"And they all believed it of me?" said Yorgh despondently.
"Not all. Vaneen, I must say, tried to speak for you with others of us. But we were few to the numbers whose saddles you have greased or whose girls you have frightened out of swimming holes. Besides, we can't find the wollies."
"So they sent you to tell me not to come back?"
"Yes. I tried to bring my bow and a quiver of arrows for you when I saw how things were, but Tefior had them taken away."
Yorgh's face flushed, and he tugged angrily at his beard.
"I will go in and knock the old man's jaw loose from his head!" he growled. "Even if it does lose me all hope of his daughter. He has no right!"
In the end, however, Kwint dissuaded him. Yorgh was touched to find that his friend had brought his own cloak together with a bag of salt and a water-skin. They parted, and Yorgh trudged out to his fire again. On the way, he cut a tall, straight sapling by the brook, about two inches thick, which he trimmed with his knife as he walked.
III
After uncovering the embers and building up the fire again, he rigged sticks to roast as much meat as he thought he could carry, and carved the end of the pole to fit his copper spearhead. The Star had set and it was nearly dark by the time he got the metal tip fitted on and secured with the narrow strip of leather that had bound Kwint's cloak.