"And why ask foolish questions?" broke in the puzzled Yonyo. "What are you thinking about, Ru? Why worry about such things?—Let the wise men settle them for us!"
Then, seeing that Ru remained sullen and silent, she bent down and plucked a weed from the wayside, and began to prick him prankishly upon the cheek. And when, annoyed, he tried to snatch the weed from her, she eluded his grasp and darted away with eyes that flashed a challenge to follow.
Without knowing why, except that she drew him on irresistibly, Ru let his club slip to the ground and dashed after her.
Strangely enough, she was not hard to overtake. In a very few seconds, he had come up to her, and had flung his arms about her in a crushing grip.
"Yonyo! Yonyo!" he murmured, with a boldness that surprised himself not less than her. "I want you! I want you! Oh, will you not be my woman, and share my fire with me, and—"
But, with the agility of a young leopard, she had struggled free of his embrace.
"I?—be your woman?" she demanded, standing proudly before him, her nostrils distended with anger. "Who are you—Ru the Sparrow-Hearted? Who are you? The man whose woman I am must be a real man! He must be a hunter of wolves!—not of earthworms! He must have slain his bears, his wild boars, his aurochs! And he must not be a dreamer of silly dreams!"
And, with a scornful laugh, Yonyo started away again.
Stung to fury, Ru raced after her once more—but he had gone scarcely ten paces when there came a warning rustling through the bushes ahead, and a massive hairy figure burst menacingly upon him.
It was Kuff the Bear-Hunter, who, even with his wounded shoulder, made a formidable antagonist. His little black eyes gleamed with evil wrath; his enormous thick lips were curled into a snarl that displayed the white glistening teeth; his great arms were outspread as if to mangle and destroy.