Already the dogs were established as sentries and watchmen, and as friends to every member of the tribe. By now mothers did not feel alarmed if a child wandered out of sight. There would be dogs along. No danger could approach a child without vociferous warning from the dogs. Men went hunting, now, with zestful tail-wagging dogs as companions in the chase. Dor killed a torpid minotaur-beetle alone, save for assisting dogs, and Burl felt a twinge of jealousy. But then Burl, himself, battled a black male spider in a lone duel,--with dogs to help. By the time a stray monster from the lowlands reached this area, it was dazed and half-numbed by one night of continuous chill. Even the black spider could not find the energy to leap. It fought like a fiend, yet sluggishly. Burl killed this one while the dogs kept it busy,--and the dogs were reproachful because he carried it back to the tribal headquarters before dividing it among his assistants. Afterward, he realized that though he could have avoided the fight he would have been ashamed to do so, while the dogs barked and snapped at its furry legs.
It was while things were in this state that the way of life for human beings on the forgotten planet was settled for all time. Burl and Saya went out early one morning with the dogs, to hunt for meat for the village. Hunting was easiest in the early hours, while creatures that strayed up the night before were still sluggish with cold. Often, hunting was merely butchery of an enfeebled monster to whom any effort at all was terribly difficult.
This morning they strode away briskly. The dogs roved exuberantly through the brush before them. They were some five miles from the village when the dogs bayed game. And Burl and Saya ran to the spot with ready spears,--which was something of a change from their former actions on notice of a carnivore abroad. They found the dogs dancing and barking around one of the most ferocious of the meat-eating beetles. It was not unduly large, to be sure. Its body might have been four feet long, or thereabouts. But its horrible gaping mandibles added a good three feet more.
Those scythelike weapons gaped wide--opening sidewise as insects' jaws do--as the beetle snapped hideously at its attackers, swinging about as the dogs dashed at it. Its legs were spurred and spiked and armed with dagger-like spines. Burl plunged into the fight.