He threw his arms around the helpless woman and swung her from him with rage. The torrent of his indignation was not assuaged by the sad picture of her fall upon the stony ground. He stood over her and taunted her helplessness, swore she should be his, that Ogga would not return, that he would carry her to the eyrie of the horse hunters, that the Medicine Men would help him, that her life should no longer be by the side of the Great Water Spirit. And then the tempestuous and fickle creature, in an outburst of wailing love, knelt by Lhatto, raised her head and besought her to think well of him; he would make her his wife, he would treat her well, he loved her, he would bring her birds and wild animals, and train horses for her, he would make her beautiful with flowers and plumes, he would show her the stars in the sky, and tell her where the fish lived, she should forget Ogga, Ogga had gone away, he had forgotten her, Ogga was dead, Ogga wanted him, Lagk, to take her to his home.
His supplications became piteous and cringing. The wild man, touched with the deathless passion which no art of modern affectation or sycophancy can disguise or control, was in a paroxysm of despair. He laid his head on Lhatto’s bound arm and implored her to be kind to him. And Lhatto still was mute. His anger was rekindled. He raised her roughly and carried her like a log to the horse. He said nothing, but strapped her Mazeppa-like to the horse’s back. He was even tender, placing soft skins between her and the animal. His vagaries of temper, the illicit madness of his first thoughts had been succeeded by stolid determination, and he made haste to vanish with his captive from their little camp.
The equipment with which he left it was slight enough. A lasso hung around his neck, a few knives of stone were stuck in his belt, and with nothing else he led the horse, carrying the still motionless Lhatto, from the upland, and began the toilsome descent to the lowland, trusting to his own sense of direction and the accidents of topography, to find his way back to the canyon country, but, above all, solicitous, that by means of his tortuous advance, he might escape pursuit. It required some skill to bring on the horse without accident or injury to its burden, but Lagk was both skillful and thoughtful, and slowly the two threaded a devious path, while Ogga hunted the strange new beast which Lagk had urged him to capture.
CHAPTER VII.
The Sloth.
When Ogga left Lagk, he crossed the uplands with rapid strides. His hunter’s keen desire and ambition had been roused by the strange report which Lagk had made to him. Lagk had told him of a singular and monstrous beast which he had seen, almost casually, as the three travelers made their way up to the mountain ridge. In one of his rambling excursions he had entered a savannah-like level, which appeared to be a southern extension of the horse valley, where Ogga and Lhatto had witnessed the strange devastation of the equine host. Here he had been arrested by a squeaking grunt, and tracing the curious interruption, had detected in a grove of ash trees, assembled near a depressed and wet area of heavy grass, a new and formidable creature. It had a covering of tawny hair, it was standing on its hind feet, and was dragging down with its huge front hands the pendant branches. Lagk had not dared to approach it closer; its novel and whimsical homeliness had dismayed him. He had concealed his discovery until the episode of Ogga’s and Lhatto’s love duet suggested its useful interjection as a device for securing Ogga’s absence.
It was this anomalous and new animal wonder that Ogga was now in search of. Suspicion of Lagk’s intentions, suspicion of his truthfulness, at first deterred Ogga, but Lagk’s asseverations became so earnest, and the picture he drew was so inexplicable that Ogga felt drawn to the eccentric chase by curiosity alone.
He had crossed the open field and found its further end cut by a landslide which had scoured a broad concavity down the side of the mountain, heaping up at the limit of its denudation the accumulated earth into a huge mound, promiscuously mixed with projecting boughs and trunks and mangled roots of trees and with fragments of rock. The erosion formed a convenient line of descent for about half a mile. Ogga slipped down the irregular and smooth surfaces and reached the debris at its foot. Up that he ascended a short way, as far as its annoying entanglement of sticks and stones allowed, and there he could see far below him an opening in the unbroken wilderness which might be interpreted as the spot mentioned by Lagk.