Twice, after that night, the Hairy People had attacked them--once while
they were on the march, and once in camp. Both assaults had been beaten
off without loss to themselves, but at cost of precious ammunition. Once
they had caught a band of ten of them swimming a river on logs; they had
picked them all off from the bank with their carbines. Once, when Kalvar
Dard and Analea had been scouting alone, they had come upon a dozen of
them huddled around a fire and had wiped them out with a single grenade.
Once, a large band of Hairy People hunted them for two days, but only
twice had they come close, and both times, a single shot had sent them
all scampering. That had been after the bombing of the group around the
fire. Dard was convinced that the beings possessed the rudiments of a
language, enough to communicate a few simple ideas, such as the fact
that this little tribe of aliens were dangerous in the extreme.

* * * * *

There were Hairy People about now; for the past five days, moving
northward through the forest to the open grasslands, the people of
Kalvar Dard had found traces of them. Now, as they came out among the
seedling growth at the edge of the open plains, everybody was on the
alert.

They emerged from the big trees and stopped among the young growth,
looking out into the open country. About a mile away, a herd of game was
grazing slowly westward. In the distance, they looked like the little
horse-like things, no higher than a man's waist and heavily maned and
bearded, that had been one of their most important sources of meat. For
the ten thousandth time, Dard wished, as he strained his eyes, that
somebody had thought to secure a pair of binoculars when they had