The overland trail was rough, and at night they had to take it slowly. Logan rode beside Hosteen.
“How far are we from this dump?”
“I don’t know-maybe a day. Depends upon the angle of the split when I joined the clansmen.”
“We’ll have to hole up in the day-“
That was what had been plaguing Hosteen as the hours crawled by. He searched all the latter part of the night for some feature of the countryside that could be adapted for a sun shelter, and he was not alone in that search, for Gorgol and Kavok rode with the width of the gorge between them, as if looking for some landmark.
There was a twittering call from Kavok, which, though they could not understand its import, brought the settlers to him. The young Norbie had dismounted and was down on one knee, running his hand along what looked to Hosteen to be undisturbed surface soil. Then he walked ahead, leading his horse, as if he followed some very faint trail.
They came away from the main cut they had taken into a side ravine, which slanted sharply upward. Kavok went down on his knees once more and dug into the side of the ravine with his long hunting knife, an occupation in which Gorgol speedily joined him, leaving Hosteen and Logan completely mystified.
Surra flowed down the side of the cut. She stopped short a yard or so away from the hole the two Norbies had already excavated, and nose wrinkled, she growled deep in her throat. Gorgol glanced over his shoulder, sighted the cat, and touched Kavok, nodding from Surra to the excavation. Hosteen caught the sudden surge of hunting interest from the feline mind. Beyond the flying knives, the busy hands of the natives, there was something alive, and that quarry was attracting all Surra’s feral love of the chase and the kill.
The earth under the scraping hands of the Norbies suddenly caved in, and both of them jerked back as a hole appeared growing wider as if they had laid bare an underground chasm. Their knives were still at ready, but not to dig, rather to defend themselves against attack.
Hosteen, warned by their attitude, drew his stunner. Gorgol flung out a hand in a gesture of waiting.
Surra, her belly fur brushing loose earth, the tip of her tail twitching with anticipation, crept forward with feline caution, her broad paws placed and then lifted in succession with the precision of the stalking huntress.
The Norbies gave her room, and Hosteen lost mind touch. Now the big cat was all hunting machine, not to be turned from the chase. She would answer to no order or suggestion while in this state. Her furred head, fox-sharp ears pricked, hung out over the opening. Then, as if she were melting into the loose sand and earth, she was gone, down into the unseen pit the Norbies had opened.
Gorgol squatted back on his haunches, and Hosteen caught at his shoulder in a tight and demanding grip.
“What lies below?” the Terran demanded.
“Djimbut pit!” Logan replied before Gorgol could raise a hand to answer.
“Djimbut?” Hosteen repeated, unable to connect the word with anything he knew. Then he remembered a pelt of close-curled black fur, as beautiful in its way as the frawn hides, which served as a wall hanging back in Quade’s Basin holding. But that had been the skin of a big beast-one close to Surra in size. Was the Terran cat about to attack such an animal in its own den?
He elbowed Gorgol aside and recklessly launched himself feet first into the hole, one hand holding the stunner close to his chest, the other fumbling for his atom torch as he slid into darkness.
Hosteen landed with a jar on a heap of sand and earth. He crouched there, listening for any sound, becoming more and more conscious of the coolness of this place. He even shivered slightly as he pushed the button of the torch and discovered that he was in the center of a hollowed area of some size.
As the Terran slued about on the sand pile, the narrow beam of the torch swept across a tunnel mouth large enough to give Surra passage or to accommodate a man on his hands and knees. Hosteen scrambled for that, again to crouch in its entrance listening.
Sounds came clearly enough-growl, rounding out into a spitting, yowling challenge that was the dune cat’s. Then, in answer, a queer kind of hum ending in a series of coughing grunts, broken by what could only be sounds of battle, enjoined and fiercely fought. Somewhere beyond, that tunnel must widen into a passage or chamber big enough to provide a field for a desperate struggle. Hosteen was head and shoulders into the passage when the coughing grunts deepened into a weird moaning, which was clipped off short. And into his mind came the vivid impression of Surra’s triumph, just as his ears caught a singsong rise and fall, which she uttered to proclaim her victory aloud.
Three yards, a little more, and he was in another chamber. Here the smell of blood combined with a thick, musky scent. His light beam caught Surra kneading with her forepaws a rent and bloodsticky heap of fur, her eyes yellow balls of nonhuman joy when the light caught them. She sat upright as Hosteen knelt beside her, tonguing herself where a long red scratch ran across her shoulder. But her battle hurts were few and ones she herself would tend.
The Terran flashed his light about to discover a series of openings in the walls, and his nostrils took in not only the hot blood scent and the odor of the dead animal but also other smells issuing from some of those holes. The place was large-whether the result of the djimbut’s burrowing or because the animal had located and used some natural fault in the earth, he was not sure. But he was able to get to his feet and stand with the roof of the chamber still well above his head. And the space, apart from the other openings, was at least ten by twenty feet, he estimated.
Surra gave a last lick to her wound scratch and then hunkered down to sniff along the battered body on the floor, growling and favoring the corpse with a last vindictive slap of forepaw. Hosteen centered the torch on the black bundle. The dead creature was as large as Surra, perhaps a fraction bigger, the chunky body equipped with four legs, which were short and clawed, the talons on the forelimbs being great sickle-shaped armaments he would not have wanted to face. But the head was the alien feature as far as the Terran was concerned. The skull was rounded without visible ears. In fact, as he leaned forward to inspect it more closely, Hosteen had difficulty in identifying eyes-until he glimpsed a round white bulb half concealed by thick curls of fur. The lower part of that head-the mouth and jaws-was broad and flat, tapering into a thin wedge at the outmost point, as if the creature had been fitted by nature with a tooth-rimmed chisel for a mouth.
“Djimbut all right.” Logan made a hands and knees progress into the big chamber. “Surra did for him-good girl.”
Those yellow eyes half closed as the dune cat looked at Logan. Then a rumble of a purr answered his frank praise.
“We’re in luck,” Logan continued. “Got us about the best wait-out anyone could find in these hills-“
And that had been the reason for the action Hosteen discovered. The lair of the djimbut was not just the tunnel and its two connected chambers. It was also a series of storerooms opening off the big room, an underground dwelling so constructed as to be a heat-proof even when they had to wreck most of the protected opening to get the horses under cover.
The damp chill faded, but the man and the Norbies quartered in the storerooms and the horses in the main chamber had a hideout from the sun that was the best protection Hosteen had found since he left the outer valley. And the seeds and roots stored up were sorted over by the natives, a selection given to and relished by their mounts and the rest taken over by their riders.
Hosteen chewed at a yellow-green pod. The flint surface splintered, giving him a mouthful of pulp, which had refreshing moisture. Gleams of sun reached them through the broken walls, but they were well out of its full heat, and they dozed off for the day.
The Terran did not know just what brought him awake with the old, instant awareness of his Service days. His head, resting on earth, might have picked up the vibration of a distant tread. He levered himself up in the cubby he shared with Logan, hearing the restless movements of the horses. A mind cast for Surra told him that the cat was either not in range or deliberately refusing to answer. But the patches of sky he could see were those of early evening. And somewhere beyond, there were riders approaching.