I had noticed that the niece carried no weapon. Which brought up another question. "Does he always mix his pleasures?" I asked.

She was in the act of withdrawing a long telescopic sight which she must have had bound to the inside of her thigh. As she mounted it to her rifle with feverish haste she answered, "He is not mixing his pleasures. Suchane is bait."

Before this could sink in completely a shrill, feminine scream tore faintly into the gusty wind and found us. I leaped to my feet. Half way to the edge of the jungle, some hundred yards from us, I watched Daphne pushing the olive-skinned girl ahead of him with rough shoves. A deeper color spread from her neck and swathed one shoulder and her side.

He stopped and raised the rifle threateningly. She turned and fled toward the jungle.

"What in God's name—" I shouted.

"You can't help her," Annellica said hopelessly. "He's cut her jugular. If there's an animal in there the blood scent will bring it out in seconds. If there isn't—Suchane is gone, anyway."

I stared down at my companion in horror. She had warned me about the "Fate of Daffy's nieces," but I couldn't have visualized anything this bestial.

She looked up at me. "She will faint soon. There are worse ways to die. You will see." She arose to stand beside me.

I threw my rifle to my shoulder, fully intending to fire the whole clip into Daphne's back, but three things happened at once. Suchane sank out of sight in the grass, an orange splotch ripped into the open, and the Major, too, sank down and levelled his rifle.

The animal, even at this distance, was undoubtedly one of the Major's wampus varieties. It was stilt-legged, but not clumsy like a giraffe. The long, thick neck swung left and right tracing the scent of warm blood, and its cat-like body arched so high a man could have walked under it.

The wind was directly at our back, and as the several human scents touched the animal's nostrils it jerked the long-fanged mouth. Its belly touched the high grass in a quick crouch, then it sprang in one, deadly accurate leap that carried it forty yards to the prostrate Suchane. Even in the light gravity, the orange blur did not rise in a high trajectory, and the Major had time for only one shot while it was in the air.

The sound startled 

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