"Whee-oo!" repeated Tarzan and hurled the balance of the carcass of the
deer to them.

Instantly the gryfs fell upon it with much bellowing, one of them
attempting to seize it and keep it from the other: but finally the
second obtained a hold and an instant later it had been torn asunder
and greedily devoured. Once again they looked up at the ape-man and
this time they saw him descending to the ground.

One of them started toward him. Again Tarzan repeated the weird cry of
the Tor-o-don. The gryf halted in his track, apparently puzzled, while
Tarzan slipped lightly to the earth and advanced toward the nearer
beast, his staff raised menacingly and the call of the first-man upon
his lips.

Would the cry be answered by the low rumbling of the beast of burden or
the horrid bellow of the man-eater? Upon the answer to this question
hung the fate of the ape-man.

Pan-at-lee was listening intently to the sounds of the departing gryfs
as Tarzan led them cunningly from her, and when she was sure that they
were far enough away to insure her safe retreat she dropped swiftly
from the branches to the ground and sped like a frightened deer across
the open space to the foot of the cliff, stepped over the body of the
Tor-o-don who had attacked her the night before and was soon climbing
rapidly up the ancient stone pegs of the deserted cliff village. In the
mouth of the cave near that which she had occupied she kindled a fire
and cooked the haunch of venison that Tarzan had left her, and from one
of the trickling streams that ran down the face of the escarpment she
obtained water to satisfy her thirst.

All day she waited, hearing in the distance, and sometimes close at
hand, the bellowing of the gryfs which pursued the strange creature
that had dropped so miraculously into her life. For him she felt the
same keen, almost fanatical loyalty that many another had experienced
for Tarzan of the Apes. Beast and human, he had held them to him with
bonds that were stronger than steel--those of them that were clean and
courageous, and the weak and the helpless; but never could Tarzan claim
among his admirers the coward, the ingrate or the scoundrel; from such,
both man and beast, he had won fear and hatred.

To Pan-at-lee he was all that was brave and noble and heroic and, too,
he was Om-at's friend--the friend of the man she loved. For any one of
these reasons Pan-at-lee would have died for Tarzan, for such is the
loyalty of the simple-m