Manly Wade Wellman - Hok 01 Read Online Free PDF Page A

he overtook her and
dragged her back. This time he bound her ankles with his girdle-thong. She lay
helpless but tameless, and glared. Hok hugged his knees and studied her with
worried eyes.
                 “I
wanted you the moment I saw you,” he said plaintively. “I thought you would
want me, too.”
                 She
spat at him, rolled over and closed her eyes.
                 “Sleep
then,” he conceded. “I shall sleep, too.”
                 In
the morning he woke to find her propped upon bound hands, her eyes turned
unforgivingly upon him.
                 “Let
me untie you,” he offered at once.
                 “Do,”
she urged bitterly. “Then I can kill myself.”
                 “You
must be thirsty,” he said. “I will bring some water.”
                 In
the clearing he plucked a dried gourd from a spreading vine. Deftly cracking
it, he cleansed the withered pulp from one cuplike piece and filled it at the
stream. Carrying it back, he offered it to Oloana. She neither moved nor spoke,
but when he held it to her lips she drew her head away.
                 “You
do not eat or drink,” he said. “You will die.”
                 “Let
me die, then.”
                 Hok
gazed at her perplexedly. Things were not going as he had hoped. What would
life be like, with a sullen, vengeful woman who must go always tied lest she
run away or kill herself? Suddenly Hok saw an awful vision— Oloana still and
voiceless, with blood flowing from her heart where nested his javelin. So vivid
was the mental picture that he dashed the back of his hand to his eyes.
                 “I
hate you,” Oloana snapped at him.
                 He
rose and stooped above her. His hands caught the leather that bound her wrists,
his muscles suddenly swelled, his breath came in a
single explosive pant. The cord broke. Bending, he hooked fingers under the
thong at her ankles. A heave, a tug, and that, too, tore apart.
                 “Run
away,”' he bade her dully.
                 She
rose to her feet, amazed.
                 “I
thought I had you,” he tried to explain, “but, even when you were tied, I did
not have you.” His brow creased at his own paradox. “You hate me. Run away.”
                 “You
don’t want me now?” she challenged him.
                 His
hands grasped her shoulders. Their faces were close to each other. His stare
fastened upon her sulky mouth, as full and red as a summer fruit. How sweet
that fruit would taste, he suddenly thought. His face darted down upon hers,
their lips crushed together for a whirling moment. Clumsy, savage, unpredicted,
it was perhaps the first kiss in human history.
                 Still
more abruptly, Hok spun and fairly raced out of the cave, out of the clearing,
into the forest away from Oloana’s black eyes and fruit-red mouth.

CHAPTER V
      The Capture of Hok
     
                 BUT
he did not run far. Somehow it had been easier to run yesterday, even when
encumbered by the struggles of Oloana. Hok lagged. His troubled young eyes
sought the ground. His feet took him where they wished.
                 The
day and the distances wore away, like rock under falling water. Hok did not
eat. Twice or thrice he drank at singing brooks, then spewed out the water as though it were brakish. Once he saw a wild pig rooting
in a thicket and by force of habit reached back for his javelins. Then he
remembered that he had left them leaning at the door of the cave. He had left
Oloana there, too. He could get more javelins, but never another Oloana.
                 It
was nearly evening. He walked slowly down a game-trail, less watchfully than he
had ever walked since childhood. Before he knew it, something huge and swarthy
flashed from behind a broad tree-bole and flung