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Title: The Story of Ab
       A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man

Author: Stanley Waterloo

Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8644]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 29, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF AB ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, Andy Schmitt,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





[Illustration: GREAT TRUNK SHOT DOWNWARD AND BACKWARD PICKED UP THE MAN
AND HURLED HIM YARDS AWAY]




                              THE STORY OF AB

                     A TALE OF THE TIME OF THE CAVE MAN

                                     BY

                              STANLEY WATERLOO

                                    1905


          Author of "A Man and a Woman," "An Odd Situation," etc.




INTRODUCTION.


This is the story of Ab, a man of the Age of Stone, who lived so long ago
that we cannot closely fix the date, and who loved and fought well.

In his work the author has been cordially assisted by some of the ablest
searchers of two continents into the life history of prehistoric times.
With characteristic helpfulness and interest, these already burdened
students have aided and encouraged him, and to them he desires to express
his sense of profound obligation and his earnest thanks.

Once only does the writer depart from accepted theories of scientific
research. After an at least long-continued study of existing evidence and
information relating to the Stone Ages, the conviction grew upon him that
the mysterious gap supposed by scientific teachers to divide Paleolithic
from Neolithic man never really existed. No convulsion of nature, no new
race of human beings is needed to explain the difference between the
relics of Paleolithic and Neolithic strugglers. Growth, experiment,
adaptation, discovery, inevitable in man, sufficiently account for all
the relatively swift changes from one form of primitive life to another
more advanced, from the time of chipped to that of polished implements.
Man has been, from the beginning, under the never resting, never
hastening, forces of evolution. The earth from which he sprang holds the
record of his transformations in her peat-beds, her buried caverns and
her rocky fastnesses. The eternal laws change man, but they themselves do
not change.

Ab and Lightfoot and others of the cave people whose story is told in the
tale which follows the author cannot disown. He has shown them as they
were. Hungry and cold, they slew the fierce beasts which were scarcely
more savage than they, and were fed and clothed by their flesh and fur.
In the caves of the earth the cave men and their families were safely
sheltered. Theirs were the elemental wants and passions. They were
swayed by love, in some form at least, by jealousy, fear, revenge, and by
the memory of benefits and wrongs. They cherished their young; they
fought desperately with the beasts of their time, and with each other,
and, when their brief, turbulent lives were ended, they passed into
silence, but not into oblivion. The old Earth carefully preserved their
story, so that we, their children, may read it now.

S. W.




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER.

I. THE BABE IN THE WOODS.

II. MAN AND HYENA.

III. A FAMILY DINNER.

IV. AB AND OAK.

V. A GREAT ENTERPRISE.

VI. A DANGEROUS VISITOR.

VII. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS.

VIII. SABRE-TOOTH AND RHINOCEROS.

IX. DOMESTIC MATTERS.

X. OLD MOK, THE MENTOR.

XI. DOINGS AT HOME.

XII. OLD MOK'S TALES.

XIII. AB'S GREAT DISCOVERY.

XIV. A LESSON IN SWIMMING.

XV. A MAMMOTH AT BAY.

XVI. THE FEAST OF THE MAMMOTH.

XVII. THE COMRADES.

XVIII. LOVE AND DEATH.

XIX. A RACE WITH DREAD.

XX. THE FIRE COUNTRY.

XXI. THE WOOING OF LIGHTFOOT.

XXII. THE HONEYMOON.

XXIII. MORE OF THE HONEYMOON.

XXIV. THE FIRE COUNTRY AGAIN.

XXV. A GREAT STEP FORWARD.

XXVI. FACING THE RAIDER.

XXVII. LITTLE MOK.

XXVIII. THE BATTLE OF THE BARRIERS.

XXIX. OLD HILLTOP'S LAST STRUGGLE.

XXX. OUR VERY GREAT GRANDFATHER.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY SIMON HARMON VEDDER

"HIS GREAT TRUNK SHOT DOWNWARD AND BACKWARD, PICKED UP THE MAN, AND
HURLED HIM YARDS AWAY"

MAP

"AB SEIZED UPON TWO OF THE SNARLING CUBS, AND OAK DID THE SAME"

"AB SPRANG TO HIS FEET, AND DREW HIS ARROW TO THE HEAD"

"THE YOUNG MEN CALLED TO HER, BUT SHE MADE NO ANSWER. SHE BUT FISHED AWAY
DEMURELY"

"AB STOOD THERE WEAPONLESS, A CREATURE WANDERING OF MIND"

"WITH A GREAT LEAP HE WENT AT AND THROUGH THE CURLING CREST OF THE YELLOW
FLAME!"

"THE GIRL COWERED BEHIND A REFUGE OF LEAVES AND BRANCHES"

"UPON THE STRONG SHAFT OF ASH THE MONSTER WAS IMPALED"




THE STORY OF AB.




CHAPTER I.


THE BABE IN THE WOODS.

Drifted beech leaves had made a soft, clean bed in a little hollow in a
wood. The wood was beside a river, the trend of which was toward the
east. There was an almost precipitous slope, perhaps a hundred and fifty
feet from the wood, downward to the river. The wood itself, a sort of
peninsula, was mall in extent and partly isolated from the greater forest
back of it by a slight clearing. Just below the wood, or, in fact, almost
in it and near the crest of the rugged bank, the mouth of a small cave
was visible. It was so blocked with stones as to leave barely room for
the entrance of a human being. The little couch of beech leaves already
referred to was not many yards from the cave.

On the leafy bed rolled about and kicked up his short legs in glee a
little brown babe. It was evident that he could not walk yet and his lack
of length and width and thickness indicated what might be a babe not more
than a year of age, but, despite his apparent youth, this man-child
seemed content thus left alone, while his grip on the twigs which had
fallen into his bed was strong, as he was strong, and he was breaking
them delightedly. Not only was the hair upon his head at least twice as
long as that of the average year-old child of today, but there were downy
indications upon his arms and legs, and his general aspect was a swart
and rugged one. He was about as far from a weakly child in appearance as
could be well imagined and he was about as jolly a looking baby, too, as
one could wish to see. He was laughing and cooing as he kicked about
among the beech leaves and looked upward at the blue sky. His dress has
not yet been alluded to and an apology for the negligence may be found in
the fact that he had no dress. He wore nothing. He was a baby of the time
of the cave men; of the closing period of the age of chipped stone
instruments; the epoch of mild climate; the ending of one great animal
group and the beginning of another; the time when the mammoth, the
rhinoceros, the great cave tiger and cave bear, the huge elk, reindeer
and aurochs and urus and hosts of little horses, fed or gamboled in the
same forests and plains, with much discretion as to relative distances
from each other.

It was some time ago, no matter how many thousands of years, when the
child--they called him Ab--lay there, naked, upon his bed of beech
leaves. It may be said, too, that there existed for him every chance for
a lively and interesting existence. There was prospect that he would be
engaged in running away from something or running after something during
most of his life. Times were not dull for humanity in the age of stone.
The children had no lack of things to interest, if not always to amuse,
them, and neither had the men and women. And this is the truthful story
of the boy Ab and his playmates and of what happened when he grew to be a
man.

It is well to speak here of the river. The stream has been already
mentioned as flowing to the eastward. It did not flow in that direction
regularly; its course was twisted and diverted, and there were bays and
inlets and rapids between precipices, and islands and wooded peninsulas,
and then the river merged into a lake of miles in extent, the waters
converging into the river again. So it was that the banks in one place
might form a height and in another merge evenly into a densely wooded
forest or a wide plain. It was so, too, that these conditions might exist
opposite each other. Thus the woodland might face the plain, or the
precipice some vast extending marsh.

To speak further of this river it may be mentioned, incidentally, that
to-day its upper reaches still exist and that the relatively small stream
remaining is called the Thames. Beside and across it lies the greatest
city in the world and its mouth is upon what is called the English
Channel. At the time when the baby, Ab, slept that afternoon in his nest
in the beech leaves this river was not called the Thames, it was only
called the Running Water, to distinguish it from the waters of the coast.
It did not empty into the British Channel, for the simple and sufficient
reason that there was no such channel at the time. Where now exists that
famous passage which makes islands of Great Britain, where, tossed upon
the choppy waves, the travelers of the world are seasick, where Drake and
Howard chased the Great Armada to the Northern seas and where, to-day,
the ships of the nations are steered toward a social and commercial
center, was then good, solid earth crowned with great forests, and the
present little tail end of a river was part of a great affluent of the
Rhine, the German river famous still, but then with a size and sweep
worth talking of. Then the Thames and the Elbe and Weser, into which
tumbled a thousand smaller streams, all went to feed what is now the
Rhine, and that then tremendous river held its course through dense
forests and deep gorges until it reached broad plains, where the North
Sea is to-day, and blended finally with the Northern Ocean.

The trees which stood upon the bank of the great river, or which could be
seen in the far distance beyond the marsh or plain, were not all the same
as now exist. There was still a distinctive presence of the towering
conifers, something such as are represented in the redwood forests of
California to-day, or, in other forms, in some Australian woods. There
was a suggestion of the fernlike but gigantic age of growth of the
distant past, the past when the earth's surface was yet warm and its air
misty, and there was an exuberance of all plant and forest growth,
something compared with which the growth in the same latitude, just now,
would make, it may be, but a stunted showing. It is wonderful, though,
the close resemblance between most of the trees of the cave man's age, so
many tens of thousands of years ago, and the trees most common to the
temperate zone to-day. The peat bogs and the caverns and the strata of
deposits in a host of places tell truthfully what trees grew in this
distant time. Already the oak and beech and walnut and butternut and
hazel reared their graceful forms aloft, and the ground beneath their
spreading branches was strewn with the store of nuts which gave a portion
of food for many of the beasts and for man as well. The ash and the yew
were there, tough and springy of fiber and destined in the far future to
become famous in song and story, because they would furnish the wood from
which was made the weapon of the bowman. The maple was there with all its
symmetry. There was the elm, the dogged and beautiful tree-thing of
to-day, which so clings to life and nourishes in the midst of unwholesome
city surroundings and makes the human hive so much the better. There were
the pines, the sycamore, the foxwood and dogwood, and lime and laurel and
poplar and elder and willow, and the cherry and crab apple and others of
the fruit-bearing kind, since so developed that they are great factors in
man's subsistence now. It was a time of plenty which was riotous. There
remained, too, a vestige of the animal as well as of the vegetable life
of the remoter ages. There were strange and dangerous creatures which
came sometimes up the river from its inlet into the ocean. Such events
had been matters of interest, not to say of anxiety, to Ab's ancestors.

The baby lying there among the beech leaves tired, finally, of its cooing
and twig-snapping and slept the sleep of dreamless early childhood. He
slept happily and noiselessly, but when he at last awoke his demeanor
showed a change. He had nothing to distract him, unless it might be the
breaking of twigs again. He had no toys, and, being hungry, he began to
yell. So far as can be learned from early data, babies, when hungry, have
always yelled. And, of old, as to-day, when a baby yelled, the woman who
had borne it was likely to appear at once upon the scene. Ab's mother
came running lightly from the river bank toward where the youngster lay.
She was worthy of attention as she ran, and this is but a bungling
attempt at a description of her and of her dress.

It should be explained here, with much care and caution, that the mother
of Ab moved in the best and most exclusive circles of the time. She
belonged to the aristocracy and, it may be added, regarding this fine
lady personally, that she had the weakness of paying much attention to
her dress. She was what might properly be called a leader of society,
though society was at the time somewhat attenuated, families living,
generally, some miles apart, and various obstacles, chiefly in the form
of large, man-eating animals, complicating the matter of paying calls. As
for the calls themselves, they were nearly as often aggressive as social,
and there is a certain degree of difference between the vicious use of a
flint ax and the leaving of a card with a bending lackey. But all this
doesn't matter. The mother of Ab belonged to the very cream of the cream,
and was dressed accordingly. Her garb was elegant but simple; it had,
first, the one great merit, that it could easily be put on or taken off.
It was sustained with but a single knot, a bow-knot--they had learned to
make a bow-knot and other knots in the stone age, for, because of the
manual requirements for living, they were cleverer fumblers with their
fingers than we are now--and the lady here described had tied her knot in
a manner not to be excelled by any other woman in all the fiercely
beast-ranged countryside.

The gown itself was of a quality to please the eye of the most carping.
It was made from the skins of wolverines, and was drawn in loosely about
the waist by a tied band, but was really sustained by a strip of the skin
which encircled the left shoulder and back and breast. This left the
right arm free from all encumbrance, a matter of some importance, for to
be right-handed was a quality of the cave man as of the man today. We
should have a grudge against them for this carelessness, and should, may
be, form an ambidextrous league, improving upon the past and teaching and
forcing young children to use each hand alike.

The garment of wolverine skins, sewed neatly together with thread of
sinews, was all the young mother wore. Thus hanging from the shoulder and
fully encircling her, it reached from the waist to about half way down
between the hips and the knees. It was as delightful a gown as ever was
contrived by ambitious modiste or mincing male designer in these modern
times. It fitted with a free and easy looseness and its colors were such
as blended smoothly and kindly with the complexion of its wearer. The fur
of the wolverine was a mixed black and white, but neither black nor white
is the word to use. The black was not black; it was only a swart sort of
color, and the white was not white; it was but a dingy, lighter contrast
to the darker surface beside it. Yet the combination was rather good.
There was enough of difference to catch the eye and not enough of
glaringness to offend it. The mother of Ab would be counted by a wise
observer as the possessor of good taste. Still, dress is a small matter.
There is something to say about the cave mother aside from the mere
description of her gown.




CHAPTER II.


MAN AND HYENA.

It is but an act of simple gallantry and justice to assert that the cave
woman had a certain unhampered swing of movement which the modern woman
often lacks. Without any reflection upon the blessed woman of to-day, it
must be said truthfully that she can neither leap a creek nor surmount
some such obstacle as a monster tree trunk with a close approach to the
ease and grace of this mother who came bounding through the forest. There
was nothing unknowing or hesitant about her movements. She ran swiftly
and leaped lightly when occasion came. She was lithe as the panther and
as careless of where her brown feet touched the ground.

The woman had physical charms. She was of about the average size of
womanhood as we see it embodied now, but her waist was not compressed at
an unseemly angle, and much resembled in its contour that of the Venus of
Milo which has become such a stock example of the healthfully
symmetrical. Her hair was brown and long. It was innocent of knot or coil
or braid, and was transfixed by no abatis of dangerous pins. It was not
parted but was thrown straight backward over the head and hung down
fairly and far between brown shoulders. It was a fine head of hair; there
could be no question about that. It had gloss and color. Captious
critics, reasoning from the standpoint of another age, might think it
needed combing, but that is only a matter of opinion. It was tangled
together in a compact and fluffy mass, and so did not wander into the
woman's eyes, which was a good thing and a great convenience, for bright
eyes and unobstructed vision were required in those lively days.

The face of this lady showed, at a glance, that no cosmetic had ever been
relied upon to give it an artificial charm. As a matter of fact it would
have been difficult to use cosmetics upon that face in the modern way,
for there was a suggestion of something more than down upon the
countenance, and there were certain irregularities of facial outline so
prominent that such details as the little matter of complexion must be
trifling. The eyes were deep set and small, the nose was short and thick
and possessed a certain vagueness of outline not easy of description. The
upper lip was excessively long and the under lip protruding. The chin was
well defined and firm. The mouth was rather wide, and the teeth were
strong and even, and as white as any ivory ever seen. Such was the face,
and there may be added some details of interest about the figure. The
arms of this fascinating woman were perfectly proportioned. They were
adapted to the times and were very beautiful. Down each of them from
shoulder to elbow ran a strip of short dark hair. From either hand ran
upward to the elbow another strip of hair, and the two, meeting at the
elbow, formed a delightful little tuft reminding one of what is known as
a "widow's peak," or that little point which grows down so charmingly on
an occasional woman's forehead. Her biceps were tremendous, as must
necessarily be the case with a lady accustomed to swing from limb to limb
along the treetops. Her thumb was nearly as long as her fingers, and the
palms of her hands were hard. Her legs were like her arms in their degree
of muscular development and hairy adornment. She had beautiful feet. It
is to be admitted that her heels projected a trifle more than is counted
the ideal thing at the present day, and that her big toe and all the
other toes were very much in evidence, but there is not one woman in
ten thousand now who could as handily pick up objects with her toes as
could the mother of the baby Ab. She was as brown as a nut, with the tan
of a half tropical summer, and as healthy a creature, from tawny head to
backward sloping heel, as ever trod a path in the world's history. This
was the quality of the lady who came so swiftly to learn the nature of
her offspring's trouble. Ladies of that day attended, as a rule, to the
wants of their own children. A wet nurse was a thing unknown and a dry
one as unthought of. This was good for the children.

The woman made a dive into the little hollow and picked the babe from its
nest of leaves and tossed him up lightly, and at once his crying ceased,
and his little brown arms went around her neck, and he cooed and prattled
in very much the same fashion as does a babe of the present time. He was
content, all in a moment, yet some noise must have aroused him, for, as
it chanced, there was great need that this particular babe at this
particular moment should have awakened and cried aloud for his mother.
This was made evident immediately. As the woman tossed him aloft in her
arms and cuddled him again there came a sound to her ears which made her
leap like some wilder creature of the forest up to a little vantage
ground. She turned her head, and then--you should have seen the woman!

Very nearly above them swung down one of the branches of a great beech
tree. The mother threw the child into the hollow of her left arm, and
leaped upward a yard to catch the branch with her right hand. So she hung
dangling. Then, instantly, holding him firmly by one arm in her left
hand, she lowered the child between her legs and clasped them about him
closely. And then, had it been your fortune to be born in those times,
you might have seen good climbing. With both her strong arms free, this
vigorous matron ran up the stout beech limb which depended downward from
the great bole of the tree until she was twenty feet above the ground,
and then, lifting herself into a comfortable place, in a moment was
sitting there at ease, her legs and one arm coiled about the big branch
and a smaller upstanding one, while the other arm held the brown babe
close to her bosom.

This charming lady of the period had reached her perch in the beech tree
top none too soon. Even as she swung herself into place upon the huge
bough, there came rushing across the space beneath, snarling, smelling
and seeking, a brute as foul and dangerous as could be imagined for
mother and son upon the ground. It was of a dirty dun color, mottled and
striped with a lighter but still dingy hue. It had a black, hoggish nose,
but there were fangs in its great jaws. It resembled a huge wolf, save as
to its massiveness and club countenance, It was one of the monster hyenas
of the time, a beast which must have been as dangerous to the men then
living as any animal except the cave tiger and the cave bear. Its
degenerate posterity, as they shuffle uneasily back and forth when caged
to-day, are perhaps not less foul of aspect, but are relatively pygmies.
Doubtless the brute had scented the sleeping babe, and, snarling aloud in
its search, had waked it, inducing the cry which proved the child's
salvation.

The beast scented immediately the prey above him and leaped upward
ferociously and vainly. Was the woman thus beset thus holding herself
aloft and with her child upon one arm in a state of sickening anxiety?
Hardly! She but encircled the supporting branch the closer, and laughed
aloud. She even poked one bare foot down at the leaping beast, and waved
her leg in provocation. At the same time there was no doubt that she was
beset. Furthermore she was hungry, and so she raised her voice, and sent
out through the forest a strange call, a quavering minor wail, but
something to be heard at a great distance. There was no delay in the
response, for delays were dangerous when cave men lived. The call was
answered instantly and the answering cry was repeated as she called
again, the sound of the reply approaching near and nearer all the time.
All at once the manner of her calling changed; it was an appeal no
longer; it was a conversation, an odd, clucking, penetrating speech in
the shortest of sentences. She was telling of the situation. There was
prompt reply; the voice seemed suddenly higher in the air and then came,
swinging easily from branch to branch along the treetops, the father of
Ab, a person who felt a natural and aggressive interest in what was going
on.

To describe the cave man it is, it may be, best of all to say that he was
the woman over again, only stronger, longer limbed and deeper chested,
firmer of jaw and more grim of countenance. He was dressed almost as she
was. From his broad shoulder hung a cloak of the skin of some wild beast
but the cord which tied it was a stout one, and in the belt thus formed
was stuck a weapon of such quality as men have rarely carried since. It
was a stone ax; an ax heavier than any battle-ax of mediaeval times, its
haft a scant three feet in length, inclosing the ax through a split in
the tough wood, all being held in place by a taut and hardened mass of
knotted sinews. It was a fearful weapon, but one only to be wielded by
such a man as this, one with arms almost as mighty as those of the
gorilla.

The man sat himself upon the limb beside his wife and child. The two
talked together in their clucking language for a moment or two, but few
words were wasted. Words had not their present abundance in those days;
action was everything. The man was hungry, too, and wanted to get home as
soon as possible. He had secured food, which was awaiting them, and this
slight, annoying episode of the day must be ended promptly. He clambered
easily up the tree and wrenched off a deadened limb at least two yards in
length, then tumbling back again and passing his wife and child along the
main branch, he swung down to where the leaping beast could almost reach
him. The heavy club he carried gave him an advantage. With a whistling
sweep, as the hyena leaped upward in its ravenous folly, came this huge
club crashing against the thick skull, a blow so fair and stark and
strong that the stunned beast fell backward upon the ground, and then,
down, lightly as any monkey, dropped the cave man. The huge stone ax went
crashing into the brain of the quivering brute, and that was the end of
the incident. Mother and child leaped down together, and the man and
woman went chattering toward their cave. This was not a particularly
eventful day with them; they were accustomed to such things.

They went strolling off through the beech glades, the strong, hairy,
heavy-jawed man, the muscular but more lightly built woman and the child,
perched firmly and chattering blithely upon her shoulder as they walked,
or, rather, half trotted along the river side and toward the cave. They
were light of foot and light of thought, but there was ever that almost
unconscious alertness appertaining to their time. Their flexible ears
twitched, and turned, now forward now backward, to catch the slightest
sound. Their nostrils were open for dangerous scents, or for the scent of
that which might give them food, either animal or vegetable, and as for
the eyes, well, they were the sharpest existent within the history of the
human race. They were keen of vision at long distance and close at hand,
and ever were they in motion, swiftly turned sidewise this way and that,
peering far ahead or looking backward to note what enemies of the wood
might be upon the trail. So, swiftly along the glade and ever alert, went
the father and mother of Ab, carrying the strong child with them.

There came no new alarm, and soon the cave was reached, though on the way
there was a momentary deviation from the path, to gather up the nuts and
berries the woman had found in the afternoon while the babe was lying
sleeping. The fruitage was held in a great leaf, a pliant thing pulled
together at the edges, tied stoutly with a strand of tough grass, and
making a handy pouch containing a quart or two of the food, which was the
woman's contribution to the evening meal. As for the father, he had more
to offer, as was evident when the cave was reached.

The man and woman crept through the narrow entrance and stood erect in a
recess in the rocks twenty feet square, at least, and perhaps fifteen
feet in height. Looking upward one could see a gleam of light from the
outer world. The orifice through which the light came was the chimney,
dug downward with much travail from the level of the land above. Directly
underneath the opening was the fireplace, for men had learned thoroughly
the use of fire, and had even some fancies as to getting rid of smoke.
There were smoldering embers upon the hearth, embers of the hardest of
wood, the wood which would preserve a fire for the greatest length of
time, for the cave man had neither flint and steel nor matches, and when
a fire expired it was a matter of some difficulty to secure a flame
again. On this occasion there was no trouble. The embers were beaten up
easily into glowing coals and twigs and dry dead limbs cast upon them
made soon a roaring flame. As the cave was lighted the proprietor pointed
laughingly to the abundance of meat he had secured. It was food of the
finest sort and in such quantity that even this stalwart being's strength
must have been exceptionally tested in bringing the burden to the cave.
It was something in quality for an epicure of the day and there was
enough of it to make the cave man's family easy for a week, at least. It
was a hind quarter of a wild horse.




CHAPTER III.


A FAMILY DINNER.

Despite the hyena and baby incident, the day had been a satisfactory one
for this cave family. Of course, had the woman failed to reach just when
she did the hollow in which her babe was left there would have come a
tragedy in the extinction of a young and promising cave child, and the
two would have been mourning, as even wild beasts mourn for their lost
young. But there was little reversion to past possibilities in the minds
of the cave people. The couple were not worrying over what might have
been. The mother had found food of one sort in abundance, and the
father's fortune had been royal. He had tossed a rock from a precipice a
hundred feet in height down into a passing herd of the little wild
horses, and great luck had followed, for one of them had been killed, and
so this was a holiday in the cave. The man and wife were at ease and had
each an appetite.

The nuts gathered by the woman were tossed in a heap among the ashes and
live coals were raked upon them, and the popping which followed showed
how well they were being roasted. A sturdy twig, two yards in length and
sharpened at the end, was utilized by the man in cooking the strips of
meat cut from the haunch of the wild horse and very savory were the odors
that filled the cave. There was the faint perfume of the crackling nuts
and there was the fragrant beneficence of the broiling meat. There are no
definite records upon the subject; the chef of to-day can give you no
information on the point, but there is reason to believe that a steak
from the wild horse of the time was something admirable. There is a sort
of maxim current in this age, in civilized rural communities, to the
effect that those quadrupeds are good to eat which "chew the cud or part
the hoof." The horse of to-day is a creature with but one toe to each
leg--we all know that--but the horse of the cave man's time had only
lately parted with the split hoof, and so was fairly edible, even
according to the modern standard.

The father and mother of Ab were not more than two years past their
honeymoon. They, in their way, were glad that their union had been so
blest and that a lusty man-child was rolling about and crowing and cooing
upon the earthen floor of the cave. They lived from hand to mouth, and
from day to day, and this day had been a good one. They were there
together, man, woman and child. They had warmth and food. The entrance to
the cave was barred so that no monster of the period might enter. They
could eat and sleep with a certainty of the perfect digestion which
followed such a life as theirs and with a certainty of all peace for the
moment. Even the child mumbled heartily, though not yet very strongly, at
the delicious meat of the little horse, and, the meal ended, the two lay
down upon a mass of leaves which made their bed, and the child lay
snuggled and warm within reach of them. The aristocracy of the time had
gone to sleep.

There was silence in the cave, but, outside, the world was not so still.
The night was not always one of silence in the cave man's time. The hours
of darkness were those when the creature which walked upon two legs was
no longer gliding through the forest with ready club or spear, and when
those creatures which used four legs instead of two, especially the
defenseless, felt more at ease than in the daytime. The grass-eating
animals emerged from the forest into the plateaus and upon the low plains
along the river side and the flesh-eaters began again their hunting. It
was a time of wild life, and of wild death, for out of the abundance much
was taken; there were nightly tragedies, and the beasts of prey were as
glutted as the urus or the elk which fed on the sweet grasses. It was but
a matter of difference in diet and in the manner of doing away with one
life which must be sacrificed to support another. There was liveliness at
night with the queer thing, man, out of the way, and brutes and beasts of
many sorts, taking their chances together, were happier with him absent.
They could not understand him, and liked him not, though the great-clawed
and sharp-toothed ones had a vast desire to eat him. He was a disturbing
element in the community of the plain and forest.

And, while all this play of life and death went on outside, the three
people, the man, woman and child, in the cave slept as soundly as sleep
the drunken or the just. They were full-fed and warm and safe. No beast
of a size greater than that of a lank wolf or sinewy wildcat could enter
the cave through the narrow entrance between the heaped-up rocks, and of
these, as of any other dangerous beast, there was none which would face
what barred even the narrow passage, for it was fire. Just at the
entrance the all-night fire of knots and hardest wood smoked, flamed and
smoldered and flickered, and then flamed again, and held the passageway
securely. No animal that ever lived, save man, has ever dared the touch
of fire. It was the cave man's guardian.




CHAPTER IV.


AB AND OAK.

Such were the father and mother of Ab, and such was the boy himself. His
surroundings have not been indicated with all the definiteness desirable,
because of the lack of certain data, but, in a general way, the degree of
his birth, the manner of his rearing and the natural aspects of his
estate have been described. That the young man had a promising future
could not admit of doubt. He was the first-born of an important family of
a great race and his inheritance had no boundaries. Just where the
possessions of the Ab family began or where they terminated no bird nor
beast nor human being could tell. The estates of the family extended from
the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean and there were no dividing lines.
Of course, something depended upon the existence or non-existence of a
stronger cave family somewhere else, but that mattered not. And the babe
grew into a sturdy youth, just as grow the boys of today, and had his
friendships and adventures. He did not attend the public schools--the
school system was what might reasonably be termed inefficient in his
time--nor did he attend a private school, for the private schools were
weak, as well, but he did attend the great school of Nature from the
moment he opened his eyes in the morning until he closed them at night.
Of his schoolboy days and his friendships and his various affairs, this
is the immediate story.

The father and mother of Ab as has, it is hoped, been made apparent, were
strong people, intelligent up to the grade of the time and worthy of
regard in many ways. The two could fairly hold their own, not only
against the wild beasts, but against any other cave pair, should the
emergency arise. They had names, of course. The name of Ab's father was
One-Ear, the sequence of an incident occurring when he was very young, an
accidental and too intimate acquaintance with a species of wildcat which
infested the region and from which the babe had been rescued none too
soon. The name of Ab's mother was Red-Spot, and she had been so called
because of a not unsightly but conspicuous birthmark appearing on her
left shoulder. As to ancestry, Ab's father could distinctly remember his
own grandfather as the old gentleman had appeared just previous to his
consumption by a monstrous bear, and Red-Spot had some vague remembrance
of her own grandmother.

As for Ab's own name, it came from no personal mark or peculiarity or as
the result of any particular incident of his babyhood. It was merely a
convenient adaptation by his parents of a childish expression of his own,
a labial attempt to say something. His mother had mimicked his babyish
prattlings, the father had laughed over the mimicry, and, almost
unconsciously, they referred to their baby afterward as "Ab," until it
grew into a name which should be his for life. There was no formal early
naming of a child in those days; the name eventually made itself, and
that was all there was to it. There was, for instance, a child living not
many miles away, destined to be a future playmate and ally of Ab, who,
though of nearly the same age, had not yet been named at all. His title,
when he finally attained it, was merely Oak. This was not because he was
straight as an oak, or because he had an acorn birthmark, but because
adjoining the cave where he was born stood a great oak with spreading
limbs, from one of which was dangled a rude cradle, into which the babe
was tied, and where he would be safe from all attacks during the absence
of his parents on such occasions as they did not wish the burden of
carrying him about. "Rock-a-by-baby upon the tree-top" was often a
reality in the time of the cave men.

Ab was fortunate in being born at a reasonably comfortable stage of the
world's history. He had a decent prospect as to clothing and shelter, and
there was abundance of food for those brave enough or ingenious enough to
win it. The climate was not enervating. There were cold times for the
people of the epoch and, in their seasons, harsh and chilling winds swept
over bare and chilling glaciers, though a semi-tropical landscape was all
about. So suddenly had come the change from frigid cold to moderate
warmth, that the vast fields of ice once moving southward were not thawed
to their utmost depths even when rank vegetation and a teeming life had
sprung up in the now European area, and so it came that, in some places,
cold, white monuments and glittering plateaus still showed themselves
amid the forest and fed the tumbling streams which made the rivers
rushing to the ocean. There were days of bitter cold in winter and sultry
heat in summer.

It may fairly be borne in mind of this child Ab that he was somewhat
different from the child of to-day, and nearer the quadruped in his
manner of swift development. The puppy though delinquent in the matter of
opening it's eyes, waddles clumsily upon its legs very early in its
career. Ab, of course, had his eyes open from the beginning, and if the
babe of to-day were to stand upright as soon as Ab did, his mother would
be the proudest creature going and his father, at the club, would be
acting intolerable. It must be admitted, though, that neither One-Ear nor
Red-Spot manifested an extraordinary degree of enthusiasm over the
precociousness of their first-born. He was not, for the time, remarkable,
and parents of the day were less prone than now to spoiling children.
Ab's layette had been of beech leaves, his bed had been of beech leaves,
and a beech twig, supple and stinging, had already been applied to him
when he misbehaved himself. As he grew older his acquaintance with it
would be more familiar. Strict disciplinarians in their way, though
affectionate enough after their own fashion, were the parents of
the time.

The existence of this good family of the day continued without dire
misadventure. Ab at nine years of age was a fine boy. There could be no
question about that. He was as strong as a young gibbon, and, it must be
admitted, in certain characteristics would have conveyed to the learned
observer of to-day a suggestion of that same animal. His eyes were bright
and keen and his mouth and nose were worth looking at. His nose was
broad, with nostrils aggressively prominent, and as for his mouth, it was
what would be called to-day excessively generous in its proportions for a
boy of his size. But it did not lack expression. His lips could quiver at
times, or become firmly set, and there was very much of what might, even
then, be called "manliness" in the general bearing of the sturdy little
cave child. He had never cried much when a babe--cave children were not
much addicted to crying, save when very hungry--and he had grown to his
present stature, which was not very great, with a healthfulness and
general manner of buoyancy all the time. He was as rugged a child of his
age as could be found between the shore that lay long leagues westward of
what is now the western point of Ireland and anywhere into middle Europe.
He had begun to have feelings and hopes and ambitions, too. He had found
what his surroundings meant. He had at least done one thing well. He had
made well-received advances toward a friend; and a friend is a great
thing for a boy, when he is another boy of about the same age. This
friendship was not quite commonplace.

Ab, who could climb like a young monkey, laid most casually the
foundation for this companionship which was to affect his future life. He
had scrambled, one day, up a tree standing near the cave, and, climbing
out along a limb near its top, had found a comfortable resting-place, and
there upon the swaying bough was "teetering" comfortably, when something
in another tree, further up the river, caught his sharp eye. It was a
dark mass,--it might have been anything caught in a treetop,--but the odd
part of it was that it was "teetering" just as he was. Ab watched the
object for a long time curiously, and finally decided that it must be
another boy, or perhaps a girl, who was swaying in the distant tree.
There came to him a vigorous thought. He resolved to become better
acquainted; he resolved dimly, for this was the first time that any idea
of further affiliation with anyone had come into his youthful mind. Of
course, it must not be understood that he had been in absolute retirement
throughout his young but not uneventful life. Other cave men and women,
sometimes accompanied by their children, had visited the cave of One-Ear
and Red-Spot and Ab had become somewhat acquainted with other human
beings and with what were then the usages of the best hungry society. He
had never, though, become really familiar with anyone save his father and
mother and the children which his mother had borne after him, a boy and a
girl. This particular afternoon a sudden boyish yearning came upon him.
He wanted to know who the youth might be who was swinging in the distant
tree. He was a resolute young cub, and to determine was to act.

It was rare, particularly in the wooded districts of the country of the
cave men, for a boy of nine to go a mile from home alone. There was
danger lurking in every rod and rood, and, naturally, such a boy would
not be versed in all woodcraft, nor have the necessary strength of arm
for a long arboreal journey, swinging himself along beneath the
intermingling branches of close-standing trees. So this departure was,
for Ab, a venture something out of the common. But he was strong for his
age, and traversed rapidly a considerable distance through the treetops
in the direction of what he saw. Once or twice, though, there came
exigencies of leaping and grasping aloft to which he felt himself
unequal, and then, plucky boy as he was, he slid down the bole of the
tree and, looking about cautiously, made a dash across some little glade
and climbed again. He had traversed little more than half the distance
toward the object he sought when his sharp ears caught the sound of
rustling leaves ahead of him. He slipped behind the trunk of the tree
into whose top he was clambering and then, reaching out his head, peered
forward warily. As he thus ensconced himself, the sound he had heard
ceased suddenly. It was odd. The boy was perplexed and somewhat anxious.
He could but peer and peer and remain absolutely quiet. At last his
searching watchfulness was rewarded. He saw a brown protuberance on the
side of a great tree, above where the branches began, not twoscore yards
distant from him, and that brown protuberance moved slightly. It was
evident that the protuberance was watching him as he was watching it. He
realized what it meant. There was another boy there! He was not
particularly afraid of another boy and at once came out of hiding. The
other boy came calmly into view as well. They sat there, looking at each
other, each at ease upon a great branch, each with an arm sustaining
himself, each with his little brown legs dangling carelessly, and each
gazing upon the other with bright eyes evincing alike watchfulness and
curiosity and some suspicion. So they sat, perched easily, these
excellent young, monkeyish boys of the time, each waiting for the other
to begin the conversation, just as two boys wait when they thus meet
today. Their talk would not perhaps be intelligible to any professor of
languages in all the present world, but it was a language, however
limited its vocabulary, which sufficed for the needs of the men and women
and children of the cave time. It was Ab who first broke the silence:

"Who are you?" he said.

"I am Oak," responded the other boy. "Who are you?"

"Me? Oh, I am Ab."

"Where do you come from?"

"From the cave by the beeches; and where do you come from?"

"I come from the cave where the river turns, and I am not afraid of you."

"I am not afraid of you, either," said Ab.

"Let us climb down and get upon that big rock and throw stones at things
in the water," said Oak.

"All right," said Ab.

And the two slid, one after the other, down the great tree trunks and ran
rapidly to the base of a huge rock overtopping the river, and with sides
almost perpendicular, but with crevices and projections which enabled the
expert youngsters to ascend it with ease. There was a little plateau upon
its top a few yards in area and, once established there, the boys were
safe from prowling beasts. And this was the manner of the first meeting
of two who were destined to grow to manhood together, to be good
companions and have full young lives, howbeit somewhat exciting at times,
and to affect each other for joy and sorrow, and good and bad, and all
that makes the quality of being.




CHAPTER V.


A GREAT ENTERPRISE.

What always happens when two boys not yet fairly in their 'teens meet, at
first aggressively, and then, each gradually overcoming this apprehension
of the other, decide upon a close acquaintance and long comradeship?
Their talk is firmly optimistic and they constitute much of the world. As
for Ab and Oak, when there had come to them an ease in conversation,
there dawned gradually upon each the idea that, next to himself, the
other was probably the most important personage in the world, fitting
companion and confederate of a boy who in an incredibly short space of
time was going to become a man and do things on a tremendous scale.
Seated upon the rock, a point of ease and vantage, they talked long of
what two boys might do, and so earnest did they become in considering
their possible great exploits that Ab demanded of Oak that he go with him
to his home. This was a serious matter. It was a no slight thing for a
boy of that day, allowed a playground within certain limits adjacent to
his cave home, to venture far away; but this in Oak's life was a great
occasion. It was the first time he had ever met and talked with a boy of
his age, and he became suddenly reckless, assenting promptly to Ab's
proposal. They ran along the forest paths together toward Ab's cave,
clucking in their queer language and utilizing in that short journey most
of the brief vocabulary of the day in anticipatory account of what they
were going to do.

Ab's father and mother rather approved of Oak. They even went so far as
to consent that Ab might pay a return visit upon the succeeding day,
though it was stipulated that the father--and this was a demand the
mother made--should accompany the boy upon most of the journey. One-Ear
knew Oak's father very well. Oak's father, Stripe-Face, was a man of
standing in the widely-scattered community. Stripe-Face was so called
because in a casual, and, on his part, altogether uninvited encounter
with a cave bear when he was a young man, a sweep of the claws of his
adversary had plowed furrows down one cheek, leaving scars thereafter
which were livid streaks. One-Ear and Stripe-Face were good friends.
Sometimes they hunted together; they had fought together, and it was
nothing out of the way, and but natural, that Ab and Oak should become
companions. So it came that One-Ear went across the forest with his boy
the next day and visited the cave of Stripe-Face, and that the two young
cubs went out together buoyant and in conquering mood, while the grown
men planned something for their own advantage. Certainly the boys matched
well. A finer pair of youngsters of eight or nine years of age could
hardly be imagined than these two who sallied forth that afternoon. They
send very fine boys nowadays to our great high schools in the United
States, and to Rugby and Eaton and Harrow in England, but never went
forth a finer pair to learn things. No smattering of letters or lore of
any printed sort had these rugged youths, but their eyes were piercing as
those of the eagle, the grip of their hands was strong, their pace was
swift when they ran upon the ground and their course almost as rapid when
they swung along the treetops. They were self-possessed and ready and
alert and prepared to pass an examination for admission to any university
of the time; that is, to any of Nature's universities, where
matriculation depended upon prompt conception of existing dangers and the
ways of avoiding them, and of all adroitness in attainments which gave
food and shelter and safety. Eh! but they were a gallant pair, these two
young gentlemen who burst forth, owning the world entirely and feeling a
serene confidence in their ability, united, to maintain their rights. And
their ambitions soon took a definite turn. They decided that they must
kill a horse!

The wild horse of the time, already referred to as esteemed for his
edible qualities, was, in the opinion of the cave people, but of moderate
value otherwise. He was abundant, ranging in herds of hundreds along the
pampas of the great Thames valley, and furnished forth abundant food for
man as well as the wild beasts, when they could capture him. His skin,
though, was not counted of much worth. Its short hair afforded little
warmth in cloak or breech-clout, and the tanned pelt became hard and
uncomfortable when it dried after a wetting. Still, there were various
uses for this horse's hide. It made fine strings and thongs, and the
beast's flesh, as has been said, was a staple of the larder. The first
great resolve of Ab and Oak, these two gallant soldiers of fortune, was
that, alone and unaided, they would circumvent and slay one of these wild
horses, thereby astonishing their respective families, at the same time
gaining the means for filling the stomachs of those families to
repletion, and altogether covering themselves with glory.

Not in a day nor in a week were the plans of these youthful warriors and
statesmen matured. The wild horse had long since learned that the
creature man was as dangerous to it as were any of the fierce four-footed
animals which hunted it, and its scent was good and its pace was swift
and it went in herds and avoided doubtful places. Not so easy a task as
it might seem was that which Ab and Oak had resolved upon. There must be
some elaborate device to attain their end, but they were confident. They
had noted often what older hunters did, and they felt themselves as good
as anybody. They plotted long and earnestly and even made a mental
distribution of their quarry, deciding what should be done with its skin
and with its meat, far in advance of any determination upon a plan for
its capture and destruction. They were boys.

There was no objection from the parents. They knew that the boys must
learn to become hunters, and if the two were not now capable of taking
care of themselves in the wood, then they were but disappointing
offspring. Consent secured, the boys acted entirely upon their own
responsibility, and, to make their subsequent plans clearer, it may be
well to explain a little more of the geography of the region. The cave of
Ab was on the north side of the stream, where the rocky banks came close
together with a little beach at either side, and the cave of Oak was
perhaps a mile to the westward, on the same side of the stream and with
very similar surroundings. On the south side of the river, opposite the
high banks between the two caves, the land was a prairie valley reaching
far away. On the north side as well there was at one place a little
valley, but it reached back only a few hundred yards from the river and
was surrounded by the forest-crowned hills. The close standing oaks and
beeches afforded, in emergency, a highway among their ranches, and along
this pathway the boys were comparatively safe. Either could climb a tree
at any time, and of the animals that were dangerous in the treetops there
were but few; in fact, there was only one of note, a tawny, cat-like
creature, not numerous, and resembling the lynx of the present day.
Almost in the midst of the little plain or valley, on the north side of
the river, rose a clump of trees, and in this the two boys saw means
afforded them for a realization of their hopes. The wild horses fed
daily in the valley to the north, as in the greater one to the south of
the river. But there also, in the high grass, as upon the south,
sometimes lurked the great beasts of prey, and to be far away from a tree
upon the plain was an unsafe thing for a cave man. From the forest edge
to the clump of trees was not more than two minutes' rush for a vigorous
boy and it was this fact which suggested to the youths their plan of
capture of the horse.

The homes of the cave men were located, when possible, where the refuge
of safety overhung closely the river's bank, and where the non-climbing
animals must pass along beneath them, but, even at that period of few men
and abundant animal life, there had developed an acuteness among the
weaker beasts, and they had learned to avoid certain paths that had
proved fatal to their brethren. They were numerous in the plains and
comparatively careless there, relying upon their speed to escape more
dangerous wild beasts, but they passed rarely beneath the ledges, where a
weighty rock dropped suddenly meant certain death. It was not a task
entirely easy for the cave men to have meat with regularity, flush as was
the life about them. New devices must be resorted to, and Ab and Oak were
about to employ one not infrequently successful.

The clam of the period, particularly the clam along this reach of the
upper Thames, was a marvel in his make-up. He was as large as he was
luscious, as abundant as he was both and was a great feature in the food
supply of the time. Not merely was he a feature in the food supply, but
in a mechanical way, and the first object sought by the boys, after their
plan had been agreed upon, was the shell of the great clam. They had no
difficulty in securing what they wanted, for strewn all about each cave
were the big shells in abundance. Sharp-edged, firm-backed, one of these
shells made an admirable little shovel, something with which to cut the
turf and throw up the soil, a most useful implement in the hands of the
river haunting people. The idea of the youngsters was simply this: Their
rendezvous should be at that point in the forest nearest the clump of
trees standing solitary in the valley below. They would select the safest
hours and then from the high ground make a sudden dash to the tree clump.
They would be watchful, of course, and seek to avoid the class of animals
for whom boys made admirable luncheon. Once at the clump of trees and
safely ensconced among the branches, they could determine wisely upon the
next step in their adventure. They were very knowing, these young men,
for they had observed their elders. What they wanted to do, what was the
end and aim of all this recklessness, was to dig a pit in this rich
valley land close to the clump of trees, a pit say some ten feet in
length by six feet in breadth and seven or eight feet in depth. That
meant a gigantic labor. Gillian, of "The Toilers of the Sea," assigned to
himself hardly a greater task. These were boys of the cave kind and must,
perforce, conduct themselves originally. As to the details of the plan,
well, they were only vague, as yet, but rapidly assuming a form more
definite.

The first thing essential for the boys was to reach the clump of trees.
It was just before noon one day when they swung together on a tree branch
sweeping nearly to the ground, and at a point upon the hill directly
opposite the clump. This was the time selected for their first dash. They
studied every square yard of the long grass of the little valley with
anxious eyes. In the distance was feeding a small drove of wild horses
and, farther away, close by the river side, upreared occasionally what
might be the antlers of the great elk of the period. Between the boys and
the clump of trees there was no movement of the grass, nor any sign of
life. They could discern no trace of any lurking beast.

"Are you afraid?" asked Ab.

"Not if we run together."

"All right," said Ab; "let's go it with a rush."

The slim brown bodies dropped lightly to the ground together, each of the
boys clasping one of the clamshells. Side by side they darted down the
slope and across through the deep grass until the clump of trees was
reached, when, like two young apes, they scrambled into the safety of the
branches.

The tree up which they had clambered was the largest of the group and of
dense foliage. It was one of the huge conifers of the age, but its
branches extended to within perhaps thirty feet of the ground, and from
the greatest of these side branches reached out, growing so close
together as to make almost a platform. It was but the work of a half hour
for these boys, with their arboreal gifts, to twine additional limbs
together and to construct for themselves a solid nest and lookout where
they might rest at ease, at a distance above the greatest leap of any
beast existing. In this nest they curled themselves down and, after much
clucking debate, formulated their plan of operation. Only one boy should
dig at a time, the other must remain in the nest as a lookout.

Swift to act in those days were men, because necessity had made it a
habit to them, and swifter still, as a matter of course, were impulsive
boys. Their tree nest fairly made, work, they decided, must begin at
once. The only point to be determined upon was regarding the location of
the pit. There was a tempting spread of green herbage some hundred feet
to the north and east of the tree, a place where the grass was high but
not so high as it was elsewhere. It had been grazed already by the
wandering horses and it was likely that they would visit the tempting
area again. There, it was finally settled, should the pit be dug. It was
quite a distance from the tree, but the increased chances of securing a
wild horse by making the pit in that particular place more than offset,
in the estimation of the boys, the added danger of a longer run for
safety in an emergency. The only question remaining was as to who should
do the first digging and who be the first lookout? There was a violent
debate upon this subject.

"I will go and dig and you shall keep watch," said Oak.

"No, I'll dig and you shall watch," was Ab's response. "I can run faster
than you."

Oak hesitated and was reluctant. He was sturdy, this young gentleman, but
Ab possessed, somehow, the mastering spirit. It was settled finally that
Ab should dig and Oak should watch. And so Ab slid down the tree,
clamshell in hand, and began laboring vigorously at the spot agreed upon.

It was not a difficult task for a strong boy to cut through tough grass
roots with the keen edge of the clamshell. He outlined roughly and
rapidly the boundaries of the pit to be dug and then began chopping out
sods just as the workman preparing to garnish some park or lawn begins
his work to-day. Meanwhile, Oak, all eyes, was peering in every
direction. His place was one of great responsibility, and he recognized
the fact. It was a tremendous moment for the youngsters.




CHAPTER VI.


A DANGEROUS VISITOR.

It was not alone necessary for the plans of Ab and Oak that there should
be made a deep hole in the ground. It was quite as essential for their
purposes that the earth removed should not be visible upon the adjacent
surface. The location of the pit, as has been explained, was some yards
to the northeast of the tree in which the lookout had been made. A few
yards southwest of the tree was a slight declivity and damp hollow, for
from that point the land sloped, in a reed-grown marsh toward the river.
It was decided to throw into this marsh all the excavated soil, and so,
when Ab had outlined the pit and cut up its surface into sods, he carried
them one by one to the bank and cast them down among the reeds where the
water still made little puddles. In time of flood the river spread out
into a lake, reaching even as far as here. The sod removed, there was
exposed a rectangle of black soil, for the earth was of alluvial deposit
and easy of digging. Shellful after shellful of the dirt did Ab carry
from where the pit was to be, trotting patiently back and forth, but the
work was wearisome and there was a great waste of energy. It was Oak who
gave an inspiration.

"We must carry more at a time," he called out. And then he tossed down to
Ab a wolfskin which had been given him by his father as a protection on
cold nights and which he had brought along, tied about his waist, quite
incidentally, for, ordinarily, these boys wore no clothing in warm
weather. Clothing, in the cave time, appertained only to manhood and
womanhood, save in winter. But Oak had brought the skin along because he
had noticed a vast acorn crop upon his way to and from the rendezvous and
had in mind to carry back to his own home cave some of the nuts. The pelt
was now to serve an immediately useful purpose.

Spreading the skin upon the grass beside him, Ab heaped it with the dirt
until there had accumulated as much as he could carry, when, gathering
the corners together, he struggled with the enclosed load manfully to the
bank and spilled it down into the morass. The digging went on rapidly
until Ab, out of breath and tired, threw down the skin and climbed into
the treetop and became the watchman, while Oak assumed his labor. So they
worked alternately in treetop and upon the ground until the sun's rays
shot red and slanting from the west. Wiser than to linger until dusk had
too far deepened were these youngsters of the period. The clamshells were
left in the pit. The lookout above declared nothing in sight, then slid
to the ground and joined his friend, and another dash was made to the
hill and the safety of its treetops. It was in great spirits that the
boys separated to seek their respective homes. They felt that they were
personages of consequence. They had no doubt of the success of the
enterprise in which they had embarked, and the next day found them
together again at an early hour, when the digging was enthusiastically
resumed.

Many a load of dirt was carried on the second day from the pit to the
marsh's edge, and only once did the lookout have occasion to suggest to
his working companion that he had better climb the tree. A movement in
the high grass some hundred yards away had aroused suspicion; some wild
animal had passed, but, whatever it was, it did not approach the clump of
trees and work was resumed at once. When dusk came the moist black soil
found in the pit had all been carried away and the boys had reached, to
their intense disgust, a stratum of hard packed gravel. That meant
infinitely more difficult work for them and the use of some new utensil.

There was nothing daunting in the new problem. When it came to the mere
matter of securing a tool for digging the hard gravel, both Ab and Oak
were easily at home. The cave dwellers, haunting the river side for
centuries, had learned how to deal with gravel, and when Ab returned to
the scene the next day he brought with him a sturdy oaken stave some six
feet in length, sharpened to a point and hardened in the fire until it
was almost iron-like in its quality. Plunged into the gravel as far as
the force of a blow could drive it, and pulled backward with the leverage
obtained, the gravel was loosened and pried upward either in masses which
could be lifted out entire, or so crumbled that it could be easily dished
out with the clamshell. The work went on more slowly, but not less
steadily nor hopefully than on the days preceding, and, for some time,
was uninterrupted by any striking incident. The boys were becoming
buoyant. They decided that the grassy valley was almost uninfested by
things dangerous. They became reckless sometimes, and would work in the
pit together. As a rule, though, they were cautious--this was an inherent
and necessary quality of a cave being--and it was well for them that it
was so, for when an emergency came only one of them was in the pit, while
the other was aloft in the lookout and alert.

It was about three o'clock one afternoon when Ab, whose turn it chanced
to be, was working valiantly in the pit, while Oak, all eyes, was perched
aloft. Suddenly there came from the treetop a yell which was no boyish
expression of exuberance of spirits. It was something which made Ab leap
from the excavation as he heard it and reach the side of Oak as the
latter came literally tumbling down the bole of the tree of watching.

"Run!" Oak said, and the two darted across the valley and reached the
forest and clambered into safe hiding among the clustering branches.
Then, in the intervals between his gasping breath, Oak managed to again
articulate a word:

"Look!" he said.

Ab looked and, in an instant, realized how wise had been Oak's alarming
cry and how well it was for them that they were so distant from the clump
of trees so near the river. What he saw was that which would have made
the boys' fathers flee as swiftly had they been in their children's
place. Yet what Ab looked upon was only a waving, in sinuous regularity,
of the rushes between the tree clump and the river and the lifting of a
head some ten or fifteen feet above the reed-tops. What had so alarmed
the boys was what would have disturbed a whole tribe of their kinsmen,
even though they had chanced to be assembled, armed to the teeth with
such weapons as they then possessed. What they saw was not of the common.
Very rarely indeed, along the Thames, had occurred such an invasion. The
father of Oak had never seen the thing at all, and the father of Ab had
seen it but once, and that many years before. It was the great serpent of
the seas!

Safely concealed in the branches of a tree overlooking the little valley,
the boys soon recovered their normal breathing capacity and were able to
converse again. Not more than a couple of minutes, at the utmost, had
passed between their departure from their place of labor and their
establishment in this same tree. The creature which had so alarmed them
was still gliding swiftly across the morass between the lowland and the
river. It came forward through the marsh undeviatingly toward the tree
clump, the tall reeds quivering as it passed, but its approach indicated
by no sound or other token of disturbance. The slight bank reached, there
was uplifted a great serpent head, and then, without hesitation, the
monster swept forward to the trees and soon hung dangling from the
branches of the largest one, its great coils twined loosely about trunk
and limb, its head swinging gently back and forth just below the lower
branch. It was a serpent at least sixty feet in length, and two feet or
more in breadth at its huge middle. It was queerly but not brilliantly
spotted, and its head was very nearly that of the anaconda of to-day.
Already the sea-serpent had become amphibious. It had already acquired
the knowledge it has transmitted to the anaconda, that it might leave the
stream, and, from some vantage point upon the shore, find more surely a
victim than in the waters of the sea or river. This monster serpent was
but waiting for the advent of any land animal, save perhaps those so
great as the mammoth or the great elk, or, possibly, even the cave
bear or the cave tiger. The mammoth was, of course, an impossibility,
even to the sea-serpent. The elk, with its size and vast antlers, was, to
put it at the mildest, a perplexing thing to swallow. The rhinoceros was
dangerous, and as for the cave bear and the cave tiger, they were
uncomfortable customers for anything alive. But there were the cattle,
the aurochs and the urus, and the little horses and deer, and wild hog
and a score of other creatures which, in the estimation of the
sea-serpent, were extremely edible. A tidbit to the serpent was a man, but
he did not get one in half a century.

Not long did the boys remain even in a harborage so distant. Each fled
homeward with his story.




CHAPTER VII.


THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS.

It was with scant breath, when they reached their respective caves, that
the boys told the story of the dread which had invaded the marsh-land.
What they reported was no light event and, the next morning, their
fathers were with them in the treetop at the safe distance which the
wooded crest afforded and watching with apprehensive eyes the movements
of the monster settled in the rugged valley tree. There was slight
movement to note. Coiled easily around the bole, just above where the
branches began, and resting a portion of its body upon a thick, extending
limb, its head and perhaps ten or fifteen feet of its length swinging
downward, the great serpent still hung awaiting its prey, ready to launch
itself upon any hapless victim which might come within its reach. That
its appetite would soon be gratified admitted of little doubt. Profiting
by the absence of the boys, who while at work made no effort to conceal
themselves, groups of wild horses were already feeding in the lowlands,
and the elk and wild ox were visible here and there. The group in the
treetop on the crest realized that it had business on hand. The
sea-serpent was a terror to the cave people, and when one appeared to
haunt the river the word was swiftly spread, and they gathered to
accomplish its end if possible. With warnings to the boys they left
behind them, the fathers sped away in different directions, one up, the
other down, the river's bank, Stripe-Face to seek the help of some of the
cave people and One-Ear to arouse the Shell people, as they were called,
whose home was beside a creek some miles below. Into the home of the
little colony One-Ear went swinging a little later, demanding to see the
head man of the fishing village, and there ensued an earnest conversation
of short sentences, but one which caused immediate commotion. To the hill
dwellers the rare advent of a sea-serpent was comparatively a small
matter, but it was a serious thing to the Shell folk. The sea-serpent
might come up the creek and be among them at any moment, ravaging their
community. The Shell people were grateful for the warning, but there were
few of them at home, and less than a dozen could be mustered to go with
One-Ear to the rendezvous.

They were too late, the hardy people who came up to assail the serpent,
because the serpent had not waited for them. The two boys roosting in the
treetop on the height had beheld what was not pleasant to look upon, for
they had seen a yearling of the aurochs enveloped by the thing, which
whipped down suddenly from the branches, and the crushed quadruped had
been swallowed in the serpent's way. But the dinner which might suffice
it for weeks had not, in all entirety, the effect upon it which would
follow the swallowing of a wild deer by its degenerate descendants of the
Amazonian or Indian forests.

The serpent did not lie a listless mass, helplessly digesting the product
of the tragedy upon the spot of its occurrence, but crawled away slowly
through the reeds, and instinctively to the water, into which it slid
with scarce a splash, and then went drifting lazily away upon the current
toward the sea. It had been years since one of these big water serpents
had invaded the river at such a distance from its mouth and never came
another up so far. There were causes promoting rapidly the extinction of
their dreadful kind.

Three or four days were required before Ab and Oak realized, after what
had taken place, that there were in the community any more important
personages than they, and that they had work before them, if they were to
continue in their glorious career. When everyday matters finally asserted
themselves, there was their pit not yet completed. Because of their
absence, a greater aggregation of beasts was feeding in the little
valley. Not only the aurochs, the ancient bison, the urus, the progenitor
of the horned cattle of to-day, wild horse and great elk and reindeer
were seen within short distances from each other, but the big, hairy
rhinoceros of the time was crossing the valley again and rioting in its
herbage or wallowing in the pools where the valley dipped downward to the
marsh. The mammoth with its young had swung clumsily across the area of
rich feed, and, lurking in its train, eyeing hungrily and bloodthirstily
the mammoth's calf, had crept the great cave tiger. The monster cave bear
had shambled through the high grass, seeking some small food in default
of that which might follow the conquest of a beast of size. The uncomely
hyenas had gone slinking here and there and had found something worthy
their foul appetite. All this change had come because the two boys, being
boys and full of importance, had neglected their undertaking for about a
week and had talked each in his own home with an air intended to be
imposing, and had met each other with much dignity of bearing, at their
favorite perching-place in the treetop on the hillside. When there came
to them finally a consciousness that, to remain people of magnitude in
the world, they must continue to do something, they went to work bravely.
The change which had come upon the valley in their brief absence tended
to increase their confidence, for, as thus exhibited, early as was the
age, the advent of the human being, young or old, somehow affected all
animate nature and terrified it, and the boys saw this. Not that the
great beasts did not prey upon man, but then, as now, the man to the
great beast was something of a terror, and man, weak as he was, knew
himself and recognized himself as the head of all creation. The mammoth,
the huge, thick-coated rhinoceros, sabre-tooth, the monstrous tiger, or
the bear, or the hyena, or the loping wolf, or short-bodied and vicious
wolverine were to him, even then, but lower creatures. Man felt himself
the master of the world, and his children inherited the perception.

Work in the pit progressed now rapidly and not a great number of days
passed before it had attained the depth required. The boy at work was
compelled, when emerging, to climb a dried branch which rested against
the pit's edge, and the lookout in the tree exercised an extra caution,
since his comrade below could no longer attain safety in a moment. But
the work was done at last, that is, the work of digging, and there
remained but the completion of the pitfall, a delicate though not a
difficult matter. Across the pit, and very close together, were laid
criss-crosses of slender branches, brought in armfuls from the forest;
over these dry grass was spread, thinly but evenly, and over this again
dust and dirt and more grass and twigs, all precautions being observed to
give the place a natural appearance. In this the boys succeeded very
well. Shrewd must have been the animal of any sort which could detect the
trap. Their chief work done, the boys must now wait wisely. The place was
deserted again and no nearer approach was made to the pitfall than the
treetops of the hillside. There the boys were to be found every day,
eager and anxious and hopeful as boys are generally. There was not
occasion for getting closer to the trap, for, from their distant perch,
its surface was distinctly visible and they could distinguish if it had
been broken in. Those were days of suppressed excitement for the two;
they could see the buffalo and wild horses moving here and there, but
fortune was still perverse and the trap was not approached. Before its
occupation by them, the place where they had dug had appeared the
favorite feeding-place; now, with all perversity, the wild horses and
other animals grazed elsewhere, and the boys began to fear that they had
left some traces of their work which revealed it to the wily beasts. On
one day, for an hour or two, their hearts were in their mouths. There
issued from the forest to the westward the stately Irish elk. It moved
forward across the valley to the waters on the other side, and, after
drinking its fill, began feeding directly toward the tree clump. It
reached the immediate vicinity of the pitfall and stood beneath the
trees, fairly outlined against the opening beyond, and affording
to the almost breathless couple a splendid spectacle. A magnificent
creature was the great elk of the time of the cave men, the Irish elk, as
those who study the past have named it, because its bones have been found
so frequently in what are now the preserving peat bogs of Ireland. But
the elk passed beyond the sight of the watchers, and so their bright
hopes fell.

The crispness of full autumn had come, one morning, when Ab and Oak met
as usual and looked out across the valley to learn if anything had
happened in the vicinity of the pitfall. The hoar frost, lying heavily on
the herbage, made the valley resemble a sea of silver, checkered and
spotted all over darkly. These dark spots and lines were the traces of
such animals as had been in the valley during the night or toward early
morning. Leading everywhere were heavy trails and light ones, telling the
story of the night. But very little heed to these things was paid by the
ardent boys. They were too full of their own affairs. As they swung into
place together upon their favorite limb and looked across the valley,
they uttered a simultaneous and joyous shout. Something had taken place
at the pitfall!

All about the trap the surface of the ground was dark and the area of
darkness extended even to the little bank of the swamp on the riverside.
Careless of danger, the boys dropped to the ground and, spears in hand,
ran like deer toward the scene of their weeks of labor. Side by side they
bounded to the edge of the excavation, which now yawned open to the sky.
They had triumphed at last! As they saw what the pitfall held, they
yelled in unison, and danced wildly around the opening, in the very
height of boyish triumph. The exultation was fully justified, for the
pitfall held a young rhinoceros, a creature only a few months old, but so
huge already that it nearly filled the excavation. It was utterly
helpless in the position it occupied. It was wedged in, incapable of
moving more than slightly in any direction. Its long snout, with its
sprouting pair of horns, was almost level with the surface of the ground
and its small bright eyes leered wickedly at its noisy enemies. It
struggled clumsily upon their approach, but nothing could relieve the
hopelessness of its plight.

All about the pitfall the earth was plowed in furrows and beaten down by
the feet of some monstrous animal. Evidently the calf was in the company
of its mother when it fell a victim to the art of the pitfall diggers. It
was plain that the mother had spent most of the night about her young in
a vain effort to release it. Well did the cave boys understand the signs,
and, after their first wild outburst of joy over the capture, a sense of
the delicacy, not to say danger, of their situation came upon them. It
was not well to interfere with the family affairs of the rhinoceros.
Where had the mother gone? They looked about, but could see nothing to
justify their fears. Only for a moment, though, did their sense of safety
last; hardly had the echo of their shouting come back from the hillside
than there was a splashing and rasping of bushes in the swamp and the
rush of some huge animal toward the little ascent leading to the valley
proper. There needed no word from either boy; the frightened couple
bounded to the tree of refuge and had barely begun clambering up its
trunk than there rose to view, mad with rage and charging viciously, the
mother of the calf rhinoceros.




CHAPTER VIII.


SABRE-TOOTH AND RHINOCEROS.

The rhinoceros of the Stone Age was a monstrous creature, an animal
varying in many respects from either species of the animal of the present
day, though perhaps somewhat closely allied to the huge double-horned and
now nearly extinct white rhinoceros of southern Africa. But the brute of
the prehistoric age was a beast of greater size, and its skin, instead of
being bare, was densely covered with a dingy colored, crinkly hair,
almost a wool. It was something to be dreaded by most creatures even in
this time of great, fierce animals. It turned aside for nothing; it was
the personification of courage and senseless ferocity when aroused.
Rarely seeking a conflict, it avoided none. The huge mammoth, a more
peaceful pachyderm, would ordinarily hesitate before barring its path,
while even the cave tiger, fiercest and most dreaded of the carnivora of
the time, though it might prey upon the young rhinoceros when opportunity
occurred, never voluntarily attacked the full-grown animal. From that
almost impervious shield of leather hide, an inch or more in thickness,
protected further by the woolly covering, even the terrible strokes of
the tiger's claws glanced off with but a trifling rending, while one
single lucky upward heave of the twin horns upon the great snout would
pierce and rend, as if it were a trifling obstacle, the body of any
animal existing. The lifting power of that prodigious neck was something
almost beyond conception. It was an awful engine of death when its
opportunity chanced to come. On the other hand, the rhinoceros of this
ancient world had but a limited range of vision, and was as dull-witted
and dangerously impulsive as its African prototype of today.

But short-sighted as it was, the boys clambering up the tree were near
enough for the perception of the great beast which burst over the
hummock, and it charged directly at them, the tree quivering when the
shoulder of the monster struck it as it passed, though the boys, already
in the branches, were in safety. Checking herself a little distance
beyond, the rhinoceros mother returned, snorting fiercely, and began
walking round and round the calf imprisoned in the pitfall. The boys
comprehended perfectly the story of the night. The calf once ensnared,
the mother had sought in vain to rescue it, and, finally, wearied with
her exertion, had retired just over the little descent, there to wallow
and rest while still keeping guard over her imprisoned young. The
spectacle now, as she walked around the trap, was something which would
have been pitiful to a later race of man. The beast would get down upon
her knees and plow the dirt about the calf with her long horns. She would
seek to get her snout beneath its body sidewise, and so lift it, though
each effort was necessarily futile. There was no room for any leverage,
the calf fitted the cavity. The boys clung to their perches in safety,
but in perplexity. Hours passed, but the mother rhinoceros showed no
inclination to depart. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when she
went away to the wallow, returning once or twice to her young before
descending the bank, and, even when she had reached the marsh, snorting
querulously for some time before settling down to rest.

The boys waited until all was quiet in the marsh, and, as a matter of
prudence, for some time longer. They wanted to feel assured that the
monster was asleep, then, quietly, they slid down the tree trunk and,
with noiseless step, stole by the pitfall and toward the hillside. A few
yards further on their pace changed to a run, which did not cease until
they reached the forest and its refuge, nor, even there, did they linger
for any length of time. Each started for his home; for their adventure
had again assumed a quality which demanded the consideration of older
heads and the assistance of older hands. It was agreed that they should
again bring their fathers with them--by a fortunate coincidence each knew
where to find his parent on this particular day--and that they should
meet as soon as possible. It was more than an hour later when the two
fathers and two sons, the men armed with the best weapons they possessed,
appeared upon the scene. So far as the watchers from the hillside could
determine, all was quiet about the clump of trees and the vicinity of the
pitfall. It was late in the afternoon now and the men decided that the
best course to pursue would be to steal down across the valley, kill the
imprisoned calf and then escape as soon as possible, leaving the mother
to find her offspring dead; reasoning that she would then abandon it.
Afterward the calf could be taken out and there would be a feast of cave
men upon the tender food and much benefit derived in utilization of
the tough yet not, at its age, too thick hide of the uncommon quarry.
There was but one difficulty in the way of carrying out this enterprise:
the wind was from the north and blew from the hunters toward the river,
and the rhinoceros, though lacking much range of vision, was as acute of
scent as the gray wolves which sometimes strayed like shadows through the
forest or the hyenas which scented from afar the living or the dead.
Still, the venture was determined upon.

The four descended the hill, the two boys in the rear, treading with the
lightness of the tiger cat, and went cautiously across the valley and
toward the tree trunk. Certainly no sound they made could have reached
the ear of the monster wallowing below the bank, but the wind carried to
its nostrils the message of their coming. They were not half way across
the valley when the rhinoceros floundered up to the level and charged
wildly along the course of the wafted scent. There was a flight for the
hillside, made none too soon, but yet in time for safety. Walking around
in circles, snorting viciously, the great beast lingered in the vicinity
for a time, then went back to its imprisoned calf, where it repeated the
performance of earlier in the day and finally retired again to its hidden
resting-place near by. It was dusk now and the shadows were deepening
about the valley.

The men, well up in the tree with the boys, were undetermined what to do.
They might steal along to the eastward and approach the calf from another
direction without disturbing the great brute by their scent. But it was
becoming darker every moment and the region was a dangerous one. In the
valley and away from the trees they were at a disadvantage and at night
there were fearful things abroad. Still, they decided to take the risk,
and the four, following the crest of the slight hill, moved along its
circle southeastward toward the river bank, each on the alert and each
with watchful eyes scanning the forest depths to the left or the valley
to the right. Suddenly One-Ear leaped back into the shadow, waved his
hand to check the advance of those behind him, then pointed silently
across the valley and toward the clump of trees.

Not a hundred yards from the pitfall the high grass was swaying gently;
some creature was passing along toward the pitfall and a thing of no
slight size. Every eye of the quartet was strained now to learn what
might be the interloper upon the scene. It was nearly dark, but the eyes
of the cave men, almost nocturnal in their adaptation as they were,
distinguished a long, dark body emerging from the reeds and circling
curiously and cautiously around the pitfall; nearer and nearer it
approached the helpless prisoner until perhaps twenty feet distant from
it. Here the thing seemed to crouch and remain quiescent, but only for a
little time. Then resounded across the valley a screaming roar, so fierce
and raucous and death-telling and terrifying that even the hardened
hunters leaped with affright. At the same moment a dark object shot
through the air and landed on the back of the creature in the shallow
pit. The tiger was abroad! There was a wild bleat of terror and agony, a
growl fiercer and shorter than the first hoarse cry of the tiger, and,
then, for a moment silence, but only for a moment. Snorts, almost as
terrible in their significance as the tiger's roar, came from the
marsh's edge. A vast form loomed above the slight embankment and there
came the thunder of ponderous feet. The rhinoceros mother was charging
the great tiger!

There was a repetition of the fierce snorts, with the wild rush of the
rhinoceros, another roar, the sound of which reechoed through the valley,
and then could be dimly seen a black something flying through the air and
alighting, apparently, upon the back of the charging monster. There was a
confusion of forms and a confusion of terrifying sounds, the snarling
roar of the great tiger and half whistling bellow of the great pachyderm,
but nothing could be seen distinctly. That a gigantic duel was in
progress the cave men knew, and knew, as well, that its scene was one
upon which they could not venture. The clamor had not ended when the
darkness became complete and then each father, with his son, fled swiftly
homeward.

Early the next morning, the four were together again at the same point of
safety and advantage, and again the frost-covered valley was a sea of
silver, this time unmarred by the criss-crosses of feeding or hunting
animals. There was no sign of life; no creature of the forest or the
plain was so daring as to venture soon upon the battlefield of the
rhinoceros and the cave tiger. Cautiously the cave men and their sons
made their way across the valley and approached the pitfall. What was
revealed to them told in a moment the whole story. The half-devoured body
of the rhinoceros calf was in the pit. It had been killed, no doubt, by
the tiger's first fierce assault, its back broken by the first blow of
the great forearm, or its vertebrae torn apart by the first grasp of the
great jaws. There were signs of the conflict all about, but that it had
not come to a deadly issue was apparent. Only by some accident could the
rhinoceros have caught upon its horns the agile monster cat, and only by
an accident even more remote could the tiger have reached a vital part of
its huge enemy. There had been a long and weary battle--a mother creature
fighting for her young and the great flesh-eater fighting for his prey.
But the combatants had assuredly separated without the death of either,
and the bereaved rhinoceros, knowing her young one to be dead, had
finally left the valley, while the tiger had returned to its prey and fed
its fill. But there was much meat left. There were, in the estimation of
the cave people, few more acceptable feasts than that obtainable from the
flesh of a young rhinoceros. The first instinct of the two men was to
work fiercely with their flint knives and cut out great lumps of meat
from the body in the pit. Hardly had they begun their work, when, as
by common impulse, each clambered out from the depression suddenly, and
there was a brief and earnest discussion. The cave tiger, monarch of the
time, was not a creature to abandon what he had slain until he had
devoured it utterly. Gorged though he might be, he was undoubtedly in
hiding within a comparatively short distance. He would return again
inevitably. He might be lying sleeping in the nearest clump of bushes! It
was possible that his appetite might come upon him soon again and that he
might appear at any moment. What chance then for the human beings who had
ventured into his dining-room? There was but one sensible course to
follow, and that was instant retreat. The four fled again to the hillside
and the forest, carrying with them, however, the masses of flesh already
severed from the body of the calf. There was food for a day or two for
each family.

And so ended the first woodland venture of these daring boys. For days
the vicinity of the little valley was not sought by either man or youth,
since the tiger might still be lurking near. When, later, the youths
dared to visit the scene of their bold exploit, there were only bones in
the pitfall they had made. The tiger had eaten its prey and had gone to
other fields. In later autumn came a great flood down the valley, rising
so high that the father of Oak and all his family were driven temporarily
from their cave by the water's influx and compelled to seek another
habitation many miles away. Some time passed before the comrades met
again.

As for Ab, this exploit might be counted almost as the beginning of his
manhood. His father--and fathers had even then a certain paternal
pride--had come to recognize in a degree the vigor and daring of his son.
The mother, of course, was even more appreciative, though to her firstborn
she could give scant attention, as Ab had the small brother in the cave
now and the little sister who was still smaller, but from this time the
youth became a person of some importance. He grew rapidly, and the sinewy
stripling developed, not increasing strength and stature and rounding
brawn alone, for he had both ingenuity and persistency of purpose,
qualities which made him rather an exception among the cave boys of his
age.




CHAPTER IX.


DOMESTIC MATTERS.

Attention has already been called to the fact that the family of Ab were
of the aristocracy of the region, and it should be added that the
interior of One-Ear's mansion corresponded with his standing in the
community. It was a fine cave, there was no doubt about that, and Red-Spot
was a notable housekeeper. As a rule, the bones remaining about the
fire after a meal were soon thrown outside--at least they were never
allowed to accumulate for more than a month or two. The beds were
excellent, for, in addition to the mass of leaves heaped upon the earth
which formed a resting-place for the family, there were spread the skins
of various animals. The water privileges of the establishment were
extensive, for there was the river in front, much utilized for drinking
purposes. There were ledges and shelves of rock projecting here and there
from the sides of the cave, and upon these were laid the weapons and
implements of the household, so that, excepting an occasional bone upon
the earthen floor, or, perhaps, a spattering of red, where some animal
had been cut up for roasting, the place was very neat indeed. The fact
that the smoke from the fire could, when the wind was right, ascend
easily through the roof made the residence one of the finest within a
large district of the country. As to light, it cannot be said that the
house was well provided. The fire at night illuminated a small area and,
in the daytime, light entered through the doorway, and, to an extent,
through the hole in the cave's top, as did also the rains, but the light
was by no means perfect. The doorway, for obvious reasons, was narrow and
there was a huge rock, long ago rolled inside with much travail, which
could on occasion be utilized in blocking the narrow passage. Barely room
to squeeze by this obstruction existed at the doorway. The sneaking but
dangerous hyena had a keen scent and was full of curiosity. The monster
bear of the time was ever hungry and the great cave tiger, though rarer,
was, as has been shown, a haunting dread. Great attention was paid to
doorways in those days, not from an artistic point of view exactly, but
from reasons cogent enough in the estimation of the cave men. But the
cave was warm and safe and the sharp eyes of its inhabitants, accustomed
to the semi-darkness, found slight difficulty in discerning objects in
the gloom. Very content with their habitation were all the family and
Red-Spot particularly, as a chatelaine should, felt much pride in her
surroundings.

It may be added that the family of One-Ear was a happy one. His life with
Red-Spot was the sequence of what might be termed a fortunate marriage.
It is true that standards vary with times, and that the demeanor of the
couple toward each other was occasionally not what would be counted the
index of domestic felicity in this more artificial and deceptive age. It
was never fully determined whether One-Ear or Red-Spot could throw a
stone ax with the greater accuracy, although certainly he could hurl one
with greater force than could his wife. But the deftness of each in
eluding such dangerous missiles was about the same, and no great harm had
at any time resulted from the effects of momentary ebullitions of anger,
followed by action on the part of either. There had not been at any time
a scandal in the family. The pair were faithful to each other. Society
was somewhat scattered in those days, and the cave twain, anywhere, were
generally as steadfast as the lion and the lioness. It was centuries
later, too, before the cave men's posterity became degenerate enough or
prosperous enough, or safe enough, to be polygamous, and, so far as the
area of the Thames valley or even the entire "Paris basin," as it is
called, was concerned, monogamy held its own very fairly, from the
shell-beds of the earliest kitchen-middens to the time of the bronze ax
and the dawn of what we now call civilization.

There were now five members in this family of the period, One-Ear,
Red-Spot, Ab, Bark and Beech-Leaf, the two last named being Ab's younger
brother and little more than baby sister. The names given them had come
in the same accidental way as had the name of Ab. The brother, when very
small, had imitated in babyish way the barking of some wolfish creature
outside which had haunted the cave's vicinity at night time, and so the
name of Bark, bestowed accidentally by Ab himself, had become the
youngster's title for life. As to Beech-Leaf, she had gained her name in
another way. She was a fat and joyous little specimen of a cave baby and
not much addicted to lying as dormant as babies sometimes do. The
bearskin upon which her mother laid her had not infrequently proven too
limited an area for her exploits and she would roll from it into the
great bed of beech leaves upon which it was placed, and become fairly
lost in the brown mass. So often had this hilarious young lady to be
disinterred from the beech leaf bed, that the name given her came
naturally, through association of ideas. Between the birth of Ab and that
of his younger brother an interval of five years had taken place, the
birth of the sister occurring three or four years later. So it came that
Ab, in the absence of his father and mother, was distinctly the head of
the family, admonitory to his brother, with ideas as to the physical
discipline requisite on occasion, and, in a rude way, fond of and
protective toward the baby sister.

There was a certain regularity in the daily program of the household,
although, with reference to what was liable to occur outside, it can
hardly be said to have partaken of the element of monotony. The work of
the day consisted merely in getting something to eat, and in this work
father and mother alike took an active part, their individual duties
being somewhat varied. In a general way One-Ear relied upon himself for
the provision of flesh, but there were roots and nuts and fruits, in
their season, and in the gathering of these Red-Spot was an admitted
expert. Not that all her efforts were confined to the fruits of the soil
and forest, for she could, if need be, assist her husband in the pursuit
or capture of any animal. She was not less clever than he in that
animal's subsequent dissection, and was far more expert in its cooking.
In the tanning of skins she was an adept. So it chanced that at this time
the father and mother frequently left the cave together in the morning,
their elder son remaining as protector of the younger inmates. When
occasionally he went with his parents, or was allowed to venture forth
alone, extra precautions were taken as to the cave's approaches. Just
outside the entrance was a stone similar to the one on the inside, and
when the two young children were left unguarded this outside barricade
was rolled against what remained of the entrance, so that the small
people, though prisoners, were at least secure from dangerous animals.
Of course there were variations in the program. There was that degree of
fellowship among the cave men, even at this early age, to allow of an
occasional banding together for hunting purposes, a battle of some sort
or the surrounding and destruction of some of the greater animals. At
such times One-Ear would be absent from the cave for days and Ab and his
mother would remain sole guardians. The boy enjoyed these occasions
immensely; they gave him a fine sense of responsibility and importance,
and did much toward the development of the manhood that was in him,
increasing his self-reliance and perfecting him in the art of winning his
daily bread, or what was daily bread's equivalent at the time in which he
lived. It was not in outdoor and physical life alone that he grew. There
was something more to him, a combination of traits somewhere which made
him a little beyond and above the mere seeker after food. He was never
entirely dormant, a sleeper on the skins and beech leaves, even when in
the shelter of the cave, after the day's adventures. He reasoned
according to such gifts as circumstances had afforded him and he had the
instinct of devising. An instinct toward devising was a great thing to
its possessor in the time of the cave people.

We know very well to-day, or think we know, that the influence of the
mother, in most cases, dominates that of the father in making the future
of the man-child. It may be that this comes because in early life the
boy, throughout the time when all he sees or learns will be most clear in
his memory until he dies, is more with the woman parent than with the
man, who is afield; or, it may be, there is some criss-cross law of
nature which makes the man ordinarily transmit his qualities to the
daughter and the woman transmit hers to the son. About that we do not
know yet. But it is certain that Ab was more like his mother than his
father, and that in these young days of his he was more immediately under
her influence. And Red-Spot was superior in many ways to the ordinary
woman of the cave time.

It was good for the boy that he was so under the maternal dominion, and
that, as he lingered about the cave, he aided in the making of threads of
sinew or intestine, or looked on interestedly as his mother, using the
bone needle, which he often sharpened for her with his flint scraper,
sewed together the skins which made the garments of the family. The
needle was one without an eye, a mere awl, which made holes through which
the thread was pushed. As the growing boy lounged or labored near his
mother, alternately helpful or annoying, as the case might be, he learned
many things which were of value to him in the future, and resolved upon
brave actions which should be greatly to his credit. He was but a cub, a
young being almost as unreasoning in some ways as the beasts of the wood,
but he had his hopes and vanities, as has even the working beaver or the
dancing crane, and from the long mother-talks came a degree of
definiteness of outline to his ambitions. He would be the greatest hunter
and warrior in all the region!

The cave mother easily understood her child's increasing daringness and
vigor, and though swift to anger and strong of hand, she could not but
feel a pride in and tell her tales to the boy beside her. After a time,
when the family of Oak returned to the cave above and the boys were much
together again, the mother began to see less of her son. The influence of
the days spent by her side remained with the boy, however, and much that
he learned there was of value in his later active life.




CHAPTER X.


OLD MOK, THE MENTOR.

It was at about this time, the time when Ab had begun to develop from
boyhood into strong and aspiring youth, that his family was increased
from five to six by the addition of a singular character, Old Mok. This
personage was bent and seemingly old, but he was younger than he looked,
though he was not extremely fair to look upon. He had a shock of grizzled
hair, a short, stiff, unpleasant beard, and the condition of one of his
legs made him a cripple of an exaggerated type. He could hobble about and
on great occasions make a journey of some length, but he was practically
debarred from hunting. The extraordinary curvature of his twisted leg
was, as usual in his time, the result of an encounter with some wild
beast. The limb curved like a corkscrew and was so much shorter than the
other leg that the man was really safe only when the walls of a cave
enclosed him. But if his legs were weak his brain and arms were not. In
that grizzled head was much intelligence and the arms were those of a
great climber. His toes were clasping things and he was at home in a
treetop. But he did not travel much. There was no need. Old Mok had
special gifts, and they were such as made him a desirable friend among
the cave men. He had, in his youth, been a mighty hunter and had so
learned that he could tell wonderfully the ways of beasts and swimming
things and the ways of slaying or eluding them. Best of all, he was such
a fashioner of weapons as the valley had rarely known, and, because of
this, was in great request as a cared-for inmate of almost any cave which
hit his fancy. After his crippling he had drifted from one haven to
another, never quite satisfied with what he found, and now he had come to
live, as he supposed, with his old friend, One-Ear, until life should
end. Despite his harshness of appearance--and neither of the two could
ever afterward explain it--there was something about the grim old man
which commended him to Ab from the very first. There was an occasional
twinkle in the fierce old fellow's eye and sometimes a certain cackle in
his clucking talk, which betokened not unkindliness toward a healthy
youngster, and the two soon grew together, as often the young and old may
do.

Though but what might be called in one sense a dependent, the crippled
hunter had a dignity and was arbitrary in the expression of his views.
Never once, through all the thousands of years which have passed since he
hobbled here and there, has lived an armorer more famous among those who
knew him best. No fashioner of sword, or lance, or coat of mail or plate,
in the far later centuries, had better reputation than had Mok with his
friends and patrons for the making of good weapons, though it may be that
his clientele was less numerous by hundreds to one than that of some
later manufacturer of a Toledo blade. He might be living partly as a
dependent, but he could do almost as he willed. Who should have standing
if it were not accorded to the most gifted chipper of flint and carver of
mammoth tooth in all the region from where the little waters came down to
make a river, to where the blue, broad stream, blending with friendly
currents, was lost in what is now the great North Sea?

A boy and an old man can come together closely, and that has, through all
the ages, been a good thing for each. The boy learns that which enables
him to do things and the man is happy in watching the development of one
of his own kind. Helping and advising Ab, and sometimes Oak as well, Old
Mok did not discourage sometimes reckless undertakings. In those days
chances were accepted. So when any magnificent scheme suggested itself to
the two youths, Ab at once sought his adviser and was not discountenanced.

It was a great night in the cave when Ab brought home two fluffy gray
bundles not much larger than kittens and tied them in a corner with
thongs of sinew, sinew so tough and stringy that it could not easily be
severed by the sharp teeth which were at once applied to it. The fluffy
gray bundles were two young wolves, and were, for Ab, a great possession.
They were not even brother and sister, these cubs, and had been gallantly
captured by the two courageous rangers, Ab and Oak. For some time the
boys had noted lurking shadows about a rugged height close by the river,
some distance below the cave of Ab, and had resolved upon a closer
investigation. A particularly ugly brute was the wolf of the cave man's
time, but one which, when not in pack, was unlikely to assail two
well-armed and sturdy youths in daylight; and the result of much cautious
spying was that they found two dens, each with young in them, and at a
time when the old wolves were away. In one den Ab seized upon two of the
snarling cubs and Oak did the same in the other, and then the raiders
fled with such speed as was in them, until they were at a safe distance
from the place where things would not go well with them should the robbed
parents return. Once in safe territory, each exchanged a cub for one
seized by the other and then each went home in triumph. Ab was especially
delighted. He was determined to feed his cubs with the utmost care and to
keep them alive and growing. He was full of the fancy and delighted in
it, but he had assumed a great responsibility.

[Illustration: AB SEIZED UPON TWO OF THE SNARLING CUBS AND OAK DID THE
SAME]

The cubs were tied in a corner of the cave and at once commanded the
attention and unbounded admiration of Bark and Beech-Leaf. The young lady
especially delighted in the little beasts and could usually be found
lying in the corner with them, the baby wolves learning in time to play
with her as if she were a wolf-suckled cub herself. Bark had almost the
same relations with the little brutes and Ab looked after them most
carefully. Even the father and mother became interested in the antics of
the young children and young wolves and the cubs became acknowledged, if
not particularly respected, members of the family. But Ab's dream was too
much for sudden realization. Not all at once could the wild thing become
a tame one. As the cubs grew and their teeth became longer and sharper,
there was an occasional conflict and the arms of Bark and Beech-Leaf were
scarred in consequence, until at last Ab, though he protested hardly, was
compelled to give up his pets. Somehow, he was not in the mood for
killing the half grown beasts, and so he simply turned them loose, but
they did not, as he had thought they would, flee to the forest. They had
known almost no life except that of the cave, they had got their meat
there and, at night, the twain were at the doorway whining for food. To
them were tossed some half-gnawed bones and they received them with
joyous yelps and snarls. Thenceforth they hung about the cave and
retained, practically, their place in the family, oddly enough showing
particular animosity to those of their own kind who ventured near the
place. One day, the female was found in the cave's rear with four little
whelps lying beside her, and that settled it! The family petted the young
animals and they grew up tamer and more obedient than had been their
father and mother. Protected by man, they were unlikely to revert to
wildness. Members of the pack which grew from them were, in time,
bestowed as valued gifts among the cave men of the region and much came
of it. The two boys did a greater day's work than they could comprehend
when they raided the dens by the river's side.

But there was much beside the capture of wolf cubs to occupy the
attention of the boys. They counted themselves the finest bird hunters in
the community and, to a certain extent, justified the proud claim made.
No youths could set a snare more deftly or hurl a stone more surely, and
there was much bird life for them to seek. The bustard fed in the vast
nut forests, the capercailzie was proud upon the moors, where the
heath-cock was as jaunty, and the willow grouse and partridge were wise in
covert to avoid the hungry snowy owl. Upon the river and lagoons and
creeks the swan and wild goose and countless duck made constant clamor,
and there were water-rail and snipe along the shallows. There were eggs
to be found, and an egg baked in the ashes was a thing most excellent. It
was with the waterfowl that the boys were most successful. The ducks
would in their feeding approach close to the shores of the river banks or
the little islands and would gather in bunches so near to where the boys
were hidden that the young hunters, leaping suddenly to their feet and
hurling their stones together, rarely failed to secure at least a single
victim. There were muskrats along the banks and there was a great beaver,
which was not abundant, and which was a mighty creature of his kind. Of
muskrats the boys speared many--and roasted muskrat is so good that it is
eaten by the Indians and some of the white hunters in Canada to-day--but
the big beaver they did not succeed in capturing at this stage of their
career. Once they saw a seal, which had come up the river from the sea,
and pursued it, running along the banks for miles, but it proved as
elusive as the great beaver.

But, as a matter of course, it was upon land that the greatest sport was
had. There were the wild hogs, but the hogs were wary and the big boars
dangerous, and it was only when a litter of the young could be pounced
upon somewhere that flint-headed spears were fully up to the emergency.
On such occasions there was fine pigsticking, and then the atmosphere in
the caves would be made fascinating with the odor of roasting suckling.
There is a story by a great and gentle writer telling how a Chinaman
first discovered the beauties of roast pig. It is an admirable tale and
it is well that it was written, but the cave man, many tens of thousands
of years before there was a China, yielded to the allurements of young
pig, and sought him accordingly.

The musk-ox, which still mingled with the animals of the river basin, was
almost as difficult of approach as in arctic wilds to-day, as was a small
animal, half goat, half antelope, which fed upon the rocky hillsides or
wherever the high reaches were. There were squirrels in the trees, but
they were seldom caught, and the tailless hare which fed in the river
meadows was not easily approached and was swift as the sea wind in its
flight, swifter than a sort of fox which sought it constantly. But the
burrowing things were surer game. There were martens and zerboas, and
marmots and hedgehogs and badgers, all good to eat and attainable to
those who could dig as could these brawny youths. The game once driven to
its hole, the clamshell and the sharpened fire-hardened spade-stick were
brought into use and the fate of the animal sought was rarely long in
doubt. It is true that the scene lacked one element very noticeable when
boys dig out any animal to-day. There was not the inevitable and
important dog, but the youths were swift of sight and quick of hand, and
the hidden creature, once unearthed, seldom escaped. One of the prizes of
those feats of excavation was the badger, for not only was it edible, but
its snow-white teeth, perforated and strung on sinew, made necklaces
which were highly valued.

The youths did not think of attacking many of the dangerous brutes. They
might have risked the issue with a small leopard which existed then, or
faced the wildcat, but what they sought most was the wolverine, because
it had fur so long and oddly marked, and because it was braver than other
animals of its size and came more boldly to some bait of meat, affording
opportunity for fine spear-throwing. And, apropos of the wolverine, the
glutton, as it is called in Europe, it is something still admired. It is
a vicious, bloodthirsty, unchanging and, to the widely-informed and
scientifically sentimental, lovable animal. It is vicious and
bloodthirsty because that is its nature. It is lovable because, through
all the generations, it has come down just the same. The cave man knew it
just as it is now; the early Teuton knew it when "hides" of land were the
rewards of warriors. The Roman knew it when he made forays to the far
north for a few centuries and learned how sharp were the blades of the
Rhine-folk and the Briton. The Druid and the Angle and Jute and Saxon
knew it, and it is known to-day in all northern Europe and Asia and
America, in fact, in nearly all the northern temperate zone. The
wolverine is something wonderful; it laughs at the ages; its bones, found
side by side with those of the cave hyena, are the same as those found in
its body as it exists to-day. It is an anomaly, an animal which does not
advance nor retrograde.

The two big boys grew daily in the science of gaining food and grew more
and more of importance in their respective households. Sometimes either
one of them might hunt alone, but this was not the rule. It was safer for
two than one, when the forest was invaded deeply. But not all their time
was spent in evading or seeking the life of such living things as they
might discover. They had a home life sometimes as entertaining as the
life found anywhere outside.




CHAPTER XI.


DOINGS AT HOME.

Those were happy times in the cave, where Ab, developing now into an
exceedingly stalwart youth, found the long evenings about the fire far
from monotonous. There was Mok, the mentor, who had grown so fond of him,
and there was most interesting work to do in making from the dark flint
nodules or obsidian fragments--always eagerly seized upon when discovered
by the cave people in their wanderings--the spearheads and rude knives
and skin scrapers so essential to their needs. The flint nodule was but a
small mass of the stone, often somewhat pear-shaped. Though apparently a
solid mass, composed of the hardest substance then known, it lay in what
might be called a series of flakes about a center, and, in wise hands,
these flakes could be chipped or pried away unbroken. The flake, once
won, was often slightly concave on the outside and convex on the other,
but the core of the stone was something more equally balanced in
formation and, when properly finished, made a mighty spearhead. For the
heavy axes and mallets, other stones, such as we now call granite,
redstone or quartose grit, were often used, but in the making of all the
weapons was required the exercise of infinite skill and patience. To make
the flakes symmetrical demanded the nicest perception and judgment of
power of stroke, for, with each flake gained, there resulted a new form
to the surface of the stone. The object was always to secure a flake with
a point, a strong middle ridge and sides as nearly edged as possible. And
in the striking off of these flakes and their finishing others of the
cave men were to old Mok as the child is to the man.

Ab hung about the old man at his work and was finally allowed to help
him. If, at first, the boy could do nothing else, he could, with his
flint scraper, work industriously at the smoothing of the long spear
shafts, and when he had learned to do well at this he was at last allowed
to venture upon the stone chipping, especially when into old Mok's
possession had come a piece of flint the quality of which he did not
quite approve and for the ruining of which in the splitting he cared but
little.

There were disasters innumerable when the boy began and much bad stone
was spoiled, but he had a will and a good eye and hand, and it came, in
time, that he could strike off a flake with only a little less of
deftness than his teacher and that, even in the more delicate work of the
finer chipping to complete the weapon, he was a workman not to be
despised. He had an ambition in it all and old Mok was satisfied with
what he did.

The boy was always experimenting, ever trying a new flint chipper or
using a third stone to tap delicately the one held in the hand to make
the fracture, or wondering aloud why it would not be well to make this
flint knife a little thinner, or that spearhead a trifle heavier. He was
questioning as he worked and something of a nuisance with it all, but old
Mok endured with what was, for him, an astonishing degree of patience,
and would sometimes comment grumblingly to the effect that the boy could
at least chip stone far better than some men. And then the veteran would
look at One-Ear, who was, notoriously, a bad flint worker,--though, a
weapon once in his grasp, there were few could use it with surer eye or
heavier hand--and would chuckle as he made the comment. As for One-Ear,
he listened placidly enough. He was glad a son of his could make good
weapons. So much the better for the family!

As times went, Ab was a tolerably good boy to his mother. Nearly all
young cave males were good boys until the time came when their thews and
sinews outmatched the strength of those who had borne them, and this, be
it said, was at no early age, for the woman, hunting and working with the
man, was no maternal weakling whose buffet was unworthy of notice. A blow
from the cave mother's hand was something to be respected and avoided.
The use of strength was the general law, and the cave woman, though she
would die for her young, yet demanded that her young should obey her
until the time came when the maternal instinct of first direction blended
with and was finally lost in pride over the force of the being to whom
she had given birth. So Ab had vigorous duties about the household.

As has been told already, Red-Spot was a notable housekeeper and there
was such product of the cave cooking as would make happy any gourmand of
to-day who could appreciate the quality of what had a most natural
flavor. Regarding her kitchen appliances Red-Spot had a matron's
justifiable pride. Not only was there the wood fire, into which, held on
long, pointed sticks, could be thrust all sorts of meat for the somewhat
smoky broiling, and the hot coals and ashes in which could be roasted the
clams and the clay-covered fish, but there was the place for boiling,
which only the more fortunate of the cave people owned. Her growing son
had aided much in the attainment of this good housewife's fond desire.

With much travail, involving all the force the cave family could muster
and including the assistance of Oak's father and of Oak himself, who
rejoiced with Ab in the proceedings, there had been rolled into the cave
a huge sandstone rock with a top which was nearly flat. Here was to be
the great pot, sometimes used as a roasting place, as well, which only
the more pretentious of the caves could boast. On the middle of the big
stone's uppermost surface old Mok chipped with an ax the outline of a
rude circle some two feet in diameter. This defined roughly the size of
the kettle to be made. Inside the circle, the sandstone must be dug out
to a big kettle's proper depth, and upon the boy, Ab, must devolve most
of this healthful but not over-attractive labor.

The boy went at the task gallantly, in the beginning, and pecked away
with a stone chisel and gained a most respectable hollow within a day or
two, but his enthusiasm subsided with the continuity of much effort with
small result. He wanted more weight to his chisel of flint set firmly in
reindeer's horn, and a greater impact to the blows into which could not
be put the force resulting from a swing of arm. He thought much. Then he
secured a long stick and bound his chisel strongly to it at one end, the
top of the chisel resting against a projecting stub of limb, so that it
could not be driven upward. To the other end of the stick he bound a
stone of some pounds in weight and then, holding the shaft with both
hands, lifted it and let the whole drop into the depression he had
already made. The flint chisel bit deeply under the heavy impact and the
days were few before Ab had dug in the sandstone rock a cavity which
would hold much meat and water. There was an unconscious celebration when
the big kettle was completed. It was nearly filled with water, and into
the water were flung great chunks of the meat of a reindeer killed that
day. Meanwhile, the cave fire had been replenished with dry wood and
there had been formed a wide bed of coals, upon which were cast numerous
stones of moderate size, which soon attained a shining heat. A sort of
tongs made of green withes served to remove the stones, one after
another, from the mass of coal, and drop them in with the meat and water.
Within a little time the water was fairly boiling and soon there was a
monster stew giving forth rich odors and ready to be eaten. And it was
not allowed to get over-cool after that summoning fragrance had once
extended throughout the cave. There was a rush for the clam shells which
served for soup dishes or cups, there was spearing with sharpened sticks
for pieces of the boiled meat, and all were satisfied, though there was
shrill complaint from Bark, whose turn at the kettle came late, and much
clamor from chubby Beech-Leaf, who was not yet tall enough to help
herself, but who was cared for by the mother. It may be that, to some
people of to-day, the stew would be counted lacking in quality of
seasoning, but an opinion upon seasoning depends largely upon the stomach
and the time, and, besides, it may be that the dirt clinging to the
stones cast into the water gave a certain flavor as fine in its way as
could be imparted by salt and pepper.

Old Mok, observing silently, had decidedly approved of Ab's device for
easier digging into sandstone than was the old manner of pecking away
with a chisel held in the hand. He was almost disposed now to admit the
big lad to something like a plane of equality in the work they did
together. He became more affable in their converse, and the youth was, in
the same degree, delighted and ambitious. They experimented with the
stick and weight and chisel in accomplishing the difficult work of
splitting from boulders the larger fragments of stone from which weapons
were to be made, and learned that by heavy, steady pressure of the
breast, thus augmented by heavy weight, they could fracture more evenly
than by blow of stone, ax or hammer. They learned that two could work
together in stone chipping and do better work than one. Old Mok would
hold the forming weapon-head in one hand and the horn-hafted chisel in
another, pressing the blade close against the stone and at just such
angle as would secure the result he sought, while Ab, advised as to the
force of each succeeding stroke, tapped lightly upon the chisel's head.
Woe was it for the boy if once he missed his stroke and caught the old
man's fingers! Very delicate became the chipping done by these two
artists, and excellent beyond any before made were the axes and
spearheads produced by what, in modern times, would have been known under
the title of "Old Mok & Co."

At this time, too, Ab took lessons in making all the varied articles of
elk or reindeer horn and the drinking cups from the horns of urus and
aurochs. Old Mok even went so far as to attempt teaching the youth
something of carving figures upon tusks and shoulder blades, but in this
art Ab never greatly excelled. He was too much a creature of action. The
bone needles used by Red-Spot in making skin garments he could form
readily enough and he made whistles for Bark and Beech-Leaf, but his
inclinations were all toward larger things. To become a fighter and a
hunter remained his chief ambition.

Rather keen, with light snows but nipping airs, were the winters of this
country of the cave men, and there were articles of food essential to
variety which were, necessarily, stored before the cold season came.
There were roots which were edible and which could be dried, and there
were nuts in abundance, beyond all need. Beechnuts and acorns were
gathered in the autumn, the children at this time earning fully the right
of home and food, and the stores were heaped in granaries dug into the
cave's sides. Should the snow at any time fall too deeply for
hunting--though such an occurrence was very rare--or should any other
cause, such, for instance, as the appearance of the great cave tiger in
the region, make the game scarce and hunting perilous, there was the
recourse of nuts and roots and no danger of starvation. There was no fear
of suffering from thirst. Man early learned to carry water in a pouch of
skin and there were sometimes made rock cavities, after the manner of the
cave kettle, where water could be stored for an emergency. Besieging wild
beasts could embarrass but could not greatly alarm the family, for, with
store of wood and food and water, the besieged could wait, and it was not
well for the flesh-seeking quadruped to approach within a long
spear-thrust's length of the cavern's narrow entrance.

The winter following the establishment of Ab's real companionship with
Old Mok, as it chanced, was not a hard one. There fell snow enough for
tracking, but not so deeply as to incommode the hunter. There had been a
wonderful nut-fall in the autumn and the cave was stored with such
quantity of this food that there was no chance of real privation. The ice
was clean upon the river and through the holes hacked with stone axes
fish were dragged forth in abundance upon the rude bone and stone hooks,
which served their purpose far better than when, in summer time, the line
was longer and the fish escaped so often from the barbless implements. It
was a great season in all that made a cave family's life something easy
and complacent and vastly promotive of the social amenities and the
advancement of art and literature--that is, they were not compelled to
make any sudden raid on others to assure the means of subsistence, and
there was time for the carving of bones and the telling of strange
stories of the past. The elders declared it one of the finest winters
they had ever known.

And so Old Mok and Ab worked well that winter and the youth acquired such
wisdom that his casual advice to Oak when the two were out together was
something worth listening to because of its confidence and ponderosity.
Concerning flint scraper, drill, spearhead, ax or bone or wooden haft,
there was, his talk would indicate, practically nothing for the boy to
learn. That was his own opinion, though, as he grew older, he learned to
modify it greatly. With his adviser he had made good weapons and some
improvements; yet all this was nothing. It was destined that an
accidental discovery should be his, the effect of which would be to
change the cave man's rank among living things. But the youth, just now,
was greatly content with himself. He was older and more modest when he
made his great discovery.

It was when the fire blazed out at night, when all had fed, when the
tired people lay about resting, but not ready yet for sleep, and the
story of the day's events was given, that Old Mok's ordinarily still
tongue would sometimes loosen and he would tell of what happened when he
was a boy, or of the strange tales which had been told him of the time
long past, the times when the Shell and Cave people were one, times when
there were monstrous things abroad and life was hard to keep. To all
these legends the hearers listened wonderingly, and upon them afterward
Ab and Oak would sometimes speculate together and question as to their
truth.




CHAPTER XII.


OLD MOK'S TALES.

It was worth while listening to Old Mok when he forgot himself and talked
and became earnestly reminiscent in telling of what he had seen or had
heard when he was young. One day there had been trouble in the cave, for
Bark, left in charge, had neglected the fire and it had "gone out," and
upon the return of his parents there had been blows and harsh language,
and then much pivotal grinding together of dry sticks before a new flame
was gained, and it was only after the odor of cooked flesh filled the
place and strong jaws were busy that the anger of One-Ear had abated and
the group became a comfortable one. Ab had come in hungry and the value of
fire, after what had happened, was brought to his mind forcibly. He laid
himself down upon the cave's floor near Old Mok, who was fashioning a
shaft of some sort, and, as he lay, poked his toes at Beechleaf, who
chuckled and gurgled as she rolled about, never for a moment relinquishing
a portion of the slender shin bone of a deer, upon the flesh of which the
family had fed. It was a short piece but full of marrow, and the child
sucked and mumbled away at it in utmost bliss. Ab thought, somehow, of how
poor would have been the eating with the meat uncooked, and looked at his
hands, still reddened--for it was he who had twisted the stick which made
the fire again. "Fire is good!" he said to Mok.

The old man kept his flint scraper going for a moment or two before he
answered; then he grunted:

"Yes, it's good if you don't get burned. I've been burned," and he thrust
out an arm upon which appeared a cicatrice.

Ab was interested. "Where did you get that?" he queried.

"Far from here, far beyond the black swamp and the red hills that are
farther still. It was when I was strong."

"Tell me about it," said the youth.

"There is a fire country," answered Old Mok, "away beyond the swamp and
woods and the place of the big rocks. It is a wonderful place. The fire
comes out of the ground in long sheets and it is always the same. The rain
and the snow do not stop it. Do I not know? Have I not seen it? Did I not
get this scar going too near the flame and stumbling and falling against a
hot rock almost within it? There is too much fire sometimes!"

The old man continued: "There are many places of fire. They are to the
east and south. Some of the Shell People who have gone far down the river
have seen them. But the one where I was burned is not so far away as they;
it is up the river to the northwest."

And Ab was interested and questioned Old Mok further about the strange
region where flames came from the ground as bushes grow, and where snow or
water did not make them disappear. He was destined, at a later day, to be
very glad that he had learned the little that was told him. But to-night
he was intent only on getting all the tales he could from the veteran
while he was in the mood. "Tell about the Shell People," he cried, "and
who they are and where they came from. They are different from us."

"Yes, they are different from us," said Old Mok, "but there was a time, I
have heard it told, when we were like them. The very old men say that
their grandfathers told them that once there were only Shell People
anywhere in this country, the people who lived along the shores and who
never hunted nor went far away from the little islands, because they were
afraid of the beasts in the forests. Sometimes they would venture into the
wood to gather nuts and roots, but they lived mostly on the fish and
clams. But there came a time when brave men were born among them who said
they would have more of the forest things, and that they would no longer
stay fearfully upon the little islands. So they came into the forest and
the Cave Men began. And I think this story true."

"I think it is true," Old Mok continued, "because the Shell People, you
can see, must have lived very long where they are now. Up and down the
creek where they live and along other creeks there lie banks of earth
which are very long and reach far back. And this is not really earth, but
is all made up of shells and bones and stone spearheads and the things
which lie about a Shell Man's place. I know, for I have dug into these
long banks myself and have seen that of which I tell. Long, very long,
must the Shell People have lived along the creeks and shores to have made
the banks of bones and shells so high."

And Old Mok was right. They talk of us as the descendants of an Aryan
race. Never from Aryan alone came the drifting, changing Western being of
to-day. But a part of him was born where bald plains were or where were
olive trees and roses. All modern science, and modern thoughtfulness, and
all later broadened intelligence are yielding to an admission of the fact
that he, though of course commingling with his visitors of the ages, was
born and changed where he now exists. The kitchen-midden--the name given
by scientists to refuse from his dwelling places--the kitchen-middens of
Denmark, as Denmark is to-day, alone, regardless of other fields, suffice
to tell a wondrous story. Imagine a kitchen-midden, that is to say the
detritus of ordinary living in different ages, accumulated along the side
of some ancient water course, having for its dimensions miles in length,
extending hundreds of yards back from the margin of this creek, of tens
and tens of thousands of years ago, and having a depth of often many feet
along this water course. Imagine this vast deposit telling the history of
a thousand centuries or more, beginning first with the deposit of clams
and mussel shells and of the shells of such other creatures as might
inhabit this river seeking its way to the North Sea. Imagine this deposit
increasing year after year and century by century, but changing its
character and quality as it rose, and the base is laid for reasoning.

At first these creatures who ranged up and down the ancient Danish creek
and devoured the clams and periwinkles must have been, as one might say,
but little more than surely anthropoid. Could such as these have migrated
from the Asiatic plateaus?

The kitchen-middens tell the early story with greater accuracy than could
any writer who ever lifted pen. Here the creek-loving, ape-like creatures
ranged up and down and quelled their appetites. They died after they had
begotten sons and daughters; and to these sons and daughters came an added
intelligence, brought from experience and shifting surroundings. The
kitchen-middens give graphic details. The bottom layer, as has been said,
is but of shells. Above it, in another layer, counting thousands of years
in growth, appear the cracked bones of then existing animals and appear
also traces of charred wood, showing that primitive man had learned what
fire was. And later come the rudely carved bones of the mammoth and woolly
rhinoceros and the Irish elk; then come rude flint instruments, and later
the age of smoothed stone, with all its accompanying fossils, bones and
indications; and so on upward, with a steady sweep, until close to the
surface of this kitchen-midden appear the bronze spear, the axhead and the
rude dagger of the being who became the Druid and who is an ancestor whom
we recognize. From the kitchen-midden to the pinnacle of all that is great
to-day extends a chain not a link of which is weak.

"They tell strange stories, too, the Shell People," Old Mok continued,
"for they are greater story-tellers than the Cave Men are, more of them
being together in one place, and the old men always tell the tales to the
children so that they are never forgotten by any of the people. They say
that once huge things came out of the great waters and up the creeks, such
as even the big cave tiger dare not face. And the old men say that their
grandfathers once saw with their own eyes a monster serpent many times as
large as the one you two saw, which came swimming up the creek and seized
upon the river horses there and devoured them as easily as the cave bear
would a little deer. And the serpent seized upon some of the Cave People
who were upon the water and devoured them as well, though such as they
were but a mouthful to him. And this tale, too, I believe, for the old
Shell Men who told me what their grandfathers had seen were not of the
foolish sort."

"But of another sort of story they have told me," Mok continued, "I think
little. The old men tell of a time when those who went down the river to
the greater river and followed it down to the sea, which seems to have no
end, saw what no man can see to-day. But they do not say that their
grandfathers saw these things. They only say that their grandfathers told
of what had been told them by their grandfathers farther back, of a story
which had come down to them, so old that it was older than the great trees
were, of monstrous things which swam along the shores and which were not
serpents, though they had long necks and serpent heads, because they had
great bodies which were driven by flippers through the water as the beaver
goes with his broad feet. And at the same time, the old story goes, were
great birds, far taller than a man, who fed where now the bustards and the
capercailzie are. And these tales I do not believe, though I have seen
bones washed from the riversides and hillsides by the rains which must
have come from creatures different from those we meet now in the forests
or the waters. They are wonderful story-tellers, the old men of the Shell
People."

"And they tell other strange stories," continued the old man. "They say
that very long ago the cold and ice came down, and all the people and
animals fled before it, and that the summer was cold as now the winter is,
and that the men and beasts fled together to the south, and were there for
a long time, but came back again as the cold and ice went back. They say,
too, that in still later times, the fireplaces where the flames came out
of great cracks in the earth were in tens of places where they are in one
now, and that, even in the ice time, the flames came up, and that the ice
was melted and then ran in rivers to the sea. And these things I do not
believe, for how can men tell of what there was so long ago? They are but
the gabblings of the old, who talk so much."

Many other stories the veteran told, but what most affected Ab was his
account of the vale of fire. He hoped to see it sometime.




CHAPTER XIII.


AB'S GREAT DISCOVERY.

It may be that never in what was destined to be a life of many changes was
Ab happier than in this period of his lusty boyhood and early manhood,
when there was so much that was new, when he was full of hope and
confidence and of ambition regarding what a mighty hunter and great man he
would become in time. As the years passed he was not less indefatigable in
his experiments, and the day came when a marvelous success followed one of
them, although, like most inventions, it was suggested in the most trivial
and accidental manner.

It chanced one afternoon that Ab, a young man of twenty now, had returned
early from the wood and was lying lazily upon the sward near the cave's
entrance, while, not far away, Bark and the still chubby Beechleaf were
rolling about. The boy was teasing the girl at times and then doing
something to amuse or awe her. He had found a stiff length of twig and was
engaged in idly bending the ends together and then letting them fly apart
with a snap, meanwhile advancing toward and threatening with the impact
the half-alarmed but wholly delighted Beechleaf. Tired of this, at last,
Bark, with no particular intent, drew forth from the pouch in his skin
cloak a string of sinew, and drawing the ends of the strong twig somewhat
nearly together, attached the cord to each, thus producing accidentally a
petty bow of most rotund proportions. He found that the string twanged
joyously, and, to the delight of Beechleaf, kept twanging it for such time
as his boyish temperament would allow a single occupation. Then he picked
from the ground a long, slender pencil of white wood, a sliver, perhaps,
from the making of a spear shaft, and began strumming with it upon the
taut sinew string. This made a twang of a new sort, and again the boy and
girl were interested temporarily. But, at last, even this variation of
amusement with the new toy became monotonous, and Bark ceased strumming
and began a series of boyish experiments with his plaything. He put one
end of the stick against the string and pushed it back until the other end
would press against the inside of the twig, and the result would be a
taut, new figure in wood and string which would keep its form even when
laid upon the ground. Bark made and unmade the thing a time or two, and
then came great disaster. He had drawn the little stick, so held in the
way we now call arrowwise, back nearly to the point where its head would
come inside the bent twig and there fix itself, when the slight thing
escaped his hands and flew away.

The quiet of the afternoon was broken by a piercing childish yell which
lacked no element of earnestness. Ab leaped to his feet and was by the
youngsters in a moment. He saw the terrified Beechleaf standing, screaming
still, with a fat arm outheld, from which dangled a little shaft of wood
which had pierced the flesh just deeply enough to give it hold. Bark stood
looking at her, astonished and alarmed. Understanding nothing of the
circumstances, and supposing the girl's hurt came from Bark's careless
flinging of sticks toward her, Ab started toward his brother to administer
one of those buffets which were so easy to give or get among cave
children. But Bark darted behind a convenient tree and there shrieked out
his innocence of dire intent, just as the boy of to-day so fluently
defends himself in any strait where castigation looms in sight. He told of
the queer plaything he had made, and offered to show how all had happened.

Ab was doubtful but laughing now, for the little shaft, which had scarcely
pierced the skin of Beechleaf's arm had fallen to the ground and that
young person's fright had given way to vengeful indignation and she was
demanding that Bark be hit with something. He allowed the sinner to give
his proof. Bark, taking his toy, essayed to show how Beechleaf had been
injured. He was the most unfortunate of youths. He succeeded but too well.
The mimic arrow flew again and the sound that rang out now was not the cry
of a child. It was the yell of a great youth, who felt a sudden and
poignant hurt, and who was not maintaining any dignity. Had Bark been as
sure of hand and certain of aim as any archer who lived in later centuries
he could not have sent an arrow more fairly to its mark than he sent that
admirable sliver into the chest of his big brother. For a second the
culprit stood with staring eyes, then dropped his toy and flew into the
forest with a howl which betokened his fear of something little less than
sudden death.

Ab's first impulse was to pursue his sinful younger brother, but, after
the first leap, he checked himself and paused to pluck away the thing
which, so light the force that had impelled it, had not gone deeply in. He
knew now that Bark was really blameless, and, picking up the abandoned
plaything, began its examination thoughtfully and curiously.

The young man's instinct toward experiment exhibited itself as usual and
he put the splinter against the string and drew it back and let it fly as
he had seen Bark do--that promising sprig, by the way, being now engaged
in peering from the wood and trying to form an estimate as to whether or
not his return was yet advisable. Ab learned that the force of the bent
twig would throw the sliver farther than he could toss it with his hand,
and he wondered what would follow were something like this plaything, the
device of which Bark had so stumbled upon, to be made and tried on a
greater scale. "I'll make one like it, only larger," he said to himself.

The venturesome but more or less diplomatic Bark had, by this time,
emerged from the wood and was apprehensively edging up toward the place
where Ab was standing. The older brother saw him and called to him to come
and try the thing again and the youngster knew that he was safe. Then the
two toyed with the plaything for an hour or two and Ab became more and
more interested in its qualities. He had no definite idea as to its
possibilities. He thought only of it as a curious thing which should be
larger.

The next day Ab hacked from a low-limbed tree a branch as thick as his
finger and about a yard in length, and, first trimming it, bent it as Bark
had bent the twig and tied a strong sinew cord across. It was a not
discreditable bow, considering the fact that it was the first ever made,
though one end was smaller than the other and it was rough of outline.
Then Ab cut a straight willow twig, as long nearly as the bow, and began
repeating the experiments of the day before. Never was man more astonished
than this youth after he had drawn the twig back nearly to its head and
let it go!

So drawn by a strong arm, the shaft when released flew faster and farther
than the maker of what he thought of chiefly as a thing of sport had
imagined could be possible. He had long to search for the headless arrow
and when he found it he went away to where were bare open stretches, that
he might see always where it fell. Once as he sent it from the string it
struck fairly against an oak and, pointless as it was, forced itself
deeply into the hard brown bark and hung there quivering. Then came to the
youth a flash of thought which had its effect upon the ages: "What if
there had been a point to the flying thing and it had struck a reindeer or
any of the hunted animals?"

He pulled the shaft from the tree and stood there pondering for a moment
or two, then suddenly started running toward the cave. He must see Old
Mok!

The old man was at work and alone and the young man told him, somewhat
excitedly, why he had thus come running to him. The elder listened with
some patience but with a commiserating grin upon his face. He had heard
young men tell of great ideas before, of a new and better way of digging
pits, or of fishing, or making deadfalls for wild beasts. But he listened
and yielded finally to Ab's earnest demand that he should hobble out into
the open and see with his own eyes how the strung bow would send the
shaft. They went together to an open space, and again and again Ab showed
to his old friend what the new thing would do. With the second shot there
came a new light into the eyes of the veteran hunter and he bade Ab run to
the cave and bring back with him his favorite spear. The young man was
back as soon as strong legs could bring him, and when he burst into the
open he found Mok standing a long spear's cast from the greatest of the
trees which stood about the opening.

"Throw your spear at the tree," said Mok. "Throw strongly as you can."

Ab hurled the spear as the Zulu of later times might hurl his assagai, as
strongly and as well, but the distance was overmuch for spear throwing
with good effect, and the flint point pierced the wood so lightly that the
weight of the long shaft was too great for the holding force and it sank
slowly to the ground and pulled away the head. A wild beast struck by the
spear at such distance would have been sorely pricked, but not hurt
seriously.

"Now take the plaything," said Old Mok, "and throw the little shaft at the
tree with that."

Ab did as he was told, and, poor marksman with his new device, of course
missed the big tree repeatedly, broad as the mark was, but when, at last,
the bolt struck the hard trunk fairly there was a sound which told of the
sharpness of the blow and the headless shaft rebounded back for yards. Old
Mok looked upon it all delightedly.

"It may be there is something to your plaything," he said to the young
man. "We will make a better one. But your shaft is good for nothing. We
will make a straighter and stronger one and upon the end of it will put a
little spearhead, and then we can tell how deeply it will go into the
wood. We will work."

For days the two labored earnestly together, and when they came again into
the open they bore a stronger bow, one tapered at the end opposite the
natural tapering of the branch, so that it was far more flexible and
symmetrical than the one they had tried before. They had abundance of ash
and yew and these remained the good bow wood of all the time of archery.
And the shaft was straight and bore a miniature spearhead at its end. The
thought of notching the shaft to fit the string came naturally and
inevitably. The bow had its first arrow.

An old man is not so easily affected as a young one, nor so hopeful, but
when the second test was done the veteran Mok was the wilder and more
delighted of the two who shot at the tree in the forest glade. He saw it
all! No longer could the spear be counted as the thing with which to do
most grievous hurt at a safe distance from whatever might be dangerous.
With the better bow and straighter shaft the marksmanship improved; even
for these two callow archers it was not difficult to hit at a distance of
a double spear's cast the bole of the huge tree, two yards in width at
least. And the arrow whistled as if it were a living thing, a hawk seeking
its prey, and the flint head was buried so deeply in the wood that both
Mok and Ab knew that they had found something better than any weapon the
cave men had ever known!

There followed many days more of the eager working of the old man and the
young one in the cave, and there was much testing of the new device, and
finally, one morning, Ab issued forth armed with his ax and knife, but
without his spear. He bore, instead, a bow which was the best and
strongest the two had yet learned to fashion, and a sheaf of arrows slung
behind his back in a quiver made of a hollow section of a mammoth's leg
bone which had long been kicked about the cave. The two workers had
drilled holes in the bone and passed thongs through and made a wooden
bottom to the thing and now it had found its purpose. The bow was rude, as
were the arrows, and the archer was not yet a certain marksman, though he
had practiced diligently, but the bow was stiff, at least, and the arrows
had keen heads of flint and the arms of the hunter were strong as was the
bow.

There was a weary and fruitless search for game, but late in the afternoon
the youth came upon a slight, sheer descent, along the foot of which ran a
shallow but broad creek, beyond which was a little grass-grown valley,
where were feeding a fine herd of the little deer. They were feeding in
the direction of the creek and the wind blew from them to the hunter, so
that no rumor of their danger was carried to them on the breeze. Ab
concealed himself among the bushes on the little height and awaited what
might happen. The herd fed slowly toward him.

As the deer neared the creek they grouped themselves together about where
were the greenest and richest feeding-places, and when they reached the
very border of the stream they were gathered in a bunch of half a hundred,
close together. They were just beyond a spear's cast from the watcher, but
this was a test, not of the spear, but of the bow, and the most
inexperienced of archers, shooting from where Ab was hidden, must strike
some one of the beasts in that broad herd. Ab sprang to his feet and drew
his arrow to the head. The deer gathered for a second in affright,
crowding each other before the wild bursting away together, and then the
bow-string twanged, and the arrow sang hungrily, and there was the swift
thud of hundreds of light feet, and the little glade was almost silent. It
was not quite silent, for, floundering in its death struggles, was a
single deer, through which had passed an arrow so fiercely driven that its
flint head projected from the side opposite that which it had entered.

[Illustration: AB SPRANG TO HIS FEET, AND DREW HIS ARROW TO THE HEAD]

Half wild with triumph was the youth who bore home the arrow-stricken
quarry, and not much more elated was he than the old man, who heard the
story of the hunt, and who recognized, at once far more clearly than the
younger one, the quality of the new weapon which had been discovered; the
thing destined to become the greatest implement both of chase and warfare
for thousands of years to come, and which was to be gradually improved,
even by these two, until it became more to them than they could yet
understand.

But the lips of each of the two makers of the bow were sealed for the
time. Ab and Old Mok cherished together their mighty secret.




CHAPTER XIV.


A LESSON IN SWIMMING.

Ab and Oak, ranging far in their hunting expeditions, had, long since,
formed the acquaintance of the Shell People, and had even partaken of
their hospitality, though there was not much to attract a guest in the
abodes of the creek-haunters. Their homes were but small caves, not much
more than deep burrows, dug here and there in the banks, above high water
mark, and protected from wild beasts by the usual heaped rocks, leaving
only a narrow passage. This insured warmth and comparative safety, but the
homes lacked the spaciousness of the caves and caverns of the hills, and
the food of fish and clams and periwinkles, with flesh and fruit but
seldom gained, had little attraction for the occasional cave visitor. Ab
and Oak would sometimes traffic with the Shell People, exchanging some
creature of the land for a product of the water, but they made brief stay
in a locality where the food and odors were not quite to their accustomed
taste. Yet the settlement had a slight degree of interest to them. They
had noted the buxom quality of some of the Shell maidens, and the two had
now attained an age when a bright-eyed young person of the other sex was
agreeable to look upon. But there had been no love passages. Neither of
the youths was yet so badly stricken.

There came an autumn morning when Ab and Oak, who had met at daybreak,
determined to visit the Shell People and go with them upon a fishing
expedition. The Shell People often fished from boats, and the boats were
excellent. Each consisted of four or five short logs of the most buoyant
wood, bound firmly together with tough withes, but the contrivance was
more than a simple raft, because, at the bow, it had been hewed to a
point, and the logs had been so chosen that each curved upward there. It
had been learned that the waves sometimes encountered could so more easily
be cleft or overridden. None of these boats could sink, and the man of the
time was quite at home in the water. It was fun for the young men whose
tale is told here to go with the Shell People and assist in spearing fish
or drawing them from the river's depths upon rude hooks, and the Shell
People did not object, but were rather proud of the attendance of
representatives of the hillside aristocracy.

The morning was one to make men far older than these two most confident
and full of life. The season was late, though the river's waters were not
yet cold. The mast had already begun to fall and the nuts lay thickly
among the leaves. Every morning, and more regularly than it comes now,
there was a spread of glistening hoar frost upon the lowlands and the
little open lands in the forest and upon every spot not tree-protected. At
such times there appeared to the eyes of the cave people the splendor of
nature such as we now can hardly comprehend. It came most strikingly in
spring and autumn, and was something wonderful. The cave men, probably,
did not appreciate it. They were accustomed to it, for it was part of the
record of every year. Doubtless there came a greater vigor to them in the
keen air of the hoar frost time, doubtless the step of each was made more
springy and each man's valor more defined in this choice atmosphere.
Temperate, with a wonderful keenness to it, was the climate of the cave
region in the valley of the present Thames. Even in the days of the cave
men, the Gulf Stream, swinging from the equator in the great warm current
already formed, laved the then peninsula as it now laves the British
Isles. The climate, as has been told, was almost as equable then as now,
but with a certain crispness which was a heritage from the glacial epoch.
It was a time to live in, and the two were merry on their journey in the
glittering morning.

The young men idled on their way and wasted an hour or two in vain
attempts to approach a feeding deer nearly enough for effective
spear-throwing. They were late when, after swimming the creek, they
reached the Shell village and there learned that the party had already
gone. They decided that they might, perhaps, overtake the fishermen, and
so, with the hunter's easy lope, started briskly down the river bank. They
were not destined to fish that day.

Three or four miles had been passed and a straight stretch of the river
had been attained, at the end of which, a mile away, could be seen the
boats of the Shell People, to be lost to sight a moment later as they
swept around a bend. But there was something else in sight. Perched
comfortably upon a rock, the sides of which were so precipitous that they
afforded a foothold only for human beings, was a young woman of the Shell
People who had before attracted Ab's attention and something of his
admiration. She was fishing diligently. She had been left by the fishing
party, to be taken up on their return, because, in the rush of waters
about the base of the rock, was a haunt of a small fish esteemed
particularly, and because the girl was one of the little tribe's adepts
with hook and line She raised her eyes as she heard the patter of
footsteps upon the shore, but did not exhibit any alarm when she saw the
two young men. The ordinary young woman of the Shell People did not worry
when away from land. She could swim like an otter and dive like a loon,
and of wild beasts she had no fear when she was thus safely bestowed away
from the death-harboring forest. The maiden on the rock was most serene.

[Illustration: THE YOUNG MEN CALLED TO HER BUT SHE MADE NO ANSWER. SHE BUT
FISHED AWAY DEMURELY]

The young men called to her, but she made no answer. She but fished away
demurely, from time to time hauling up a flashing finny thing, which she
calmly bumped on the rock and then tossed upon the silvery heap, which had
already assumed fair dimensions, close behind her. As Ab looked upon the
young fisherwoman his interest in her grew rapidly and he was silent,
though Oak called out taunting words and asked her if she could not talk.
It was not this young woman, but another, who had most pleased Oak among
the girls of the Shell People.

It was not love yet with Ab, but the maiden interested him. He held no
defined wish to carry her away to a new home with him, but there arose a
feeling that he wanted to know her better. There might,--he didn't
know--be as good wives among the Shell maidens as among the well-running
girls of the hills.

"I'll swim to the rock!" he said to his companion, and Oak laughed loudly.

Short time elapsed between decision and action in those days, and hardly
had Ab spoken when he flung his fur covering into the hands of Oak, and,
clad only in the clout about his hips, dropped, with a splash, into the
water. All this time the girl had been eyeing every motion closely. As the
little waves rose laughingly about the man, she descended lightly from her
perch and slid into the stream as easily and silently as a beaver might
have done. And then began a chase. The girl, finding mid-current swiftly,
was a full hundred yards ahead as Ab came fairly in her wake.

A splendid swimmer was the stalwart young man of the hills. He had been in
and out of water almost daily since early childhood, and, though there had
never been a test, was confident that, among all the Shell People, there
was none he could not overtake, despite what he had heard and knew of
their wonderful cleverness in the water. Were not his arms and legs longer
and stronger than theirs and his chest deeper? He felt that he could
outswim easily any bold fisherman among them, and as for this girl, he
would overtake her very quickly and draw her to the bank, and then there
would be an interview of much enjoyment, at least to him. His strong arm
swept the water back, and his strong legs, working with them, drove his
body forward swiftly toward the brown object not very far ahead. Along the
bank ran the laughing and shouting Oak.

Yard by yard, Ab's mighty strokes brought him nearer the object of his
pursuit. She was swimming breast forward, as was he--for that was his only
way--she with a dog-like paddling stroke, and often she turned her head to
look backward at the man. She did not, even yet, appear affrighted, and
this Ab wondered at, for it was seldom that a girl of the time, thus
hunted, was not, and with reason, terrified. She, possibly, understood
that the chase did not involve a real abduction, for she and her pursuer
had often met, but there was, at least, reason enough for avoiding too
close contact on this day. She swam on steadily, and, as steadily, Ab
gained upon her.

Down the long stretch of tumbling river, sweeping eastward between hill
and slope and plain and woodland, went the chase, while the panting and
cheering Oak, strong-legged and enduring as he was, barely kept pace with
the two heads he could see bobbing, not far apart now, in the tossing
waters. Ab had long since forgotten Oak. He had forgotten how it was that
he came to be thus swimming in the river. His thought was only what now
made up an overmastering aim. He must reach and seize upon the girl before
him!

Closer and closer, though she as much as he was aided by the swift
current, the young man approached the girl. The hundred yards had lessened
into tens and he could plainly see now the wake about her and the
occasional up-flip of her brown heels as she went high in her stroke. He
now felt easily assured of her and laughed to himself as he swept his arms
backward in a fiercer stroke and came so close that he could discern her
outline through the water. It was but a matter of endurance, he chuckled
to himself. How could a woman outswim a man like him?

It was just at the time when this thought came that Ab saw the Shell girl
lift her head and turn it toward him and laugh--laugh recklessly, almost
in his very face, so close together were they now. And then she taught him
something! There was a dip such as the otter makes when he seeks the
depths and there was no longer a girl in sight! But this was only a
demonstration, made in sheer audacity and blithesome insolence, for the
brown head soon appeared again some yards ahead and there was another
twist of it and another merry laugh. Then the neat body turned upon its
side, and with quick outdriving legstrokes and the overhand and underhand
pulling-forward which modern swimmers partly know, the girl shot ahead
through the tiny white-capped waves and away from the swimmer so close
behind her, as to-day the cutter leaves the scow. From the river bank came
a wild yelp, the significance of which, if analyzed, might have included
astonishment and great delight and brotherly derision. Oak was having a
great day of it! He was the sole witness of a swimming-match the like of
which was rare, and he was getting even with his friend for various
assumptions of superiority in various doings.

Unexhausted and sturdy and stubborn, Ab was not the one to abandon his
long chase because of this new phase of things. He inhaled a great breath
and made the water foam with his swift strokes, but as well might a wild
goose chase a swallow on the wing as he seek to overtake that brown streak
on the water. It was wonderful, the manner in which that Shell girl swam!
She was like the birds which swim and dive and dip, and know of nothing
which they fear if only they are in the water far enough away from where
there is the need of stalking over soil and stone. It was not that the
Shell girl was other than at home on land. She was quite at home there and
reasonably fleet, but the creek and river had so been her element from
babyhood that the chase of the hill man had been, from the start, a sheer
absurdity.

Ab lifted himself in the waters and gazed upon the dark spot far away,
and, piqued and maddened, put forth all the swimming strength there was
left in his brawny body. It seemed for a brief time that he was almost
equal to the task of gaining upon what was little more than a dot upon the
surface far ahead. But his scant prospect of success was only momentary.
The trifling spot in the distant drifts of the river seemed to have
certain ideas of its own. The speed of its course in the water did not
abate and, in a moment, it was carried around the bend, and lost to sight.
Ab drifted to the turn and saw, below, a girl clambering into safety among
the rafts of the fishing Shell People. What she would tell them he did not
know. That was not a matter to be much considered.

There was but one thing to be done and that was to reach the land and
return to a life more strictly earthly and more comfortable. There is
nothing like water for overcoming a young man's fancy for many things. Ab
swam now with a somewhat tired and languid stroke to the shore, where Oak
awaited him hilariously. They almost came to blows that afternoon, and
blows between such as they might have easily meant sudden death. But they
were not rivals yet and there was much to talk of good-naturedly, after
some slight outflamings of passion on the part of Ab, and the two men were
good friends again.

The sum of all the day was that there had been much exercise and fun, for
Oak at least. Ab had not caught the Shell girl, manfully as he had
striven. Had he caught her and talked with her upon the river bank it
might have changed the current of his life. With a man so young and sturdy
and so full of life the laughing fancy of a moment might have changed into
a stronger feeling and the swimming girl might have become a woman of the
cave people, one not quite so equal by heritage to the task of breeding
good climbing and running and fighting and progressive beings as some girl
of the hills.

It matters little what might have happened had the outcome of the day's
effort been the reverse of what it was. This is but the account of the
race and what the sequel was when Ab swam so far and furiously and well.
It was his first flirtation. It was yet to come to him that he should be
really in love in the cave man's way.




CHAPTER XV.


THE MAMMOTH AT BAY.

It was late autumn, and a light snow covered the ground, when one day a
cave man, panting for breath, came running down the river bank and paused
at the cave of One-Ear. He had news, great news! He told his story
hurriedly, and then was taken into the cave and given meat, while Ab,
seizing his weapons, fled downward further still toward the great
kitchen-midden of the Shell People. Just as ages and ages later, not far
from the same region, some Scottish runner carried the fiery cross, Ab ran
exultingly with the news it was his to bring. There must be an immediate
gathering, not only of the cave men, but of the Shell People as well, and
great mutual effort for great gain. The mammoths were near the point of
the upland!

The runner to the cave of One-Ear was a hunter living some miles to the
north, upon a ledge of a broad forest-covered plateau terminating on the
west in a slope which ended in a precipice with more than a hundred feet
of sheer descent to the valley below. On rare occasions a herd of mammoths
invaded the forest and worked itself toward the apex of the plateau, and
then word went all over the region, for it was an event in the history of
the cave men. If but a sufficient force could be suddenly assembled, food
in abundance for all was almost certainly assured. The prize was something
stupendous, but prompt action was required, and there might be tragedies.
As bees hum and gather when their hive is disturbed, so did the Shell
People when Ab burst in upon them and delivered his message. There was
rushing about and a gathering of weapons and a sorting out of men who
should go upon the expedition. But little time was wasted. Within half an
hour Ab was straining back again up the river toward his own abode, while
behind him trailed half a hundred of the Shell People, armed in a way
effective enough, but which, in the estimation of the cave men, was
preposterous. The spears of the Shell People had shafts of different wood
and heads of different material from those of the cave men, and they used
their weapons in a different manner. Accustomed to the spearing of fish or
of an occasional water beast, like a small hippopotamus, which still
existed in the rivers of the peninsula, they always threw their
spears--though the cave people were experts with this as well--and, as a
last resource in close conflict, they used no stone ax or mace, but simply
ran away, to throw again from a distance, or to fly again, as conditions
made advisable. But they were brave in a way--it was necessary that all
who would live must have a certain animal bravery in those days--and
their numbers made them essential in the rare hunting of the mammoth.

When the company reached the home of Ab they found already assembled there
a score of the hill men, and, as the word had gone out in every direction,
it was found, when the rendezvous was reached, which was the cave of
Hilltop, the man living near the crest of the plateau, and the one who had
made the first run down the river, that there were more than a hundred,
counting all together, to advance against the herd and, if possible, drive
the great beasts toward the precipice. Among this hundred there was none
more delighted than Ab and Oak, for, of course, these two had found each
other in the group, and were almost like a brace of dogs whining for the
danger and the hunt.

Not lightly was an expedition against a herd of mammoths to be begun, even
by a hundred well-armed people of the time of the cave men. The mammoth
was a monster beast, with perhaps somewhat less of sagaciousness than the
modern elephant, but with a temper which was demoniacal when aroused, and
with a strength which nothing could resist. He could be slain only by
strategy. Hence the everlasting watch over the triangular plateau and the
gathering of the cave and river people to catch him at a disadvantage.
But, even with a drove feeding near the slope which led to the precipice,
the cave men would have been helpless without the introduction of other
elements than their weapons and their clamor. The mammoth paid no more
attention to the cave man with a spear than to one of the little wild
horses which fed near him at times. The pygmy did not alarm him, but did
the pygmy ever venture upon an attack, then it was likely to be seized by
the huge trunk and flung against rock or tree, to fall crushed and
mangled, or else it was trodden viciously under foot. From one thing,
though, the mammoth, huge as he was, would flee in terror. He could not
face the element of fire, and this the cave men had learned to their
advantage. They could drive the mammoth when they dare not venture to
attack him, and herein lay their advantage.

Under direction of the veteran hunter, Hilltop, who had discovered the
whereabouts of the drove, preparations were made for the dangerous
advance, and the first thing done was the breaking off of dry roots of the
overturned pitch pines, and gathering of knots of the same trees, with
limbs attached, to serve as handles. These roots and knots, once lighted,
would blaze for hours and made the most perfect of natural torches.
Lengths of bark of certain other trees when bound together and lighted at
one end burned almost as long and brightly as the roots and knots. Each
man carried an unlighted torch of one kind or another, in addition to his
weapons, and when this provision was made the band was stretched out in a
long line and a silent advance began through the forest. The herd of
mammoths was composed of nineteen, led by a monster even of his kind, and
men who had been watching them all night and during the forenoon said that
the herd was feeding very near the edge of the wood, where it ended on the
slope leading to the precipice. There was ice upon the slope and there
were chances of a great day's hunting. To cut off the mammoths, that is,
to extend a line across the uprising peninsula where they were feeding,
would require a line of not more than about five hundred yards in length,
and as there were more than a hundred of the hunters, the line which could
be formed would be most effective. Lighted punk, which preserved fire and
gave forth no odor to speak of, was carried by a number of the men, and
the advance began.

It had been an exhilarating scene when the cave men and Shell People first
assembled and when the work of gathering material for the torches was in
progress. So far was the gathering from the present haunt of the game that
caution had been unnecessary, and there was talk and laughter and all the
open enjoyment of an anticipated conquest. The light snow, barely covering
the ground, flashed in the sun, and the hunters, practically impervious to
the slight cold, were almost prankish in their demeanor. Ab and Oak
especially were buoyant. This was the first hunt upon the rocky peninsula
of either of them, and they were delighted with the new surroundings and
eager for the fray to come. All about was talk and laughter, which became
general with any slight physical disaster which came to one among the
hunters in the climbing of some tree for a promising dead branch or
finding a treacherous hollow when assailing the roots of some upturned
pine. It was a brisk scene and a lively one, that which occurred that
crisp morning in late autumn when the wild men gathered to hunt the
mammoth. All was brightness and jollity and noise.

Very different, in a moment, was the condition when the hunters entered
the forest and, extended in line, began their advance toward the huge
objects of their search. The cave man, almost a wild beast himself in some
of his ways, had, on occasion, a footfall as light as that of any animal
of the time. The twig scarcely crackled and the leaf scarcely rustled
beneath his tread, and when the long line entered the wood the silence of
death fell there, for the hunters made no sound, and what slight sound the
woodland had before--the clatter of the woodpeckers and jays--was hushed
by their advance. So through the forest, which was tolerably close, the
dark line swept quietly forward until there came from somewhere a sudden
signal, and with a still more cautious advance and contraction of the line
as the peninsula narrowed the quarry was brought in sight of all.

Close to the edge of the slope, and separated by a slight open space from
the forest proper, was an evergreen grove, in which the herd of monster
beasts was feeding. A great bull, with long up-curling tusks, loomed above
them all, and was farthest away in the grove. The hunters, hidden in the
forest, lay voiceless and motionless until the elders decided upon a plan
of attack, and then the word was passed along that each man must fire his
torch.

All along the edge of the wood arose the flashing of little flames. These
grew in magnitude until a line of fire ran clear across the wood, and the
mammoths nearest raised their trunks and showed signs of uneasiness. Then
came a signal, a wild shout, and at once, with a yell, the long line burst
into the open, each man waving his flaming torch and rushing toward the
grove.

There was a chance--a slight one--that the whole herd might be stampeded,
but this had rarely happened within the memory of the oldest hunter. The
mammoth, though subject to panic, did not lack intelligence and when in a
group was conscious of its strength. As that yell ascended, the startled
beasts first rushed deeper into the grove and then, as the slope beyond
was revealed to them, turned and charged blindly, all save one, the great
tusker, who was feeding at the grove's outer verge. They came on, great
mountains of flesh, but swerved as they met the advancing line of fire and
weaved aimlessly up and down for a moment or two. Then a huge bull, stung
by a spear hurled by one of the hunters and frantic with fear, plunged
forward across the line and the others followed blindly. Three men were
crushed to death in their passage and all the mammoths were gone save the
big bull, who had started to rejoin his herd but had not reached it in
time. He was now raging up and down in the grove, bewildered and
trumpeting angrily. Immediately the hunters gathered closer together and
made their line of fire continuous.

The mammoth rushed out clear of the trees and stood looming up, a
magnificent creature of unrivaled size and majesty. His huge tusks shone
out whitely against the mountain of dark shaggy hair. His small eyes
blazed viciously as he raised his trunk and trumpeted out what seemed
either a hoarse call to his herd or a roar of agony over his strait. He
seemed for a moment as if about to rush upon the dense line of his
tormentors, but the flaming faggots dashed almost in his face by the
reckless and excited hunters daunted him, and, as a spear lodged in his
trunk, he turned with almost a shriek of pain and dashed into the grove
again. Close at his heels bounded the hundred men, yelling like demons and
forgetting all danger in the madness of the chase. Right through the grove
the great beast crashed and then half turned as he came to the open slope
beyond. Running beside him was a daring youth trying in vain to pierce him
in the belly with his flint-headed spear, and, as the mammoth came for the
moment to a half halt, his keen eyes noted the pygmy, his great trunk shot
downward and backward, picked up the man and hurled him yards away against
the base of a great tree, the body as it struck being crushed out of all
semblance to man and dropping to the earth a shapeless lump. But the fire
behind and about the desperate mammoth seemed all one flame now, countless
spears thrown with all the force of strong arms were piercing his tough
hide, and out upon the slope toward the precipice the great beast plunged.
Upon his very flanks was the fire and about him all the stinging danger
from the half-crazed hunters. He lunged forward, slipped upon the smooth
glacial floor beneath him, tried to turn again to meet his thronging foes
and face the ring of flame, and then, wavering, floundering, moving
wonderfully for a creature of his vast size, but uncertain as to foothold,
he was driven to the very crest of the ledge, and, scrambling vainly,
carrying away an avalanche of ice, snow and shrubs, went crashing to his
death, a hundred feet below!




CHAPTER XVI.


THE FEAST OF THE MAMMOTH.

To the right and left of the precipice the fall to the plain below was
more gradual, and with exultant yells, the cave and Shell men rushed in
either direction, those venturing nearest the sheer descent going down
like monkeys, clinging as they went to shrubs and vines, while those who
ran to where the drop was a degree more passable fairly tumbled downward
to the plain. In an incredibly short space of time absolute silence
prevailed in and about the grove where the scene had lately been so
fiercely stirring. In the valley below there was wildest clamor.

It was a great occasion for the human beings of the region. There was no
question as to the value of the prize the hunters had secured. Never
before in any joint hunting expedition, within the memory of the oldest
present, had followed more satisfactory result. The spoil was well worth
the great effort that had been made; in the estimation of the time,
perhaps worth the death of the hunters who had been killed. The huge beast
lay dead, close to the base of the cliff. One great, yellow-white, curved
tusk had been snapped off and showed itself distinct upon the grass some
feet away from the mountain of flesh so lately animated. The sight was one
worth looking upon in any age, for, in point of grandeur of appearance,
the mammoth, while not as huge as some of the monsters of reptilian times,
had a looming impressiveness never surpassed by any beast on the earth's
surface. Though prone and dead he was impressive.

But the cave and Shell men were not so much impressed as they were
delighted. They had come into possession of food in abundance and there
would be a feast of all the people of the region, and, after that,
abundant meat in many a hut and cave for many a day. The hunters were
noisy and excited. A group pounced upon the broken tusk--for a mammoth
tusk, or a piece of one, was a prize in a cave dwelling--and there was
prospect of a struggle, but grim voices checked the wrangle of those who
had seized upon this portion of the spoil and it was laid aside, to be
apportioned later. The feast was the thing to be considered now.

Again swift-footed messengers ran along forest paths and swam streams and
thridded wood and thicket, this time to assemble, not the hunters alone,
but with them all members of households who could conveniently and safely
come to the gathering of the morrow, when the feast of the mammoth would
be on. The messengers dispatched, the great carcass was assailed, and keen
flint knives, wielded by strong and skillful hands, were soon separating
from the body the thick skin, which was divided as seemed best to the
leaders of the gathering, Hilltop, the old hunter, for his special
services, getting the chief award in the division. Then long slices of the
meat were cut away, fires were built, the hunters ate to repletion and
afterward, with a few remaining awake as guards, slept the sleep of the
healthy and fully fed. Not in these modern days would such preliminary
consumption of food be counted wisest preparation for a feast on the
morrow, but the cave and Shell men were alike independent of affections of
the stomach or the liver, and could, for days in sequence, gorge
themselves most buoyantly.

The morning came crisp and clear, and, with the morning, came from all
directions swiftly moving men and women, elated and hungry and expectant.
The first families and all other families of the region were gathering for
the greatest social function of the time. The men of various households
had already exerted themselves and a score or two of fires were burning,
while the odor of broiling meat was fragrant all about. Hunter husbands
met their broods, and there was banqueting, which increased as, hour after
hour, new groups came in. The families of both Ab and Oak were among those
early in the valley, Beechleaf and Bark, wide-eyed and curious, coming
upon the scene as a sort of advance guard and proudly greeting Ab. All
about was heard clucking talk and laughter, an occasional shout, and ever
the cracking of stone upon the more fragile thing, as the monster's
roasted bones were broken to secure the marrow in them.

There was hilarity and universal enjoyment, though the assemblage, almost
by instinct, divided itself into two groups. The cave men and the Shell
men, while at this time friendly, were, as has been indicated, unlike in
many tastes and customs and to an extent unlike in appearance. The cave
man, accustomed to run like the deer along the forest ways, or to avoid
sudden danger by swift upward clambering and swinging along among
treetops, was leaner and more muscular than the Shell man, and had in his
countenance a more daring and confident expression. The Shell man was
shorter and, though brawny of build, less active of movement. He had spent
more hours of each day of his life in his rude raft-boat, or in walking
slowly with poised spear along creek banks, or, with bent back, digging
for the great luscious shell-fish which made a portion of his food, than
he had spent afoot and on land, with the smell of growing things in his
nostrils. The flavor of the water was his, the flavor of the wood the cave
man's. So it was that at the feast of the mammoth the allies naturally and
good-naturedly became somewhat grouped, each person according to his kind.
When hunger was satisfied and the talking-time came on, those with objects
and impulses the same could compare notes most interestedly. Constantly
the number of the feasters increased, and by mid-day there was a company
of magnitude. Much meat was required to feed such a number, but there were
tons of meat in a mammoth, enough to defy the immediate assaults of a much
greater assemblage than this of exceedingly healthy people. And the smoke
from the fires ascended and these rugged ones ate and were happy.

But there came a time in the afternoon when even such feasters as were
assembled on this occasion became, in a measure, content, when this one
and that one began to look about, and when what might be called the social
amenities of the period began. Veterans flocked together, reminiscent of
former days when another mammoth had been driven over this same cliff; the
young grouped about different firesides, and there was talk of feats of
strength and daring and an occasional friendly grapple. Slender, sinewy
girls, who had girls' ways then as now, ate together and looked about
coquettishly and safely, for none had come without their natural
guardians. Rarely in the history of the cave men had there been a
gathering more generally and thoroughly festive, one where good eating had
made more good fellowship. Possibly--for all things are relative--there
has never occurred an affair of more social importance within the
centuries since. Human beings, dangerous ones, were merry and trusting
together, and the young looked at each other.

Of course Ab and Oak had been eating in company. They had risked
themselves dangerously in the battle on the cliff, had escaped injury and
were here now, young men of importance, each endowed with an appetite
corresponding with the physical exertion of which he was capable and which
he never hesitated to make. The amount either of those young men had eaten
was sufficient to make a gourmand, though of grossest Roman times, fairly
sick with envy, and they were still eating, though, it must be confessed,
with modified enthusiasm. Each held in his hand a smoking lump of flesh
from some favored portion of the mammoth and each rent away an occasional
mouthful with much content. Suddenly Ab ceased mastication and stood
silent, gazing intently at a not unpleasing object a few yards distant.

Two girls stood together near a fire about which were grouped perhaps a
dozen people. The two were eating, not voraciously, but with an apparent
degree of interest in what they were doing, for they had not been among
the early arrivals. It was upon these two that Ab's wandering glance had
fallen and had been held, and it was not surprising that he had become so
interested. Either of the couple was fitted to attract attention, though a
pair more utterly unlike it would be difficult to imagine. One was slight
and the other the very reverse, but each had striking characteristics.

They stood there, the two, just as two girls so often stand to-day, the
hand of one laid half-caressingly upon the hip of the other. The beaming,
broad one was chattering volubly and the slender one listening carelessly.
The talking of the heavier girl was interrupted evenly by her mumbling at
a juicy strip of meat. Her hunger, it was clear, had not yet been
satisfied, and it was as clear, too, that her companion had yet an
appetite. The slender one was, seemingly, not much interested in the
conversation, but the other chattered on. It was plain that she was a most
contented being. She was symmetrical only from the point of view of
admirers of the heavily built. She had very broad hips and muscular arms
and was somewhat squat of structure. It is hesitatingly to be admitted of
this young lady that, sturdy and prepossessing, from a practical point of
view, as she might be to the average food-winning cave man, she lacked a
certain something which would, to the observant, place her at once in good
society. She was an exceedingly hairy young woman. She wore the usual
covering of skins, but she would have been well-draped, in moderately
temperate weather, had the covering been absent. Either for fashion's sake
or comfort, not much weight of foreign texture in addition to her own
hirsute and, to a certain extent, graceful, natural garb, was needed. She
was a female Esau of the time, just a great, good-hearted, strong and
honest cave girl, of the subordinate and obedient class which began
thousands of years before did history, one who recognized in the girl who
stood beside her a stronger and dominating spirit, and who had been
received as a trusted friend and willing assistant. It is so to-day, even
among the creatures which are said to have no souls, the dogs especially.
But the girl had strength and a certain quick, animal intelligence. She
was the daughter of a cave man living not far from the home of old
Hilltop, and her name was Moonface. Her countenance was so broad and
beaming that the appellation had suggested itself in her jolly childhood.

Very different from Moonface was the slender being who, having eaten a
strip of meat, was now seeking diligently with a splinter for the marrow
in the fragment of bone her father had tossed toward her. Her father was
Hilltop, the veteran of the immediate region and the hero of the day, and
she was called Lightfoot, a name she had gained early, for not in all the
country round about was another who could pass over the surface of the
earth with greater swiftness than could she. And it was upon Lightfoot
that Ab was looking.

The young woman would have been fair to look upon, or at least
fascinating, to the most world-wearied and listless man of the present
day. She stood there, easily and gracefully, her arms and part of her
breast, above, and her legs from about the knees, below, showing clearly
from beneath her covering of skins. Her deep brown hair, knotted back with
a string of the tough inner bark of some tree, hung upon the middle of her
flat, in-setting back. She was not quite like any of the other girls about
her. Her eyes were larger and softer and there was more reflection and
variety of expression in them. Her limbs were quite as long as those of
any of her companions and the fingers and toes, though slenderer, were
quite as suggestive of quick and strong grasping capabilities, but there
was, with all the proof of springiness and litheness, a certain rounding
out. The strip of hair upon her legs below the knees was slight and
silken, as was also that upon her arms. Yet, undoubted leader in society
as her appearance indicated, quite aside from her father's standing, there
was in her face, with all its loftiness of air, a certain blithesomeness
which was almost at variance with conditions. She was a most lovable young
woman--there could be no question about that--and Ab had, as he looked
upon her for the first time, felt the fact from head to heel. He thought
of her as like the leopard tree-cat, most graceful creature of the wood,
so trim was she and full of elasticity, and thought of her, too, as he
looked in her intelligent face, as higher in another way. He was somewhat
awed, but he was courageous. He had, so far in life, but sought to get
what he wanted whenever it was in sight. Now he was nonplussed.

Presently Lightfoot raised her eyes and they met those of Ab. The young
people looked at each other steadily for a moment and then the glance of
the girl was turned away. But, meanwhile, the man had recovered himself.
He had been eating, absent-mindedly, a well-cooked portion of a great
steak of the mammoth's choicest part. He now tore it in twain and watched
the girl intently. She raised her eyes again and he tossed her a half of
the smoking flesh. She saw the movement, caught the food deftly in one
hand as it reached her, and looked at Ab and laughed. There was no mock
modesty. She began eating the choice morsel contentedly; the two were, in
a manner, now made formally acquainted.

The young man did not, on the instant, pursue his seeming advantage, the
result of an impulsive bravery requiring a greater effort on his part than
the courage he had shown in conflict with many a beast of the forest. He
did not talk to the young woman. But he thought to himself, while his
blood bubbled in his veins, that he would find her again; that he would
find her in the wood! She did not look at him more, for her people were
clustering about her and this was a great occasion.

Ab was recalled to himself by a hoarse exclamation. Oak was looking at him
fiercely. There was no other sound, but the young man stood gazing fixedly
at the place where the girl had just been lost amid the group about her.
And Ab knew instinctively, as men have learned to know so well in all the
years, from the feeling which comes to them at such a time, that he had a
rival, that Oak also had seen and loved this slender creature of the
hillside.

There was a division of the mammoth flesh and hide and tusks. Ab struggled
manfully for a portion of one of the tusks, which he wanted for Old Mok's
carving, and won it at last, the elders deciding that he and Oak had
fought well enough upon the cliff to entitle them to a part of the honor
of the spoil, and Oak opposing nothing done by Ab, though his looks were
glowering. Then, as the sun passed toward the west, all the people
separated to take the dangerous paths toward their homes. Ab and Oak
journeyed away together. Ab was jubilant, though doubtful, while the face
of Oak was dark. The heart of neither was light within him.




CHAPTER XVII.


THE COMRADES.

Drifting away in various directions toward their homes the Cave and Shell
People still kept in groups, by instinct. Social functions terminated
before dark and guests going and coming kept together for mutual
protection in those days of the cave bear and other beasts. But on the day
of the Feast of the Mammoth there was somewhat less than the usual
precaution shown. There were vigorous and well-armed hunters at hand by
scores, and under such escort women and children might travel after dusk
with a degree of safety, unless, indeed, the great cave tiger,
Sabre-Tooth, chanced to be abroad, but he was more rarely to be met than
others of the wild beasts of the time. When he came it was as a
thunderbolt and there were death and mourning in his trail. The march
through the forest as the shadows deepened was most watchful. There was a
keen lookout on the part of the men, and the women kept their children
well in hand. From time to time, one family after another detached itself
from the main body and melted into the forest on the path to its own cave
near at hand. Thus Hilltop and his family left the group in which were Ab
and Oak, and glances of fire followed them as they went. The two girls,
Lightfoot and Moonface, had walked together, chattering like crows. They
had strung red berries upon grasses and had hung them in their hair and
around their necks, and were fine creatures. Lightfoot, as was her wont,
laughed freakishly at whatever pleased her, and in her merry mood had an
able second in her sturdy companion. There were moments, though, when even
the irrepressible Lightfoot was thoughtful and so quiet that the girl who
was with her wondered. The greater girl had been lightly touched with that
unnamable force which has changed men and women throughout all the ages.
The picture of Ab's earnest face was in her mind and would not depart. She
could not, of course, define her own mood, nor did she attempt it. She
felt within herself a certain quaking, as of fear, at the thought of him,
and yet, so she told herself again and again, she was not afraid. All the
time she could see Ab's face, with its look of longing and possession, but
with something else in it, when his eyes met hers, which she could not
name nor understand. She could not speak of him, but Moonface had upon her
no such stilling influence.

"They look alike," she said.

Lightfoot assented, knowing the girl meant Ab and Oak. "But Ab is taller
and stronger," Moonface continued, and Lightfoot assented as
indifferently, for, somehow, of the two she had remembered definitely one
only. She became daring in her reflections: "What if he should want to
carry me to his cave?" and then she tried to run away from the thought and
from anything and everybody else, leaping forward, outracing and leaving
all the company. She reached her father's cave far ahead of the others and
stood, laughing, at the entrance, as the family and Moonface, a guest for
the night, came trotting up.

And Ab, the buoyant and strong, was not himself as he journeyed with the
homeward-pressing company. His mood changed and he dropped away from Oak
and lagged in the rear of the little band as it wound its way through the
forest. Slight time was needed for others to recognize his mood, and he
was strong of arm and quick of temper, as all knew well, and, so, he was
soon left to stalk behind in independent sulkiness. He felt a weight in
his breast; a fiery spot burned there. He was fierce with Oak because Oak
had looked at Lightfoot with a warm light in his eyes. He! when he should
have known that Ab was looking at her! This made rage in his heart; and
sadness came, too, because he was perplexed over the girl. "How can I get
her?" he mumbled to himself, as he stalked along.

Meanwhile, at the van of the company there was noise and frolic. Assembled
in force, they were for the hour free from dread of the haunting terror of
wild beasts, and, satisfied with eating, the Cave and Shell People were in
one of the merriest moods of their lives, collectively speaking. The young
men were especially jubilant and exuberant of demeanor. Their sport was
rough and dangerous. There were scuffling and wrestling and the more
reckless threw their stone axes, sometimes at each other, always, it is
true, with warning cries, but with such wild, unconscious strength put in
the throwing that the finding of a living target might mean death. Ab,
engrossed in thoughts of something far apart from the rude sport about
him, became nervously impatient. Like the girl, he wanted to escape from
his thoughts, and bounding ahead to mingle with the darting and swinging
group in front, he was soon the swift and stalwart leader in their
foolishly risky sport, the center of the whole commotion. One muscled man
would hurl his stone hatchet or strong flint-headed spear at a green tree
and another would imitate him until a space in advance was covered and the
word given for a rush, when all would race for the target, each striving
to reach it first and detach his own weapon before others came. It was a
merry but too careless contest, with a chance of some serious happening.
There followed a series of these mad games and the oldsters smiled as they
heard the sound of vigorous contest and themselves raced as they could, to
keep in close company with the stronger force.

Ab had shown his speed in all his playing. Now he ran to the front and
plucked out his spear, a winner, then doubled and ran back beside the
pathway to mingle with the central body of travelers, having in mind only
to keep in the heart and forefront of as many contests as possible. There
was more shouting and another rush from the main body and, bounding aside
from all, he ran to get the chance of again hurling his spear as well. A
great oak stood in the middle of the pathway and toward it already a spear
or two had been sent, all aimed, as the first thrower had indicated, at a
white fungus growth which protruded from the tree. It was a matter of
accuracy this time. Ab leaped ahead some yards in advance of all and
hurled his spear. He saw the white chips fly from the side of the fungus
target, saw the quivering of the spear shaft with the head deep sunken in
the wood, and then felt a sudden shock and pain in one of his legs. He
fell sideways off the path and beneath the brushwood, as the wild band,
young and old, swept by. He was crippled and could not walk. He called
aloud, but none heard him amid the shouting of that careless race. He
tried to struggle to his feet, but one leg failed him and he fell back,
lying prone, just aside from the forest path, nearly weaponless and the
easy prey of the wild beasts. What had hurt him so grievously was a spear
thrown wildly from behind him. It had, hurled with great strength, struck
a smooth tree trunk and glanced aside, the point of the spear striking the
young man fairly in the calf of the leg, entering somewhat the bone
itself, and shocking, for the moment, every nerve. The flint sides had cut
a vein or two and these were bleeding, but that was nothing. The real
danger lay in his helplessness. Ab was alone, and would afford good eating
for those of the forest who, before long, would be seeking him. The scent
of the wild beast was a wonderful thing. The man tried to rise, then lay
back sullenly. Far in the distance, and growing fainter and fainter, he
could hear the shouts of the laughing spear-throwers.

The strong young man, thus left alone to death almost inevitable, did not
altogether despair. He had still with him his good stone ax and his long
and keen stone knife. He would, at least, hurt something sorely before he
was eaten, he thought grimly to himself. And then he pressed leaves
together on the cut upon his leg, and laid himself back upon the leaves
and waited.

He did not have to wait long. He had not thought to do so. How full the
woods were of blood-scenting and man-eating things none knew better than
he. His ear, keen and trained, caught the patter of a distant approach.
"Wolves," he said to himself at first, and then "Hyenas," for the step was
puzzling. He was perplexed. The step was regular, and it was not in the
forest on either side, but was coming up the path. A terror came upon him
and he had crawled deeper into the shades, when he noted that the steps
first ceased, and then that they wandered searchingly and uncertainly.
Then, loud and strong, rang out a voice, calling his name, and it was the
voice of Oak! He could not answer for a moment, and then he cried out
gladly.

Oak had, in the forward-rushing group, seen Ab's hurt and fall, but had
thought it a trifling matter, since no outcry came from those behind, and
so had kept his course away and ahead with the rest. But finally he had
noted the absence of Ab and had questioned, and then--first telling some
of his immediate companions that they were to lag and wait for him--had
started back upon a run to reach the place where he had last seen his
friend. It was easy now to arrange wet leaves about Ab's crippling, but
little more than temporary, wound. The two, one leaning upon the other and
hobbling painfully, and each with weapons in hand, contrived, at last, to
reach Oak's lingering and grumbling contingent. Ab was helped along by two
instead of one then, and the rest was easy. When the pathway leading to
home was reached, Oak accompanied his friend, and the two passed the night
together.

Ab, once on his own bed, with Oak couched beside him, was surprised to
find, not merely that his physical pain was going, but that the greater
one was gone. The weight and burning had left his breast and he was no
longer angry at Oak. He thought blindly but directly toward conclusions.
He had almost wanted to kill Oak, all because each saw the charm of and
wanted the possession of a slender, beautiful creature of their kind. Then
something dangerous had happened to him, and this same Oak, his friend,
the man he had wished to kill, had come back and saved his life. The sense
which we call gratitude, and which is not unmingled with what we call
honor, came to this young cave man then. He thought of many things,
worried and wakeful as he was, and perhaps made more acute of perception
by the slight, exciting fever of his wound.

He thought of how the two, he and Oak, had planned and risked together, of
their boyish follies and failures and successes, and of how, in later
years, Oak had often helped him, of how he had saved Oak's life once in
the river swamp, where quicksands were, of how Oak had now offset even
that debt by carrying him away from certain ending amid wild beasts. No
one--and of the cave men he knew many--no one in all the careless, merry
party had missed him save Oak. He doubtless could not have told himself
why it was, but he was glad that he could repay it all and have the
balance still upon his side. He was glad that he had the secret of the bow
and arrow to reveal. That should be Oak's! So it came that, late that
night, when the fire in the cave had burned low and when one could not
wisely speak above a whisper, Ab told Oak the story of the new weapon, of
how it had been discovered, of how it was to be used and of all it was for
hunters and fighters. Furthermore, he brought his best bow and best arrows
forth, and told Oak they were his and that they would practice together in
the morning. His astonished and delighted companion had little to say over
the revelation. He was eager for the morning, but he straightened out his
limbs upon the leafy mattress and slept well. So, somewhat later, did the
half-feverish Ab.

Morning came and the cave people were astir. There was brief though hearty
feeding and then Ab and Oak and Old Mok, to whom Ab had said much aside,
went away from the cave and into the forest. There Oak was taught the
potency of the new weapon, its deadly quality and the safety of distance
it afforded its user. It was a great morning for all three, not excepting
the stern and critical old teacher, when they thus met together in the
wood and the secret of what two had found was so transmitted to another.
As for Oak, he was fairly aflame with excitement. He was far from slow of
mind and he recognized in a moment the enormous advantage of the new way
of killing either the things they ate, or the things they dreaded most. He
could scarcely restrain his eagerness to experiment for himself. Before
noon had come he was gone, carrying away the bow and the good arrows. As
he disappeared in the wood Ab said nothing, but to himself he thought:

"He may have all the bows and arrows he can make, but I will have
Lightfoot myself!"

Ab and Mok started for the cave again, Ab, bow in hand and with ready
arrow. There was a patter of feet upon leaves in the wood beside them and
then the arrow was fitted to the string, while Old Mok, strong-armed if
weak-legged, raised aloft his spear. The two were seeking no conflict with
wild beasts today and were but defensive and alert. They were puzzled by
the sound their quick ears caught. "Patter, patter," ever beside them, but
deep in the forest shade, came the sound of menacing followers of some
sort.

There was tension of nerves. Old Mok, sturdy and unconsciously fatalistic,
was more self-contained than the youth at his side, bow-armed and with
flint ax and knife ready for instant use. At last an open space was
reached across which ran the well-worn path. Now the danger must reveal
itself. The two men emerged into the glade, and, a moment later, there
bounded into it gamboling and full of welcome, the wolf cubs, which had
played about the cave so long, who were now detached from their own kind
and preferred the companionship of man. There was laughter then, and a
more careless demeanor with the weapon borne.




CHAPTER XVIII.


LOVE AND DEATH.

Different from his former self became this young forester, Ab. He was
thinking of something other than wild beasts and their pursuit.
Instinctively, the course of his hunting expeditions tended toward the
northwest and soon the impulse changed to a design. He must look upon
Lightfoot again! Henceforth he haunted the hill region, and never keener
for quarry or more alert for the approach of some dangerous animal was the
eye of this woodsman than it was for the appearance somewhere of a slender
figure of a cave girl. Neither game nor things to dread were numerous in
the vicinity of the home of Hilltop, for there one of the hardiest and
wisest among hunters had occupied his cave for many years, and wild beasts
learn things. So it chanced that Lightfoot could wander farther afield
than could most girls of the time. Ab knew all this well, for the quality
of expert and venturesome old Hilltop was familiar to all the cave men
throughout a wide stretch of country. So Ab, somewhat shamefaced to his
own consciousness, hunted in a region not the best for spoil, and looked
for a girl who might appear on some forest path, moderately safe from the
rush of any of the hungry man-eaters of the wood.

But not all the time of this wild lover was wasted in haunting the
possible idling-places of the girl he wanted so. With love there had come
to him such sense and thoughtfulness as has come with earnest love to
millions since. What could he do with Lightfoot should he gain her? He was
but a big, young fighting man and hunter, still sleeping, almost nightly,
on one of the leaf beds in his father's cave. With a wife of his own he
must have a cave of his own. Compared with his first impulses toward the
girl, this was a new train of thought, and, as we recognize it to-day, a
nobler one. He wanted to care for his own. He wanted a cave fit for the
reception of such a woman as this, to him, the sweetest and proudest of
all beings, Lightfoot, daughter of old Hilltop, of the wooded highlands.

Far up the river, far beyond the home of Oak's father and beyond the
shining marshlands and the purple heather reaches which made the foothills
pleasant, extended to the river's bank a promontory, bold and picturesque
and clad heavily with the best of trees. It was a great stretch of land,
where, in some of nature's grim work, the earth had been up-heaved and
there had been raised good soil for giant forests, and at the same time
been made broad caverns to become future habitations of the creature known
as man. But the trees bore nuts and fruits, and such creatures as found
food in nuts and fruits, and, later, such as loved rich herbage, came to
the forest in great numbers, and then followed such as fed upon these
again, all the flesh eaters, to whom man was, as any other living thing,
to be seized upon and devoured. The promontory, so rich in game and nuts
and fruits, was, at the same time, the most dangerous in all the region
for human habitation. There were deep, dry caves within its limits, but in
none of them had a cave man yet ventured to make his home. It was toward
this promontory that the young man in love turned his eyes. Because others
had feared to make a home in this lone, high region should he also fear?
There was food there in plenty and if there were chance of fighting in
plenty, so much the better! Was he not strong and fleet; had he not the
best of spears and axes? Above all, had he not the new weapon which made
man far above the beasts? Here was the place for a home which should be
the best in all this region of the cave men. Here game and food of all
kinds would be most abundant. The situation would demand a brave man and a
woman scarcely less courageous, but would not he and the girl he was
determined to bring there meet all occasion? His mind was fixed.

Ab found a cave, one clean and dry and opening out upon a slight treeless
area, and this he, lover-like, improved for the woman he had resolved to
bring there, arranging carefully the interior of which must be a home. He
had fancies such as lovers have exhibited from since the time when the
plesiosaurus swashed away in the strand of a warm sea a hollow nursery for
the birth and first tending of the young of his odd kind, up to the later
time when men have squandered fortunes on the sleeping rooms of women they
have loved. He toiled for many days. With his ax he chipped away the
cavern's sharp protuberances at each side, and with the stone chips from
the walls and with what he brought from outside, he made the floor white
and clean and nearly level. He built a fireplace and chipped into a huge
stone, which, fortunately, lay inside the cave, a hollow for holding
drinking water, or for the boiling of meat. He built up a passage-way at
the entrance, allowing something but not too much more than his own width,
as the gauge for measurement of its breadth. He brought into the cave a
deep carpet of leaves and made a wide bed in one corner and this he
covered with furred skins, for many skins Ab owned in his own right. Then,
with a thick fragment of tough branch as a lever, he rolled a big stone
near the cave's entrance and left it ready to be occupied as a home. The
woman was still lacking.

There came a day when Ab, impatient after his searching and waiting, but
yet resolute, had killed a capercailzie--the great grouse-like bird of the
time, the descendants of which live to-day in northern forests--and had
built a fire and feasted, and then, instinctively careful, had climbed to
the first broad, low branch of an enormous tree and there adjusted himself
to sleep the sleep of one who has eaten heartily. He lay with the big
branch for a bed, supported on either side by green, upspringing twigs,
and slept well for an hour or two and then awoke, lazy and listless, but
with much good to him from the repast and rest. It was not yet very late
in the afternoon and the sun still shone kindly upon him, as upon a whole
world of rejoicing things. Something like a reflection of the life of the
morning was beginning to manifest itself, as is ever the way where forests
and wild things are. The wonderful noise of wood life was renewed. As the
young man awakened, he felt in every pulse the thrilling powers of
existence. Everything was fair to look upon. His ears took in the sound of
the voices of birds, already beginning vesper songs, though the afternoon
was yet so early as scarcely to hint of evening, and the scent from a
thousand plants and flowers, permeating and intoxicating, reached his
senses as he lounged sprawlingly upon his safe bed aloft.

It was attractive, the scene which Ab looked upon. The forest was in all
the glory of summer and nesting and breeding things were happy. There was
the fullness of the being of trees and plants and of all birds and beasts.
There was a soft commingling of sounds which told of the life about, the
effect of which was, somehow, almost drowsy in the blending of all
together. The great ferns waved gently along the hollows as the slight
breeze touched them. They were queer, those ferns. They were not quite so
slender and tapering and gothic as the ferns we see to-day. They were a
trifle more lush and ragged, and their tips were sometimes almost rounded.
But Ab noted little of fern or bird. It was only the general sensuousness
that was upon him. The smell of the pines was a partial tonic to the
healthy, half-awakened man, and, though he lay back upon the rugged wooden
bed and half dozed again, nature had aroused him a trifle beyond the point
of relapse into absolute, unknowing slumber. There was coming to him a
sharpness of perception which affected the quiescence of his enjoyment. He
rose to a sitting posture and looked about him. At once his eyes flashed,
every nerve and muscle became tense and the blood leaped turbulently in
his veins. He had seen that for which he had come into this region, the
girl who had so reached his rude, careless heart. Lightfoot was very near
him!

The girl, all unconscious, was sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree
which lay close beside a creek. There was an abundance of small pebbles
upon the little strand and the young lady was absent-mindedly engaged in
an occupation in which, to the observer, she took some interest, while
she, no doubt, was really thinking of something else. She sat there,
slender, beautiful and excelling, in her way, the belle of the period,
merely amusing herself. Her toes were charming toes. There could be no
debate on that point, for, while long and strong and flexible, they had a
certain evenness and symmetry. They were being idly employed just now. At
the creek's edge, half imbedded in the ground, uprose the crest of a
granite stone. Picking up pebble after pebble in her admirable toes,
Lightfoot was engaged in throwing them, one after another, at the
outstanding point of granite, utilizing in the performance only those toes
and the brown leg below the knee. She did exceedingly well and hit the
red-brown target often. Ab, hot-headed and fierce lover in the tree top,
looked on admiringly. How perfect of form was she; how bright the face!
and then, forgetting himself, he cried aloud and slid from the branch as
easily and swiftly as any serpent and started running toward the girl. He
must have her!

With his cry, the girl leaped to her feet, and as he reached the ground,
recognized him on the instant. She knew in the same instant that they had
felt together and that it was not by accident that he was near her. She
had felt as he; so far as a woman may feel with a man; but maidens are
maidens, and sweet lightness dreads force, and a modified terror came upon
her. She paused for a moment, then turned and ran toward the upland
forest.

Not a moment hesitating or faltering as affected by the girl's action was
the young man who had tumbled from the tree bed. The blood dancing within
him and the great natural impulse of gaining what was greatest to him in
life controlled him now. He was hot with fierce lovingness. He ran well,
but he did not run better than the graceful thing before him.

Even for the critical being of the great cities of to-day, the one who
"manages" races of all sorts, it would have been worth while to see this
race in the forest. As the doe leaps, scarcely touching the ground, ran
Lightfoot. As the wolf or hound runs, less swift for the moment, but
tireless, ran the man behind her. Yet of all the men in the cave region,
this flying girl wanted most this man to take her! It was the maidenly
force-dreading instinct alone which made her run.

Ab, dogged and enduring, lost no space as the race led away toward the
hill and home of the fleet thing ahead of him. There were miles to be
covered, and therein he had hope. They were on the straight path to
Hilltop's cave, though there were divergent, curving side paths almost as
available; but to avoid her pursuer, the fugitive could take none of
these. There were cross-cuts everywhere. In leaving the direct path she
would but lose ground. To reach soon enough by straight, clean running the
towering wooded hill in which was her father's cave seemed the only hope
of the half-unwilling fugitive.

There were descents and ascents in the long chase and plateaus where the
running was on level ground. Straining forward, gaining little, but
confident of overtaking the girl, Ab, deep-chested and physically
untroubled, pressed onward, when he noted that the girl made a sudden
spurt and bounded forward with a speed not shown before, while, at the
same time, she swerved from the right of the path.

It was not Ab who had made her swerve. Some new alarm had come to her. She
was about to reach and, as Ab supposed, pass one of the inletting paths
entering almost at right angles from the left. She did not pass it. She
leaped into it in evident terror and then, breaking out from the wood on
the right, came another form and one surely in swift following. Ab knew
the figure well. Oak was the new pursuer!

The awful rage which rose in the heart of Ab as he saw what was happening
is what can no more be described than one can tell what a tiger in the
jungle thinks. He saw another--the other his friend--pursuing and
intending to take what he wanted to be his and what had become to him more
than all else in the world; more than much eating and the skins of things
to keep him warm, more than a mammoth's tooth to carve, more than the
glorious skin of the great cave tiger, the possession of which made a rude
nobility, more than anything and all else! He leaped aside from the path.
He knew well the other path upon which were running Oak and Lightfoot. He
knew that he could intercept them, because, though the running was not so
good, the distance to be covered was much less, for to him path running
was a light matter. In the wood he ran as easily and leaped as well and
attained a point almost as quickly as the beasts. There was a stress of
effort and, as the shadows deepened, he burst in upon the cross path where
he knew were the fleeing Lightfoot and following Oak. He had thought to
head them off, but Ab was not the only man who was swift of foot in the
cave country. They passed, almost as he bounded from the forest. He saw
them close together not many yards ahead of him and, with a shout of rage,
bent himself in swift and terrible pursuit again.

It was all plain to Ab now as he flew along, unnoted by the two ahead of
him. He knew that Oak had, like him, determined to own Lightfoot, and had
like him, been seeking her. Only chance had made the chase thus cross
Oak's path; but that made no difference. There must be a grim meeting
soon. Ab could see that the endurance of the wonderfully fleet-footed
woman was not equal to that of the man so near her. She would soon be
overtaken. Before her rose the hill, not a mile in its slope, where were
her father's cave, and safety. He knew that she had not the strength to
breast it fleetly enough for covert. And, as he looked, he saw the girl
turn a frightened face toward her close pursuer and knew that she saw him
as well. Her pace slackened for a moment as this revelation came to her,
and he felt, somehow, that in him she recognized comparative protection.
Then she recovered herself and bent all the power she had toward the
ascent. But Oak had been gaining steadily, and now, with a sudden rush, he
reached her and grasped her, the woman shrieking wildly. A moment later Ab
rushed in upon them with a shout. Instinctively Oak released the girl, for
in the cry he heard that which meant menace and immediate danger. As
Lightfoot felt herself free she stood for a moment or two without a
movement, with wide-open eyes, looking upon what was happening before her.
Then she bounded away, not looking backward as she ran.

[Illustration: AB STOOD THERE WEAPONLESS, A CREATURE WANDERING OF MIND]

The two men stood there glaring at each other, Oak perched, and yet not
perched, so broad and perfect was his foothold, on the crest of a slight
shelf of the downward slope. There stood the two men, poised, the one
above, the other below, two who had been as close together from childhood
as all the attributes of mind and body might allow, and yet now as far
apart as human beings may be. They were beautiful in a way, each in his
murderous, unconscious posing for the leap. The sun hit the blue ax of Oak
and made it look a gray. The raised ax of Ab, which was of a lighter
colored stone, was in the shade and its yellowness was darkened into
brown. The spectacle lasted for but a second. As Oak leaped Ab bounded
aside and they stood upon a level, a tiny plateau, and there was fierce,
strong fencing. One could not note its methods; even the keen-eyed
wolverine, crouching low upon an adjacent monster limb, could never have
followed the swift movements of these stone axes. The dreadful play was
brief. The clash of stone together ceased as there came a duller sound,
which told that stone had bitten bone. Oak, slightly the higher of the
two, as they stood thus in the fray, leaned forward suddenly, his arms
aloft, while from his hand dropped the blue ax. He floundered down
uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still.
Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had
parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked
upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and
pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to
where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl
was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the waning day were
deepening.




CHAPTER XIX.


A RACE WITH DREAD.

Ab looked toward the forest wherein Lightfoot had fled and then looked
upon that which lay at his feet. It was Oak--there were the form and
features of his friend--but, somehow, it was not Oak. There was too much
silence and the blood upon the leaves seemed far too bright. His rage
departed, and he wanted Oak to answer and called to him, but Oak did not
answer. Then came slowly to him the idea that Oak was dead and that the
wild beasts would that night devour the dead man where he lay. The thought
nerved him to desperate, sudden action. He leaped forward, he put his arms
about the body and carried it away to a hollow in the wooded slope. He
worked madly, doing some things as he had seen the cave people do at other
buryings. He placed the weapons of Oak beside him. He took from his belt
his own knife, because it was better than that of Oak, and laid it close
to the dead man's hand, and then, first covering the body with beech
leaves, he worked frantically upon the overhanging soil, prying it down
with a sharp-pointed fragment of limb, and tossing in upon all as heavy
stones as he could lift, until a great cairn rose above the hunter who
would hunt no more.

Panting with his efforts, Ab sat himself down upon a rock and looked upon
the monument he had raised. Again he called to Oak, but there was still no
answer. The sun had set, evening shadows thickened around him. Then there
came upon the live man a feeling as dreadful as it was new, and, with a
yell, which was almost a shriek, he leaped to his feet and bounded away in
fearful flight.

He only knew this, that there was something hurt his inside of body and
soul, but not the inside of him as it had been when once he had eaten
poisonous berries or when he had eaten too much of the little deer. It was
something different. It was an awful oppression, which seemed to leave his
body, in a manner, unfeeling but which had a great dread about it and
which made him think and think of the dead man, and made him want to run
away and keep running. He had always run far that day, but he was not
tired now. His legs seemed to have the hard sinews of the stag in them but
up toward the top of him was something for them to carry away as fast and
far as possible from somewhere. He raced from the dense woodland down into
the broad morass to the west--beyond which was the rock country--and into
which he had rarely ventured, so treacherous its ways. What cared he now!
He made great leaps and his muscles and sinews responded to the thought of
him. To cross that morass safely required a touch on tussocks and an
upbounding aside, a zig-zag exhibition of great strength and knowingness
and recklessness. But it was unreasoning; it was the instinct begotten of
long training and, now, of the absence of all nervousness. Each taut toe
touched each point of bearing just as was required above the quagmire,
and, all unperceiving and uncaring, he fled over dirty death as easily as
he might have run upon some hardened woodland pathway. He did not think
nor know nor care about what he was doing. He was only running away from
the something he had never known before! Why should he be running now? He
had killed things before and not cared and had forgotten. Why should he
care now? But there was the something which made him run. And where was
Oak? Would Oak meet him again and would they hunt together? No, Oak would
not come, and he, this Ab, had made it so! He must run. No one was
following him--he knew that--but he must run!

The marsh was passed, night had fallen, but he ran on, pressing into the
bear and tiger haunted forest beyond. Anything, anything, to make him
forget the strange feeling and the thing which made him run! He plunged
into a forest path, utterly reckless, wanting relief, a seeker for
whatever might come.

In that age and under such conditions as to locality it was inevitable
that the creature, man, running through such a forest path at night, must
face some fierce creature of the carnivora seeking his body for food. Ab,
blinded of mood, cared not for and avoided not a fight, though it might be
with the monster bear or even the great tiger. There was no reason in his
madness. He was, though he knew it not, a practical suicide, yet one who
would die fighting. What to him were weight and strength to-night? What to
him were such encounters as might come with hungry four-footed things? It
would but relieve him were some of the beasts to try to gain his life and
eat his body. His being seemed valueless, and as for the wild beasts--and
here came out the splendid death-facing quality of the cave man--well, it
would be odd if there were not more deaths than one! But all this was
vague and only a minor part of thought.

Sometimes, as if to invite death, he yelled as he ran. He yelled whenever
in his fleeting visions he saw Oak lying dead again. So ran the man who
had killed another.

There was a growl ahead of him, a sudden breaking away of the bushes, and
then he was thrown back, stunned and bleeding, because a great paw had
smitten him. Whatever the beast might be, it was hungry and had found what
seemed easy prey. There was a difference, though, which the animal,--it
was doubtless a bear--unfortunately for him, did not comprehend, between
the quality of the being he proposed to eat just now and of other animals
included in his ordinary menu. But the bear did not reason; he but plunged
forward to crush out the remaining life of the runner his great paw had
driven back and down and then to enjoy his meal.

The man was little hurt. His skin coat had somewhat protected him and his
sinewy body had such toughness that the hurling of it backward for a few
feet was not anything involving a fatality. Very surely and suddenly had
been thrust upon him now the practical lesson of being or dying, and it
was good for the half-crazed runner, for it cleared his mind. But it made
him no less desperate or careless. With strength almost maniacal he leaped
at what he would have fled from at any other time, and, swinging his ax
with the quickness of light, struck tremendously at the great lowering
head. He yelled again as he felt stone cut and crash into bone, though
himself swept aside once more as a great paw, sidestruck, hurled him into
the bushes. He bounded to his feet and saw something huge and dark and
gasping floundering in the pathway. He thought not but ran on panting. By
some strange freak of forest fortune abetting might the man wandering of
mind had driven his ax nearly to the haft into the skull of his huge
assailant. It may be that never before had a cave man, thus armed, done so
well. The slayer ran on wildly, and now weaponless.

Soon to the runner the scene changed. The trees crowded each other less
closely and there was less of denned pathway. There came something of an
ascent and he breasted it, though less swiftly, for, despite the impelling
force, nature had claims, and muscles were wearying of their work. Fewer
and fewer grew the trees. He knew that he was where there was now a sweep
of rocky highlands and that he was not far from the Fire Country, of which
Old Mok had so often told him. He burst into the open, and as he came out
under the stars, which he could see again, he heard an ominous whine, too
near, and a distant howl behind him. A wolf pack wanted him.

He shuddered as he ran. The life instinct was fully awakened in him now,
as the dread from which he had run became more distant. Had he heard that
close whine and distant howl before he fairly reached the open he would
have sought a treetop for refuge. Now it was too late. He must run ahead
blindly across the treeless space for such harborage as might come. Far
ahead of him he could see light, the light of fire, reaching out toward
him through the darkness. He was panting and wearied, but the sounds
behind him were spur enough to bring the nearly dead to life. He bowed his
head and ran with such effort as he had never made before in all his wild
and daring existence.

The wolves of the time, greater, swifter and fiercer than the gaunt gray
wolves of northern latitudes and historic times, ran well, but so did
contemporaneous man run well, and the chase was hard. With his life to
save, Ab swept panting over the rocky ground with a swiftness begotten of
the grand last effort of remaining strength, running straight toward the
light, while the wolf pack, now gathered, hurled itself from the wood
behind and followed swiftly and relentlessly. Ever before the man shone
the light more brightly; ever behind him became more distinct the sound
made by the following pack. It was a dire strait for the running man. He
was no longer thinking of what he had lately done. He ran.

[Illustration: WITH A GREAT LEAP HE WENT AT AND THROUGH THE CURLING CREST
OF THE YELLOW FLAME]

The light he had seen extended as he neared it into what looked like a
great fence of flame lying across his way. There were gaps in the fence
where the flame, still continuous, was not so high as elsewhere. He did
not hesitate. He ran straight ahead. Closer and closer behind him crowded
the pursuing wolves, and straight at the flame he ran. There was one
chance in many, he thought, and he took it without hesitation. Close
before him now loomed the wall of flame. Close behind him slavering jaws
were working in anticipation, and there was a strain for the last rush.
There was no alternative. Straight at the fire wall where it was lowest
rushed Ab, and with a great leap he went at and through the curling crest
of the yellow flame!

The man had found safety! There was a moment of heat and then he knew
himself to be sprawling upon green turf. A little of the strength of
desperation was still with him and he bounded to his feet and looked
about. There were no wolves. Beside him was a great flat rock, and he
clambered upon this, and then, over the crest of the flames could see
easily enough the glaring eyes of his late pursuers. They were running up
and down, raging for their prey, but kept from him beyond all peradventure
by the fire they could not face. Ab started upright on the rock panting
and defiant, a splendid creature erect there in the firelight.

Soon there came to the man a more perfect sense of his safety. He shouted
aloud to the flitting, snarling creatures, which could not harm him now;
he stooped and found jagged stones, which he sent whirling among them.
There was a savage satisfaction in it.

Suddenly the man fell to the ground, fairly groaning with exhaustion.
Nature had become indignant and the time for recuperation had been
reached. The wearied runner lay breathing heavily and was soon asleep. The
flames which had afforded safety gave also a grateful warmth in the chill
night, and so it was that scarcely had his body touched the ground when he
became oblivious to all about him, only the heaving of the broad chest
showing that the man lying fairly exposed in the light was a living thing.
The varying wind sometimes carried the sheet of flame to its utmost extent
toward him, so that the heat must have been intense, and again would carry
it in an opposite direction while the cold air swept down upon the
sleeping man. Nothing disturbed him. Inured alike to heat and cold, Ab
slept on, slept for hours the sleep which follows vast strain and
endurance in a healthy human being. Then the form lying on the ground
moved restlessly and muttered exclamations came from the lips. The man was
dreaming.

For as the sleeper lay there--he remembered it when he awoke and wondered
over it many times in after years--Oak sprang through the flames, as he
himself had done, and soon lay panting by his side. The lapping of the
fire, the snapping and snarling of the wolves beyond and the familiar
sound of Oak's voice all mingled confusedly in his ears, and then he and
Oak raced together over the rough ground, and wrestled and fought and
played as they had wrestled and fought and played together for years. And
the hours passed and the wind changed and the flames almost scorched him
and Ab started up, looking about him into the wild aspect of the Fire
Country; for the night had passed and the sun had risen and set again
since the exhausted man had fallen upon the ground and become unconscious.

Ab rolled instinctively a little away from the smoky sheets of flame and,
sitting up, looked for Oak. He could not see him. He ran wildly around
among the rocks looking for him and despairingly called aloud his name.
The moment his voice had been hoarsely lifted, "Oak!" the memory of all
that had happened rushed upon him. He stood there in the red firelight a
statue of despair. Oak was dead; he had killed Oak, and buried him with
his own hands, and yet he had seen Oak but a minute ago! He had bounded
through the flames and had wrestled and run races with Ab, and they had
talked together, and yet Oak must be lying in the ground back there in the
forest by the little hill. Oak was dead. How could he get out of the
ground? Fear clutched at Ab's heart, his limbs trembled under him. He
whimpered like a lost and friendless hound and crouched close to the
hospitable fire. His brain wavered under the stress of strange new
impressions. He recalled some mutterings of Old Mok about the dead, that
they had been seen after it was known that they were deep in the ground,
but he knew it was not good to speak or think of such things. Again Ab
sprang to his feet. It would not do to shut his eyes, for then he saw
plainly Oak in his shallow hole in the dark earth and the face Ab had
hurried to cover first when he was burying his friend, there under the
trees. And so the night wore away, sleep coming fitfully from time to
time. Ab could not explore his retreat in the strange firelight nor run
the risks of another night journey across the wild beasts' chosen country.
He began to be hungry, with the fierce hunger of brute strength, sharpened
by terrific labors, but he must wait for the morning. The night seemed
endless. There was no relief from the thoughts which tortured him, but, at
last, morning broke, and in action Ab found the escape he had longed for.




CHAPTER XX.


THE FIRE COUNTRY.

It was light now and the sun shone fairly on Ab's place of refuge. As his
senses brought to him full appreciation he wondered at the scene about
him. He was in a glade so depressed as to be a valley. About it, to the
east and north and west, in a wavering, tossing wall, rose the uplifting
line of fire through which he had leaped, though there were spaces where
the height was insignificant. On the south, and extending till it circled
a trifle to east, rose a wall of rock, evidently the end of a
forest-covered promontory, for trees grew thickly to its very edge and
their green branches overhung its sheer descent. Coming from some crevice
of the rocks on the east, and tumbling downward through the valley, was a
riotous brook, which disappeared through some opening at the west. Within
this area, thus hemmed in by fire and rock, appeared no living thing save
the birds which sang upon the bushes beside the small stream's banks and
the butterflies which hung above the flowers and all the insect world
which joined in the soft, humming chorus of the morning. It was something
that Ab looked upon with delighted wonder, but without understanding. What
he saw was not a marvel. It was but the result of one of many upheavals at
a time when the earth's cooled shell was somewhat thinner than now and
when earthquakes, though there were no cities to overthrow, at least made
havoc sometimes by changing the face of nature. There had come a great
semi-circular crack in the earth, near and extending to the line of the
sheer rock range. The natural gas, the product of the vegetation of
thousands of centuries before, had found a chance to escape and had poured
forth into the outer world. Something, perhaps a lightning stroke and a
flaming tree, perhaps some cave man making fire and consumed on the
instant when he succeeded, had ignited the sheet of rising gas, and the
result was the wall of flame. It was all natural and commonplace, for the
time. There were other upleaping flame sheets in the surrounding region
forever burning--as there are in northern Asia to-day--but Ab knew of
these fires only from Old Mok's tales. He stood wonderstruck at what he
saw about him.

But this man in the valley was young and very strong, with tissues to be
renewed, and the physical man within him clamored and demanded. He must
eat. He ran forward and around, anxiously observant, and soon learned that
at the western end of the valley, where the little creek tumbled through a
rocky cut into a lower level, there was easy exit from the
fire-encompassed and protected area. He clambered along the creek's rough,
descending side. He emerged upon an easier slope and then found it
possible to climb the hillside to the plane of the great wood. There must,
he thought, be food of some sort, even for a man with only Oak's knife in
his possession! There was the forest and there were nuts. He was in the
forest soon, among the gray-trunked, black-mottled beeches and the rough
brown oaks. He found something of what he sought, the nuts lying under
shed leaves, though the supply was scant. But nuts, to the cave man, made
moderately good food, supplying a part of the sustenance he required, and
Ab ate of what he could find and arose from the devouring search and
looked about him.

He was weaponless, save for the knife, and a flint knife was but a thing
for closest struggle. He longed now for his ax and spear and the strong
bow which could hurt so at a distance. But there was one sort of weapon to
be had. There was the club. He wandered about among the tops of fallen
trees and wrenched at their dried limbs, and finally tore one away and
broke off, later, with a prying leverage, what made a rough but available
club for a cave man's purposes. It was much better than nothing. Then
began a steady trot toward what should be fair life again. There were
vague paths through the forest made by wild beasts. As he moved the man
thought deeply.

He thought of the fire-wall, and could not with all his reasoning
determine upon the cause of its existence, and so abandoned the subject as
a thing, the nub of which was unreachable. That was the freshest object in
his mind and the first to be mentally disposed of. But there were other
subjects which came in swift succession. As he went along with a dog's
gait he was not in much terror, practically weaponless as he was. His eye
was good and he was going through the forest in the daylight. He was
strong enough, club in hand, to meet the minor beasts. As for the others,
if any of them appeared, there were the trees, and he could climb. So, as
he trotted he could afford to think.

And he thought much that day, this perplexed man, our grandfather with so
many "greats" before the word. He had nothing to divert him even in the
selection of the course toward his cave. He noted not where the sun stood,
nor in what direction the tiny head-waters of the rivulets took their
course, nor how the moss grew on the trees. He traveled in the wood by
instinct, by some almost unexplainable gift which comes to the thing of
the woods. The wolf has it; the Indian has it; sometimes the white man of
to-day has it.

As he went Ab engaged in deeper and more sustained thought than ever
before in all his life. He was alone; new and strange scenes had enlarged
his knowledge and swift happenings had made keener his perceptions. For
days his entire being had been powerfully affected by his meeting with
Lightfoot at the Feast of the Mammoth and the events which had followed
that meeting in such swift succession. The tragedy of Oak's death had
quickened his sensibilities. Besides, what had ensued latest had been what
was required to make him in a condition for the divination of things. The
wise agree that much stimulant or much deprivation enables the brain
convolutions to do their work well, though deprivation gets the cleaner
end. The asceticism of Marcus Aurelius was productive of greater results
than the deep drinking of any gallant young Roman man of letters of whom
he was a patron. The literature of fasting thinkers is something fine. Ab,
after exerting his strength to the utmost for days, had not eaten of
flesh, and the strong influences to which he was subjected were exerted
upon a man still, practically, fasting. For a time, the rude and
earth-born child of the cave was lifted into a region of comparative
sentiment and imagination. It was an experience which affected materially
all his later life.

Ever to the trotting man came the feelings which must follow fierce love
and deadly action and vague remorse and fear of something indefinable. He
saw the face and form of Lightfoot; he saw again the struggle,
death-ending, with the friend of youth and of mutual growing into manhood.
He remembered dimly the half insane flight, the leaps across the dreaded
morass and, more distinctly, the chase by the wolves. The aspect of the
Fire Country and of all that followed his awakening was, of course, yet
fresh in his mind. He was burdened.

Ever uprising and oppressing above all else was the memory of the man he
had killed and buried, covering the face first, so that it might not look
at him. Was Oak really dead? he asked himself again! Had not he, Ab, as
soon as he slept again, seen, alive and well, the close friend of his? He
clung to the vision. He reasoned as deeply as it was in him to reason.

As he struggled in his mind to obtain light there came to him the fancy of
other things dimly related to the death mystery which had perplexed him
and all his kind. There must be some one who made the river rise and fall
or the nut-bearing forest be either fruitful or the hard reverse. Who and
what could it be? What should he do, what should all his friends do in the
matter of relation to this unknown thing?

With this day and hour did not come really the beginning of Ab's thought
upon the subject of what was, to him and those he knew, the supernatural.
He had thought in the past--he could not help it--of the shadow and the
echo. He remembered how he and Oak had talked about the echo, and how they
had tried to get rid of the thing which had more than once called back to
them insolently across the valley. Every word they shouted this hidden
creature would mockingly repeat and there was no recourse for them. They
had once fully armed themselves and, in a burst of desperate bravery, had
resolved to find who and what the owner of this voice was and have, at
least, a fight. They had crossed the valley and ranged about the woodland
whence the voice seemed to have come, but they never found what they
sought!

The shadow which pursued them on sunny afternoons had puzzled them in
another way. Very persistent had been the flat, black, earth-clinging and
distorted thing which followed them so everywhere. What was this black,
following thing, anyhow, this thing which swung its unsubstantial body
around as one moved but which ever kept its own feet at the feet of the
pursued, wherever there was no shade, and which lay there beside one so
persistently?

But the echoes and the shadows were nothing as compared with the things
which came to one at night. What were those creatures which came when a
man was sleeping? Why did they escape with the dawn and appear again only
when he was asleep and helpless, at least until he awoke fairly and seized
his ax?

The sun rose high and dropped slowly down toward the west, where the far
ocean was, and the shadows somewhat lengthened, but it was still light
along the forest pathways and the untiring man still hurried on. He was
now close to his country and becoming careless and at ease. But his
imagination was still busy; he could not free himself of memory. There
came to him still the vision of the friend he had buried, hiding his face
first of all. The frenzy of his wish for knowing rushed again upon him.
Where was Oak now? he demanded of himself and of all nature. "Where is
Oak?" he yelled to the familiar trees beside his path. But the trees, even
to the cave man, so close to them in the economy of wild life, so like
them in his naturalness, could give no answer.

So the cave man struggled in his dim, uncertain way with the eternal
question: "If a man die shall he live again?" So the human mind still
struggles, after thousands of centuries have contributed to its
development. A wall more impassable than the wall of flame Ab had so
lately looked upon still rises between us and those who no longer live. We
reach out for some knowledge of those who have died, and go almost into
madness because we can grasp nothing. Silence unbroken, darkness
impenetrable ever guard the mystery of death. In the long ages since the
cave man ran that day, love and hope have in faith erected, beyond the
grim barriers of blackness and despair, fair pavilions of promise and
consolation, but to the stern examiners of physical fact and reality there
has come no news from beyond the walls of silence since. We clamor
tearfully for some word from those who are dead, but no answer comes. So
Ab groped and strove alone in the forest, in his youth and ignorance, and
in the youth and ignorance of our race.

Upon the pathway along the river's bank Ab emerged at last. All was
familiar to him now. There, by the clump of trees in the flat below, was
the place where he and Oak had dug the pit when they were but mere boys
and had learned their first important lessons in sterner woodcraft. Soon
came in sight, as he ran, the entrance to the cave of his own family. He
was home again. But he was not the one who had left that rude habitation
three days before. He had gone away a youth. He had come back one who had
suffered and thought. He came back a man.




CHAPTER XXI.


THE WOOING OF LIGHTFOOT.

Lightfoot, when Ab seized Oak, had fled away from the two infuriated men,
as the hare runs, and had sped into the forest. She had the impetus of new
fear now and ran swiftly as became her name, never looking behind her, nor
did she slacken her pace, though panting and exhausted, until she found
herself approaching the cave where lived her playmate, Moonface, not more
than an hour's run from her own home.

The fleeing girl was fortunate in stumbling upon her friend as soon as she
came into the open space about the cave. Moonface was enjoying herself
lazily that afternoon. She was leaning back idly in a swing of vines to
which she had braided a flexible back, and was blinking somnolently in the
sunshine as the visitor leaped from the wood. Moonface recognized her
friend, gave a quavering cry of delight and came slipping and rolling
recklessly to the ground to meet her. Lightfoot uttered no word. She stood
breathless, and was rather carried than led by Moonface to an easy seat,
moss-padded, upon twisted tree roots, which was that young lady's ordinary
resting-place. Upon this seat the two sank, one overcome with past fear
and present fatigue, and the other with an all-absorbing and demanding
curiosity. It was beyond the ordinary scope of the self-restraining forces
in Moonface to await with calm the recovery of Lightfoot's breath and
powers of conversation. She pinched and shook her friend and demanded,
half-crying but impatiently, some explanation. It was a great hour for
Moonface, the greatest in her life. Here was her friend and dictator
panting and terrified like some weak, hunted-down thing of the wood. It
was a marvel. At last Lightfoot spoke:

"They are fighting at the foot of the hill!" she said, and Moonface at
once guessed the whole story, for she was not blind, this wide-mouthed
creature.

"Why did you run away?" she asked.

"I ran because I was scared. One of them must be dead before this time. I
am glad I am alive myself," Lightfoot gasped. Then the girl covered her
face with her hands as she recalled Ab's face, distorted by passion and
murderous hate, and Oak's equally maddened look as, before the onrush, he
had grasped her so firmly that the marks of his fingers remained blue upon
her arms and slender waist and neck.

Then Lightfoot, slow to regain her composure, told tremblingly the story
of all that had occurred, finding comfort in the unaffrighted look upon
the face, as well as in the reassuring talk, of her easy-going,
unimaginative and cheerful and faithful companion. She remained as a guest
at the cave overnight and the next forenoon, when she took her way for
home, she was accompanied by Moonface. Gradually, as the hours passed,
Lightfoot regained something of her usual frame of mind and a little of
her ordinary manner of careless light-heartedness, but when home had been
reached and the girls had rested and eaten and she heard Moonface telling
anew for her the story of the flight in the wood, while her father,
Hilltop, and her two strapping brothers listened with interest, but with
no degree of excitement, she felt again the wild alarm and horror and
uncertainty which had affected her when first she fled from what was to
her so dreadful. She crept away from the cave door near which the others
sat enjoying the balmy midsummer afternoon, beckoning to one of her
brothers to follow her, as the big fellow did unquestioningly, for
Lightfoot had been, almost from young girlhood, the dominant force in the
family, even the strong father, though it was contrary to the spirit of
the time, admiring and yielding to his one daughter without much comment.
The great, hulking youth, well armed and ready for any adventure, joined
her, nothing both, and the two disappeared, like shadows, in the depths of
the forest.

Lightfoot had been the housekeeper in the cave of Hilltop, the cave of the
greatest hunter of the region, young despite the years which had
encompassed him, and father of two boys who were fine specimens of the
better men of the time. They were splendid whelps, and this slim thing,
whom they had cared for as she grew, dominated them easily, though the age
was not one of vast family affection, while chivalry, of course, did not
exist. Hilltop's wife had died two years before, and Lightfoot, with
unconscious force, had taken her mother's place. There was none other with
woman's ways to help the men in the rock-guarded home on the windy hill.
Hilltop had not been altogether unthinking all this time. He had often
looked upon his daughter's friend, the jolly, swart and well-fed Moonface,
and had much approved of her, but, today, as he listened to her story, he
did not pay such attention as was demanded by the interest of the theme.
An occasional death, though it were the killing of one cave man by
another, was not a matter of huge importance. He was not inflamed in any
way by what he heard, but as he looked and listened to the comfortable
young person who was speaking, the idea, hastened it may be by some loving
and domestic instinct, grew slowly in his brain that she might make for
him as excellent a mate as any other of the "good matches" to be found in
the immediately surrounding country. He was a most directly reasoning
person, this Hilltop, best of hunters and generally respected on the
forest ridges. After the thought once dawned upon him, it grew and grew,
and an idea fairly developed in Hilltop's mind meant action. His
fifty-five years of age had hardly cooled and had certainly not nearly
approached to freezing the blood in his outstanding veins. He had a suit
to make, and make at once. That he might have no interruption he bade
Stone-Arm, his remaining son, who sat on a rock near by, and who had
listened, open-mouthed, to the recital of Moonface, to seek his brother
and Lightfoot in the forest path. There might be beasts abroad and two men
were better than one, said this crafty father-hunter-lover.

The boy, clever tracker as a red Indian or Australian trailer, soon found
the path his brother and Lightfoot had taken and joined them. As he
listened to what they were saying he was glad he had been sent to follow
them. They were hastening toward the valley. The trees were beginning to
cast long shadows when the three came to where the more abrupt hillside
reached the slope and where the torn ground, broken limbs and twigs and
deep-indented footprints in the soil gave glaring evidence to the eye of
yesterday's struggle. But, aside from all this, there was something else.
There was a carpet of yellowish-brown leaves, at the edge of the circle of
fray, where a man had fallen. On the clean stretch of evenly rain-packed
leaves there were spots from which the scarlet had but lately faded into
crimson. There was a place where the surface was disturbed and sunken a
little. All three knew that a man had died there.

The two young men and their sister stood together uttering no word. The
men were amazed. The woman half comprehended all. She did not hesitate a
moment. Guided by a sure instinct, Lightfoot reached, without thought or
conscious search, the spot of unnatural earth which reared itself so near
to them, the spot where was fresh stone-covered soil and where a man was
buried. The pile of stones, newly heaped upon the moist earth, told their
story.

Someone was buried there, but whom? Was it Oak or Ab?

"Shall I dig?" said Stone-Arm, making ready for the task, while Branch,
his elder brother, prepared for work as well.

"No! No!" cried Lightfoot. "He is buried deep and the stones are over him.
It will be night soon and the wolves and hyenas would be here before we
could get away. Let it be. Someone is there, but the one who killed him
has buried him. He will come back!" The two boys were silent, and
Lightfoot led the way toward home. When the three reached the cave of
Hilltop the sun was setting. Something had happened at the cave, but there
arises at this point no stern demand for going into details. Hilltop,
brave man, was no laggard in wooing, and Moonface was not a nervous young
person. When the other members of the household reached the cave Moonface
was already installed as mistress. There would be no reprisals from an
injured family. The girl had lived with her ancient father, whom she had
half-supported and who would, possibly, be transplanted to Hilltop's cave
for such pottering life as he was still capable of during the rest of his
existence. The new régime was fairly established.

The arrangement suited Lightfoot well enough. This astounding stepmother
had been her humble but faithful friend. Lightfoot was a ruling woman
spirit wherever she was, and she knew it, though she bowed at all times to
the rule of strength as the only law. Nevertheless she knew how to get her
own way. With Moonface, everything was easy for her and she found it
rather pleasant than otherwise to find the other young woman made suddenly
a permanent resident of the cave in which she had been born and had lived
all her life. As the two girls met, and the situation was curtly announced
by Hilltop, their faces were worth the seeing. There was alarm and
hopefulness upon the countenance of Moonface, sudden astonishment and
indignation, and then reflection, upon the face of Lightfoot. After a few
moments of thought both girls laughed cheerfully.

The story of the newly found grave made but little impression upon the
group and Lightfoot, the only one of the household who thought much about
it, thought silently. To her the single question was: "Who lay there?"
There was nothing strange to the others of the family in the thought that
one man should have killed another, and no one attached blame to or
proposed punishment of the slayer. Sometimes after such a happening, the
cave man who had slain another might have a rock rolled suddenly upon him
from a height, or in passing a thicket have the flint head of a spear
driven through him, but this was only the deed, perhaps, of an enraged
father or brother, not in any sense a matter of course in the way of
justice, and even such attempt at reprisal was not the rule.

But in the bosom of Lightfoot was a weight like a stone. It was as heavy,
she thought, as one of the stones on the bare ground over the body of the
man who lay there in the dark earth, because he had run after her. Who was
it? It might be Ab! And all through the night the girl tossed uneasily on
her bed of leaves, as she did for nights to come.

As for Moonface, who shall say what that rotund and hairy young person
thought when the family had settled down to the changed order of things
and she had adjusted herself to the duties of a matron in her new home?
She was not less broadly buoyant and beaming, but who can tell that, when
she noted Lightfoot's burning look and thoughtful mien, Moonface did not
sometimes think of the two young men who, but yesterday, had rejoiced in
such strength and vigor and charm of power and who were so good to look
upon? She was a wife now, but to another sort of man. Even the feminine
among writers of erotic novels have not yet revealed what the young moon
thinks when she "holds the old moon in her arms." Anyhow, Hilltop was a
defense and a great provider of food. He was a fine figure of a man, too.

[Illustration: THE GIRL COWERED BEHIND A REFUGE OF LEAVES AND BRANCHES]

Lightfoot was not much in the cave now. She lingered about the open space
or wandered in the near wood. A woman's instinct told her to be out-doors
all the time she could. A man would seek her, but with the thought came an
awful dread. Which man? One afternoon she saw something.

Two gray forms flitted across an open space in the forest near the cave,
and in a moment the girl was in a treetop. What followed was the
unexpected. Close behind the gray things came a man, fully armed,
straight, eager and alert and silent in his wood surroundings, with eyes
roving over and searching all the open space about the cave of Hilltop.
The man was Ab.

The girl gave a shriek of delight, then, alarmed at the sound she had
made, cowered behind a refuge of leaves and branches. She was happy beyond
all her experience before. The question which had been in all her thoughts
was answered! It was Oak, not Ab, who lay in the ground on the hillside.
And, even as she realized this fully, there was a swift upward scramble
and the young cave man was beside her on the limb. There was no running
away this time. The girl's face told its story well enough, so well that
Ab, still lately doubting, though resolved, knew that his fitting mate
belonged to him. There came to them the happiness which ever comes to
lovers, be they man or bird or beast, and then came swift conclusion. He
told her she must go with him at once, told her of the new cave and of all
he had done, but the girl, well aware of the dangers of the beast-haunted
region where the new home had been selected, was thoroughly alarmed. Then
Ab told her of the little flying spears which Old Mok had made for him,
and about the wonderful bow which sent them to their mark, and the girl
was reassured and soon began to feel exceedingly brave and proud of her
lover and his prowess.

No need of carrying off a girl by force or craft on this occasion, for
Hilltop had fully recognized Ab's strength and quality. The two went to
the cave together and there was eating and then, later, two skin-clad
human beings, a man and a woman, went away together through the forest.
Their journey was a long one and a careful lookout was necessary as they
hurried along a pathway of the strange country. But the cave was reached
at last, just as the sun burned red and gave a rosy glow to everything.

Silently the two came into the open space in front of what was to be their
fortress and abode. Solid was the rock about the entrance and narrow the
blocked opening. Smoke curled in a pretty spiral upward from where
smoldered the fire Ab had made the day before. Lightfoot looked upon it
all and laughed joyously, though tremblingly, for she had now given
herself to a man and he had brought her to his place of living.

As for the man, he looked down upon the girl delightedly. His pulse beat
fast. He put his arm about her and together they entered the cave. There
was a marriage but no ceremony. Just as robins mate when they have met or
as the buck and doe, so faithful man and wife became these two.

Darkness fell, the fire at the cave entrance flashed up fiercely and Ab
and Lightfoot were "at home."




CHAPTER XXII.


THE HONEYMOON.

The sun shone brilliantly, birds were singing and the balsam firs gave
forth their morning incense as Ab and Lightfoot issued from their cave.
They had eaten heartily, and came out buoyant and delighted with the
world which was theirs. The chattering of the waterfowl along the river
reached their ears faintly, the leaves were moved by a gentle breeze,
there was a hum of insects in the air and the very pulse of living could
be felt. Ab carried his new weapon proudly, hungering for the love and
admiration of this girl of his, and eager to show her its powers and to
exhibit his own skill. At his back hung his quiver of mammoth bone. His
bow, unstrung, was in his hand. In front of the cave was a bare area of
many yards in extent, then came a few scattering trees and, at a distance
of perhaps two hundred yards, the forest began. Across the open space of
ground, with its great mass of branches crushed together not far from the
cave's mouth, had fallen one of the gigantic conifers' of the time, and
was there gradually decaying, its huge limbs and bole, disintegrating,
and dry as punk, affording, close at hand, a vast fuel supply, the
exceptional value of which Ab had recognized when making his selection of
a home. Near the edge of the little clearing made by nature, Ab seated
himself upon a log, and drawing Lightfoot down to a seat beside him,
began enthusiastically to make clear the marvels of the weapon he had
devised and which he and Old Mok had developed into something startling
in its possibilities.

All details of the explanation made by the earnest young hunter, it is
probable, Lightfoot did not comprehend. She looked proudly at him,
fingering the flint pointed arrows curiously, yet seemed rather intent
upon the man than the wood and stone. But when he pointed at a great knot
in a tree near them and bent his bow and sent an arrow fairly into the
target, and when, even with her strength, Lightfoot could not pull the
arrow out, she was wild with admiration and excitement. She begged to be
taught how to use, herself, this wonderful new weapon, for she recognized
as readily as could anyone its adaptation to the use of one of inferior
strength. The delighted lover was certainly as desirous as she that she
should some day become an expert. He handed her the bow, retaining, slung
over his shoulder, fortunately, as it developed, the bone quiver full of
Old Mok's best arrows. He taught her, first, how to bend and string the
bow. There were failures and successes, and there was much laughter from
the merry-hearted Lightfoot. Finally, it happened that Ab was not just
content with the quality of the particular arrow which he had selected
for Lightfoot's use. He had taken a slender one with a clean flint head,
but something about the notch had not quite suited him. With a thin, hard
stone scraper, carried in a pouch of his furry garb, he began rasping and
filing at this notch to make it better fit the string of tendons, while
Lightfoot, with the bow still strung, stood beside him. At last, tired of
holding the thing in her hands, she passed it over her head and one
shoulder and stood there jauntily, with both hands free, while the man
scraped away with the one little flake of flint in his possession, and,
as he worked, paused from time to time note how well he was rounding the
notch in the end of the slight hardwood shaft. It was just as he was
holding up to her eyes the arrow, now made almost an ideal one, according
to his fancy, when there came to the ears of the two a sound, distinct,
ominous and implying to them deadly peril, a sound such that, though
nerves spoke and muscles acted, they were very near the momentary
paralysis which sometimes come from sudden fearful shock. From close
beside them came the half grunt and half growl of the great cave bear!

With the instinct born of generations, each leaped independently toward
the nearest tree, and, with the unconscious strength and celerity which
comes to even wild animals with the dread of death at hand, each
clambered to a treetop before a word was spoken. Scarcely had either left
the ground before there was a rush into the open glade of a huge brown
hairy form, and this was instantly followed by another. As Ab and
Lightfoot climbed far amid the branches and looked down, they saw
upreared at the base of each tree the figure of one of the monsters whose
hungry exclamations they knew so well. They had been careless, these two
lovers, especially the man. He had known well, but for the moment had
forgotten how beast-infested was the immediate area about his new home,
and now had come the consequence of his thoughtlessness. He and his wife
had been driven to the treetops within a few yards of their own
hearthstone, leaving their weapons inside their cave!

Alarmed and panting, after settling down to a firm seat far aloft, each
looked about to see what had become of the other. Each was at once
reassured as to the present, and each became much perplexed as to the
future. The cave bear, like his weaker and degenerate descendant, the
grizzly of to-day, had the quality of persistence well developed, and
both Ab and Lightfoot knew that the siege of their enemies would be
something more than for the moment. The trees in which they perched were
very close to the wood, but not so close that the forest could be reached
by passing from branch to branch. Their two trees were not far from each
other, but their branches did not intermingle. There was a distinct
opening between them. The tree up which Lightfoot had scrambled was a
great fir towering high above the strong beech in which Ab had found his
safety. Branches of the fir hung down until between their ends and Ab's
less lofty covert there were but a few yards of space. Still, one trying
to reach the beech from the lofty fir would find an unpleasantly wide
gap.

Each of the creatures in the tree was unarmed. Ab still bore the quiver
full of admirable arrows, and across the breast of Lightfoot still hung
the strong bow which she had slung about her in such blithesome mood.
Soon began an exceedingly earnest conversation. Ab, eager to reach again
the fair creature who now belonged to him, was half frantic with rage,
and Lightfoot was far from her usual mood of careless gaiety. The two
talked and considered, though but to little purpose, and, finally, after
weary hours, the night came on. It was a trying situation. Man and woman
were in equal danger. The bears were hungry--and the cave bear knew his
quarry. The beasts beneath were not disposed to leave the prey they had
imprisoned aloft. The night grew, but either Ab or Lightfoot, looking
down, could see the glare of small, hungry eyes. There was gentle talk
between the two, for this was a great strait and, in straits, souls, be
they prehistoric, historic or of to-day, always come closer together.
Very much more loving lovers, even, than they were before, became the two
perched aloft that night. It was a comfort for the wedded pair to call to
each other through the darkness. After a time, however, muscles grew lax
with the continued strain. Weariness clouded the spirits of the couple
and almost overcame them and only the thing which has always, in great
stress, given the greatest strength in this world--the love of male and
female--sustained them. They stood the test pretty well. To sleep in a
tree top was an easy thing for them, with the precautions, simple and
natural, of the time. Each plaited a withe of twigs with which to be tied
to the tree or limb, and resting in the hollow nest where some great limb
joined the bole, slept as sleep tired children, until the awakening of
nature awoke these who were nature's own. When Ab awoke, he had more on
his mind than Lightfoot, for he was the one who must care for the two. He
blinked and wondered where he was. Then he remembered all, suddenly. He
looked across anxiously at a slender brown thing lying asleep, coiled so
close to the bole of the tree to which she was bound that she seemed
almost a part of it. Then he looked down, and, after what he saw, thought
very seriously. The bears were there! He looked up at the bright sky and
all about him, and inhaled all the fragrance of the forest, and felt
strong, and that he knew what he should do. He called aloud.

The girl awoke, frightened. She would have fallen had she not been bound
to the tree. Gradually, the full meaning of the situation dawned upon her
and she began to cry. She was hungry, her limbs were stiffened by her
bands, and there was death below. But there, close to her, was the Man.
His voice gradually reassured her. He was becoming angry now, almost
raging. Here he was, the lord of a cave, independent and master as much
as any other man whom he knew, perched in one tree while his bride of a
day was in the top of another, yet kept apart from her by the brutes
below!

He had decided what to do, and now he talked to Lightfoot with all the
frankness of the strong male who felt that he had another to care for,
and who realized his responsibility and authority together. As the
strength and decided personality of the young man came to her through his
voice, the young woman drew her scanty fur robe about her and checked her
tears. She became comparatively calm and reasonable.

The tree in which Lightfoot had found refuge had many long slender
branches lowering toward the giant beech into which the man had made his
retreat. Ab argued that it was possible--barely possible--for Lightfoot's
compact, agile, slender body to be launched in just the right way from
one of the branches of the taller tree, and, swinging in its descent
across the space between the two, lodge among the branches of the beech
with him. Strong arms ready to clasp her as she came and to withstand the
shock and to hold her safely he promised and, to enforce his plea, he
pointed out that, unless they thus took their fate in hand, there was
starvation awaiting them as they were, while carrying out his plan, if
any accident befell, there was only swift though dreadful death to reckon
with. There was one chance for their lives and that chance must be taken.
Ab called to his young wife:

"Crawl out upon a branch above me, swing down from it, swing hard and
throw yourself to me. I will catch you and hold you. I am strong."

The woman, with all faith in the man, still demurred. It was a great
test, even for the times and the occasion. But hunger was upon her and
she was cold and was, naturally, very brave. She lowered herself and
climbed down and reached an out-extending limb, and there, across the
gap, she saw Ab with his strong legs twined about the uprearing branch
along which he laid, with giant brown arms stretched out confidently and
with eyes steadily regarding her, eyes which had love and longing and a
lot of fight in them. She walked out along the limb, holding herself
safely by a firm hand-hold on the limb above, until the one her bare feet
rested upon swayed and tipped uncertainly. Then came her time of trial of
nerve and trust. Suddenly she stooped, caught the lower limb with her
hands and then swung beneath it, hanging by her hands alone, and, hand
over hand, passed herself along until she reached almost its end. Then
she began swaying back and forth. She was but a few yards above Ab now,
dangling in mid-air, while, below her, the two hungry bears had rushed
together and were looking upward with red, anticipating eyes, the ooze
coming from their mouths. The moment was awful. Soon she must be a
mangled thing devoured by frightful beasts, or else a woman with a life
renewed. She looked at Ab, and, with courage regained, prepared for the
great effort which must end all or gain a better lease of life.

She swung back and forth, each drawing up and outreach and flexible
motion of her arms giving more momentum to the sway and conserving force
for the launch of herself she was about to make. The desperation and
strength of a wood-wise creature, so bravely combined, alone enabled her
to obey Ab's hoarse command.

Ab, with his arms outreaching in their strength, feeling the fierce eyes
of the hungry bears below boring into his very heart, leaned forward and
upward as the swing of the woman reached its climax. With a cry of
warning, the woman launched herself and shot downward and forward, like a
bolt to its mark, a very desirable lump of femininity as appearing in
mid-air, but one somewhat forcible in its alighting.

Ab was strong, but when that girl landed fairly in his brawny arms, as
she did beautifully, it was touch and go, for a fraction of a second,
whether both should fall to the ground together or both be saved. He
caught her deftly, but there was a great shock and swing and then, with a
vast effort, there came recovery and the man drew himself, shaking, back
to the support of the branch from which he had been almost wrenched away,
at the same time placing beside him the object he had just caught.

There was absolute silence for a moment or two between these
unconventional lovers to whom had come escape from a hard situation. They
were drawing deep breaths and recovering an equilibrium. There they sat
together on the strong branch, each of them as secure and, for the
moment, as perfectly at home as if lying on a couch in the cave. Each of
them was panting and each of them rejoicing. It was unlikely that upon
their trained, robust nerves the life-endangering episode of a moment
could have a more than passing effect. They sat so together for some
minutes with arms entwined, still drawing deep breaths, and, a little
later, began to laugh chucklingly, as breath came to be spared for such
exhibition if human feeling. Gradually, the indrawing and expelling of
the glorious air shortened. The two had regained their normal condition
and Ab's face lengthened and the lines upon it became more distinct. He
was all himself again, but in no dallying mood. He gave a triumphant
whoop which echoed through the forest, shook his clenched hand savagely
at the brutes below and reached toward Lightfoot for the bow which hung
about her shoulders.




CHAPTER XXIII.


MORE OF THE HONEYMOON.

The brown, downy woman knew, on the instant, what was her husband's mood
and immediate intent when he thus shouted and took into his own keeping
again the stiff bow which hung about her shoulders. She knew that her
lord was not merely in a glad, but that he was also in a vengeful frame
of mind, that he wanted from her what would enable him to kill things,
and that, equipped again, he was full of the spirit of fight. She knew
that, of the four animals grouped together, two huge creatures of the
ground and two slighter ones perched in a tree top, the chances were that
the condition of those below had suddenly become the less preferable.

The bow was about Ab's shoulders instantly, and then this preposterous
young gentleman of the period turned to the woman and laughed, and caught
her in one of his arms a little closer, and drew her up against him and
laid his cheek against her own for a moment and drew it away and laughed
again. The kiss, it is believed, had not fully developed itself in the
cave man's time, but there were substitutes. Then, releasing her, he said
gleefully and chucklingly, "follow me;" and they clambered down the bole
of the beech together until they reached the biggest and very lowest limb
of all. It was perhaps twenty feet above the ground. A little below their
dangling feet the hungry bears, hitherto more patient, now, with their
expected prey so close at hand, becoming desperately excited, ran about,
frothing and foaming and red-eyed, uprearing themselves in awful
nearness, at times, in their eagerness to reach the prey which they had
so awaited and which, to their intelligence, seemed about falling into
their jaws. They had so driven into trees before, and finally consumed
exhausted cave men and women. As bears went, they were doubtless logical
animals. They could not know that there had come into possession of this
particular pair of creatures of the sort they had occasionally eaten, a
trifling thing of wood and sinew string and flint point, which was
destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of
the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that
something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than
they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their
arteries might be cut, or their hearts pierced and that then they must
lie down and die? The well-thrown spear had been, in other ages, a vast
surprise to the carnivora of the period, but there was something yet to
learn.

When they had reached the huge branch so near the ground both Ab and
Lightfoot were for a moment startled and lifted their feet instinctively,
but it was only for a moment in the case of the man. He knew that he was
perfectly safe and that he had with him an engine of death. He selected
his best and strongest arrow, he fitted it carefully to the string and
then, as his mother had done years before above the hyena which sought
her child, he reached one foot down as far as he could, and swung it back
and forth tantalizingly, just above the larger of the hungry beasts
below. The monster, fierce with hunger and the desire for prey, roared
aloud and upreared himself by the tree trunk and tore the bark with his
strong claws, throwing back his great head as he looked upward at the
quarry so near him and yet just beyond his reach. This was the man's
opportunity. Ab drew back the arrow till the flint head rested close by
his out-straining hand and the tough wood of the bow creaked under the
thrust of his muscled arm. Then he released the shaft. So close together
were man and bear that archer's skill of aim was not required. The brown
target could not be missed. The arrow struck with a tear and the flint
head drove through skin and tissue till its point protruded at the back
of the great brute's neck. The bear fell suddenly backward, then rose
again and reached blindly at its neck with its huge fore-paws, while from
where the arrow had entered the blood came out in spurts. Suddenly the
bear ceased its appalling roars and started for the cave. There had come
to it the instinct which makes such great beasts seek to die alone. It
rushed at the narrow entrance but its course was scarcely noted by the
couple in the tree. The other bear, the female, was seeking to reach them
in no less savage mood than had animated her stricken mate.

Not often, when the cave man first learned the use of the bow, came to
him such fortune with a first strong shot as that which had so come to
Ab. Again he selected a good arrow, again shot his strongest and best,
but the shaft only buried itself in the shoulder and served but to drive
to absolute madness the raging creature thus sorely hurt. The forest
echoed with the roaring of the infuriated animal, and as she reared
herself clambering against the tree the tough fiber was rended away in
great slivers, and the man and woman were glad that the trunk was thick
and that they owned a natural citadel. Again and again did Ab discharge
his arrows and still fail to reach a vital part of the terror below. She
fairly bristled with the shafts. It was inevitable that she must die, but
when the last shot had sped she was still infuriate and, apparently, as
strong as ever. The archer looked down upon her with some measure of
despondency in his face, but by no means with despair. He and his bride
must wait. That was all, and this he told to Lightfoot. That intelligent
and reliable young helpmate of a few hours, who had looked upon what had
occurred with an awed admiration, did not exhibit any depression. Her
husband, fortunate Benedict, had produced a great effect upon her by his
feat. She felt herself something like a queen. Had she known enough and
had the fancies of the Ruth of some thousands of decades later she would
have told him how completely thenceforth his people were her people and
his gods her gods.

The she bear became finally somewhat quieted; she tore less angrily at
the tree and made less of the terrible clamor which had for the moment
driven from the immediate region all the inmates of the wood, for none
save the cave tiger cared to be in the immediate neighborhood of the cave
bear. Her roars changed into roaring growls, and she wandered
staggeringly about. At last she started blindly and weakly toward the
forest, and just as she had passed beneath its shadow, paused, weaved
back and forth for a moment, and then fell over heavily. She was dead.

Not an action of the beast had escaped the eyes of Ab. Well he knew the
ways of wounded things. As the bear toppled over he gave utterance to a
whoop and, with a word to the girl beside him, slid lightly to the
ground, she following him at once. It was very good to be upon the earth
again. Ab stamped with his feet and stretched his arms, and the woman
danced upon the grass and laughed gleefully. But this was only for a
moment or so. Ab started toward the cave, and as he reached the entrance,
gave a great cry of rage and dismay. Lightfoot ran to his side and even
her ready laugh failed her when she looked upon his perplexed and stormy
countenance and saw what had happened. The rump of the monster he bear
was what she looked upon. The beast, in his instinctive effort to crawl
into some dark place to die, had fairly driven himself into the cave's
entrance, dislodging some of the stones Ab had placed there, had wedged
himself in firmly, and had died before he could extricate his great
carcass. The two human beings were homeless and, with all the arrows
gone, weaponless, in the midst of a region so dangerously infested that
any movement afoot was but inviting death. They were hungry, too, for
many hours had passed since they had tasted food. It was not matter of
surprise that even the stout-hearted cave man stood aghast.

The occasion for Ab's alarm was fully verified. From the spot where the
cave bear lay at the forest's edge came a sharp, snapping growl. The
lurking hyenas had found the food, and a long, inquiring howl from
another direction told that the wolves had scented it and were gathering.
For the instant Ab was himself almost helpless with fear. The woman was
simply nerveless. Then the man, so accustomed to physical danger,
recovered himself. He sprang forward, seized a stout fragment of limb
which might serve as a sort of weapon, and, turning to the woman, said
only the one word "fire."

Lightfoot understood and life came to her again. None in all the region
could make a fire more swiftly than she. Her quick eye detected just the
base she wanted in a punkish fragment of wood and the harder and pointed
bit of limb to be used in making the friction. In a time scarcely worth
the noting the point was whirling about and burning into the wooden base,
twirling with a skill and velocity not comprehensible by us to-day, for
the cave people had perfected wonderfully this greatest manual art of the
time, and Lightfoot, muscular and enduring, was, as already said, in this
thing the cleverest among the clever. Ab, with ready club in hand,
advanced cautiously toward the point at the wood's edge where lay the
body of the bear. He paused as he came near enough to see what was
happening. Four great hyenas were tearing eagerly at the flesh of the
dead brute, and behind them, deeper in the wood, were shining eyes, and
Ab knew that the wolf pack was gathering. The bear consumed, the man and
woman, without defense, would surely be devoured. It was a desperate
strait, but, though he was weaponless, there was the cave man's great
resort, the fire, and there might be a chance for life. To seek the tree
tops would be dangerous even now, and once ensconced in such harborage,
only starvation was awaiting. He moved back noiselessly, with as little
apparent motion as possible, for he did not want to attract the attention
of the gleaming eyes in the distance, until he came near Lightfoot again,
and then he abandoned caution of movement and began tearing frantically
at the limbs and débris of the great dead conifer, and to build a
semicircular fence in front of the cave entrance. He did the swift work
of half a score of men in his desperation and anxiety, his great strength
serving him well in his compelling strait.

Meanwhile the stick twirled and rasped in the hands of the brown woman
seated on the ground, and at last a tiny thread of smoke arose. The
continued friction had done its work. Deft himself at fire-making, Ab
knew just what was wanted at this moment and ran to his wife's side with
punk from the dead tree, rubbed to a powder in his hard hands. The
powder, poured gently down upon the point where the increasing heat had
brought the gleam of fire, burst, almost at once, into a little flame.
What followed was simple and easy. Dry twigs made the slight flame a
greater one and then, at a dozen different points, the wall which Ab had
built was fired. They were safe, for the time at least. Behind them was
the uprearing rock in which was the cave and before them, almost
encircling them completely, was the ring of fire which no wild beast
would cross. At one end, close to the rock, a space had been left by Ab,
that he and Lightfoot might, through it, reach the vast store of fuel
which lay there ready to the hand and so close that there was no danger
in visiting it. Hardly had the flame extended itself along the slight
wooden barrier than the whole wood and clearing resounded with terrifying
sounds. The wolf pack had increased until strong enough to battle with
the hyenas for the remainder of the feast in the wood, and their fight
was on.

The feeling of terror had passed away from this young bride and groom,
with the assurance of present safety, and Ab felt the need of eating.
"There is meat," he said, as he pointed toward the haunches of the bear,
half-protruding from the rock, "and there is fire. The fire will cook the
meat, and, besides, we are safe. We will eat!"

The bridegroom of but a day or two said this somewhat grandiloquently,
but he was not disposed to be vain or grandiloquent a little later. He
put his hand to the belt of his furry garb and found no sharp flint knife
there! It had been lost in his late tree clambering. He put his hand into
the pouch of his cloak and found only the flint skin scraper, the scraper
with which he had improved the arrow's notch, though it was not
originally intended for such use. It was all that remained to him of
weapon or utensil. But it would cut or tear, though with infinite effort,
and the man, to reassure the woman, laughed, and assailed the brown
haunch before him. Even with his strength, it was difficult for Ab to
penetrate the tough skin of the bear with an implement intended for
scraping, not for cutting, and it was only after he had finally cut, or
rather dug, away enough to enable him to get his fingers under the skin
and tear away an area of it by sheer main strength that the flesh was
made available. That end once attained, there followed a hard transverse
digging with the scraper, a grasp about tissue of strong, impressed
fingers, and a shred of flesh came away. It was tossed at once to a young
person who, long twig in hand, stood eagerly waiting. She caught the
shred as she had caught the fine bit of mammoth when first she and Ab had
met, and it was at once impaled and thrust into the flames. It was
withdrawn, it is to be feared, a trifle underdone, and then it
disappeared, as did other shreds of excellent bear's meat which came
following. It was a sight for a dyspeptic to note the eating of this
belle-matron of the region on this somewhat exceptional occasion.

Strip after strip did Ab tear away and toss to his wife until the
expression on her face became a shade more peaceful and then it dawned
upon him that she was eating and that he was not. There was clamor in his
stomach. He sprang away from the bear, gave Lightfoot the scraper and
commanded her to get food for him as he had done for her. The girl
complied and did as well as had done the man in digging away the meat. He
ate as she had done, and, at last, partly gorged and content, allowed her
to take her place at the fire and again eat to his serving. He had shown
what, from the standard of the time, must be counted as most gallant and
generous and courteous demeanor. He had thought a little of the woman.

A tiny rill of cold water trickled down on one side of the outer door of
their cave. With this their thirst was slaked, and they ate and ate. The
shadows lengthened and Ab replenished again and again the fire. From the
semicircle of forest all about came the sound of footsteps rustling in
the leaves. But the two people inside the fire fence, hungry no longer,
were content. Ab talked to his wife:

"The fire will keep the man-eating things away," he said. "I ran not long
ago with things behind me, and I would have been eaten had I not come
upon a ring of fire like the one we have made. I leaped it and the eaters
could not reach me. But, for the fire I leaped there was no wood. It came
out of a crack in the ground. Some day we will go there and I will show
you that thing which is so strange."

The woman listened, delighted, but, at last, there was a nodding of the
head. She lay back upon the grass a sleepy being. Ab looked at her and
thought deeply. Where was safety? As they were, one of them must be awake
all the time to keep the fire replenished. Until he could enter the cave
again he must be weaponless. Only the fire could protect the two. They
had heat and food and nothing to fear for the moment, but they must
fairly eat their way into a safety which would be permanent!

He kept the fire alight far into the darkness, and then, piling the fuel
high all along the line of defense, he aroused the sleeping woman and
told her she must keep the flames bright while he slept in his turn. She
was just the wife for such an emergency as this, and rose uncomplainingly
to do her part of the guarding work. From the forest all about came
snarling sounds or threatening growls, and eyes blazed in the somber
depths beneath the trees. There were hungry things out there and they
wanted to eat a man and woman, but fire they feared. The woman was not
afraid.

After hours had passed the man awoke and took the woman's place and she
slept in his stead. Morning came and the sounds from the forest died away
partly, but the man and woman knew of the fierce creatures still lurking
there. They knew what was before them. They must delve and eat their way
into the cave as soon as possible.

Ab scraped at the bear's huge body with his inefficient bit of flint and
dug away food in abundance, which he heaped up in a little red mound
inside the fire, but the bear was a monstrous beast and it was a long way
from tail to head. The days of the honeymoon passed with a degree of
travail, for there was no moment when one of the two must not be awake
feeding the guarding fire or digging at the bear. They ate still heartily
on the second day but it is simple, truthful history to admit that on the
sixth day bear's meat palled somewhat on the happy couple. To have eaten
thirty quails in thirty days or, at a pinch, thirty quails in two days
would have been nothing to either of them, but bear's meat eaten as part
of what might be called a tunneling exploit ceased, finally, to possess
an attractive flavor. There was a degree of shade cast by all these
obtrusive circumstances across this honeymoon, but there came a day and
hour when the bear was largely eaten, and fairly dug away as to much of
the rest of him, and then, quite suddenly, his head and fore-quarters
toppled forward into the cave, leaving the passage free, and when Ab and
Lightfoot followed, one shouting and the other laughing, one coming again
to his fortress and his weapons and his power, and the other to her
hearth and duties.




CHAPTER XXIV.


THE FIRE COUNTRY AGAIN.

The sun rose brightly the next morning and when Ab, armed and watchful,
rolled the big stone away and passed the smoldering fire and issued from
the cave into the open, the scene he looked upon was fair in every way.
Of what had been left of the great bear not a trace remained. Even the
bones had been dragged into the forest by the ravening creatures who had
fed there during the night. There were birds singing and there were no
enemies in sight. Ab called to Lightfoot and the two went forth together,
loving and brave, but no longer careless in that too interesting region.

And so began the home life of these two people. It was, in its way and
relatively, as sweet and delicious as the first home life of any loving
and appreciating man and woman of to-day. The two were very close, as the
conditions under which they lived demanded. They were the only human
beings within a radius of miles. The family of the cave man of the time
was serenely independent, each having its own territory, and depending
upon itself for its existence. And the two troubled themselves about
nothing. Who better than they could daily win the means of animal
subsistence?

Ab taught Lightfoot the art of cracking away the flakes of the flint
nodules and of the finer chipping and rasping which made perfect the
spear and arrowheads, and never was pupil swifter in the learning. He
taught her, too, the use of his new weapon, and in all his life he did no
wiser thing! It was not long before she became easily his superior with
the bow, so far as her strength would allow, and her strength was far
from insignificant. Her arrows flew with greater accuracy than his,
though the buzzing shaft had not as yet, and did not have for many
centuries later, the "gray goose" feather which made the doing of its
mission far more certain. Lightfoot brought to the cave the capercailzie
and willow grouse and other birds which were good things for the larder,
and Ab looked on admiringly. Even in their joint hunting, when there was
a half rivalry, he was happy in her. Somehow, the arrow sang more merrily
when it flew from Lightfoot's bow.

Better than Ab, too, could the young wife do rare climbing when in a nest
far out upon some branch were eggs good for roasting and which could be
reached only by a light-weight. And she learned the woods about them
well, and, though ever dreading when alone, found where were the trees
from which fell the greatest store of nuts and where, in the mud along
the river's side, her long and highly educated toes could reach the clams
which were excellent to feed upon.

But never did the hunter leave the cave without a fear. Ever, even in the
daytime, was there too much rustling among the leaves of the near forest.
Ever when day had gone was there the sound of padded feet on the sward
about the cave's blocked entrance. Ever, at night, looking out through
the narrow space between the heaped rocks, could the two inside the cave
see fierce and blazing eyes and there would come to them the sound of
snarls and growls as the beasts of different quality met one another. Yet
the two cared little for these fearful surroundings of the darkness. They
were safe enough. In the morning there were no signs of the lurking
beasts of prey. They were somewhere near, though, and waiting, and so Ab
and Lightfoot had the strain of constant watchfulness upon them.

It may be that because of this ever present peril the two grew closer
together. It could not well be otherwise with human beings thus bound and
isolated and facing and living upon the rest of nature, part of it
seeking always their own lives. They became a wonderfully loving couple,
as love went in that rude time. Despite the too wearing outlook imposed
upon them, because they were in so dangerous a locality, they were very
happy. Yet, one day, came a difference and a hurt.

Oak, apparently forgotten by others, was remembered by Ab, though never
spoken of. Sometimes the man had tossed upon his bed of leaves and had
muttered in his sleep, and the one word he had most often spoken in this
troubled dreaming was the name of Oak. Early in their married life
Lightfoot, to whom the memory of the dead man, so little had she known
him, was a far less haunting thing than to her husband, had suddenly
broken a silence, saying "Where is Oak?" There was no answer, but the
look of the man of whom she had asked the question was such that she was
glad to creep from his sight unharmed. Yet once again, months later, she
forgot herself and mocked Ab when he had been boastful over some exploit
of strength and courage and when he had seemed to say that he knew no
fear. She, but to tease him, sprang up with a face convulsed and
agonized, and with staring eyes and hands opening and shutting, had cried
out "Oak! Oak!" as she had seen Ab do at night. Her mimic terror was
changed on the moment into reality. With a shudder and then with a glare
in his eyes the man leaped toward her, snatching his great ax from his
belt and swinging it above her head. The woman shrieked and shrank to the
ground. The man whirled the weapon aloft and then, his face twitching
convulsively, checked its descent. He may, in that moment, have thought
of what followed the slaying of the other who had been close to him.
There was no death done, but, thenceforth, Lightfoot never uttered aloud
the name of Oak. She became more sedate and grave of bearing.

The episode was but a passing, though not a forgotten one in the lives of
the two. The months went by and there were tranquil hours in the cave as,
at night, the weapons were shaped, and Lightfoot boasted of the
arrowheads she had learned to make so well. Sometimes Old Mok would be
rowed up the river to them by the sturdy and venturesome Bark, who had
grown into a particularly fine youth and who now cared for nothing more
than his big brother's admiration. Between Old Mok and Lightfoot, to Ab's
great delight, grew up the warmest friendship. The old man taught the
woman more of the details of good arrow-making and all he knew of
woodcraft in all ways, and the lord of the place soon found his wife
giving opinions with an air of the utmost knowledge and authority.
Whatever came to him from her and Old Mok pleased him, and when she told
him of some of the finer points of arrow-making he stretched out his
brawny arms and laughed.

But there came, in time, a shade upon the face of the man. The incident
of the talk of Oak may have brought to his mind again more freshly and
keenly the memory of the Fire Country. There he had found safety and
great comfort. Why should not he and Lightfoot seize upon this home and
live there? It was a wonderful place and warm, and there were forests at
hand. He became so absorbed in his own thoughts on this great theme that
the woman who was his could not understand his mood, but, one day, he
told her of what he had been thinking and of what he had resolved upon.
"I am going to the Fire Country," he said.

Armed, this time with spear and ax and bow and arrow, and with food
abundant in the pouch of his skin garb, Ab left the cave in which
Lightfoot was now to stay most of the time, well barricaded, for that she
was to hunt afar alone in such a region was not even to be thought of.
What thoughts came to the man as he traversed again the forest paths
where he had so pondered as he once ran before can be but guessed at.
Certainly he had learned no more of Oak.

Lightfoot, left alone in the cave, became at once a most discreet and
careful personage, for one of her buoyant and daring temperament. She had
often taken risks since her marriage, but there was always the chance of
finding within the sound of her voice her big mate, Ab, should danger
overtake her. She remained close to the cave, and when early dusk came
she lugged the stone barriers into place and built a night-fire within
the entrance. The fierce and hungry beasts of the wood came, as usual,
lurking and sniffing harshly about the entrance, and when she ventured
there and peered outside she saw the wicked and leering eyes. Alone and a
little alarmed, she became more vengeful than she would have been with
the big, careless Ab beside her. She would have sport with her bow. The
advantage of the bow is that it requires no swing of space for its work
as is demanded of the flung spear. An arrow may be sent through a mere
loophole with no probable demerit as to what it will accomplish. So the
woman brought her strongest bow--and far beyond the rough bow of Ab's
first make was the bow they now possessed--and gathered together many of
the arrows she could make so well and use so well, and, thus equipped,
went again to the cave's entrance, and through the space between the
heaped rocks of the doorway sent toward the eyes of wolf, or cave hyena,
shafts to which they were unaccustomed, but which, somehow, pierced and
could find mid-body quite as well as the cave man's spear. There was a
certain comfort in the work, though it could not affect her condition in
one way or another. It was only something of a gain to drive the eyes
away.

And Ab reached the Fire Valley again. He found it as comfortable and
untenanted as when the leap through the ring of flame had saved his life.
He clambered up the creek and wandered along its banks, where the grass
was green because of the warmth about, and studied all the qualities of
the naturally defended valley. "I will make my home here," he said.
"Lightfoot shall come with me."

The man returned to his cave and his lonely mate again and told her of
the Fire Country. He said that in the Fire Valley they would be safer and
happier, and told her how he had found an opening underneath the cliff
which they could soon enlarge into a cave to meet all wants. Not that a
cave was really needed in a fire valley, but they might have one if they
cared. And Lightfoot was glad of the departure.

The pair gathered their belongings together and there was the long
journey over again which Ab had just accomplished. But it was far
different from either journey that he had made. There with him was his
wife, and he was all equipped and was to begin a new sort of life which
would, he felt, be good. Lightfoot, bearing her load gallantly, was not
less jubilant. As a matter of plain fact, though Lightfoot had been happy
in the cave in the forest, she had always recognized certain of its
disadvantages, as had, in the end, her fearless husband. It is, in a
general way, vexatious to live in a locality where, as soon as you leave
your hearthstone, you incur, at least, a chance of an exciting and
uncomfortable episode and then lodgment in the maw of some imposing
creature of the carnivora. Lightfoot was quite ready to seek with Ab the
Fire Valley of which he had so often told her. She was a plucky young
matron, but there were extremes.

There were no adventures on the journey worth relating. The Fire Valley
was reached at nightfall and the two struggled weariedly up the rugged
path beside the creek which issued from the valley's western end. As they
reached the level Ab threw down his burden, as did Lightfoot, and as the
woman's eyes roved over the bright scene, she gave a great gasp of
delight. "It is our home!" she cried.

They ate and slept in the light and warmth of surrounding flames, and
when the day came they began the work of enlarging what was to be their
cave. But, though they worked earnestly, they did not care so much for
the prospective shelter as they might have done. What a cave had given
was warmth and safety. Here they had both, out of doors and under the
clear sky. It was a new and glorious life. Sometimes, though happy, the
woman worked a little wearily, and, not long after the settlement of the
two in their new home, a child was born to them, a son, robust and
sturdy, who came afterward to be known as Little Mok.




CHAPTER XXV.


A GREAT STEP FORWARD.

There came to Ab and Lightfoot that comfort which comes with laboring for
something desired. In all that the two did amid their pleasant
surroundings life became a greater thing because its dangers were so
lessened and its burdens lightened. But they were not long the sole human
beings in the Fire Valley. There was room for many and soon Old Mok took
up his permanent abode with them, for he was most contented when with Ab,
who seemed so like a son to him. A cave of his own was dug for Mok,
where, with his carving and his making of arrows and spearheads, he was
happy in his old age. Soon followed a hegira which made, for the first
time, a community. The whole family of Ab, One-Ear, Red-Spot and Bark and
Beech-leaf and the later ones, all came, and another cave was made, and
then old Hilltop was persuaded to follow the example and come with
Moonface and Branch and Stone Arm, his big sons, and the group, thus
established and naturally protected, feared nothing which might happen.
The effect of daily counsel together soon made itself distinctly felt,
and, under circumstances so different, many of the old ways were departed
from. Half a mile to the south the creek, which made a bend adown its
course, tumbled into the river and upon the river were wild fowl in
abundance and in its depths were fish. The forest abounded in game and
there were great nut-bearing trees and the wild fruits in their season.
Wild bees hovered over the flowers in the open places and there were
hoards of wild honey to be found in the hollows of deadened trunks or in
the high rock crevices. A great honey-gatherer, by the way, was
Lightfoot, who could climb so well, and who, furthermore, had her own
fancy for sweet things. It was either Bark or Moonface who usually
accompanied her on her expeditions, and they brought back great store of
this attractive spoil. The years passed and the community grew, not
merely in numbers, but intelligence. Though always an adviser with Old
Mok, Ab's chief male companion in adventure was the stanch Hilltop, who
was a man worth hunting with. Having two such men to lead and with a
force so strong behind them the valley people were able to cope with the
more dangerous animals venturesomely, and soon the number of these was so
decreased that even the children might venture a little way beyond the
steep barriers which had been raised where the flame circle had its gaps.
The opening to the north was closed by a high stone wall and that along
the creek defended as effectively, in a different way. They were having
good times in the valley.

At first, the home of all was in the caves dug in the soft rock of the
ledge, for of those who came to the novel refuge there was, for a season,
none who could sleep in the bright light from the never-waning flames.
There came a time, though, when, in midsummer, Ab grumbled at the heat
within his cave and he and Lightfoot built for themselves an outside
refuge, made of a bark-covered "lean-to" of long branches propped against
the rock. Thus was the first house made. The habitation proved so
comfortable that others in the valley imitated it and soon there was a
hive of similar huts along the foot of the overhanging precipice. When
the short, sharp winter came, all did not seek their caves again, but the
huts were made warmer by the addition to their walls of bark and skins,
and cave dwelling in the valley was finally abandoned. There was one
exception. Old Mok would not leave his warm retreat, and, as long as he
lived, his rock burrow was his home.

There came also, as recruits, young men, friends of the young men of the
valley, and the band waxed and waned, for nothing could at once change
the roving and independent habits of the cave men. But there came
children to the mothers, the broad Moonface being especially to the fore
in this regard, and a fine group of youngsters played and straggled up
and down the creek and fought valiantly together, as cave children
should. The heads of families were friendly, though independent. Usually
they lived each without any reference to anyone else, but when a great
hunt was on, or any emergency called, the band came together and fought,
for the time, under Ab's tacitly admitted leadership. And the young men
brought wives from the country round.

The area of improvement widened. Around the Fire Village the zone of
safety spread. The roar of the great cave tiger was less often heard
within miles of the flaming torches of the valley so inhabited. There
grew into existence something almost like a system of traffic, for, from
distant parts, hitherto unknown, came other cave men, bringing skins, or
flints, or tusks for carving, which they were eager to exchange for the
new weapon and for instruction in its uses. Ab was the first chieftain,
the first to draw about him a clan of followers. The cave men were taking
their first lesson in a slight, half unconfessed obedience, that first
essential of community life where there is yet no law, not even the
unwritten law of custom.

Running in and out among the children, sometimes pummeled by them, were a
score or two of gray, four-footed, bone-awaiting creatures, who, though
as yet uncounted in such relation, were destined to furnish a factor in
man's advancement. They were wolves and yet no longer wolves. They had
learned to cling to man, but were not yet intelligent enough or taught
enough to aid him in his hunting. They were the dogs of the future, the
four-footed things destined to become the closest friends of men of
future ages, the descendants of the four cubs Ab and Oak had taken from
the dens so many years before.

It was humanizing for the children, this association of such a number
together, though they ran only a little less wildly than those who had
heretofore been born in the isolated caves. There came more of an average
of intelligence among them, thus associated, though but little more
attention was paid them than the cave men had afforded offspring in the
past. There had come to Ab after Little Mok two strong sons, Reindeer and
Sure-Aim, very much like him in his youth, but of them, until they
reached the age of help and hunting, he saw little. Lightfoot regarded
them far more closely, for, despite the many duties which had come upon
her, there never disappeared the mother's tenderness and watchfulness.
And so it was with Moonface, whose brood was so great, and who was like a
noisy hen with chickens. So existed the hovering mother instinct with all
the women of the valley, though then the mothers fished and hunted and
had stirring events to distract them from domesticity and close affection
almost as much as had the men.

From this oddly formed community came a difference in certain ways of
doing certain things, which changed man's status, which made a revolution
second only to that made by the bow and for which even men of thought
have not accounted as they should have done, with the illustration before
them in our own times of what has followed so swiftly the use of steam
and, later, of electricity. Men write of and wonder at the strange gap
between what are called the Paleolithic and the Neolithic ages, that is,
between the ages when the spearheads and ax and arrowheads were of stone
chipped roughly into shape, and the age of stone even-edged and smoothly
polished. There was really no gap worth speaking of. The Paleolithic age
changed as suddenly into the Neolithic as the age of horse power changed
into that of steam and electricity, allowance being always made for the
slower transmission of a new intelligence in the days when men lived
alone and when a hundred years in the diffusion of knowledge was as a
year to-day.

One day Ab went into Old Mok's cave grumbling. "I shot an arrow into a
great deer," he said, "and I was close and shot it with all my force, but
the beast ran before it fell and we had far to carry the meat. I tore the
arrow from him and the blood upon the shaft showed that it had not gone
half way in. I looked at the arrow and there was a jagged point uprising
from its side. How can a man drive deeply an arrow which is so rough? Are
you getting too old to make good spears and arrows, Mok?" And the man
fumed a little. Old Mok made no reply, but he thought long and deeply
after Ab had left the cave. Certainly Ab must have good arrows! Was there
any way of bettering them? And, the next day, the crippled old man might
have been seen looking for something beside the creek where it found its
exit from the valley. There were stones ground into smoothness tossed up
along the shore and the old man studied them most carefully. Many times
he had bent over a stream, watching, thinking, but this time he acted. He
noted a small sandstone block against which were rasping stones of harder
texture, and he picked this from the tumbling current and carried it to
his cave. Then, pouring a little water upon a depression in the stone's
face, he selected his best big arrowhead and began rubbing it upon the
wet sandstone. It was a weary work, for flint and sandstone are different
things and flint is much the harder, but there came a slow result.
Smoother and smoother became the chipped arrowhead, and two days
later--for all the waking hours of two days were required in the weary
grinding--Old Mok gave to Ab an arrow as smooth of surface and keen of
edge as ever flew from bow while stone was used. And not many years
passed--as years are counted in old history--before the smoothed stone
weaponhead became the common property of cave men. The time of chipped
stone had ended and that of smoothed stone had begun. There was no space
between them to be counted now. One swiftly became the other. It was a
matter of necessity, this exhibition of enterprise and sense by the early
man in the prompt general utilization of a new discovery. And not alone
in the improvements in means which came when men of the hunting type were
so gathered in a community were the bow and the smoothed implements,
though these were the greatest of the discoveries of the epoch. The
fishermen who went to the river were not content with the raft-like
devices of the aquatic Shell People and learned, in time, that hollowed
logs would float and that, with the aid of fire and flint axes, a great
log could be hollowed. And never a Phoenician ship-builder, never a
Fulton of the steamer, never a modern designer of great yachts, stood
higher in the estimation of his fellows than stood the expert in the
making of the rude boats, as uncouth in appearance as the river-horse
which sometimes upset them, but from which men could, at least, let down
their lines or dart their spears to secure the fish in the teeming
waters. And the fishermen had better spears and hooks now, for comparison
was necessarily always made among devices, and bone barbs and hooks were
whittled out from which the fish no longer often floundered. There came,
in time, the making of rude nets, plaited simply from the tough marsh
grasses, but they served the purpose and lessened somewhat the gravity of
the great food question.




CHAPTER XXVI.


FACING THE RAIDER.

One day, at noon, a man burst, panting, through the wide open entrance to
the Fire Valley. His coat of skin was rent and hung awry and, as all
could see when he staggered down the pathway, the flesh was torn from one
cheek and arm, and down his leg on one side was the stain of dried blood.
He was exhausted from his hurt and his run and his talk was, at first,
almost unmeaning. He was met by some of the older and wiser among those
who saw him coming and to their questions answered only by demanding Ab,
who came at once. The hard-breathing and wounded man could only utter the
words "Big tiger," when he pitched forward and became unconscious. But
his words had been enough. Well understood was it by all who listened
what a raid of the cave tiger meant, and there was a running to the
gateway and soon was raised the wall of ready stone, upbuilt so high that
even the leaping monster could not hope to reach its summit. Later the
story of the wounded, but now conscious and refreshed runner, was told
with more of detail and coherence.

The messenger brought out what he had to tell gaspingly. He had lost much
blood and was faint, but he told how there had taken place something
awful in the village of the Shell Men. It was but little after dusk the
night before when the Shell Men were gathered together in merrymaking
after good fishing and lucky gathering of what there was to eat along the
shores of the shell fish and the egg-laying turtles and the capture of a
huge river-horse. It had been, up to midnight, one of the greatest and
most joyous meetings the Shell People had joined in for many years. They
were close-gathered and prosperous and content, and though there was
daily turmoil and risk of death upon the water and sometimes as great
risk upon the land, yet the village fringing the waters had grown, and
the midden--the "kitchen-midden" of future ages--had raised itself
steadily and now stretched far up and down the creek which was a river
branch and far backward from the creek toward the forest which ended with
the uplands. They had learned to dread the forest little, the water
people, but from the forest now came what made for each in all the
village a dread and horror. The cave tiger had been among them!

The Shell People had gathered together upon the sward fronting their line
of shallow caves and one of them, the story-teller and singer, was
chanting aloud of the river-horse and the great spoil which was theirs,
when there was a hungry roar and the yell or shriek of all, men or women
not too stricken by fear to be unable to utter sound, and then the leap
into their midst of the cave tiger! Perhaps the story-teller's chant had
called the monster's attention to him, perhaps his attitude attracted it;
whatever may have been the influence, the tiger seized the singer and
leaped lightly into the open beyond the caves and, as lightly, with long
bounds, into the blackness of the forest beyond.

There was a moment of awe and horror and then the spirit of the brave
Shell Men asserted itself. There was grasping of weapons and an
outpouring in pursuit of the devourer. Easy to follow was the trail, for
a monster beast carrying a man cannot drop lightly in his leaps. There
was a brief mile or two traversed, though hours were consumed in the
search, and then, as morn was breaking, the seekers came upon what was
left of the singer. It was not much and it lay across the forest pathway,
for the cave tiger did not deign to hide his prey. There came a half
moaning growl from the forest. That growl meant lurking death. Then the
seekers fled. There was consultation and a resolve to ask for help. So
the runner, the man stricken down by a casual stroke in the tiger's rush,
but bravest among his tribe, had come to the Fire Valley.

To the panting stranger Ab had not much to say. He saw to it that the man
was refreshed and cared for and that the deep scars along his side were
dressed after the cave man's fashion. But through the night which
followed the great cave leader pondered deeply. Why should men thus live
and dread the cave tiger? Surely men were wiser than any beast! This one
monster must, anyhow, be slain!

But little it mattered to all surrounding nature that the strong man in
the Fire Valley had resolved upon the death of the cave tiger. The tiger
was yet alive! There was a difference in the pulse of all the woodland.
There was a hush throughout the forest. The word, somehow, went to every
nerve of all the world of beasts, "Sabre-Tooth is here!" Even the huge
cave bear shuffled aside as there came to him the scent of the invader.
The aurochs and the urus, the towering elk, the reindeer and the lesser
horned and antlered things fled wildly as the tainted air brought to them
the tale of impending murder. Only the huge rhinoceros and mammoth stood
their ground, and even these were terror-stricken with regard for their
guarded young whenever the tiger neared them. The rhinoceros stood then,
fierce-fronted and dangerous, its offspring hovering by its flanks, and
the mammoths gathered in a ring encircling their calves and presenting an
outward range of tusks to meet the hovering devourer. The dread was all
about. The forest became seemingly nearly lifeless. There was less
barking and yelping, less reckless playfulness of wild creatures, less
rustling of the leaves and pattering along the forest paths. There was
fear and quiet, for Sabre-Tooth had come!

The runner, refreshed and strengthened by food and sleep, appeared before
Ab in the morning and told his story more in detail and got in return the
short answer: "We will go with you and help you and your people. Tigers
must be killed!"

Rarely before had man gone out voluntarily to hunt the great cave tiger.
He had, sometimes in awful strait, defended himself against the monster
as best he could, but to seek the encounter where the odds were so great
against him was an ugly task. Now the man-slayer was to be the pursued
instead of the pursuer. It required courage. The vengeful wounded man
looked upon Ab with a grim, admiring regard. "You fear not?" he said.

There was bustling in the valley and soon a stalwart dozen men were armed
with bow and spear and the journey was taken up toward the Shell Men's
home. The village was reached at mid-day and as the little troop emerged
from the forest the death wail fell upon their ears. "The tiger has come
again!" exclaimed the runner.

It was true. The tiger had come again! Once more with his stunning roar
he had swept through the village and had taken another victim, a woman,
the wife of one of the head men. Too benumbed by fear, this time, to act
at once, the Shell Men had not pursued the great brute into the darkness.
They had but ventured out in the morning and followed the trail and found
that the tiger had carried the woman in very nearly the same direction as
he had borne the man and that what remained from his gorging of the night
lay where his earlier feast had been. It was the first tragedy almost
repeated.

The little group of Fire Valley folk entered the village and were
received with shouts from the men, while from the throats of the women
still rose the death wail. There were more people about the huts than Ab
had ever seen there and he recognized at once among the group many of the
cave men from the East, strong people of his own kind. As the wounded
runner had gone to the Fire Valley, so another had been sent to the East,
to call upon another group for aid, and the Eastern cave people, under
the leadership of a huge, swarthy man called Boarface, had come to learn
what the strait was and to decide upon what degree of help they could
afford to give. Between these Eastern and the Western cave men there was
a certain coldness. There was no open enmity, though at some time in the
past there had been family battles and memories of feuds were still
existent. But Ab and Boarface met genially and there was not a trace of
difference now. Boarface joined readily in the council which was held and
decided that he would aid in the desperate hunt, and certainly his aid
was not to be despised when his followers were looked upon. They were a
stalwart lot.

The way was taken by the gathered fighting men toward where, across the
forest path, lay part of a woman. As the place was neared the band
gathered close together and there were outpointing spears, just as the
mammoths' tusks outpointed when the beasts guarded their young from the
thing now hunted. But there came no attack and no sound from the forest.
The tiger must be sleeping. Beneath a huge tree bordering the pathway lay
what remained of the woman's body. Fifty feet above, and almost directly
over this dreadful remnant of humanity, shot out a branch as thick as a
man's body. There was consultation among the hunters and in this Ab took
the lead, while Boarface and the Shell Men who had come to help assented
readily. No need existed for the risk of an open fight with this great
beast. Craft must be used and Ab gave forth his swift commands.

The Fire Valley leader had seen to it that his company had brought what
he needed in his effort to kill the tiger. There were two great tanned,
tough urus hides. There were lengths of rhinoceros hide, cut thickly,
which would endure a strain of more than the weight of ten brawny men.
There was one spear, with a shaft of ash wood at least fifteen feet in
length and as thick as a man's wrist. Its head was a blade of hardest
flint, but the spear was too heavy for a man's hurling. It had been made
for another use.

There was little hesitation in what was done, for Ab knew well the
quality of the work he had in hand. He unfolded his plan briefly and then
he himself climbed to the treetop and out upon the limb, carrying with
him the knotted strip of rhinoceros hide. In the pouch of his skin
garment were pebbles. He reached a place on the big limb overhanging the
path and dropped a pebble. It struck the earth a yard or two away from
what remained of the woman's body and he shouted to those below to drag
the mangled body to the spot where the pebble had hit the earth. They
were about to do so when from the forest on one side of the path came a
roar, so appalling in every way that there was no thought of anything
among most of the workers save of sudden flight. The tiger was in the
wood and very near and a scent had reached him. There was a flight which
left upon the ground beneath the tree branches only old Hilltop and the
rough Boarface and some dozen sturdy followers, these about equally
divided between the East and the West men of the hills. There was swift
and sharp work then.

The tiger might come at any moment, and that meant death to one at least.
But those who remained were brave men and they had come far to encompass
this tiger's ending. They dragged what remained of the tiger's prey to
where the pebble had hit the earth. Ab, clinging and raging aloft, afar
out upon the limb, shouted to Hilltop to bring him the spear and the urus
skins, and soon the sturdy old man was beside him. Then, about two deep
notches in the huge shaft, thongs were soon tied strongly, and just below
its middle were attached the bag-shaped urus skins. Near its end the
rhinoceros thong was knotted and then it was left hanging from the limb
supported by this strong rope, while, three-fourths of the way down its
length, dangled on each side the two empty bags of hide. Short orders
were given, and, directed by Boarface, one man after another climbed the
tree, each with a weight of stones carried in his pouch, and each
delivering his load to old Hilltop, who, lying well out upon the limb,
passed the stones to Ab, who placed them in the skin pouches on either
side the suspended and threatening spear. The big skin pouches on either
side were filling rapidly, when there came from the forest another roar,
nearer and more appalling than before, and some of the workers below fled
panic-stricken. Ab shouted and frothed and foamed as the men ran. Old
Hilltop slid down the tree, ax in hand, followed by the dark Boarface,
and one or two of the men below were captured and made to work again.
Soon all the work which Ab had in mind was done. Above the path, just
over what remained of the woman, hung the great spear, weighted with half
a thousand pounds of stone and sure to reach its mark should the tiger
seek its prey again. The branch was broad and the line of rhinoceros skin
taut, and Ab's flint knife was keen of edge. Only courage and calmness
were needed in the dread presence of the monster of the time. Neither the
swarthy Boarface nor the gaunt Hilltop wanted to leave him, but Ab forced
them away.

Not long to wait had the cave man, but the men who had been with him were
already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was
still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the
limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves
against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the
forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground
beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a sound from the impact
of his fearfully clawed but padded feet as he sought the meal he had
prepared for himself. The great beast was approaching. The great man
aloft was waiting.

Into the open along the path came the tiger, and Ab, gripping the limb
more firmly, looked down upon the thing so closely and in daylight for
the first time in his life. Ab was certainly brave, and he was calm and
wise and thinking beyond his time, but when he saw plainly this beast
which had slipped so easily and silently from the forest, safe though he
was upon his perch, he was more than startled. The thing was so huge and
with an aspect so terrible to look upon!

The great cat's head moved slowly from side to side; the baleful eyes
blazed up and down the pathway and the tawny muzzle was lifted to catch
what burden there might be on the air. The beast seemed satisfied,
emerging fairly into the sunlight. Immense of size but with the graceful
lankness of the tigers of to-day, Sabre-Tooth somewhat resembled them,
though, beside him, the largest inmate of the Indian jungle would appear
but puny. The creature Ab looked upon that day so long ago was beautiful,
in his way. He was beautiful as is the peacock or the banded rattlesnake.
There were color contrasts and fine blendings. The stripes upon him were
wonderfully rich, and as he came creeping toward the body, he was as
splendid as he was dreadful.

With every nerve strained, but with his first impulse of something like
terror gone, Ab watched the devourer beneath him while his sharp flint
knife, hard gripped, bore lightly against the taut rhinoceros-hide rope.
The tiger began his ghastly meal but was not quite beneath the suspended
spear. Then came some distant sound in the forest and he raised his head
and shifted his position.

[Illustration: UPON THE STRONG SHAFT OF ASH THE MONSTER WAS IMPALED]

He was fairly under the spear now. The knife pressed firmly against the
rawhide was drawn back and forth noiselessly but with effectiveness.
Suddenly the last tissue parted and the enormously weighted spear fell
like a lightning-stroke. The broad flint head struck the tiger fairly
between the shoulders, and, impelled by such a weight, passed through his
huge body as if it had met no obstacle. Upon the strong shaft of ash the
monster was impaled. There echoed and reechoed through the forest a roar
so fearful that even the hunters whom Ab had sent far away from the scene
of the tragedy clambered to the trees for refuge. The struggles of the
pierced brute were tremendous beyond description, but no strength could
avail it now; it had received its death wound and soon the great tiger
lay still, as harmless as the squirrel, frightened and hidden in his
nest. In wild triumph Ab slid to the ground and then the long cry to
summon his party went echoing through the wood. When the others found him
he had withdrawn the spear and was already engaged, flint knife in hand,
in stripping from the huge body the glorious robe it wore.

There was excitement and rejoicing. The terror had been slain! The Shell
People were frantic in their exultation. Meanwhile Ab had called upon his
own people to assist him and the wonderful skin of the tiger was soon
stretched out upon the ground, a glorious possession for a cave man.

"I will have half of it," declared Boarface, and he and Ab faced each
other menacingly. "It shall not be cut," was the fierce retort. "It is
mine. I killed the tiger!"

Strong hands gripped stone axes and there was chance of deadly fray then
and there, but the Shell People interfered and the Shell People excelled
in number, and were a potent influence for peace. Ab carried away the
splendid trophy, but as Boarface and his men departed, there were black
faces and threatening words.




CHAPTER XXVII.


LITTLE MOK.

Among all the children of Ab--and remarkable it was for the age--the best
loved was Little Mok, the eldest son. When the child, strong and joyous,
was scarcely two years old, he fell from a ledge off the cliff where he
had climbed to play, and both his legs were broken. Strange to say he
survived the accident in that time when the law of the survival of the
fittest was almost invariable in its sternest and most purely physical
demonstration. The mother love of Lightfoot warded off the last pitiless
blow of nature, although the child, a hopeless cripple, never after
walked. The name Little Mok was naturally given him, and before long the
child had won the heart, as well as the name, of the limping old maker of
axes, spearheads and arrows.

The closer ties of family life, as we know them now, existed but in their
outlines to the cave man. The man and woman were faithful to each other
with the fidelity of the higher animals and their children were cared for
with rough tenderness in their infancy. The time of absolute dependence
was made very short, though, and children very early were required to
find some of their own food, and taught by necessity to protect
themselves. But Little Mok, unable to take up for himself the burden of
an independent existence, was not slain nor left to die of neglect as
might have been another child thus crippled in the time in which he
lived. He, once spared, grew into the wild hearts of those closest to him
and became the guarded and cherished one of the rude home of Ab and
Lightfoot, and to him was thus given the continuous love and care which
the strong-limbed boys and girls of the family lost and never missed.

It was a strange thing for the time. The child had qualities other than
the negative ones of helplessness and weakness with which to bind to him
the hearts of those around him, but the primary fact of his entire
dependence upon them was what made him the center of the little circle of
untaught, untamed cave people who lived in the Fire Valley. He may have
been the first child ever so cherished from such impulse.

From his mother the child inherited a joyous disposition which nothing
could subdue. Often on the return home from some little expedition on
which it had been practicable to take him, sitting on Lightfoot's
shoulder, or on the still stronger arm of old One-Ear, his silent,
somewhat brooding grandfather, the little brown boy made the woods ring
with shrill bird calls, or the mimicry of animals, and ever his laughter
filled the spaces in between these sounds. Other children flocked around
the merry youngster, seeking to emulate his play of voice and the
oldsters smiled as they saw and heard the joyous confusion about the tiny
reveler. The excursions to the river were Little Mok's chief delight from
his early childhood. He entered into the preparations for them with a
zest and keen enjoyment born of the presence of an adventurous spirit in
a maimed body, and when the fishing party left the Fire Camp it was
incomplete if Little Mok was not carried lightly at the van, the life and
joy of the occasion.

No one ever forgot the day when Little Mok, then about six years old,
caught his first fish. His joy and pride infected all as he exhibited his
prize and boasted of what he would catch in the river next, and when, on
the return, Old Mok saluted him as the "Great Fisherman," the elf's
elation became too great for any expression. His little chest heaved, his
eyes flashed, and then he wriggled from Lightfoot's arms into the lap of
Old Mok, snuggled down into the old man's furs and hid his face there;
and the two understood each other.

It was soon after this great event of the first fish-catching that
Red-Spot, Ab's mother, died. She had never quite adapted herself to the
new life in the Fire Valley, and after a time she began to grow old very
fast. At last a fever attacked her and the end of her patient, busy life
came. After her death One-Ear was much in Old Mok's cave, the two had so
long been friends. There with them the crippled boy was often to be
found. He was not always gay and joyous. Sometimes he lay for days on his
bed of leaves at home, in weakness and pain, silent and unlike himself.
Then when Lightfoot's care had given him back a little strength, he would
beg to be taken to Old Mok's cave. There he could sleep, he said, away
from the noise and the lights of the outside world, and finally he
claimed and was allowed a nest of his own in the warmest and darkest nook
of Old Mok's den, where he slept every night, and sometimes a good part
of the day, when one of his times of pain and weakness was upon him. Here
during many a long hour of work, experiment and argument, the wide eyes
and quick ears of Little Mok saw and heard, while Ab, Mok and One-Ear
bent over their work at arrowhead or spear point, and talked of what
might be done to improve the weapons upon which so much depended. Here,
when no one else remained in the weary darkness of night and the half
light of stormy days Old Mok beguiled the time with stories, and
sometimes in a hoarse voice even attempted to chant to his little hearer
snatches of the wild singing tales of the Shell People, for the Shell
People had a sort of story song.

Once, when Lightfoot sat by Old Mok's fire, she told them of the time
when she and Ab found themselves outside their cave, unarmed, with a bear
to be eaten through before they could get into their door, and Little Mok
surprised his mother and Old Mok by an outburst of laughter at the tale.
He had a glimmering of humor, and saw the droll side of the adventure, a
view which had not occurred to Lightfoot, nor to Ab. The little lad, of
the world, yet not in it, saw vaguely the surprises, lights and shades
and contrasts of existence, and sometimes they made him laugh. The laugh
of the cave man was not a common event, and when it came was likely to be
sober and sardonic, at least it was so when not simply an evidence of
rude health and high animal spirits. Humor is one of the latest, as it is
one of the most precious, grains shaken out of Time's hour-glass, but
Little Mok somehow caught a tiny bit of the rainbow gift, long before its
time in the world, and soon, with him, it was to disappear for centuries
to come.

One day when Little Mok was brought back from an expedition to the river,
he told Old Mok how he had sat long on the bank, too tired to fish, and
had just rested and feasted his eyes on the wood, the stream, the small
darting creatures in it, the birds, and the animals which came to drink.
Describing a herd of reindeer which had passed near him, Little Mok took
up a piece of Old Mok's red chalkstone and on the wall of the cave drew a
picture of the animal. The veteran stared in surprise. The picture was
wonderfully life-like in grasp and detail. The child owned that great
gift, the memory of sight, and his hand was cunning. Encouraged by his
success, the boy drew on, delighting Old Mok with his singular fidelity
and skill. Then came hours and days of sketching and etching in the old
man's cave. The master was delighted. He brought out from their hiding
places his choicest pieces of mammoth tusk or teeth of the river-horse
for Little Mok's etchings and carvings. And, as time passed, the young
artist excelled the old one, and became the pride and boast of his friend
and teacher. Sometimes the little lad would work far into the night, for
he could not pause when he had begun a thing until it was complete--but
then he would sleep in his warm nest until noon the next day, crawling
out to cook a bit of meat for himself at the nearest fire, or sharing Old
Mok's meal, as was more convenient.

While everything else in the Fire Valley was growing, developing and
flourishing, Little Mok's frail body had ever grown but slowly, and about
the beginning of his twelfth year there appeared a change in him. He
became permanently weak and grew more and more helpless day by day. His
cherished excursions to the river, even his little journeys on old
One-Ear's strong arm to the cliff top, from whence he could see the whole
world at once, had all to be abandoned.

When the winter snows began to whirl in the air Little Mok was lying
quietly on his bed, his great eyes looking wistfully up at Lightfoot, who
in vain taxed her limited skill and resources to tempt him to eat and
become more sturdy. She hovered over him like a distressed mother bird
over its youngling fallen from the nest, but, with all her efforts, she
could not bring back even his usual slight measure of health and strength
to the poor Little Mok. Ab came sometimes and looked sadly at the two and
then walked moodily away, a great weight on his breast. Old Mok was
always at work, and yet always ready to give Little Mok water or turn his
weary little frame on its rude bed, or spread the furs over the wasted
body, and always Lightfoot waited and hoped and feared.

And at last Little Mok died, and was buried under the stones, and the
snow fell over the lonely cairn under the fir trees outside the Fire
Valley where his grave was made.

Lightfoot was silent and sad, and could not smile nor laugh any more. She
longed for Little Mok, and did not eat or sleep. One night Ab, trying to
comfort her, said, "You will see him again."

"What do you mean?" cried Lightfoot. And Ab only answered, "You will see
him; he will come at night. Go to sleep, and you will see him."

But Lightfoot could not sleep yet and for many a night her eyes closed
only when extreme fatigue compelled sleep toward the morning.

And at last, after many days and nights, Lightfoot, when asleep, saw
Little Mok. Just as in life, she saw him, with all his familiar looks and
motions. But he did not stay long. And again and again she saw him, and
it comforted her somewhat because he smiled. There had come to her such a
heartache about him, lying out there under the snow and stones, with no
one to care for him, that the smile warmed her heavy heart and she told
Ab that she had seen Little Mok, only whispering it to him--for it was
not well, she knew, to talk about such things--and she whispered to Ab,
too, her anguish that Little Mok only came at night, and never when it
was day, but she did not complain. She only said: "I want to see him in
the daytime."

And Ab could think of nothing to say. But that made him think more and
more. He felt drawn closer to Lightfoot, his wife, no longer a young
girl, but the mother of Little Mok, who was dead, and of all his
children.

In his mind arose, vaguely obscure, yet persistent, the idea that brute
strength and vigor, keen senses and reckless bravery were not, after all,
the sole qualities that make and influence men. Old Mok, crippled and
disabled for the hunt and defense, was nevertheless a power not to be
despised, and Little Mok, the helpless child, had been still strong
enough to win and keep the love of all the stalwart and rough cave
people. Ab was sorry for Lightfoot. When in the spring the forlorn mother
held in her arms a baby girl a little brightness came into her eyes
again, and Ab, seeing this, was glad, but neither Ab nor Lightfoot ever
forgot their eldest and dearest, Little Mok.




CHAPTER XXVIII.


THE BATTLE OF THE BARRIERS.

While Ab had been occupied by home affairs trouble for him and his people
had been brewing. By no means unknown to each other before the tiger hunt
were Ab and Boarface. They had hunted together and once Boarface, with
half a dozen companions, had visited the Fire Valley and had noted its
many attractions and advantages. Now Boarface had gone away angry and
muttering, and he was not a man to be thought of lightly. His rage over
the memory of Ab's trophy did not decrease with the return to his own
region. Why should this cave man of the West have sole possession of that
valley, which was warm and green throughout the winter and where the wild
beasts could not enter? Why had he, this Ab, been allowed to go away with
all the tiger's skin? Brooding enlarged into resolve and Boarface
gathered together his relations and adherents. "Let us go and take the
Fire Valley of Ab," he said to them, and, gradually, though objections
were made to the undertaking of an enterprise so fraught with danger, the
listeners were persuaded.

"There are other fires far down the river," said one old man. "Let us go
there, if it is fire we most need, and so we will not disturb nor anger
Ab, who has lived in his valley for many years. Why battle with Ab and
all his people?"

But Boarface laughed aloud: "There are many other earth fires," he said.
"I know them well, but there is no other fire which chances to make a
flaming fence about a valley close to the great rocks, and which has
water within the space it surrounds and which makes a wall against all
the wild beasts. We will fight and win the valley of Ab."

And so they were led into the venture. They sought, too, the aid of the
Shell People in this raid, but were not successful. The Shell People were
not unfriendly to those of the Fire Valley, and had not Ab been really
the one to kill the tiger? Besides, it was not wise for the waterside
dwellers to engage in any controversy between the forest factions, for
the hill people had memories and heavy axes. A few of the younger and
more adventurous joined the force of Boarface, but the alliance had no
tribal sanction. Still, the force of the swarthy leader of the Eastern
cave men was by no means insignificant. It contained good fighting men,
and, when runners had gone far and wide in the Eastern country, there
were gathered nearly ten score of hunters who could throw the spear or
wield the ax and who were not fearful of their lives. The band led by
Boarface started for the Fire Country, intending to surprise the people
in the valley. They moved swiftly, but not so swiftly as a fleet young
man from the Shell People who preceded them. He was sent by the elders a
day before the time fixed for the assault, and so Ab learned all about
the intended raid. Then went forth runners from the valley; then the
matron Lightfoot's eyes became fiery, since Ab was threatened; then old
Hilltop looked carefully over his spears, and poised thoughtfully his
great stone ax; then Moonface smote her children and gathered together
certain weapons, and then Old Mok went into his cave and stayed there,
working at none knew what.

They came from all about, the Western cave men, for never in the valley
had food or shelter been refused to any and the Eastern cave men were not
loved. Many a quarrel over game had taken place between the raging
hunters of the different tribes, and many a bloody single-handed
encounter had come in the depths of the forest. The band was not a large
one, the Eastern men being far more numerous, but the outlook was not as
fine as it might be for the advancing Boarface. The force assembled
inside the valley was, in point of numbers, but little more than half his
own, but it was entrenched and well-armed, and there were those among the
defenders whom it was not well to meet in fight. But Boarface was
confident and was not dismayed when his force crept into the open only to
find the ordinary valley entrance barred and all preparations made for
giving him a welcome of the warmer sort. There was what could not be
thoroughly barricaded in so brief a time, the entrance where the brook
issued at the west. This pass must be forced, for the straight, uprising
wall between the flames and across the opening to the north was something
relatively unassailable. It was too narrow and too high and sheer and
there were too many holes in the wall through which could be sent those
piercing arrows which the Western cave men knew how to use so well. The
battle must be up along the bed of the little creek. The water was low at
this season, so low that a man might wade easily anywhere, and there had
been erected only a slight barrier, enough to keep wild beasts away, for
Ab had never thought of invasion by human beings. The creek tumbled
downward, through passages, between straight-sided, ruggedly built stone
heaps, with spaces between wide enough to admit a man, but not any great
beast of prey. There was no place where, by a man, the wall could not
easily be mounted and, above, there was no really good place of vantage
for the defenders.

So the invading force, concealment of action being no longer necessary,
ranged themselves along the banks of the creek to the west of the valley
and prepared for a rush. They had certain chances in their favor. They
were strong men, who knew how to use their weapons well, and they were in
numbers almost as two to one. Meanwhile, inside the valley, where the
approach and plans of the enemy had been seen and understood, there had
gone on swiftly, under Ab's stern direction, such preparation for the
fray as seemed most adequate with the means at hand.

The great advantage possessed was that the defenders, on firm footing
themselves, could meet men climbing, and so, a little further up the
creek than the beast-opposing wall, had been thrown up what was little
more than a rude platform of rock, wide and with a broad expanse of top,
on which all the valley's force might cluster in an emergency. Upon this
the people were to gather, defending the first pass, if they could, by
flights of spears and arrows and here, at the end, to win or lose. This
was the general preparation for the onslaught, but there had been
precautions taken more personal and more involving the course of the most
important of the people of the valley.

At the left of the gorge, where must come the invaders, the rock rose
sheerly and at one place extended outward a shelf, high up, but reached
easily from the Fire Valley side. There were consultations between Ab and
the angry and anxious and almost tearful Lightfoot. That charming lady,
now easily the best archer of the tribe, had developed at once into a
fighting creature and now demanded that her place be assigned to her.
With her own bow, and with arrows in quantity, it was decided that she
should occupy the ledge and do all she could. Upon the ledge was
comparative safety in the fray, and Ab directed that she should go there.
Old Hilltop said but little. It was understood, almost as a matter of
course, that he would be upon the barrier and there face, with Ab, the
greatest issue. The old man was by no means unsatisfactory to look upon
as he moved silently about and got ready the weapons he might have to
use. Gaunt, strong-muscled and resolute, he was worthy of admiration.
Ever following him with her eyes, when not engaged in the chastisement of
one of her swart brood, was Moonface, for Moonface had long since learned
to regard her grizzled lord with love as well as much respect.

There were other good fighting men and other women beside these mentioned
who would do their best, but these few were the dominant figures.
Meanwhile, Boarface and his strong band had decided upon their plan of
attack and would soon rush up the bed of the shallow stream with all the
bravery and ferocity of those who were accustomed to face death lightly
and to seize that which they wanted.

The invaders came clambering up the creek's course, openly and with
menacing and defiant shouts, for any concealment was now out of the
question. They had but few bows and could, under the conditions, send no
arrow flight which would be of avail, but they had thews and sinews and
spears and axes. As they came with such rush as men might make up a
tumbling waterway with slipping pebbles beneath the feet and forced
themselves one by one between the heaped stone piles and fairly in front
of the barrier there was a discharge of arrows and more than one man,
impaled by a stone-headed shaft, fell, to dabble feebly in the water, and
did not rise again. But there came a time in the fight when the bow must
be abandoned.

The assault was good and the demeanor of the men behind the barrier was
good as well. Not more gallant was one group than the other for there
were splendid fighters in both ranks. The boasted short sword of the
Romans, in times effeminate, as compared with these, afforded not in its
wielding a greater test of personal courage than the handling of the
flint-headed spear or the stone knife or chipped ax. There, all along the
barrier, was the real grappling of man and man, with further existence as
the issue.

The invaders, losing many of their number, for arrows flew steadily and a
mass so large could not easily be missed even by the most bungling of
those strong archers, swept upward to the barrier and then was a
muscular, deadly tumult worth the seeing. To the south and nearest the
side where Lightfoot was perched with her bow and great bunch of arrows
Ab stood in front, while to his right and near the other end of the rude
stone rampart was stationed old Hilltop, and he hurled his spears and
slew men as they came. The fight became simply a death struggle, with the
advantage of position upon one side and of numbers on the other. And Ab
and Boarface were each seeking the other.

So the struggle lasted for a long half hour, and when it ended there were
dead and dying men upon the barrier, while the waters of the creek were
reddened by the blood of the slain assailants. The assault now ebbed a
little. Neither Ab nor Hilltop had been injured in the struggle. As the
invaders pressed close Ab had noted the whish of an arrow now and then
and the hurt to one pressing him closely, and old Hilltop had heard the
wild cries of a woman who hovered in his rear and hurled stones in the
faces of those who strove to reach him. And now there came a lull.

Boarface had recognized the futility of scaling, under such conditions, a
steep so well defended and had thought of a better way to gain his end
and crush Ab and his people. He had heard the story of Ab's first advent
into the valley when, chased by the wolves, he leaped through the flame,
and there came an inspiration to him! What one man had done others could
do, and, with picked warriors of his band, he made a swift detour, while,
at the same time, the main body rushed desperately upon the barrier
again.

What had been good fighting before was better now. Lives were lost, and
soon all arrows were spent and all spears thrown, and then came but the
dull clashing of stone axes. Ab raged up and down, and, ever in the
front, faced the oncoming foe and slew as could slay the strong and
utterly desperate. More than once his life was but a toy of chance as men
sprang toward him, two or three together, but ever at such moment there
sang an arrow by his head and one of his assailants, pierced in throat or
body, fell back blindly, hampering his companions, whose heads Ab's great
ax was seeking fiercely. And, all the time, nearer the northern end of
the barrier, old Hilltop fought serenely and dreadfully. There were many
dead men in the pools of the creek between the barrier and the entrance
to the valley. And about Ab ever sang the arrows from the rocky shelf.

There was wild clamor, the clash of weapons and the shouting of
battle-crazed men but there was not enough to drown the sound of a scream
which rose piercingly above the din. Ab recognized the voice of Lightfoot
and raised his eyes to see the woman, regardless of her own safety,
standing upright and pointing up the valley. He knew that something
meaning life and death was happening and that he must go. He leaped
backward and a huge Western cave man sprang to his place, to serve as
best he could.

Not a moment too soon had that shrill cry reached the ears of the
fighting man. He ran backward, shouting to a score of his people to
follow him as he ran, and in an instant recognized that he had been
outwitted, at least for the moment, by the vengeful Boarface. As he
rushed to the east toward the wall of flame he saw a dark form pass
through its crest in a flying leap. There were others he knew would
follow. His own feat of long ago was being repeated by Boarface and his
chosen group of best men!

It was not Boarface who leaped and it was hard for a gallant youth of the
Eastern cave men that he had strength and daring and had dashed ahead in
the assault, for he had scarcely touched the ground when there sank
deeply into his head a stone ax, impelled by the strongest arm of all
that region, and he was no more among things alive. Ab had reached the
fire wall with the speed of a great runner while, close behind him, came
his eager following.

The forces could see each other clearly enough now, and those on the
outside outnumbered those on the inside again by two to one. But those
leaping the flames could not alight poised ready for a blow, and there
were adroit and vengeful axmen awaiting them. There was a momentary pause
for planning among the assailants, and then it was that Ab fumed over his
own lack of foresight. His chosen band who were with him now were all
bowmen, and about the shoulder and chest of each was still slung his
weapon, but there were no more arrows. Each quiverful had been shot away
early in the fight and then had come the spear and ax play. But what a
chance for arrows now, with that threatening band preparing for the rush
and leap together, and, while out of reach of spear or ax, within easy
reach of the singing little shafts! Oh, for the shafts now, those slender
barbed things which were hurled in his new way! And, even as he thus
raged, there came a feeble shout from down the valley behind him and he
saw something very good!

Limping, with effort, but resolutely forward, was a bent old man, bearing
encircled within his long arms a burden which Ab himself could not have
carried for any distance without stress and labored breathing. The lean
old Mok's arms were locked about a monster sheaf of straight flint-headed
arrows, a sheaf greater in size than ever man had looked upon before. The
crippled veteran had not been idle in his cave. He had worked upon the
store of shafts and flintheads he had accumulated, and here was the
result in a great emergency!

The old man cast his sheaf upon the ground and then sank down, somewhat
totteringly, beside it. There needed no shout of command from Ab to tell
those about him what to do. There was one combined yell of sudden
exultation, a rush together for the shafts and a swift filling of empty
quivers. It was but the work of a moment or two. Then something promptly
happened. The great fellows, though acting without orders, shot almost
"all together," as the later English archers did, and so close just
across the flame wall was the opposing group that the meanest archer in
all the lot could scarcely fail to reach a living target, and stronger
arms drew back those arrows than were the arms of those who drew
bowstring in the battles of mediæval history. With the first deadly
flight came a scattering outside and men lay tossing upon the ground in
their death agony. There was no cessation to the shot, though Boarface
sought fiercely to rally his followers, until all had fled beyond the
range of the bowmen. Upon the ground were so many dead that the numbers
of the two forces were now more nearly equal. But Boarface had brave
followers. They ranged themselves together at a safe distance and then
started for the flame wall with a rush, to leap it all together.

There was another arrow-flight as the onslaught came, and more men went
down, but the charge could not be stopped. Over the low flame-crests shot
a great mass of bodies, there to meet that which was not good for them.
The struggle was swift and deadly, but the forces were almost evenly
matched now and the insiders had the advantage. Boarface and Ab met face
to face in the melée and each leaped toward the other with a yell. There
was to be a fight which must be excellent, for two strong leaders were
meeting and there were many lives at stake.




CHAPTER XXIX.


OLD HILLTOP'S LAST STRUGGLE.

Even as he leaped the flames, the desperate Boarface hurled at Ab a
fragment of stone, which was a thing to be wisely dodged, and the invader
was fairly on his feet and in position to face his adversary as the axes
came together. More active, more powerful, it may be, and certainly more
intelligent, was Ab than Boarface, but the leader of the assailants had
been a raider from early youth and knew how to take advantage. In those
fierce days to attain the death of an enemy, in any way, was the
practical end sought in a conflict. Close behind Boarface had leaped a
youth to whom the leader had given his commands before the onrush and
who, as he found his feet upon the valley's sward, sought, not an
adversary face to face, but circled about the two champions, seeking only
to get behind the leaping Ab while Boarface occupied his sole attention.
The young man bore a great stone-headed club, a dreadful weapon in such
hands as his. The men struck furiously and flakes spun from the heavy
axes, but Boarface was being slowly driven back when there descended upon
Ab's shoulder a blow which swerved him and would certainly have felled a
man with less heaped brawn to meet the impact. At the same instant
Boarface made a fierce downward stroke and Ab leaped aside without
parrying or returning it, for his arm was numbed. Another such blow from
the new assailant and his life was lost, yet he dare not turn. That would
be his death. And now Boarface rushed in again and as the axes came
together called to his henchman to strike more surely.

And just then, just as it seemed to Ab the end was near, he heard behind
him the sharp twang of the bowstring which had sounded so sweetly at the
valley's other end and, with a groan, there pitched down upon the sward
beside him a writhing man whose legs drew back and forth in agony and who
had been pierced by an arrow shot fiercely and closely from behind and
driven in between his shoulder blades. He knew what it must mean. The arm
which had drawn that arrow to its head was that of a slight, strong
creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had
shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when
she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string
and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow
notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered
near, intent only upon sending a second shaft into the breast of
Boarface.

But there was no need. Unhampered now, Ab rushed in upon his enemy and
rained such blows as only a giant could have parried. Boarface fought
desperately, but it was only man to man, and he was not the equal of the
maddened one before him. His ax flew from his hand as his wrist was
broken by Ab's descending weapon, and the next moment he fell limply and
hardly moved, for a second blow had sunk the stone weapon so deeply in
his head that the haft was hidden in his long hair.

It was all over in a moment now. As Ab turned with a shout of triumph
there was a swift end to the little battle. There were brief encounters
here and there, but the Eastern men were leaderless and less
well-equipped than their foes, and though they fought as desperately as
cornered wolves, there was no hope for them. Three escaped. They fled
wildly toward the flame and leaped over and through its flickering yellow
crest and there was no pursuit. It was not a time for besieged men to be
seeking useless vengeance. There came wild yells from the lower end of
the valley where the greater fight was on. With a cry Ab gathered his men
together and the victorious band ran toward the barrier again, there with
overwhelming force to end the struggle. Ever, in later years, did Ab
regret that his fight with Boarface had not ended sooner. To save an old
hero he had come too late.

Boarface, when taking with him a strong band to the upper end of the
valley, had still left a supposably overwhelming force to fight its way
up and over the barrier. Ab away from the scene of struggle, old Hilltop
assumed command. He was a fit man for such death-facing steadfastness as
was here required.

Never had Ab been able to persuade Lightfoot's father to use or even try
the new weapon, the bow and arrow. He had no tender feeling toward modern
innovations. He had a clear eye and strong arm, and the ax and spear were
good enough for him! He recognized Ab's great qualities, but there were
some things that even a well-regarded son-in-law could not impose upon
any elder family male. Among these was this twanging bow with its light
shaft, better fitted for a child's plaything than for real work among
men. As for him, give him a heavy spear, with the blade well set in
thongs, or a heavy ax, with the head well clinched in the sinew-bound
wooden haft. There was rarely miss or failure to the spear-thrust or the
ax-stroke. And now, in proof of the soundness of his old-fashioned
belief, he staked ruggedly his life. There were few spears left. There
were only axes on either side. And there stood old Hilltop upon the
barrier, while beside him and all across stood men as brave if not quite
as sturdy or as famous.

In the rear of the line, noisy, sometimes fierce and sometimes weeping,
were the women, whose skill was only a little less than that of the males
and who were even more ruthless in all feeling toward the enemy. And
still easily chief among these, conspicuous by her noisy and uncaring
demeanor of mingled alarm and vengefulness, was the raging Moonface. She
rushed up close beside her husband's defending group and still hurled
stones and hurled them most effectively. They went as if from a catapult,
and more than one bone or head was broken that day by those missiles from
the arm of this squat savage wife and mother. But the men below were
outnumbering and brave, and now, maddened by different emotions, the lust
of conquest, the murderous anger over slain companions and, underlying
all, the thought of ownership of this fair and warm and safe place of
home, were resolute in their attack. They had faith in their leader,
Boarface, and expected confidently every moment an onslaught to aid
them from above. And so they came up the watery slope, one pressing
blood-thirstily behind the other with an earnestness none but men as
strong and well equipped and as brave or braver could hope to withstand.
The closing struggle was desperate.

Hilltop stood to the front, between two rocks some few yards apart, over
which bubbled the shallow creek, and between which was the main upward
entrance to the valley. He stood upon a rock almost as flat as if some
expert engineer of ages later had planed its surface and then adjusted it
to a level, leaving the shallow waters tumbling all about it. The rock
out-jutted somewhat on the slope and there must necessarily be some
little climb to face the aged defender. On either side was a stretch of
down-running, gradually-sloping waterfall, full of great boulders,
embarrassing any straight rush of a group together, but, between and
upward, sprang swart men, and facing them on either side of old Hilltop
beyond the rocks were the remainder of the mass of cave men upon whom he
depended for making good the defense of the whole barrier. Beside him, in
the center of the battle, were the two creatures in the world upon whom
he could most depend, his stalwart and splendid sons, Strong-Arm and
Branch. With them, as gallant if not as strong as his great brother,
stood braced the eager Bark. They were ready, these young men, but, as it
chanced, there could be, at the beginning of the strong clamber of the
foe, only one man to first meet them. All were behind this man at the
front, for the flat rock came to something like a point. He stood there,
hairy and bare except for the skin about his hips, and with only an ax in
his hand, but this did not matter so much as it might have done, for only
axes were borne by the up-clambering assailants. The throwing of an ax
was a little matter to the sharp-eyed and flexile-muscled cave men. Who
could not dodge an ax was better out of the way and out of the world. A
meeting such as this impending must be a matter only of close personal
encounter and fencing with arm and wooden handle and flint-head of edge
and weight.

There was a clash of stone together, and, one after another, strong
creatures with cloven skulls toppled backward, to fall into the babbling
creek, their blood helping to change its coloring. Leaping from side to
side across his rock, along each edge of which the water rushed, old
Hilltop met the mass of enemies, while those who passed were brained by
his great sons or by those behind. But the forces were unequal and the
plane in front was not steep enough nor the water deep enough to prevent
something like an organized onslaught. With fearful regularity, uplifted
and thrown aside occasionally in defense to avoid a stroke, the ax of
Hilltop fell and there was more and more fine fighting and fine dying. On
either side were men doing scarcely less stark work. Hilltop's two sons,
on either side of him now, as the assailants, crowded by those behind,
pressed closer, fully justified their parentage by what they did, and
Bark was like a young tiger. But the onslaught was too strong. There were
too many against too few. There were loud cries, a sudden impulse and,
though axes rose and fell and more men tumbled backward into the water,
the rock was swept upon and won and the old man stood alone amid his
foes, his sons having been carried backward by the pressure of the mass.
There was sullen battling on the upper level, but there was no fray so
red as that where Hilltop, old as he was, swung his awful ax among the
close crowding throng of enemies about him. Four fell with skulls cleanly
split before a giant of the invaders got behind the gray defender of the
pass. Then an ax came crashing down and old Hilltop pitched forward, dead
before he fell into the cool waters of the pool below.

There was a yell of exultation from the upward-climbing Eastern cave men
as they saw the most dangerous of their immediate enemies go down, but,
before the echoes had come back, the sound was lost in that which came
from the height above them. It was loud and threatening, but not the yell
of their own kind.

There had come sweeping down the valley the victors in the fight at the
Eastern end. Ab, with the lust of battle fully upon him as he heard the
wild shriek of Moonface, who had seen her husband fall, was a creature as
hungry for blood as any beast of all the forest, and his followers were
scarce less terrible. Swift and dreadful was the encounter which
followed, but the issue was not doubtful for a moment. The barrier's
living defenders became as wild themselves as were these conquering
allies. The fight became a massacre. Flying hopelessly up the valley, the
remnant, only some twenty, of the Eastern cave men ran into the vacant
big cave for refuge and there, barricaded, could keep their pursuers at
bay for the time at least.

There was no immediate attack made upon the remnant of the assailants who
had thus sought refuge. They were safely imprisoned, and about the cave's
entrance there lay down to eat and rest a body of vengeful men of twice
their number. The struggle was over, and won, but there was little
happiness in the Fire Valley which had been so well defended.

Moonface, wildly fighting, had seen her husband's death. With the rush of
Ab's returning force which changed the tide of battle she had been swept
away, shrieking and seeking to force herself toward the rock whereon old
Hilltop had so well demeaned himself. Now there emerged from one side a
woman who spoke to none but who clambered down the rough waterway and
waded into the little pool below the rock and stooped and lifted
something from the water. It was the body of the brave old hunter of the
hills. With her arms clutched about it the woman began the clamber upward
again, shaking her head dumbly, when rude warriors, touched somehow,
despite the coarse texture of their being, came wading in to assist her
with the ghastly burden. She emerged with it upon the level and laid it
gently down upon the grass, but still uttered no word until her children
gathered and the weeping Lightfoot came to her and put her arms about
her, and then from the uncouth creature's eyes came a flood of tears and
a gasp which broke the tension, and the death wail sounded through the
valley. The poor, affectionate animal was a little nearer herself again.

There were dead men lying beside the flames at the Eastern end of the
valley, and these were brought by the men and tossed carelessly into the
pools below where lay so many others of the slain. There were storm
clouds gathering and all the valley people knew what must happen soon.
The storm clouds burst; the little creek, transformed suddenly into a
torrent by the fall of water from the heights above, swept the dead men
away together to the river and so toward the sea. Of all the invading
force there remained alive only the three who had re-leaped the flames
and those imprisoned in the cave.

There was council that night between Ab and his friends and, as the
easiest way of disposing of the prisoners in the cave, it was proposed to
block the entrance and allow the miserable losers in battle to there
starve at their leisure. But the thoughtful Old Mok took Ab aside and
said:

"Why not let them live and work for us? They will do as you say. This was
the place they wanted. They can stay and make us stronger."

And Ab saw the reason of all this and the hungry, imprisoned men were
given the alternative of death or obedient companionship. They did not
hesitate long. The warmth of the valley and its other advantages were
what they had come for and they had no narrow views outside the food and
fuel question. The valley was good. They accepted Ab's authority and came
out and fed and, with their wives and children, who were sent for, became
of the valley people.

This place of refuge and home and fortress was acquiring an importance.




CHAPTER XXX.


OUR VERY GREAT GRANDFATHER.

And the years passed. One still afternoon in autumn a gray, hairy man, a
man approaching old age, but without weakness of arm or stiffness of
joint, as yet, sat on the height overlooking the village. He looked in
tranquil comfort, now down into the little valley, and now across it into
the wood beyond, where the sun was approaching the treetops. He had come
to the hill with the mere instinct of the old hunter seeking to be
completely out of doors, but he had brought work with him and was
engaged, when not looking thoughtfully far away, in finishing a huge bow,
the spring of which he occasionally tested. Every motion showed the
retained possession of tremendous strength as well as the knowledge of
its use to most advantage. A very hale old man was Ab, the great hunter
and head of the people of the Fire Valley.

A few yards away from Ab, leaning against the trunk of a beech, stood
Lightfoot, her quick glance roving from place to place and as keen,
seemingly, as ever. These two were still most content when together, and
it was well for each that they had in the same degree withstood what the
years bring. The woman had, perhaps, changed less than the man. Her hair
was still dark and her step had not grown heavy. She had changed in face
and expression rather than in form. There had grown in her eyes and about
her mouth the indefinable lines and tokens, pathetic and sweet, of care,
of sorrow, of suffering and of quiet gladness, in short, of motherhood.

As twilight came on the woods rang with the shouts and laughter of a
party of young men who were coming home from some forest trip. Ab,
looking down the valley, over the flashing flame, into the forest hills,
in whose deep shade lay Little Mok, old Hilltop and Ab's mother, could
see the lusty youths in the village, running, leaping, wrestling and
throwing spears, axes and stones in competition. A strange oppression
came upon him and he thought of Oak lying in the ground alone on the
hillside, miles away. Ab felt, even now, the strong, helpful arm of his
friend around him, just as it was in the evening journey from the Feast
of the Mammoth homeward, when he had been rescued from almost certain
death by Oak. A lump rose in the throat of the man of many battles and
many trials. He shook himself, as if to shake off the memory that plagued
him. Oak came not often to trouble Ab's peace now, and when he came it
was always at night. Morning never found him near the Fire Village.

The young hunters, rioting like the young men in the valley, were passing
now. Ab looked upon them thoughtfully. He felt dimly a desire to speak to
them, to tell them something about the hurts they might avoid, and how
hard it was to have a great, heavy load on one's chest at times--all
one's life--but the cave man was, as to the emotions, inarticulate. Ab
could no more have spoken his half defined feelings than the tree could
cry out at the blow of the ax.

The woman left the beech tree and approached the man and touched his arm.
His eyes turned upon her kindly and after she had seated herself beside
him, there was laughing talk, for Lightfoot was declaring her desperate
condition of hunger and demanding that he return to the valley with her.
She examined his bow critically and had an opinion to express, for so
fine a shot as she might surely talk a little about so manful a thing as
the making of the weapon. And as the sun sank lower and the valley fell
into shadow, the two descended together, a pair who, after all, had
reason to be glad that they had lived.

And the children these two left were bold and strong and dominant by
nature, and maintained the family leadership as the village grew. With
later generations came trouble vast and dire to the people of the land,
but it was not the part of this proud and seasoned and well-weaponed
group to flee like wild beasts when came drifting to the Westward the
first feeble vanguard of the Aryan overflow. The vanguard was overthrown;
its men made serfs and its women mothers. Other cave men in other regions
might escape to the Northward as the wave increased, there to become
frost-bitten Lapps or the "Skrallings" of the Norsemen, the Eskimo of
to-day, but not so the people of the great Fire Valley or their stern and
sturdy vassals for half a hundred miles about. No child's play was it for
those of another and still rude civilization to meet them in their
fastnesses, and the end of the struggle--for this region at least--was,
not a conquest, but a blending, a blending good for each of the two
forces.

And as the face of Nature changed with the ages, as the later glacial
cold wavered and fluctuated and forced back and forth migrations of man
and beast, still the first-formed group retained coherence, retained it
beyond great natural cataclysms, retained it to historic ages, to wield
long the smoothed stone weapons, and, afterward, the bronze axes, and to
diverge in many branches of contentious defenders and invaders, to become
Iberian and Gaul and Celt and Saxon, to fight family against family, and
to commingle again in these later times.

Upon the beach the other day, watching the waves lap toward her, sat a
woman, cultured, very beautiful and wise in woman's way and among the
fairest and the best of all earth can produce. There are many such as
she. Barely longer ago than the other day, as time is counted, a rugged
man, gentle as resolute and noble, became the enshrined hero of a vast
republic, when he struck from slave limbs the shackles of four million
people. In an insular home across the sea, interested still in the
world's affairs, is an old man vigorous in his octogenarianism, a power,
though out of power, a figure to be a monument in personal history, a
great man. But a few years ago the whole world stood with bowed head
while into the soil he loved was lowered the coffin of one who has bound
the nations together in sympathy for _Les Misérables_ of the earth. In a
home on the continent broods watchfully a bald-headed giant in cavalry
boots, one who has dictated arbitrarily, as premier, the policy of the
empire he has largely made. The woman upon the sands, the great
liberator, the man wonderful even in old age, the heart-stirring writer,
the man of giant personality physical and mental, have had reason to
boast alike a strain of the blood of Ab and Lightfoot. In the veins of
each has danced the transmitted product of the identical corpuscles which
coursed in the veins of those two who first found a home in the Fire
Valley. Strong was primitive man; adroit, patient and faithful was
primitive woman; he, the strongest, she, the fairest and cleverest of the
time, could protect their offspring, breed and care for great children of
similar powers and so insure a lasting race. Thus has the good blue blood
come down. This is not romance, this is not fancy; this is but faithful
history.

THE END






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