would be impossible; and Almayne had set himself the task of tracking this elk down.
Outwardly he scoffed at Julah's warning of a curse, but like many of the frontier hunters he had a secret respect for the lore of the red shamans and conjurers. The evil which Julah had predicted had come with impressive swiftness: at one stroke Almayne had lost his horse, his pack ponies and his beaver pelts. Julah had seemed to expect that the giant elk would show himself again; and, most strangely, Almayne had encountered the animal at least sixty miles from Sani'gilagi where he had seen the great bull for the first time. This was an astonishing confirmation of the old Indian's prophecy. It would be as well, Almayne felt, to kill this elk, this Awi Agwa, as Julah had advised; and since the animal was wounded, the task might not be hard.
Awi Agwa traveled northwestward. Of all the deer kind, the elk when frightened is the swiftest, the most enduring. The roar of Almayne's rifle that first morning on Sani'gilagi had started the giant bull on a journey which lasted for hours and which brought him down from the mountains into the upper foothills. It was the season of mating. He had left his own cows on Sani'gilagi; so in search of other cows Awi Agwa had ranged far and wide through the foothills until a rifle had roared again and a bullet had plowed its way deep into his right
