f a gun, and as Mukoki crumpled down in his tracks there
followed a cry so terrible, so unhuman, so blood-curdling that, as
he fell, an answering cry of horror burst from the lips of the old
warrior. He lay like dead, though he was not touched. Instinct more
than reason had impelled him to fall at the sound of the mysterious
shot. Cautiously he wormed his rifle to his shoulder. But there came
no movement from the rocks.

Then, from half-way down the mountain, there came again that terrible
cry, and Mukoki knew that no animal in all these wilds could make it,
but that it was human, and yet more savage than anything that had ever
brought terror into his soul. Trembling, he crouched to the earth, a
nameless fear chilling the blood in his veins. And the cry came again,
and yet again, always farther and farther away, now at the foot of
the mountain, now upon the plain, now floating away toward the chasm,
echoing and reechoing between the mountain ridges, startling the
creatures of the night into silence, and wresting deep sobbing breaths
from out of Mukoki's soul. And the old warrior moved not a muscle
until far away, miles and miles, it seemed, there died the last echo
of it, and only the whispering winds rustled over the mountain top.

CHAPTER XI

THE CRY IN THE CHASM

If Mukoki had been a white man he would have analyzed in some way the
meaning of those strange cries. But the wild and its savage things
formed his world; and his world, until this night, had never known
human or beast that could make the terrible sounds he had heard. So
for an hour he crouched where he had fallen, still trembling with
that nameless fear, and trying hard to form a solution of what had
happened. Slowly he recovered himself. For many years he had mingled
with white people at the Post and reason now battled with the
superstitions of his race.

He had been fired at. He had heard the whistling song of the ball over
his head, and had heard it strike the tree behind him. For a time
those rocks toward which he stared like fascinated beast had concealed
a man. But what kind of man! He remembered the ancient battle-cries
of his tribe, and of the enemies of his tribe, but none was like the
cries that had followed the shot. He heard them still; they rang in
his ears, and sent shivering chills up his back. And the more he tried
to reason the greater that nameless fear grew in him, until he slunk
like an animal down the side of the mountain,