Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/185

 The strong white teeth of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones closed upon it as naturally as though no countless ages had rolled their snail-like way between himself and the last of his progenitors to bury bloody fangs in the soft flesh of an antagonist.

Wasted ages! fleeing from the primitive and the brute toward the neoteric and the human—in a brief instant your labors are undone, the veneer of eons crumbles in the heat of some pristine passion revealing again naked and unashamed, the primitive and the brute.

Big Fist, white now from terror at impending death, struggled to be free. Thandar buried his teeth more deeply. There was a sudden rush of spurting blood that choked him. Big Fist relaxed, inert.

Thandar, drenched crimson, rose to his feet. The huge body on the ground before him floundered spasmodically once or twice as the life blood gushed from the severed jugular. The eyes rolled up and set, there was a final twitch and Big Fist was dead.

Thandar turned toward the circle of interested spectators. He singled out a burly quartet.

“Bear Big Fist to the cliff top,” he commanded. “When you return we shall choose a king.”

The men did as they were bid. They did not at all understand what Thandar meant by choosing a