Two shots slammed quickly behind him.  He dropped his axe and took a two-hand grip on his stabbing-spear as he turned.  His son was hurrying forward, his pistol drawn, glancing behind as he came.

“Hairy People.  Four,” he reported.  “I shot two; she threw a spear and killed another.  The other ran.”

The daughter of Seldar Glav and Olva nodded in agreement.

“I had no time to throw again,” she said, “and Bo-Bo would not shoot the one that ran.”

Kalvar Dard’s son, who had no other name than the one his mother had called him as a child, defended himself.  “He was running away.  It is the rule:  use bullets only to save life, where a spear will not serve.”

Kalvar Dard nodded.  “You did right, son,” he said, taking out his own pistol and removing the magazine, from which he extracted two cartridges.  “Load these into your pistol; four rounds aren’t enough.  Now we each have six.  Go back to the rear, keep the little ones moving, and don’t let Varnis get behind.”

“That is right. We must all look out for Varnis, and take care of her,” the boy recited obediently.  “That is the rule.”

He dropped to the rear.  Kalvar Dard holstered his pistol and picked up his axe, and the column moved forward again.  They were following a ledge, now; on the left, there was a sheer drop of several hundred feet, and on the right a cliff rose above them, growing higher and steeper as the trail slanted upward.  Dard was worried about the ledge; if it came to an end, they would all be trapped.  No one would escape.  He suddenly felt old and unutterably weary.  It was a frightful weight that he bore—­responsibility for an entire race.

* * * * *

Suddenly, behind him, Dorita fired her pistol upward.  Dard sprang forward—­there was no room for him to jump aside—­and drew his pistol.  The boy, Bo-Bo, was trying to find a target from his position in the rear.  Then Dard saw the two Hairy People; the boy fired, and the stone fell, all at once.

It was a heavy stone, half as big as a man’s torso, and it almost missed Kalvar Dard.  If it had hit him directly, it would have killed him instantly, mashing him to a bloody pulp; as it was, he was knocked flat, the stone pinning his legs.

At Bo-Bo’s shot, a hairy body plummeted down, to hit the ledge.  Bo-Bo’s woman instantly ran it through with one of her spears.  The other ape-thing, the one Dorita had shot, was still clinging to a rock above.  Two of the children scampered up to it and speared it repeatedly, screaming like little furies.  Dorita and one of the older girls got the rock off Kalvar Dard’s legs and tried to help him to his feet, but he collapsed, unable to stand.  Both his legs were broken.

This was it, he thought, sinking back.  “Dorita, I want you to run ahead and see what the trail’s like,” he said.  “See if the ledge is passable.  And find a place, not too far ahead, where we can block the trail by exploding that demolition-bomb.  It has to be close enough for a couple of you to carry or drag me and get me there in one piece.”