The Man quieted, but from the depths of the forest came screams of rage.
Chujee said dryly, "They didn't interpret that as an act of mercy," as he remounted.
The agoutis were trembling. Nawputta noticed that he was shaking a bit himself. He had counted his shots, and knew before he started to reload that he had had just one shot left.
The yelping cries of the Men followed them as they headed into the notch, but the things didn't show themselves long enough for a shot.
"That was too close for comfort," said Nawputta in a low voice, not taking his eyes from the woods."Say, hasn't somebody invented a rifle whose recoil automatically reloads it, so that one can shoot it as fast as one pulls the trigger?"
Chujee grunted."Yeah, he was up in the Colony demonstrating it last year. I tried it out. It jammed regularly every other shot. Maybe they'll be practical some day, but for the present I'll stick to the good old lever action. I suppose you were thinking of what would have happened to us if the Men had kept on coming. I— Say, look!" He halted his animal."Look up yonder!"
Nawputta looked, and said: "Those boulders weren't piled up on top of the cliff when we came this way, were they?"
"That's right. When we get into the narrowest part of the notch, they'll roll them down on us. They'll be protected from our guns by the bulge of the cliff. There's no pathway on the other side of the river. We can't swim the animals because of the rapids, and even if we could, the river's so narrow that the rocks would bounce and hit us anyway."
Nawputta pondered."We'll have to get through that bottle neck somehow; it'll be dark in a couple of hours."
Both were silent for a while.
Chujee said: "There's something wrong about this whole business; Nguchoy and his partner, I mean. If we ever get out of this—"
Nawputta interrupted him: "Look! I could swim one agouti over here, and climb a tree on the other side. I could get a good view of the top of the cliffs. There's quite an open space there, and I could try to keep the Men away from the boulders with my gun, while you took the agoutis down through the notch. Then, if you can find a corresponding tree below the bottle neck, you could repeat the process while I followed you down."
"Right! I'll fire three shots when I'm ready for you."
Nawputta tethered his animal and hoisted himself up the big pine, his rifle held firmly in his tail. He found a place where he could rest the gun on a branch to sight, and waved to the guide, who set off at a trot down the narrow shelf along the churning waters.
Sure enough, the Men presently appeared on top of the cliff. They looked smaller over the sights of Nawputta's rifle than he had expected; too small to make practical targets as individuals even. He aimed into the thick of these dancing pink midges and fired twice. The crash of the rifle was flung back sharply from the south wall of the gorge. He couldn't see whether he had hit anything, but the spidery things disappeared.
Then he waited. The sun had long since disappeared behind the ridge, but a few slanting rays poked through the notch; insects were briefly visible as motes of light as they flew through these rays. Overhead a string of geese flapped southward.
When Nawputta heard three shots, he descended, swam his agouti back across the river, and headed downstream. The dark walls of the gorge towered almost vertically over him. Above the roar of the rapids he heard a shot, then another. The agouti flinched at the reports, but kept on. The shots continued. The Men were evidently determined not to be balked of their prey this time. Nawputta counted—seven—eight. The firing ceased, and the zoologist knew that his companion was reloading.
There was a rattle of loose rock. A boulder appeared over his head, swelled like a balloon, swished past him, and went plunk in the river beside him, throwing spray over him and his mount. He kicked the animal frantically and it bounded forward, nearly pitching its rider into the river at a turn.
Nawputta wondered desperately why Chujee hadn't begun shooting again. He looked up, and saw that the air over his head seemed to be full of boulders hanging suspended. They grew as he watched, and every one seemed headed straight for him. He bent low and urged the animal; he saw black water under him as the agouti cleared a recess in the trail with a bucking jump. He thought: "Why doesn't he shoot? But it's too late now."
The avalanche of rock struck the trail and the river behind him with a roar; one rock passed him so closely that he felt its wind. The agouti in its terror almost skidded off the trail. Then they were out in the sunlight again, and the animal's zigzag leaps settled into a smooth gallop.
Nawputta pulled up opposite Chujee's tree.
The guide was already climbing down with his rifle in his tail. He called: "Did you get hit? I thought you were a goner sure when the rock fall commenced. Got a twig caught in my breech while I was reloading."
Nawputta tried to call back reassurance, but found he couldn't make a sound.