Sullenly Nareen nodded. He undid the gag, frowning questioningly.

She rolled her eyes, eased her tongue and jaws, swallowed distastefully a few times, then muttered sullenly, “Yes, I’ll eat. I’m thirsty, too. I could eat some eggs. I won’t scream or call out here if you leave the gag out.”

“I’ll bash your brains out if you do!” he promised grimly. Then he ungagged Naroo. With a vicious nod she agreed to eat and drink.

He saw to it that they did not waste time. Then he bound their wrists together again, not tightly behind the small of the back this time, but in front, comfortably, though not so loosely that they could suddenly thrust up their hands and jerk the gag from their mouths and yell should they come within screeching distance of some wandering hunting party. The gags, too, he fixed a little more comfortably, not so far back in the jaws that it was difficult to breathe, let alone bite hard. But he fixed each gag expertly, so that as they walked along a girl could not gradually work the stick across her mouth with jaws and teeth so she could bite through the thong should opportunity for escape occur.

They sat there in furious silence as his long, strong fingers put the hardwood gag back over Nareen’s tongue into the mouth, fitted it to his satisfaction, lashed the thong round her neck, then pulled the stick this way and that, then a little farther back until he felt the firm grip of the teeth on the stick to his satisfaction. She glared sullenly back into his grim, boyish face as he worked. Naroo glared with the devil-cat in her eyes. Sitting back with a half-smile, the cicatrizes of warriorhood standing out across his big chest, his hands clasped loosely across his knees, he surveyed the finished job with satisfaction. A fat green fly came importantly buzzing into the cave.

“You find it hard to keep your mouths shut?” He grinned. “But you’ll have plenty of time to talk—later on, when you are my wives, my two good wives who will hunt and work for me, and bring me sweet honeycomb and cool water when I am lying thirsty in the shade. Yes, the seasons will come and go and come again in our happy lands of the Gunn-e-darr. Yes, you’ll both have plenty of time to talk. But when that long time comes, then see you do not talk too much!”

Nareen stared. Naroo glared.

XIX

RUNAWAYS IN THE NIGHT

Red Kangaroo fitted the dilly-bags round the girls’ shoulders and picked up his weapons. A lizard scuttled away in alarm.

“We keep moving,” he growled. “Follow me and climb down.”

He undid the thongs on their ankles, keeping a wary eye lest they loose a stone upon his head as they climbed down the steep rock-face. But their attention was fully taken up in saving themselves from a fall, for their wrists were still bound, though loosely.