Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/63

 high meadow on the main ridge of Sani'gilagi close to the summit. Before him opened a small grassy plateau, almost circular in shape. On three sides rocks and trees enclosed the place; but to the south the mountainside dropped almost sheer, forming the profoundest precipice of the Cowees. In this lofty pasture poised upon the brink of the vast cliff, Awi Agwa expected to find his cows; and there he found them.

They were there, all eight of them, five of them lying down near the middle of the meadow, the others cropping the grass nearby. Awi Agwa wasted only one glance upon them. At the farther edge of the plateau, on the very verge of the precipice, a wide-antlered bull elk stood gazing out over the panorama of purple hills and valleys spread below him.

Two hundred yards down the wooded western slope Almayne, following in his quarry's tracks, heard Awi Agwa's furious bugling challenge. The elk cows heard it and raised their heads eagerly, their big ears pricked forward. The stalwart bull that was now master of the herd—the usurper that stood in Awi Agwa's look-out place on the precipice's brow—heard it and whirled to meet the danger.

What he saw chilled his blood. The king had come back, the giant elk whose herd he had stolen,