cratur. And behind the foremost cratur a half dozen others jammed the way!

He turned—and saw the snowy-striped heads of the savage warriors already entering the rocks. They were trapped.

Lifa pushed at him. Her purple eyes were blazing.

"Drive them out of the way!" she cried. "One whiff of your scent and they will scatter."

Besan groaned. His tank of scent lay back in the cave village of Detch.

"I can't," he confessed swiftly. "I am—I was born without scent glands."

Lifa's eyes were scornful. She clawed him aside and pushed forward, laying down an acrid barrage that split the lumbering craturs' living wall apart. They pushed through into the more open ground beyond the rocks.

Besan's eyes leaked but his brain was busy. If the craturs could only be used to stop the savages....

"Give me the goorn dust," he told Lifa.

"I'll give you nothing," she screeched hoarsely. "I want nothing to do with a freak like you. I'll find a new mate." She turned to run toward the southern hills.

Besan spun her about and ripped the bags of goorn dust from their hiding place. Lifa snarled, her nails raked his face, and then her knife slashed at his forearm. The Earthman chopped his hand down on her wrist and the knife jarred free.

"Take her," he told Nard Rost and Relsa.

Back toward the craturs he ran until he was within throwing distance of them. As he ran he untied the sacks, and once within range started tossing them accurately at the shaggy red heads of the bearlike monsters.

The goorn dust acted swiftly, deadening their senses and, at the same time rousing their notoriously short tempers to a feverish peak. For the moment they would pay no heed to the obnoxious natural weapon of the striped men.

At that moment the pursuing warriors came into sight and darted in among the milling brutes. The craturs roared and sprang upon them.

Besan turned and raced back toward the others.

Lifa was gone. She had twisted free from Nard Rost and Relsa and headed southward 

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