SOURCE: Star Man's Son (Ace Books 1952) aka Daybreak 2250 AD by Andre Norton

DESCRIPTION: "Fors heard swift movement in the loose rocks somewhere behind him, as if small, agile things were speeding away to safety. The slowest of the hunters had returned to the fire grumbling and emptyhanded. When the catch was laid out on the stone Fors saw it clearly for the first time—lizards! They resembled those he had seen all his life hiding among rocky places—and yet there was something odd about the shape of the heads—But before he could guess what it was the bodies had been slung over the flames to broil." (Star Man's Son by Andre Norton)

NOTES:  The lizards of the desert are an intelligent race living in caves near terraces of domestic grass. When large predators like the beast men come, they decoy the killers into a position where they can kill them with special burrs they collect. These poisonous thorn balls cause the victim to foam at the mouth and die almost instantly. The desert lizards worship idols such as the Egyptian pieces taken from a museum in one of the holocaust cities.

HISTORY: Norton's lizard folk may seem like an unnecessary plot device but you can see the author having fun speculating on what an intelligent reptile species would be like. Harry Harrison would take this even further with his West of den series many decades later.