Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/174

 will be more of us to meet the bad men, should they come, and kill them.”

When Big Fist heard that Flatfoot was dead and by the hand of this stranger he pined less to measure his strength with that of the newcomer. He saw the knothole that the other offered, and promptly he sought to crawl through it, but with honor.

“Very well,” he said, “I shall not kill you—you need not be afraid. But you must know that I am king, and do as I say that you shall do.”

“‘Afraid,’” Thandar laughed. “You may be king,” he said, “but as for doing what you say—” and again he laughed.

It was a very different Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones from the thing that the sea had spewed up twelve months before.