Early one afternoon as he was topping a barrier in search of other valleys he came suddenly face to face with a great, hairy man. Both stopped—the hairy one glaring with his nasty little eyes.
"I can kill you," growled the savage.
Waldo had no desire to fight—it was information he was searching. But he almost smiled at the ready greeting of the man. It was the same that Sag the Killer had accorded him that day he had gone down to the sea for the last time.
It came as readily and as glibly from these primitive men as "good morning" falls from the lips of the civilized races, yet among the latter he realized that it had its counterpart in the stony stares which Anglo Saxon strangers vouchsafe one another.
"I have no quarrel with you," replied Waldo. "Let us be friends."
"You are afraid," taunted the hairy one.
Waldo pointed to his sable garment.
"Ask Nagoola," he said.
The man looked at the trophy. There could be no mightier argument for a man's valor than that. He came a step closer that he might scrutinize it more carefully.
"Full-grown and in perfect health," he grunted to himself. "This is no worn and mangy hide peeled from the rotting carcass of one dead of sickness.