Skag was now essentially absorbed. It couldn't be a mistake. The monkeys knew. He himself knew from days and nights with the big cats. There was no cough just like that. It was in a different direction from before, back toward the city this time, but as before, muffled and close down to the riverbed. . . . Nothing of the cub left in that cough; neither was there hurry or hunger or any particular rage or fear. A big beast finishing a sleep, down in some sandy niche by the river; a solitary beast full of years, a bit drowsy just this moment, and in no particular hurry to take up the hunt. Such was the picture that came to Skag with a keen kind of enjoyment. The thrill had lifted his misery for a minute. This was something to cope with. It took away the heart-breaking sense of inadequacy.
It wasn't the thrill of a hunt that animated Skag. The fact is, he hadn't even a six-shooter along. This was the closeness of the real thing again—the deep joy, perhaps, of testing outside of cages once more, the power that had never failed. And just now along the river and beyond the place where the cough came from—Carlin was coming!
The last of the monkeys had flicked away. Skag arose and held his hand high, palm toward her. She beckoned, but still came forward. Skag moved without haste, but rapidly. All the beauty and wonder of Carlin was the same; it lived in his heart, integrate and unparalleled as ever, but some power had come to him from the cough of the tiger. Around all the fear, even for her life, was the one splendid thing—that she had followed him into the monkey glen.
She was nearing the place where the cough had come from, yet Skag did not run. A second time he held up his hand, palm outward, but she still came forward laughing.
"You ran from me?"
"I did not think of you coming so far—to-day."
Skag had stepped between her and the river, turning her toward the city, but Carlin drew back.
"I have come so far. I want to go to our—to the monkey glen!"
She was watching him strangely. Skag understood something that moment: that he might know of Carlin's delight through her eyes, of all joy and good that he might bring, but that he should never know from her eyes if he brought hurt. Skag put this back into the deep place of his mind.
"All right. We'll go back," he said. "They were here—the whole troupe. Just a minute ago, they swung away—"