She had led her pursuers over a long and difficult line, hoping to throw them out, but Gow-Loo, though less fleet than she, was not to be shaken off; in fact he had pressed her hard and fired thrice as the leading greyhound fires at his hare, whilst the others, running to point, had headed-off her attempts at doubling. The men were in training, knew the country, and thought to wear her down by sprinting in succession. Again, and yet again, had her turn of speed been the saving of her.
HE THREW SHORT WITH A GASP
But she was getting a long way down the glen and the daylight held. It would see her out unless she changed her tactics. In a little while she would be out of her country and (for aught that she knew) in theirs, then the game would be up.
So, tightening her throat, she had made up her mind, and doubled right-handedly close across the line of Low-Mah, whom she believed she had hurt, taking the risk of his assegai at short range. Her judgment justified itself when the hunter threw short with a gasp and she slipped past him and made her point, a salient rock-face that she knew, steep, narrow, where she could neither be overlooked nor outflanked. There, at more than a very tall spruce-tree's height from the last stones of the scree below her, she had chosen her ledge and stood at bay, regulating her breath and schooling her swimming head for the final tussle.
"I think those rocks were not wholly new ground to thee," suggested the listener.
"I had been up there before—three years back, when I was a girl. Our old men call them 'The Two Fangs,' but the tribe has re-named them; they are 'The Hungry Boys' since—since something happened there which is not good to speak about," she shot a glance over her shoulder to make sure that The Dead were not listening. "Three of our unproved lads, two half-growns and a child, whilst berrying, were driven up that cleft by a wolf. They were not found in time. The two boys must have eaten the little one. Then—who knows?—perhaps they fought with knives. They were found up there, dead,—with the bones."
"Ugh! not a clean place after dark. Surely your children went wide of it in all lights. How then—?"