When Tharn was satisfied the boy was reasonably at home among the trees, by night or by day, the second phase of his education was undertaken. He taught him to follow an animal's spoor along the dust of a game trail, he showed him how not only to classify each into its proper category but schooled him in such fine distinctions as judging an animal's height, weight and age from imprints left by its feet. Luckily Trakor was endowed with eyes and ears beyond the normal in keenness, and it was not long until he was able to give an excellent account of himself in woodcraft. And daily his strength was increasing under the unaccustomed tasks imposed on his muscles. Swinging by the hands through mile after mile of branches molded biceps and back muscles into bands of steel and endowed his fingers with a vise-like grip. His body, already deeply tanned, became burned to a dusky hue and he began to fill out into a specimen of perfect manhood. If Tharn chafed at the delay in his reunion with Dylara he did not display it and he continued the boy's education as though he had a lifetime to put into doing so. But Trakor knew what all this was costing the other, and while he never mentioned it, the determination grew to make it up to the cave lord. There was a bond between them now, based on mutual respect and admiration, plus a hero-worshiping desire on Trakor's part to become exactly like Tharn himself. Exactly half a moon from the day Tharn had snatched Trakor from under the noses of Gerdak's warriors, the boy made his first kill--a fat buck that had come down to a water hole to drink. He had dropped upon its back from the lower branches of a tree, as Tharn had taught him, and a knife thrust into its heart had brought it down. They sat side by side among the branches of a tree, gorging themselves on strips of raw flesh hacked from the side of Trakor's kill, while below them a pack of Jackals quarreled over the buck's remains. Sunset was only minutes away and already dusk was seeping into the forest aisles. Trakor was full of plans for the morrow. "When Dyta comes again," he was saying, "let us hunt out the lair of one of the great cats. I need a new loin cloth and I will cut one from the hide of Jalok or Tarlok--after I have slain him." Tharn hid his smile by sinking his gleaming teeth into the meat in his hands. "And how will you go about killing Tarlok?" he said casually. Trakor was surprised at the question. "The same way you slew Sadu the day we met. I will spring upon him from a tree and drive my knife into his heart." "You will spring into his teeth!" Tharn said grimly. "Let this be your most important lesson: Seek no fight with the great cats. A life time in the jungle is not training enough to pick a quarrel with any of them. There will be times when one of them will stalk you down and trap you; then, if you are lucky, you instead of Tarlok or Jalok or Sadu will come out alive." "But you have slain them!" Trakor argued.