Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 
 Sabu saw Priya had not come to any harm. The gunshot had terrified her and she had fainted.
 In a fraction of a second, Sabu’s attention was on the enemy who had started running up.
 The warrior in Sabu replaced the timid boy of thirteen, and he worked out a strategy in half a minute. The first thing he had to do was to talk his friend out of his frightened inertia into confidence and activity.
 Sabu emptied the kitbag and picked up the catapult from among the various articles it contained. Handing it to his friend, he began to talk. “Look Rajan!” he said. “He’ll approach the rock thinking that we’re some distance away. Certainly he hasn’t seen Priya lying in a faint on the rock. He hopes to shoot us down before we reach the woods. We’ll simply lie down waiting for the man to come up to a distance of twenty feet from the rock. You’ll apply your catapult and I’ll throw two or three stones at him. Before he recovers from the shock, we can fell him like a log. You can achieve the almost impossible thing only if you are brave and confident. 
 “Don’t worry even if you fail in the first attempt. You can continue attacking him lying down unseen. I will attack him with stones aiming at his head. We won’t allow him to capture poor Priya, or ourselves to be shot like two stray dogs.”
 While talking, Sabu collected stones the size of apples on three different places on the rock. He also rolled six of the rounded boulders available in plenty on the hill-slope to the brim of the rock.
 Rajan lay on the rock with a few dozen sharp, white pebbles ready beside him. As the criminal ran up the hill and approached the rock, his nerves began to betray him. 
 Sabu too, lay on the rock, facing the lake and watching the man coming up. He would be a tired man by the time he approached the rock, Sabu was certain.
 When the enemy neared the rock, Sabu whispered to his friend, “He’s already tired.  Hit at the centre of his forehead just once and he will be down.”
 Meanwhile, the man was running up frantically. To capture the boys, question them and kill them was very important. His very life hung on whether he could accomplish this. If they could not be caught alive, to be shot later, he should at least eliminate them. The young devils might abandon the girl and hide in the forest. He was, in fact, as tense and nervous as the boys he wanted to hunt down. 
 Rajan’s hands began to shake. Would the giant fall with but one pebble? Would his aim that never failed desert him now?
 Sabu lay still, breathing freely, emptying his mind of all thoughts. Even if his friend failed, he should not. With a good hit on the head with a stone as big as an apple, he hoped he could down him.
 “Fire!” whispered Sabu when the enemy had reached as near as twenty feet from the rock.
 The pebble that hissed out of Rajan’s catapult and the stone that Sabu hurled, hit the kidnapper one after another, the first on his forehead and the other on his chest.
The sudden attack took the criminal by surprise. He shouted an obscene epithet and fired.
But Sabu had lain down even before the enemy thought of firing.
Their hope that they could down the enemy in the first attack itself did not materialise.  He might move sideways away from the range of their missiles. This should not be allowed.
 Sabu crawled to the left where there was another heap of stones. His friend could attack the enemy without standing up. But to throw stones with force he had to stand up inviting enemy fire.
 In another moment Rajan resumed his attack.
 Anger and humiliation shook the kidnapper. Pebbles were flying at him like hissing snakes, hitting him on his face, neck, ears, and chest. He did not get time to think. Blood was flowing down from different parts of his face and he was feeling dizzy.
 He aimed his rifle at the point from which the stream of pebbles was coming.  Although he could not see his assailant, he fired hoping to paralyse him with fear.
 Seeing that the enemy’s attention was on Rajan, Sabu jumped up boldly and launched two powerful missiles at him. Hit hard on the chest and head, he roared with pain and anger, and, shifting his aim to the new front, fired again. 
 Rajan was desperate. He had hit the giant more than a dozen times, mostly on the face, but the enemy seemed to be possessed with the devil himself.
 “I’ve little desire to do you any harm. I’ve come to take Priya home. What’s the use in our quarrelling?” said the criminal in a mild, conciliatory tone.
 Rajan tried to answer the enemy with an extra strong pebble carefully aimed at a spot between his eyes. But alas!  The string of his catapult snapped and he groaned in despair.
 Jumping up from a different location this time, Sabu sent two missiles aimed at his head.  He roared in agony and began to fire indiscriminately.
 Fired by a sudden surge of determination, Rajan rose for the first time and hit the enemy on the head with an extra large stone. As he was falling down, the kidnapper fired again, aiming at Rajan.
 The man tried to rise supporting himself on his hands. Now Sabu rolled down the boulders one after another. The first boulder bounced and flew over the fallen man. The second boulder, however, hit him hard on his chest. He pushed down all the boulders he had collected. The man was hit twice more. He started rolling down the slope shouting curses at them all the while. 
 Some twenty yards down the slope, he lay like a log without any movement.
 “Is he pretending to be dead?” Rajan said.
  “Is he really dead?” said Sabu.
 As Sabu turned to his friend, he was horrified.  Rajan was standing bathed in blood.