ALMAYNE saw Awi Agwa for the first A time one clear, cold autumn morning on Sani'gilagi, the highest of the Cowees. Almayne was a young man then. He was a wilderness hunter, a trader in peltries, an Indian fighter when the war drums throbbed in the Overhills; but not many years before, he had been a schoolboy in England, with a liking for books. From the great precipice of Sani'gilagi he had just watched a crimson September sunrise, and the glory of it had stirred him deeply.
That was why he did not kill Awi Agwa that first day. From his camp near the summit of the mountain he had walked a few hundred yards down the ridge in search of water. In a small level meadow on the crest of the ridge he came suddenly upon a giant elk, the largest elk that he had ever seen, standing on the very verge of the precipice, gazing out over the wide expanse of forested hills and valleys. Forty yards behind the elk, the long yellow form of a puma, stretched lazily upon a flat sunny rock, caught his eye.
Neither animal saw or scented the other. Neither
