The hell I don't," said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not the
native tongue.

He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grass
interspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasional
groves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with
infrequent waterholes.

It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn't
take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its
pre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he
failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.

"Dangerous," Zikkara pointed out. "No one hunts the Cytha."

"I do," Duncan said, speaking now in the native language. "I hunt
anything that damages my crop. A few nights more of this and there
would be nothing left."

* * * * *

Jamming the bandanna back into his pocket, he tilted his hat lower
across his eyes against the sun.

"It might be a long chase, mister. It is the _skun_ season now. If you
were caught out there...."

"Now listen," Duncan told it sharply. "Before I came, you'd feast one
day, then starve for days on end; but now you eat each day. And you
like the doctoring. Before, when you got sick, you died. Now you get
sick, I doctor you, and you live. You like staying in one place,
instead of wandering all around."

"Mister, we like all this," said Zikkara, "but we do not hunt the
Cytha."

"If we do not hunt the Cytha, we lose all this," Duncan pointed out.
"If I don't make a crop, I'm licked. I'll have to go away. Then what
happens to you?"

"We will grow the corn ourselves."

"That's a laugh," said Duncan, "and you know it is. If I didn't kick
your backsides all day long, you wouldn't do a lick of work. If I
leave, you go back to the bush. Now let's go and get that Cytha."

"But it is such a little one, mister! It is such a young one! It is
scarcely worth the trouble. It would be a shame to kill it."

Probably just slightly smaller than a horse, thought Duncan, watching
the native closely.

It's scared, he told himself. It's scared dry and spitless.

"Besides, it must have been most hungry. Surely, mister, even a Cytha
has the right to eat."

"Not from my crop," said Duncan savagely. "You know why we grow the
_vua_, don't you? You know it is great medicine. The berries that it
grows cures those who are sick inside their heads. My people need that
medicine--need it very badly. And what is more, out there--" he