At last came the morning for departure. Rising with the sun, Waldo
took his morning "tub" in the cold spring that rose a few yards from
his cave, then he got out the razor that the sailor had given him, and
after scraping off his scanty, yellow beard, hacked his tawny hair
until it no longer fell about his shoulders and in his eyes.
Then he gathered up his weapons, rolled the boulders before the
entrance to his cave, and turning his back upon his rough home set
off down the little stream toward the distant valley where it wound
through the forest along the face of the cliffs to Flatfoot and Korth.
As he stepped lightly along the hazardous trail, leaping from ledge
to ledge in the descent of the many sheer drops over which the stream
fell, he might have been a reincarnation of some primeval hunter from
whose savage loins had sprung the warriors and the strong men of a
world.
The tall, well-muscled, brown body; the clear, bright eyes; the
high-held head; the sword, the spear, the shield were all a far cry
from the weak and futile thing that had lain groveling in the sand upon
the beach, sweating and shrieking in terror six short months before.
And yet it was the same.
What one good but mistaken woman had smothered another had brought out,
and the result of the influence of both was a much finer specimen of
manhood than either might have evolved alone.
In the afternoon of the third day Waldo came to the forest opposite the
cliffs where lay the home of Nadara. Cautiously he stole from tree to
tree until he could look out unseen upon the honeycombed face of the
lofty escarpment.
All was lifeless and deserted. The cave mouths looked out upon the
valley, sad and lonely. There was no sign of life in any direction as
far as Waldo could see.
Coming from the forest he crossed the clearing and approached the
cliffs. His eye, now become alert in woodcraft, detected the young
grass growing in what had once been well-beaten trails. He needed no
further evidence to assure him that the caves were deserted, and had
been for some time.
One by one he entered and explored several of the cliff dwellings. All
gave the same mute corroboration of what was everywhere apparent--the
village had been evacuated without haste in an orderly manner.
Everything of value had been removed--only a few broken utensils
remaining as indication that it had ever constituted human habitation.
Waldo was utterly confounded. He had not the remotest idea in which
direction to search. During the balance of the afternoon he wandered
along the various ledges, entering first one cave and then another.
He wondered which had been Nadara's. He tried to imagine her life among
these crude, primitive surroundings; among the beast-like men and women
who were her people. She did not seem to harmonize with either. He was
convinced that she was more out of place here than Flatfoot would have
been in a Back Bay drawing-room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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