Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/83

But what could he do with his bare hands, without his rifle? The dagger? He could throw it—yes! And what then? One does not kill a mountain bear with a single thrust of steel. So he kept whizzing around the tree, and his thoughts whizzed along, his fears, his hopes—and then, quite suddenly, the bear changed her tactics.

"Airrrh—whoof—airrh!" she said with low, rumbling dignity.

"Wheet-wheet!" came the echo from the branches of the tree where the cursed, feathery thing was roosting in safety.

And Bibi Bear rose on her hind feet, fir needles and moss sticking to her pelt, belly sagging loosely, perspiration rising from her nostrils in a gray flag of steam. Straight toward the tree she walked, forepaws wide extended as if to embrace the fir and the miserable being who was clinging to it for dear life.

Something like a slobbering grin curled the brute's black, leathery lips, and Mortazu Khan watched. His skin seemed to shrink. Blue wheels whirled in front of his eyes. A hammer beat at the base of his skull.

Ahi! There was Azeena—who would not live out the day unless. …

"Allah!" he said. "It is not I who shall be a widower to-night, but Azeena who shall be a widow!"—and his knife flashed free while the bear came on, slow, ponderous, thinking in her ugly, twisted brain that all would be over in two crimson minutes if she could only tear the man away from the protecting tree.

Mortazu Khan knew it, too. "Assassin!" he cried. "Base-born and lean bastard!"

"Waughree!" replied the bear.

She came on without haste, leaned smack against