, to examine it.

It was a human footprint, but much larger than his own, or those of
his tribe; and Grom's beard, and the stiff hairs on the nape of his
corded neck, bristled with hostility at the sight of it.

The toes of this portentous print were immensely long and muscular,
the heel protruded grotesquely far behind the arch of the foot, which
was low and flat. The pressure was very marked along all the outer
edge, as if the author of the print had walked on the outer sides of
his feet. To Grom, who was an adept in the signs of the trail, it
needed no second look to be informed that one of the Bow-legs had been
here. And the trail was not five minutes old.

Grom slipped under the nearest bushes, and writhed forward with
amazing speed in the direction indicated by the strange footprint,
pausing every other second to look, sniff the air, and listen. The
trail was as clear as daylight to him. Suddenly he heard voices,
several of them, guttural and squealing, and stopped again as if
turned to stone. Then another voice, at which he started in amazement.
It was Mawg's, speaking quietly and confidentially. Mawg, then, had
gone over to the Bow-legs! Grom's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had been
right. He ought to have killed the traitor. He writhed himself into a
dense covert, and presently, over the broken brink of a vine-draped
ledge, was able to command a view of the speakers.

They were five in number, and grouped almost immediately below him.
Four were of the Bow-legs, squat, huge in the shoulder, long-armed,
flat-skulled, of a yellowish clay color, with protruding jaws, and
gaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses.
Grom's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of them breathed
up to him.

They were all armed with spears and stone-headed clubs, such as their
people had been unacquainted with up to the time of their attack upon
the Tribe of the Little Hills. It was apparent to Grom that the
renegade Mawg, who towered among them arrogantly, had been teaching
them what he knew of effective weapons.

Having no remotest comprehension of the language of the Bow-legs--which
Mawg was speaking with them--Grom could get little clue to the drift of
their talk. They gesticulated frequently toward the east, and then
again toward the caves at the valley-mouth, so Grom guessed readily
enough that they were planning something against his people.

It was clear, also, that this was but a little scout