And then Burl shook himself. He had been angry when he left his tribe. He had been more angry when he returned and they would not obey him. He had remained with them, petulantly silent, displaying the offended dignity he felt and elaborately refusing to acknowledge any overtures, even from Saya. Burl had acted rather childishly. But his tribesmen were like children. It was the best way for him to act.
They shivered, too hopeless even to run away while the shaggy monster feasted a half-mile away. There were six men and seven women besides himself, and the rest were children, from gangling adolescents to one babe in arms. They whimpered a little. Then Saya looked imploringly at Burl--coquetry forgotten now. The other whimpered more loudly. They had reached that stage of despair, now, when they could draw the monster to them by blubbering in terror.
This was the psychological moment. Burl said dourly:
He took Saya's hand and started away. There was but one direction in which any human being could think to move in this valley, at this moment. It was the direction away from the grisly mother of horrors. It happened to be the way up the valley wall. Burl started up that slope. Saya went with him.
Before they had gone ten yards Dor spoke to his wife. They followed Burl, with their three children. Five yards more, and Jak agitatedly began to bustle his family into movement. Old Jon, wheezing, frantically scuttled after Burl, and Cori competently set out with the youngest of her children in her arms and the others marching before her. Within seconds more, all the tribe was in motion.
Burl moved on, aware of his following, but ignoring it. The procession continued in his wake simply because it had begun to do so. Dik, his adolescent brashness beaten down by terror, nevertheless regarded Burl's stained weapon with the inevitable envy of the half-grown for achievement. He saw something half-buried in the soil and--after a fearful glance behind--he moved aside to tug at it. It was part of the armor of a former rhinoceros beetle. Tet joined him. They made an act of great daring of lingering to find themselves weapons as near as possible to Burl's.
A quarter-mile on, the fugitives passed a struggling milkweed plant, no more than twenty feet high and already scabrous with scale and rusts upon its lower parts. Ants marched up and down its stalk in a steady single file, placing aphids from their nearby ant-city on suitable spots to feed,--and to multiply as only parthenogenic aphids can do. But already, on the far side of the milkweed, an ant-lion climbed up to do murder among them. The ant-lion, of course, was the larval form of a lace-wing fly. The aphids were its predestined prey.