Waldo was undecided whether to wait for the encounter where he was or hasten on in an effort to overtake Nadara, that she might not escape him entirely. He knew that he stood a good chance of being killed in the conflict, and he also knew that were he victorious it might easily be at such a terrible price that he would be physically incapable of continuing his search for the girl for many days.
As he meditated his eyes wandered back and forth across the landscape before him searching for Nadara.
To his right lay, at a little distance, a level plain which stretched to the foot of low-lying cliffs at the valley's southern rim, some three or four miles distant. In this direction his view was almost unobstructed, but it was not in the direction of the girl's flight, so that it was but by accident that Waldo's eyes swept casually across the peaceful scene which would, at another time, have chained his attention with its quiet and alluring beauty.
It was as he swept a backward glance in the direction of Flatfoot that his eye was arrested by the hint of something far out across the valley, a little behind his own position.
To the Waldo of a few months previous it would not have been visible, but the new woodcraft of the man scented the abnormal in the vague suggestion of movement out among the long-waving grasses of the plain.
And now, with every sense alert and riveted upon the spot, he was quick to perceive that it was an animal moving slowly toward the cliffs at the upper end of the valley. Presently a little rise of ground, less thickly grassed, brought the creature into full view for an instant; but in that instant Waldo saw that the thing he watched was a woman.
As he turned to hurry after her he saw Flatfoot top another hill a half mile nearer than he had before been, and as the cave man came into view he turned his eyes in the direction that Waldo had been looking. A second later and he had abandoned the pursuit of Waldo and was running rapidly toward the woman.
Nadara had apparently circled back once more, this time from the sea, and coming up the valley had passed Waldo and come opposite Flatfoot before either of them had discovered her. The young man gave a little cry of alarm as he realized that the cave man was nearer to the girl than he—by a good half mile, he judged, and so he put every ounce of his speed into the wild dash he made down the hill into a gully which led out upon the valley.
On and on he raced unable to see either Flatfoot or Nadara; hoping, ever hoping, that he would be the first to win to her side; for Nadara had told him of the atrocities that such a creature as Flatfoot might perpetrate upon a woman rather than permit her to escape him or fall into the hands of another.
Nadara, being up wind, caught neither the scent nor noise of the two who were racing madly toward her. The first knowledge she had that she was not alone in the valley was the sight of Flatfoot as he broke suddenly through a clump of tall grass not fifty paces from her.