Yorgh ducked his head lower and wailed again. For good measure, he added a few guttural coughs, as if the animal had scented game. The splashing resumed for a second amid low cries of alarm, then was replaced by the hasty pat-pat-pat of bare feet along the bank. Yorgh peered after the wetly gleaming figures, and doubled up with one hand firmly across his mouth.
Taking time only to refill his water-skin, he followed the trail along the creek at a good pace. Just as he sighted the outlines of tents through the thinning trees, a handful of hunters ran pell-mell up the trail toward him.
"Hold! What's this?" snapped Chief Tefior, raising his spear to halt those trotting behind him. His gray-streaked beard bristled as he eyed Yorgh suspiciously.
"Yorgh, your best hunter," answered Yorgh, casting his eyes modestly downward. "I would have returned last night, had not my wolly run off in a sandstorm."
"About you, I do not worry!" retorted Tefior, fingering the haft of his spear. "The girls just ran into camp shrieking that a ponadu was stalking the woods."
"Panting, wide-eyed, and in all the glory of their rather damp tresses," added a dark young bowman named Kwint, hiding a grin behind his hand as he examined Yorgh's innocent features.
"I thought I heard something," admitted the latter.
"Come then, Father!" half-grown Puko urked. "You'll help, won't you, Yorgh? Here, take my spear!"
Yorgh was half-inclined to let them go. He liked the sort of joke that brewed a while, gaining savor, like the time last spring when he had the luck to knock a ponadu unconscious with the butt of his broken spear. He still dreamed of having another such inspiration as that which impelled him to tie a dead log to the creature's hind legs, and then lead a group of young hunters into that part of the woods on the way to their nightly courting.
They had been enraged at spending half the night up trees, not daring to venture down in the dark with only their bronze knives. But they had been unable to prove that Yorgh had done anything worse than run faster than they, and he had enjoyed a unique evening being wined and fed and listened to with respect due the only man present, while the others waited for the disgruntled beast to free itself and slink unhappily off.