"It is my right," she declared, "as a priestess. If I go not, the journey is without favor in the sight of Jarg."
"But—" argued Steve.
"Moreover," insisted the girl, "one must go to serve as interpreter and counsel. You Slumberers know not the ways of those through whose territory you must pass."
"Just the same—" fumed Steve.
"Furthermore," concluded Beth firmly, "I have chosen you as my mate. And it is written that a Woman must stand by her Man at all times, nor desert him in hour of peril."
There was no answer to that. So, completely floored and none too gracefully, Steve surrendered.
But however little he may have desired her presence, now that she was here, Steve Duane was forced to concede that her aid had proven invaluable. It was she who, by reading of the stars, had reoriented them after an evening of blundering aimlessly through a trackless forest. It was she who stalled the attack of a small band of Rovers, addressing the ruler of these unattached Women in their own slurred dialect and bidding her take her followers to the Mother at Fautnox. It was she, also, who snared wild hares in seines of hair and cotton, dug scrawny taters from furrowless fields, and prepared meals for them all. For these, she explained, were the rightful duties of a priestess.
Only in one respect did her company prove more of an embarrassment than a pleasure: the persistence with which she attached herself to him. This was not so bad in the daytime. As a matter of fact, it was good to tramp through leafy dells with the keen, live scent of summer vibrant in your nostrils, watching the sudden scamperings of curious chipmunks startled by your passage, and the arrow-flight of swift-flushing birds; hearing the muted murmur of river waters rushing pell-mell to a distant sea as it had in countless ages past and would for endless aeons; feeling the soft warmth of a shoulder firm against your own in carefree comradeship. But it was—well, awkward to say the least, thought Steve, to seek your blanket at night and find it already occupied by one who looked up at you with drowsy expectancy, and damned uncomfortable to spend the night huddled by the glowing embers of a campfire.
Chuck heard Steve's grumbling with a stare of blank astonishment.