She took the chance. “Cat-one, this is death for you. Get away while you can.”

Nancee chewed and swallowed. Again she heard a heavy stamp from the picket line. The other mounts were moving uneasily. Then one gave a shrill whinny which brought Dik’s head around.

“What’s to do with those horses, Mish?”

One of the men who had slouched away from the fire spat over his shoulder.

“Jus’ spooked—they’s bin doin’ that for a while. Tree cat hanging around maybe. Tha’s like ’em.”

“See to it.” Dik did not raise his voice, but there was a bite in it.

He turned back to Nancee. “Tree cat,” he repeated slowly as if trying to impress on her the dangers which might be piled mountain-high against anyone in this wild country. “Get one of them on your trail, lady, and you’ll know what ill luck really means.”

Defiance was on the tip of Nancee’s tongue, but she swallowed hasty words. She must let him believe that he had won—at Idast for now. Perhaps he had, unless she had such courage as that of Mairee.

One of the horses flung up its head and uttered a startling loud neigh. Boldhoof stamped as if in some answer known only to the equine kind.

“Cat-one—” Nancee’s thought was shatp. “If this is your doing—”

All the men in the bowl had turned to look at the picket line now. Two had swords out, and a third was fitting an arrow to the string of his bow. Even Dik had half turned his back on her, though she did not believe that she dared move without his seeing.

“Cat-one—these are ready for the kill!” She could not be sure what game the half-grown cub was playing nor why, but she was sure that the prairiecat was behind it all.

“Get it!” Dik’s order grated and sent the men into action, though she noted that they moved slowly, watching the brush and the two trees between which the picket line had been anchored.

Nancee measured the distance between her and Dik. His attention was now all for the horse line, and he had drawn his own sword. That knife in his boottop—dared she try for it?

As if the hidden clan cat read her purpose, only halfformed as it was, mind to mind, there came a squall as nerve-racking as any sound she had ever heard, and the horses, including Boldhoof, went into wild lunging at the ropes. That of the Northhorse parted as if it were made of tapestry thread and the huge mare swung around, shouldering its smaller neighbors apart, leading to the break-free of one of those. At the same time Nancee flung her own light body forward. Her shoulder struck behind Dik’s knees, sending the man staggering for a step or two, but not before she had jerked that boot knife free, its hilt fitting into her hand as if it had been made for her alone.

The men pulled back as Boldhoof reared and dropped both hoofs together with a ground-shaking force. While two of the other horses, now free, ran up and away over the edge of the hollow, their fellows flailed out with hooves and jerked their heads against the confinement of the ropes which held them.

“Whar’s tha’ double-be-damned cat?” shouted the archer, his bow swinging from side to side as he tried to find some target.

They were all looking upward into the trees, endeavoring to sight the menace. Yet, save for the threshing of lower limbs caused by the jerking of the picket line below, there was nothing to be sighted.

Dik had regained his balance and swung around, his eyes narrowed, the intent look of the hunter on his bristle-cheeked face. He took a single stride to where Nancee was regaining her feet, the knife in her hands.

“What kind of damned witchery—” he began, and then his hand flashed out. Before she could dodge or try to defend herself his fist struck her chin, not full on as he had intended, for some providence allowed her to jerk her head back in time, but with force enough to send her spinning backward, the world a whirl of pain and light around her.

She fell right enough, and part of her waited for the second blow she was sure would come. Instead there was a hoarse shout and her dazed head and misty sight could not warn her. There was the heavy smell of horse scent, and with it the odor of raw fear.

Over her loomed a trampling monster. A great head bowed, and jaws opened and closed again on her hunched shoulder. She was dragged upward, though her feet did not quite leave the ground, and so she passed into a darkness through which came only faintly for the second time the yowl of a cat.

Pain in her back and her feet reached into the dark and brought her out again. She was near stifled by the heavy smell of horse sweat, but she forced her eyes open. Yet, she was being drawn along the ground, backward, unable to see where she might be taken. And it was Boldhoofs mouth which had closed upon her, the mare’s giant strength seemingly little disturbed by the burden of the slight body she had gathered from the ground.

There was a whistling flight of an arrow, the kind used to frighten game into a stampede during which the stragglers could be picked off. Yet Boldhoof paid no attention to the shaft, which must have passed near by the sound of it.

Nancee was half-conscious—the pain in her shoulder where the great teeth gripped her and the bruising of her body dragged along the ground made her sick—but she held on to the small portion of awareness she had. Surely one of the men back there would use an arrow to better purpose soon—

For the third time the battle cry of a cat rang out, and this time from¹ close to her, from the air, as if some furred warrior had grown wings.

“Two-legs, let the good horse free you and then join me here!”

Somehow that reached her in spite of the pain of her body and the near blankness of her mind brought about by Dik’s blow. She was freed suddenly from that crushing of her shoulder, and she slumped, unable to move. Then she could have screamed, perhaps she did, as something tangled fiercely in her hair and pulled up her head. There was a furred body behind her; she caught only a glimpse or two of it as it endeavored to keep its hold in her hair.

Somehow she got to her knees, and that torturing grasp on her hair loosened. She flailed out with one arm, and her hand struck against a stone-firm pillar seemingly covered with damp hide. Grasping at that, she strove to come erect, though she had to lean against the foreleg of the Northhorse to do that.

“Two-legs, there is no time for resting. Get you up!”

Nancee wavered along Boldhoof’s side, and her hand hit against one of the panniers which had still beladen the horse. Apparently the raiders had not stripped their prize. That voice in her head provided the energy she must have. As it impressed “Climb” on her, Nancee strove to fight her way up over the pannier onto the broad back. There was a flash of gray-brown and the young prairiecat was there also, crowding against her.

Boldhoof went into a rocking trot and then such a gallop as Nancee would never have expected the heavy animal could produce. She lay on that back, her fingers laced in the belts which held the panniers, while the cat flattened itself beside her.

“The voiceless horses of those have run,” it cast into her mind. “This good mountain stepped on two of the bad two-legs—perhaps neither will rise again. This is better than the wagon—but we shall find that, two-legs, and Frog Hunter shall be among the bold ones—with another name—you shall see. I am Rider of the Mountain that runs—”

She managed to raise her head a fraction. There was the flow of air about them; truly Boldhoof was running now. Nancee listened for a sound of pursuit; she was not able as yet to look back. Surely Dik would not let them go so easily!

“Dik—” she said aloud, forgetting the difference now between mindspeech and that from the lips. “He will follow.”

There was an odd feeling in her mind. If perhaps the cub laughed so among his peers, that was what she sensed now.