This breath-taking young person was coming straight toward the very tree that sheltered him. As she drew nearer, he could make out her features more clearly, and he saw that the wide eyes were also brown, flecked with tiny bits of Dyta, the sun (or so he thought); her cheeks were high but not too prominent, her nose rather small but beautifully shaped. She walked gracefully, shoulders back, her head lifted proudly, an almost saucy tilt to her chin.
She passed beneath him and went on into the forest. Tharn came down quickly and set out to follow. Why he did so was not considered; some strange force drew him on. Less than twenty feet separated them, now; but so guarded were his movements that the girl was not aware of being trailed.
And now a small treeless glade stopped the stalker. Not daring to follow further, he watched her take an empty gourd from its hiding place in a clump of grasses and set about filling it with rich, red fruit from a cluster of low bushes.
Tharn watched her intently from behind the bole of a mighty tree. His eyes feasted on the matchless beauty of her face and form. Forgotten completely was the driving motive that had brought him this far from home. The flaming thirst for revenge was dead, quenched entirely by a flooding emotion, new to him but old as life itself.
A little later he saw that the girl's search for berries was bringing her close to a tree some fifty feet to his left. Swinging easily into the foliage overhead, he moved silently along the boughs until the strange princess was directly below.
And as he drew to a pause, Tarlok, the leopard, rose from the screen of leaves just beneath him and, crouching briefly, sprang without warning at the golden form fifteen feet below.
That second of hesitation on the part of the cat, saved the girl's life. Tharn, trained to think and to act in the same instant, was in mid-air as Tarlok's claws left the bark. And so, inches from that softly curved back, the beast was swept aside by the impact of a hundred and seventy pounds of muscular manhood.
Snarling its rage, the cat wheeled as it struck the earth, then pounced, almost in the same motion, at Tharn's half-kneeling figure. But, swift as was the movement, the man was quicker. Crouching under the arc of the hurtling body, the Cro-Magnard drove his long knife to the hilt in the white-furred belly. The force of the leap, plus the power behind that strong right arm, tore a long, deep gash, and the animal fell, screaming with pain and hate. Quickly he regained his feet and again threw himself at the two-legged creature in his path. But Tharn easily avoided the charge and vaulted into a nearby tree.
Blood streamed from the fatally wounded leopard as it turned to the man's leafy haven and attempted to scramble into the lower branches. The effort cost Tarlok his remaining strength, however, and he toppled heavily to earth. Once more he sought to regain his feet, only to collapse and move no more.