The hairy apelike savage crouching in bloody death behind the tree was indeed clad in flapping, red-dyed garments of skin. His skin, however, was as white beneath its matted covering of black hair as Orth's own. Yet the other had called the savage a redskin.
As Orth watched the tall young giant stamped his foot down on the fallen warrior's middle, shook the long chestnut hair out of his handsome brown face, and opening his mouth let out a prolonged hideous screech. As he did so his fists hammered drumlike on his distended chest.
From the distance a hideous snarling and trumpeting answered the ear-splitting sound. The man grinned at Orth and nodded toward the forest. He stepped down and held up two fingers.
"Vello," he said, continuing to make the V sign that first saw birth in the Second World War. "Me, I am Dun Horgan. Horgan of the wilderness. Those are my friends you hear, the hairy apes of Afri County."
Orth held out his hand. "Shake," he said, "Horgan. I'm named Orth. I hail from Meadville in Pennsylvania."
"Pennsylvania over that way," and Horgan pointed, "but no village that name. Maybe small?"
Orth nodded. "Small," he agreed wryly. After three million years he wondered that the states retained their original names.
Horgan reached down to jerk an intricately woven necklace of hair, from which depended a crudely carved locket of bone, from the fallen savage's neck.
"Scalp locket is worth fifteen bits bounty," he said offering it to Orth. "It is yours."
Orth shook his head. "No, you keep it. I'll trade it for some food and a bed." He eyed the other thoughtfully.