Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/219

 For a long distance he carried her, his little pig eyes searching and straining to right and left into the black night for the first sign of savage beast. The half atrophied muscles of his little ears, still responding to an almost dead instinct, strove to prick those misshapen members forward that they might catch the first crackling of dead leaves beneath the padded paw of the fanged night prowlers.

But the wood seemed dead. No living creature appeared to thwart the beast-man’s evil intent. Far behind him Thandar slept. Thurg grinned.

The moon broke through the clouds, splotching the ground all silver green beneath the forest trees. Nadara awoke from her swoon. They were in a little open glade. Instantly she recalled the happenings that had immediately preceded her unconsciousness. In the moonlight she recognized Thurg. He was smirking horribly down into her upturned face.

Thandar had often talked with her of religion. He had taught her of his God, and now the girl thanked Him that Thurg was still too low in the scale of evolution to have learned to kiss. To have had that matted beard, those flabby, pendulous lips pressed to hers! It was too horrible—she closed her eyes in disgust.

Thurg lowered her to her feet. With one hand