McNeil sat up. "Done because they were hunting us?"
"Might well be. On the other hand, the affair may have been just one of general precaution."
"The ghosts did it?" Ross wanted to know.
"I asked that. No, it seems that strange tribesmen overran it at night."
"At night?" McNeil whistled.
"Just so." Ashe's tone was dry. "The tribes do not fight that way. Either someone slipped up in his briefing, or the Reds are overconfident and don't care about the rules. But it was the work of tribesmen, or their counterfeits. There is also a nasty rumor speeding about that the ghosts do not relish traders and that they might protest intrusions of such with penalties all around——"
"Like the Wrath of Lurgha," supplied Ross.
"There is a certain repetition in this which suggests a lot to the suspicious mind," Ashe agreed.
"I'd say no more hunting expeditions for the present," McNeil said. "It is too easy to mistake a friend for a deer and weep over his grave afterward."
"That is a thought which entered my mind several times this afternoon," Ashe agreed. "These people are deceptively simple on the surface, but their minds do not work along the same patterns as ours. We try to outwit them, but it takes only one slip to make it fatal. In the meantime, I think we'd better make this place a little more snug, and it might be well to post sentries as unobtrusively as possible."