Yes, it would be good fun to let them go on, but Yorgh could not think of a quick excuse to separate Puko from the band. The boy was his favorite, perhaps because he so admired Yorgh's feats of fun and strength, or perhaps because his brown eyes so resembled those of his older sister.
"Well, truthfully," said Yorgh, "having only a knife in my belt, I broke off a branch and yelled aloud to scare the slinking thing. I distinctly heard it run off up the creek."
Some stared at him; other glanced sidelong at each other.
Yorgh grinned good-naturedly, until he saw Tefior's scowl.
"Well," growled the chief, "I think we are too late to catch whatever it was, much as I would have liked to!"
Yorgh widened his eyes to their most innocent expression at the pointed emphasis of the last phrase.
"You, Puko!" added Tefior. "Run back to camp ahead of us and find the fathers of those silly wenches. Tell them I said two or three are to go back with the girls to get the wash, and to smack their bottoms for going so far without even small bows!"
The tramp back to camp was made in silence, save for subdued snickering at the rear of the file, where Kwint and others whispered of the winter camp. The Sea People there still told stories of sea monsters, remembering the great, black, slippery thing that had been shot full of arrows and hauled up on the river bank before it was seen to be a kromp skin mounted on a frame of boughs. No one had admitted creating the "monster," but Kwint thought he knew the maker.
Despite Tefior's disapproving glare when Yorgh appeared before the chief's tent at suppertime, the customs of hospitality suffered no greater breach than that the tribal leader stamped off to inspect the picket line of wollies below the camp immediately after finishing his bowl of stew. Yorgh allowed Puko to shame Vaneen into offering a fourth helping, on grounds that he had not eaten during his desperate trek through the burning sands. He watched her move about the fire.