w and help you. Al-tan has
agreed to aid Du-seen against the Galus of Jor; but there are many of
us who have combined to rise against Al-tan and prevent this ruthless
desecration of the laws and customs of the Kro-lu and of Caspak. We
will rise as Luata has ordained that we shall rise, and only thus. No
batu may win to the estate of a Galu by treachery and force of arms
while Chal-az lives and may wield a heavy blow and a sharp spear with
true Kro-lus at his back!"

"I hope that I may live to aid you," I replied. "If I had my weapons
and my ammunition, I could do much. Do you know where they are?" "No,"
he said, "they have disappeared." And then: "Wait! You cannot go
forth half armed, and garbed as you are. You are going into the Galu
country, and you must go as a Galu. Come!" And without waiting for a
reply, he led me into another apartment, or to be more explicit,
another of the several huts which formed his cellular dwelling.

Here was a pile of skins, weapons, and ornaments. "Remove your strange
apparel," said Chal-az, "and I will fit you out as a true Galu. I have
slain several of them in the raids of my early days as a Kro-lu, and
here are their trappings."

I saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and as my clothes were by now so
ragged as to but half conceal my nakedness, I had no regrets in laying
them aside. Stripped to the skin, I donned the red-deerskin tunic, the
leopard-tail, the golden fillet, armlets and leg-ornaments of a Galu,
with the belt, scabbard and knife, the shield, spear, bow and arrow and
the long rope which I learned now for the first time is the distinctive
weapon of the Galu warrior. It is a rawhide rope, not dissimilar to
those of the Western plains and cow-camps of my youth. The honda is a
golden oval and accurate weight for the throwing of the noose. This
heavy honda, Chal-az explained, is used as a weapon, being thrown with
great force and accuracy at an enemy and then coiled in for another
cast. In hunting and in battle, they use both the noose and the honda.
If several warriors surround a single foeman or quarry, they rope it
with the noose from several sides; but a single warrior against a lone
antagonist will attempt to brain his foe with the metal oval.

I could not have been more pleased with any weapon, short of a rifle,
which he could have found for me, since I have been adept with the rope
from early childhood; but I must confess that I was less favorably
incli