Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/172

 master; to do whatever would bring Thandar the greatest happiness.

The return to the dwellings of Nadara’s people occupied three never-to-be-forgotten days.

How different this journey by comparison with that of a year since, when the cave girl had been leading the terror-stricken Waldo Emerson in flight from the bad men toward, to him, an equally horrible fate at the hands of Korth and Flatfoot!

Then the forest glades echoed to the pads of fierce beasts and the stealthy passage of naked, human horrors. No twig snapped that did not portend instant and terrifying death.

Now Korth and Flatfoot were dead at the hands of the metamorphosed Waldo. The racking cough was gone. He had encountered the bad men and others like them and come away with honors. Even Nagoola, the sleek, black devil-cat of the hideous nights, no longer sent the slightest tremor through the rehabilitated nerves.

Did not Thandar wear Nagoola’s pelt about his shoulder and loins—a pelt that he had taken in hand to hand encounter with the dread beast?

Slowly they walked beneath the shade of giant trees, beside pleasant streams, or, again, across open valleys where the grass grew knee high and countless, perfumed wild flowers opened a pathway before their naked feet.