Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/50

 “Yes—yes,” cried Waldo. “Yes, that is it—panthers bore me now.”

“Oh!” The girl clasped her hands in ecstasy. “How many have you slain?”

“Er—why, let me see,” the young man blundered. “As a matter of fact, I never kept any record of the panthers I killed.”

Waldo was becoming frantic. He had never lied before in all his life. He hated a lie and loathed a liar. He wondered why he had lied now.

Surely it were nothing to boast of to have butchered one of God’s creatures—and as for claiming to have killed so many that he could not recall the number, it was little short of horrible. Yet he became conscious of a poignant regret that he had not killed a thousand panthers, and preserved all the pelts as evidence of his valor.

The panther still regarded them from the safety of the farther shore. The girl drew quite close to Waldo in the instinctive plea for protection that belongs to her sex. She laid a timid hand upon his skinny arm and raised her great, trusting eyes to his face in reverent adoration.

“How do you kill them?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

Then it was that Waldo determined to make a clean breast of it, and admit that he never before had seen a live panther. But as he opened his