explain how she recruited so easily a tough, hard-bitten soldier of fortune like myself, and a wooly-
headed, absentminded old scientist like Doc.
Not only was the Cro-Magnon girl the most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on, but she was also
totally different from the women I had previously known. Nearly naked, save for a skimpy, apron-like
garment of soft, elegantly tanned furs, which extended over one breast and shoulder but left bare the
other perfect young breast and creamy, rounded shoulder, she was lithe and supple, her slim, tanned
body graceful as an acrobat's. She had a long, flowing mane of silky hair the color of ripe corn and wide,
dark-lashed eyes as blue as rainwashed April skies and a full, luscious mouth the tint of wild
strawberries.
Darya had been a revelation to me: imagine a girl who had never heard of perfume, cosmetics, mascara
or underwired bras . . . a young female ignorant of the latest fads and fashions . . . a lithe, teen-aged
Amazon who could swim, hunt, fight like a man but was as soft and sweet and demure as any princess in
a fairy tale.
Such was Darya, gomad or princess of the Stone Age kingdom of Thandar. Is it any wonder I had fallen
helplessly in love with her?
Together we had managed to escape from our captivity by the Apemen of Kor, but not without making
some enemies. Among these foes were Fumio, the handsome but villainous Cro-Magnon chieftain who
had been an unsuccessful suitor for Darya's hand; and One-Eye the Neanderthal, who had seized the
kingship of Kor when I had slain Uruk the former High Chief with my revolver; and Xask, wily and
cunning vizier of Kor, who was of neither race, but an exile fled from the wrath of his own mysterious
people, who dwelt somewhere in the interior, far from the shores of the sea of Sogar-Jad.
But we had made good friends, as well. There was Hurok, the brawny Neanderthal to whom I had taught
the meaning of friendship; and Jorn the Hunter, a brave youth from Darya's tribe; and her mighty sire
himself, Tharn, stalwart Omad or king of distant Thandar.
Just when it seemed that all of our difficulties were at an end, the mysterious force of coincidence
intervened once again.
Pursued by a great war party of Korians, Tharn's small host of warriors (searching for the lost Darya)
had seemed outmatched. But a fortuitously timed stampede of huge pachyderms had crushed the
Apemen of Kor, while the men of Thandar had fled to safety behind the dense wall of the jungles. We
did not at that point in our adventures realize that Xask, One-Eye and Fumio had eluded the destruction
which had consumed the warriors of Kor.
However, coincidence had separated us. Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter had sought to penetrate a
narrow pass through the Peaks of Peril, believing they were closely behind the long-lost Darya. What
they in fact discovered beyond those sinister mountains we, far behind them, did not at that time know.
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