"Hell, I don't know. Sounds like a lot of dogs."
He scratched his cheek. "Reinforcements," he said, and whistled a fluting call. Then he made a curious motion with his right hand. I knew that motion as well as his followers did. We stepped quietly in among the thick underbrush and, squatting down, waited.
CHAPTER X
They came along the pathway, holding in the leashed dogs, for evidently they did not trust to their own powers to keep up with free-running beasts. There were eight or ten men, with as many hounds. These were making a fearful racket. They nosed us and before they got abreast of us were poking wildly aside from the safety of the tussocked path of solid earth. The men yelled at each other and made the usual human amount of unnecessary uproar.
How I scorned and despised them!
One carried a grotesque-looking apparatus on his back which I supposed to be a kind of enlarged walkie-talkie. The germ of a plan grew. I marked this fellow for my own.
When they drew opposite I charged out of hiding with a savage bellow. The dogs, not mankillers, were baffled for a moment, and the men were taken wholly by surprise. I gripped the front of the walkie-talkie operator's jacket and hit him in the belly; with the new adroitness lent my muscles by race memory, the punch had the force of a giraffe's kick. Ignoring the other men, I dragged him off to the side and laid him on his face among the lush weeds.
Others of the Old Companions were fighting with them now. None of us had weapons—indeed, they would only have hampered us and blunted our murder-lust. I heard the futile spat of a revolver over the barking and yelling. Two men came at me, drawing their guns. I reached out, laughing, and took them by the necks and smashed their heads together. My hands and forearms were spattered with blood and brains. I let the corpses fall and looked for other adversaries.
They were all dead, even the dogs. Seven of my brothers watched me expectantly, including the yellow-haired chief. I went over to the man whom I had hit in the belly.