At length, in the vague twilight, she found herself passing a side-grotto filled with an enormous pile of split and broken bones. At the base of this gruesome mound, crunching one of the bones with noisy gusto, crouched a half-grown wolf; but the creature did not deign to give her so much as the greeting of a growl; and she continued around still another turn, and entered an enormous chamber illumined by the sunlight that shone in through a slit in the roof.
At one corner of this gallery, bent industriously above a mass of broken and denuded tree branches, squatted the slim, short figure of a man.
Disturbed by the sound of an intrusion, he looked up with a startled expression.
"Yonyo!" he cried, springing to his feet with every evidence of joy.
"Ru!" she returned, and came to him, and let him fold his arms about her.
"Why were you away so long?" he demanded, reproachfully, as he released her. "The sun has gone down, and then gone down again, Yonyo, and the spirits of darkness have twice taken the world, since you were here before. And last night—it must have been in a dream—I thought I heard terrible screams and howlings, as of beasts that fight. Why did you not come to tell me what befell? There must have been evil winds abroad in the dark."
"There were evil winds abroad," she assured him. "Our men all went down to fight the beast-people. And the evil winds blew against us, and many of our men were lost."
Surprised and dismayed, Ru stood staring resentfully at her. "Why did you not tell me?" he burst forth. "Why did you not tell me, so that I might go down with my brothers to fight the beast-men?"
But Yonyo merely shrugged in disdain. "I was not silly enough to tell you. It would have done no good. Grumgra is very strong. He would have killed you with his club before you could throw one stone at the beast-man. You know how you have hidden here ever since Grumgra chased you. If he learned where you are, you would not live to see the sun go down again. I alone have found out where you are, for did I not follow you after Grumgra gave up the chase, and did you not show me where you were coming to live?"
"I showed only you, Smiling-Eyed! And I shall show only you until the gods make me as strong as Grumgra!" vowed Ru, hopefully eying the mass of leafless branches at which he had been working.