bulls moved towards the brink of the cliff, the usurper pushing his antagonist before him. Another minute and Awi Agwa would plunge backward over that brink to fall five hundred feet upon the jagged rocks below.
A golden eagle, circling above Sani'gilagi's summit, dodged in the air as the dull boom of the rifle came to him.
Almayne stood erect, a tall yellow-brown figure in his stained buckskins, the lowered rifle balanced in his left hand. Fifteen feet from the rim of the precipice lay the usurper's body. Almayne's bullet, ranging forward under the ribs, had pierced the animal's heart. Just beyond the carcass of his fallen rival, his back to the cliff's edge, stood Awi Agwa.
Legs wide apart, his huge bulk swaying from side to side, his head hanging low as though he no longer had strength to support his mighty antlers, the giant elk gazed dully at the hunter. If his ears had heard the rifle shot, it meant nothing to him in that moment of immeasurable weariness. He knew only that suddenly his enemy had fallen at his feet, that in the instant of disaster victory had come.
Presently he lurched forward and thrust weakly with his sharp brow prongs at the body of his foe. Then, with something of his old pride, he lifted his head again. His throat swelled with the bugle call
