Courtot was close behind him; Courtot looked up and
they could see his face.

'You must go, now,' whispered Helen. 'You have promised me.'

'I am keeping my promise,' he said sternly. 'But I am not going to run
from him. You would hate me for being a coward, Helen.'

She looked at him, puzzled. Then she saw that the holster at his hip
was empty.

'Oh,' cried Helen wildly, 'not that! You must kill him, Alan. I was
mad with fear. I----'

Stopping the flow of her words there swept over her the paralyzing
certainty that it was useless to batter against fate; that a man's
destiny was not to be thrust aside by a woman's love. For out of the
silence there burst a sound which to her quivering nerves was fraught
with word of death; that sound which in countless human hearts presages
a death before the dawn--the long, lugubrious howling of a dog. It
seemed to her to burst out of the nothingness of the sky, to arise in
the void of an unseen ghostly world where spirit voices foretold the
onrush of destruction.

Jim Courtot was hurrying up the slope. They saw him stop dead in his
tracks. He, too, seemed turned to stone by the sound. It came again,
the terrible howling of a dog, nearer as though the creature sped
across the hills on the wings of the quickening morning wind. Sanchia
stopped and began to draw back. Longstreet came on unconcernedly.

A third time, and again nearer, came the strange baying. Courtot held
where he was, balancing briefly. Then they heard him cry out, his
voice strange and hoarse; he whirled about and began to run. He was
going down the trail now, running as a man runs only from his death,
stumbling, cursing, rising and plunging on.

'Look!' Howard's fingers had locked upon Helen's arm. 'It is Kish
Taka!'

She looked. Behind them, outlined against the sky, were a strange
pair. A great beast, head down, howling as it ran, that was bigger
than a desert wolf, and close behind it, gaunt body doubled, speeding
like an arrow, a naked man. They flashed across the open space and
sped down the steep slope of the ravine where, in the shadows, they
became mere ghost figures.

'It is Kish Taka!' said Howard a second time. 'And again Kish Taka has
saved my life.'

Dazed, the girl did not yet understand. She shivered and drew close to
her lover, stepping into his arms. He held her tight, and they turned
their fascinated eyes below. The speed of Jim Courtot in the grip of
his terror