air and telling me that they were there and
that there was nothing to fear.
My next dream, in the order of succession, begins always
with the flight of Lop-Ear and myself through the forest. The
Fire-Man and Broken-Tooth and the tree of the tragedy are gone.
Lop-Ear and I, in a cautious panic, are fleeing through the
trees. In my right leg is a burning pain; and from the flesh,
protruding head and shaft from either side, is an arrow of the
Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of it pain me
severely, but it bothered my movements and made it impossible
for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.
At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a tree.
Lop-Ear went right on. I called to him--most plaintively, I
remember; and he stopped and looked back. Then he returned to
me, climbing into the fork and examining the arrow. He tried to
pull it out, but one way the flesh resisted the barbed lead,
and the other way it resisted the feathered shaft. Also, it
hurt grievously, and I stopped him.
For some time we crouched there, Lop-Ear nervous and
anxious to be gone, perpetually and apprehensively peering this
way and that, and myself whimpering softly and sobbing. Lop-Ear
was plainly in a funk, and yet his conduct in remaining by me,
in spite of his fear, I take as a foreshadowing of the altruism
and comradeship that have helped make man the mightiest of the
animals.
Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the
flesh, and I angrily stopped him. Then he bent down and began
gnawing the shaft of the arrow with his teeth. As he did so he
held the arrow firmly in both hands so that it would not play
about in the wound, and at the same time I held on to him. I
often meditate upon this scene--the two of us, half-grown cubs,
in the childhood of the race, and the one mastering his fear,
beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand
by and succor the other. And there rises up before me all that
was there foreshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias,
of life-saving crews and Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and
leaders of forlorn hopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ
himself, and of all the men of earth, mighty of stature, whose
strength may trace back to the elemental loins of Lop-Ear and
Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of the Younger World.
When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, the
shaft was withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on, but this
time it was he that stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely.
Some of the smaller veins had doubtless been ruptured. Running
out to the end of a branch, Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green
leaves. These he stuffed into the wound. They accomplished the
purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped. Then we went on
together, back to the safety of the caves.
CHAPTER VIII
Well do I remember that first winter after I left home. I
have long dreams of sitting shivering in the cold. Lop-Ear and
I sit close together, with our arms and legs about each other,
blue-faced and with chattering teeth. It got particularly crisp
along toward morning. In those chill early hours we slept
little, huddling together in numb misery and waiting for the
sunrise in order to get warm.
When we went outside there was a crackle of frost under
foot. One morning we discovered ice on the surface of the quiet
water in the eddy where was the drinking-place, and there was a
great How-do-you-do about it. Old Marrow-Bone was the oldest
member of the horde, and he had never seen anything like it
before. I remember the worried, plaintive look that came into
his eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive look always
came into our eyes when we did not understand a thing, or when
we felt the prod of some vague and inexpressible desire.)
Red-Eye, too, when he investigated the ice, looked bleak and
plaintive, and stared across the river into the northeast, as
though in some way he connected the Fire People with this
latest happening.
But we found ice only on that one morning, and that was
the coldest winter we experienced. I have no memory of other
winters when it was so cold. I have often thought that that
cold winter was a fore-runner of the countless cold winters to
come, as the ice-sheet from farther north crept down over the
face of the land. But we never saw that ice-sheet. Many
generations must have passed away before the descendants of the
horde migrated south, or remained and adapted themselves to the
changed conditions.
Life was hit or miss and happy-go-lucky with us. Little
was ever planned, and less was executed. We ate when we were
hungry, drank when we were thirsty, avoided our carnivorous
enemies, took shelter in the caves at night, and for the rest
just sort of played along through life.
We were very curious, easily amused, and full of tricks
and pranks. There was no seriousness about us, except when we
were in danger or were angry, in which cases the one was
quickly forgotten and the other as quickly got over.
We were inconsecutive, illogical, and inconsequential. We
had no steadfastness of purpose, and it was here that the Fire
People were ahead of us. They possessed all these things of
which we possessed so little. Occasionally, however, especially
in the realm of the emotions, we were capable of long-cherished
purpose. The faithfulness of the monogamic couples I have
referred to may be explained as a matter of habit; but my long
desire for the Swift One cannot be so explained, any more than
can be explained the undying enmity between me and Red-Eye.
But it was our inconsequentiality and stupidity that
especially distresses me when I look back upon that life in the
long ago. Once I found a broken gourd which happened to lie
right side up and which had been filled with the rain. The
water was sweet, and I drank it. I even took the gourd down to
the stream and filled it with more water, some of which I drank
and some of which I poured over Lop-Ear. And then I threw the
gourd away. It never entered my head to fill the gourd with
water and carry it into my cave. Yet often I was thirsty at
night, especially after eating wild onions and watercress, and
no one ever dared leave the caves at night for a drink.
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Another time I found a dry; gourd, inside of which the
seeds rattled. I had fun with it for a while. But it was a play
thing, nothing more. And yet, it was not long after this that
the using of gourds for storing water became the general
practice of the horde. But I was not the inventor. The honor
was due to old Marrow-Bone, and it is fair to assume that it
was the necessity of his great age that brought about the
innovation.
At any rate, the first member of the horde to use gourds
was Marrow-Bone. He kept a supply of drinking-water in his
cave, which cave belonged to his son, the Hairless One, who
permitted him to occupy a corner of it. We used to see
Marrow-Bone filling his gourd at the drinking-place and
carrying it carefully up to his cave. Imitation was strong in
the Folk, and first one, and then another and another, procured
a gourd and used it in similar fashion, until it was a general
practice with all of us so to store water.
Sometimes old Marrow-Bone had sick spells and was unable
to leave the cave. Then it was that the Hairless One filled the
gourd for him. A little later, the Hairless One deputed the
task to Long-Lip, his son. And after that, even when
Marrow-Bone was well again, Long-Lip continued carrying water
for him. By and by, except on unusual occasions, the men never
carried any water at all, leaving the task to the women and
larger children. Lop-Ear and I were independent. We carried
water only for ourselves, and we often mocked the young
water-carriers when they were called away from play to fill the
gourds.
Progress was slow with us. We played through life, even
the adults, much in the same way that children play, and we
played as none of the other animals played. What little we
learned, was usually in the course of play, and was due to our
curiosity and keenness of appreciation. For that matter, the
one big invention of the horde, during the time I lived with
it, was the use of gourds. At first we stored only water in the
gourds--in imitation of old Marrow-Bone.
But one day some one of the women--I do not know which
one--filled a gourd with black-berries and carried it to her
cave. In no time all the women were carrying berries and nuts
and roots in the gourds. The idea, once started, had to go on.
Another evolution of the carrying-receptacle was due to the
women. Without doubt, some woman's gourd was too small, or else
she had forgotten her gourd; but be that as it may, she bent
two great leaves together, pinning the seams with twigs, and
carried home a bigger quantity of berries than could have been
contained in the largest gourd.
So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation of
supplies during the years I lived with the Folk. It never
entered anybody's head to weave a basket out of willow-withes.
Sometimes the men and women tied tough vines about the bundles
of ferns and branches that they carried to the caves to sleep
upon. Possibly in ten or twenty generations we might have
worked up to the weaving of baskets. And of this, one thing is
sure: if once we wove withes into baskets, the next and
inevitable step would have been the weaving of cloth. Clothes
would have followed, and with covering our nakedness would have
come modesty.
Thus was momentum gained in the Younger World. But we were
without this momentum. We were just getting started, and we
could not go far in a single generation. We were without
weapons, without fire, and in the raw beginnings of speech. The
device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled
when I think of it.
Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To show
you how fortuitous was development in those days let me state
that had it not been for the gluttony of Lop-Ear I might have
brought about the domestication of the dog. And this was
something that the Fire People who lived to the northeast had
not yet achieved. They were without dogs; this I knew from
observation. But let me tell you how Lop-Ear's gluttony
possibly set back our social development many generations.
Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to
the south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. These were little
frequented for two reasons. First of all, there was no food
there of the kind we ate; and next, those rocky hills were
filled with the lairs of carnivorous beasts.
But Lop-Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day. We
would not have strayed had we not been teasing a tiger. Please
do not laugh. It was old Saber-Tooth himself. We were perfectly
safe. We chanced upon him in the forest, early in the morning,
and from the safety of the branches overhead we chattered down
at him our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch, and
from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an infernal row
and warning all the forest-dwellers that old Saber-Tooth was
coming.
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We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him
good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his tail, and
sometimes he paused and stared up at us quietly for a long
time, as if debating in his mind some way by which he could get
hold of us. But we only laughed and pelted him with twigs and
the ends of branches.
This tiger-baiting was common sport among the folk.
Sometimes half the horde would follow from overhead a tiger or
lion that had ventured out in the daytime. It was our revenge;
for more than one member of the horde, caught unexpectedly, had
gone the way of the tiger's belly or the lion's. Also, by such
ordeals of helplessness and shame, we taught the hunting
animals to some extent to keep out of our territory. And then
it was funny. It was a great game.
And so Lop-Ear and I had chased Saber-Tooth across three
miles of forest. Toward the last he put his tail between his
legs and fled from our gibing like a beaten cur. We did our
best to keep up with him; but when we reached the edge of the
forest he was no more than a streak in the distance.
I don't know what prompted us, unless it was curiosity;
but after playing around awhile, Lop-Ear and I ventured across
the open ground to the edge of the rocky hills. We did not go
far. Possibly at no time were we more than a hundred yards from
the trees. Coming around a sharp corner of rock (we went very
carefully, because we did not know what we might encounter), we
came upon three puppies playing in the sun.
They did not see us, and we watched them for some time.
They were wild dogs. In the rock-wall was a horizontal
fissure--evidently the lair where their mother had left them,
and where they should have remained had they been obedient. But
the growing life, that in Lop-Ear and me had impelled us to
venture away from the forest, had driven the puppies out of the
cave to frolic. I know how their mother would have punished
them had she caught them.
But it was Lop-Ear and I who caught them. He looked at me,
and then we made a dash for it. The puppies knew no place to
run except into the lair, and we headed them off. One rushed
between my legs. I squatted and grabbed him. He sank his sharp
little teeth into my arm, and I dropped him in the suddenness
of the hurt and surprise. The next moment he had scurried
inside.
Lop-Ear, struggling with the second puppy, scowled at me
and intimated by a variety of sounds the different kinds of a
fool and a bungler that I was. This made me ashamed and spurred
me to valor. I grabbed the remaining puppy by the tail. He got
his teeth into me once, and then I got him by the nape of the
neck. Lop-Ear and I sat down, and held the puppies up, and
looked at them, and laughed.
They were snarling and yelping and crying. Lop-Ear started
suddenly. He thought he had heard something. We looked at each
other in fear, realizing the danger of our position. The one
thing that made animals raging demons was tampering with their
young. And these puppies that made such a racket belonged to
the wild dogs. Well we knew them, running in packs, the terror
of the grass-eating animals. We had watched them following the
herds of cattle and bison and dragging down the calves, the
aged, and the sick. We had been chased by them ourselves, more
than once. I had seen one of the Folk, a woman, run down by
them and caught just as she reached the shelter of the woods.
Had she not been tired out by the run, she might have made it
into a tree. She tried, and slipped, and fell back. They made
short work of her.
We did not stare at each other longer than a moment.
Keeping tight hold of our prizes, we ran for the woods. Once in
the security of a tall tree, we held up the puppies and laughed
again. You see, we had to have our laugh out, no matter what
happened.
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And then began one of the hardest tasks I ever attempted.
We started to carry the puppies to our cave. Instead of using
our hands for climbing, most of the time they were occupied
with holding our squirming captives. Once we tried to walk on
the ground, but were treed by a miserable hyena, who followed
along underneath. He was a wise hyena.
Lop-Ear got an idea. He remembered how we tied up bundles
of leaves to carry home for beds. Breaking off some tough
vines, he tied his puppy's legs together, and then, with
another piece of vine passed around his neck, slung the puppy
on his back. This left him with hands and feet free to climb.
He was jubilant, and did not wait for me to finish tying my
puppy's legs, but started on. There was one difficulty,
however. The puppy wouldn't stay slung on Lop-Ear's back. It
swung around to the side and then on in front. Its teeth were
not tied, and the next thing it did was to sink its teeth into
Lop-Ear's soft
and unprotected stomach. He let out a scream, nearly
fell, and clutched a branch violently with both hands to save
himself. The vine around his neck broke, and the puppy, its
four legs still tied, dropped to the ground. The hyena
proceeded to dine.
Lop-Ear was disgusted and angry. He abused the hyena, and
then went off alone through the trees. I had no reason that I
knew for wanting to carry the puppy to the cave, except that I
WANTED to; and I stayed by my task. I made the work a great
deal easier by elaborating on Lop-Ear's idea. Not only did I
tie the puppy's legs, but I thrust a stick through his jaws and
tied them together securely.
At last I got the puppy home. I imagine I had more
pertinacity than the average Folk, or else I should not have
succeeded. They laughed at me when they saw me lugging the
puppy up to my high little cave, but I did not mind. Success
crowned my efforts, and there was the puppy. He was a plaything
such as none of the Folk possessed. He learned rapidly. When I
played with him and he bit me, I boxed his ears, and then he
did not try again to bite for a long time.
I was quite taken up with him. He was something new, and
it was a characteristic of the Folk to like new things. When I
saw that he refused fruits and vegetables, I caught birds for
him and squirrels and young rabbits. (We Folk were meat-eaters,
as well as vegetarians, and we were adept at catching small
game.) The puppy ate the meat and thrived. As well as I can
estimate, I must have had him over a week. And then, coming
back to the cave one day with a nestful of young-hatched
pheasants, I found Lop-Ear had killed the puppy and was just
beginning to eat him. I sprang for Lop-Ear,--the cave was
small,--and we went at it tooth and nail.
And thus, in a fight, ended one of the earliest attempts
to domesticate the dog. We pulled hair out in handfuls, and
scratched and bit and gouged. Then we sulked and made up. After
that we ate the puppy. Raw? Yes. We had not yet discovered
fire. Our evolution into cooking animals lay in the
tight-rolled scroll of the future.
CHAPTER IX
Red-Eye was an atavism. He was the great discordant
element in our horde. He was more primitive than any of us. He
did not belong with us, yet we were still so primitive
ourselves that we were incapable of a cooperative effort strong
enough to kill him or cast him out. Rude as was our social
organization, he was, nevertheless, too rude to live in it. He
tended always to destroy the horde by his unsocial acts. He was
really a reversion to an earlier type, and his place was with
the Tree People rather than with us who were in the process of
becoming men.
He was a monster of cruelty, which is saying a great deal
in that day. He beat his wives--not that he ever had more than
one wife at a time, but that he was married many times. It was
impossible for any woman to live with him, and yet they did
live with him, out of compulsion. There was no gainsaying him.
No man was strong enough to stand against him.
Often do I have visions of the quiet hour before the
twilight. From drinking-place and carrot patch and berry swamp
the Folk are trooping into the open space before the caves.
They dare linger no later than this, for the dreadful darkness
is approaching, in which the world is given over to the carnage
of the hunting animals, while the fore-runners of man hide
tremblingly in their holes.
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There yet remain to us a few minutes before we climb to
our caves. We are tired from the play of the day, and the
sounds we make are subdued. Even the cubs, still greedy for fun
and antics, play with restraint. The wind from the sea has died
down, and the shadows are lengthening with the last of the
sun's descent. And then, suddenly, from Red-Eye's cave, breaks
a wild screaming and the sound of blows. He is beating his
wife.
At first an awed silence comes upon us. But as the blows
and screams continue we break out into an insane gibbering of
helpless rage. It is plain that the men resent Red-Eye's
actions, but they are too afraid of him. The blows cease, and a
low groaning dies away, while we chatter among ourselves and
the sad twilight creeps upon us.
We, to whom most happenings were jokes, never laughed
during Red-Eye's wife-beatings. We knew too well the tragedy of
them. On more than one morning, at the base of the cliff, did
we find the body of his latest wife. He had tossed her there,
after she had died, from his cave-mouth. He never buried his
dead. The task of carrying away the bodies, that else would
have polluted our abiding-place, he left to the horde. We
usually flung them into the river below the last
drinking-place.
Not alone did Red-Eye murder his wives, but he also
murdered for his wives, in order to get them. When he wanted a
new wife and selected the wife of another man, he promptly
killed that man. Two of these murders I saw myself. The whole
horde knew, but could do nothing. We had not yet developed any
government, to speak of, inside the horde. We had certain
customs and visited our wrath upon the unlucky ones who
violated those customs. Thus, for example, the individual who
defiled a drinking-place would be attacked by every onlooker,
while one who deliberately gave a false alarm was the recipient
of much rough usage at our hands. But Red-Eye walked rough-shod
over all our customs, and we so feared him that we were
incapable of the collective action necessary to punish him.
It was during the sixth winter in our cave that Lop-Ear
and I discovered that we were really growing up. From the first
it had been a squeeze to get in through the entrance-crevice.
This had had its advantages, however. It had prevented the
larger Folk from taking our cave away from us. And it was a
most desirable cave, the highest on the bluff, the safest, and
in winter the smallest and warmest.
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To show the stage of the mental development of the Folk, I
may state that it would have been a simple thing for some of
them to have driven us out and enlarged the crevice-opening.
But they never thought of it. Lop-Ear and I did not think of it
either until our increasing size compelled us to make an
enlargement. This occurred when summer was well along and we
were fat with better forage. We worked at the crevice in
spells, when the fancy struck us.
At first we dug the crumbling rocks away with our fingers,
until our nails got sore, when I accidentally stumbled upon the
idea of using a piece of wood on the rock. This worked well.
Also it worked woe. One morning early, we had scratched out of
the wall quite a heap of fragments. I gave the heap a shove
over the lip of the entrance. The next moment there came up
from below a howl of rage. There was no need to look. We knew
the voice only too well. The rubbish had descended upon
Red-Eye.
We crouched down in the cave in consternation. A minute
later he was at the entrance, peering in at us with his
inflamed eyes and raging like a demon. But he was too large. He
could not get in to us. Suddenly he went away. This was
suspicious. By all we knew of Folk nature he should have
remained and had out his rage. I crept to the entrance and
peeped down. I could see him just beginning to mount the bluff
again. In one hand he carried a long stick. Before I could
divine his plan, he was back at the entrance and savagely
jabbing the stick in at us.
His thrusts were prodigious. They could have disembowelled
us. We shrank back against the side-walls, where we were almost
out of range. But by industrious poking he got us now and
again--cruel, scraping jabs with the end of the stick that
raked off the hide and hair. When we screamed with the hurt, he
roared his satisfaction and jabbed the harder.
I began to grow angry. I had a temper of my own in those
days, and pretty considerable courage, too, albeit it was
largely the courage of the cornered rat. I caught hold of the
stick with my hands, but such was his strength that he jerked
me into the crevice. He reached for me with his long arm, and
his nails tore my flesh as I leaped back from the clutch and
gained the comparative safety of the side-wall.
He began poking again, and caught me a painful blow on the
shoulder. Beyond shivering with fright and yelling when he was
hit, Lop-Ear did nothing. I looked for a stick with which to
jab back, but found only the end of a branch, an inch through
and a foot long. I threw this at Red-Eye. It did no damage,
though he howled with a sudden increase of rage at my daring to
strike back. He began jabbing furiously. I found a fragment of
rock and threw it at him, striking him on the chest.
This emboldened me, and, besides, I was now as angry as
he, and had lost all fear. I ripped fragment of rock from the
wall. The piece must have weighed two or threepounds. With my
strength I slammed it full into Red-Eye's face. It nearly
finished him. He staggered backward, dropping his stick, and
almost fell off the cliff.
He was a ferocious sight. His face was covered with blood,
and he was snarling and gnashing his fangs like a wild boar. He
wiped the blood from his eyes, caught sight of me, and roared
with fury. His stick was gone, so he began ripping out chunks
of crumbling rock and throwing them in at me. This supplied me
with ammunition. I gave him as good as he sent, and better; for
he presented a good target, while he caught only glimpses of me
as I snuggled against the side-wall.
Suddenly he disappeared again. From the lip of the cave I
saw him descending. All the horde had gathered outside and in
awed silence was looking on. As he descended, the more timid
ones scurried for their caves. I could see old Marrow-Bone
tottering along as fast as he could. Red-Eye sprang out from
the wall and finished the last twenty feet through the air. He
landed alongside a mother who was just beginning the ascent.
She screamed with fear, and the two-year-old child that was
clinging to her released its grip and rolled at Red-Eye's feet.
Both he and the mother reached for it, and he got it. The next
moment the frail little body had whirled through the air and
shattered against the wall. The mother ran to it, caught it up
in her arms, and crouched over it crying.
Red-Eye started over to pick up the stick. Old Marrow-Bone
had tottered into his way. Red-Eye's great hand shot out and
clutched the old man by the back of the neck. I looked to see
his neck broken. His body went limp as he surrendered himself
to his fate.
Red-Eye hesitated a moment, and Marrow-Bone, shivering
terribly, bowed his head and covered his face with his crossed
arms. Then Red-Eye slammed him face-downward to the ground. Old
Marrow-Bone did not struggle. He lay there crying with the fear
of death. I saw the Hairless One, out in the open space,
beating his chest and bristling, but afraid to come forward.
And then, in obedience to some whim of his erratic spirit,
Red-Eye let the old man alone and passed on and recovered the
stick.
He returned to the wall and began to climb up. Lop-Ear,
who was shivering and peeping alongside of me, scrambled back
into the cave. It was plain that Red-Eye was bent upon murder.
I was desperate and angry and fairly cool. Running back and
forth along the neighboring ledges, I gathered a heap of rocks
at the cave-entrance. Red-Eye was now several yards beneath me,
concealed for the moment by an out-jut of the cliff. As he
climbed, his head came into view, and I banged a rock down. It
missed, striking the wall and shattering; but the flying dust
and grit filled his eyes and he drew back out of view.
A chuckling and chattering arose from the horde, that
played the part of audience. At last there was one of the Folk
who dared to face Red-Eye. As their approval and acclamation
arose on the air, Red-Eye snarled down at them, and on the
instant they were subdued to silence. Encouraged by this
evidence of his power, he thrust his head into view, and by
scowling and snarling and gnashing his fangs tried to
intimidate me. He scowled horribly, contracting the scalp
strongly over the brows and bringing the hair down from the top
of the head until each hair stood apart and pointed straight
forward.
The sight chilled me, but I mastered my fear, and, with a
stone poised in my hand, threatened him back. He still tried to
advance. I drove the stone down at him and made a sheer miss.
The next shot was a success. The stone struck him on the neck.
He slipped back out of sight, but as he disappeared I could see
him clutching for a grip on the wall with one hand, and with
the other clutching at his throat. The stick fell clattering to
the ground.
I could not see him any more, though I could hear him
choking and strangling and coughing. The audience kept a
death-like silence. I crouched on the lip of the entrance and
waited. The strangling and coughing died down, and I could hear
him now and again clearing his throat. A little later he began
to climb down. He went very quietly, pausing every moment or so
to stretch his neck or to feel it with his hand.
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At the sight of him descending, the whole horde, with wild
screams and yells, stampeded for the woods. Old Marrow-Bone,
hobbling and tottering, followed behind. Red-Eye took no notice
of the flight. When he reached the ground he skirted the base
of the bluff and climbed up and into his own cave. He did not
look around once.
I stared at Lop-Ear, and he stared back. We understood
each other. Immediately, and with great caution and quietness,
we began climbing up the cliff. When we reached the top we
looked back. The abiding-place was deserted, Red-Eye remained
in his cave, and the horde had disappeared in the depths of the
forest.
We turned and ran. We dashed across the open spaces and
down the slopes unmindful of possible snakes in the grass,
until we reached the woods. Up into the trees we went, and on
and on, swinging our arboreal flight until we had put miles
between us and the caves. And then, and not till then, in the
security of a great fork, we paused, looked at each other, and
began to laugh. We held on to each other, arms and legs, our
eyes streaming tears, our ,sides aching, and laughed and
laughed and laughed.
CHAPTER X
After we had had out our laugh, Lop-Ear and I curved back
in our flight and got breakfast in the blueberry swamp. It was
the same swamp to which I had made my first journeys in the
world, years before, accompanied by my mother. I had seen
little of her in the intervening time. Usually, when she
visited the horde at the caves, I was away in the forest. I had
once or twice caught glimpses of the Chatterer in the open
space, and had had the pleasure of making faces at him and
angering him from the mouth of my cave. Beyond such amenities I
had left my family severely alone. I was not much interested in
it, and anyway I was doing very well by myself.
After eating our fill of berries, with two nestfuls of
partly hatched quail-eggs for dessert, Lop-Ear and I wandered
circumspectly into the woods toward the river. Here was where
stood my old home-tree, out of which I had been thrown by the
Chatterer. It was still occupied. There had been increase in
the family. Clinging tight to my mother was a little baby.
Also, there was a girl, partly grown, who cautiously regarded
us from one of the lower branches. She was evidently my sister,
or half-sister, rather.
My mother recognized me, but she warned me away when I
started to climb into the tree. Lop-Ear, who was more cautious
by far than I, beat a retreat, nor could I persuade him to
return. Later in the day, however, my sister came down to the
ground, and there and in neighboring trees we romped and played
all afternoon. And then came trouble. She was my sister, but
that did not prevent her from treating me abominably, for she
had inherited all the viciousness of the Chatterer. She turned
upon me suddenly, in a petty rage, and scratched me, tore my
hair, and sank her sharp little teeth deep into my forearm. I
lost my temper. I did not injure her, but it was undoubtedly
the soundest spanking she had received up to that time.
How she yelled and squalled. The Chatterer, who had been
away all day and who was only then returning, heard the noise
and rushed for the spot. My mother also rushed, but he got
there first. Lop-Ear and I did not wait his coming. We were off
and away, and the Chatterer gave us the chase of our lives
through the trees.
After the chase was over, and Lop-Ear and I had had out
our laugh, we discovered that twilight was falling. Here was
night with all its terrors upon us, and to return to the caves
was out of the question. Red-Eye made that impossible. We took
refuge in a tree that stood apart from other trees, and high up
in a fork we passed the night. It was a miserable night. For
the first few hours it rained heavily, then it turned cold and
a chill wind blew upon us. Soaked through, with shivering
bodies and chattering teeth, we huddled in each other's arms.
We missed the snug, dry cave that so quickly warmed with the
heat of our bodies.
Morning found us wretched and resolved. We would not spend
another such night. Remembering the tree-shelters of our
elders, we set to work to make one for ourselves. We built the
framework of a rough nest, and on higher forks overhead even
got in several ridge-poles for the roof. Then the sun came out,
and under its benign influence we forgot the hardships of the
night and went off in search of breakfast. After that, to show
the inconsequentiality of life in those days, we fell to
playing. It must have taken us all of a month, working
intermittently, to make our tree-house; and then, when it was
completed, we never used it again.
But I run ahead of my story. When we fell to playing,
after breakfast, on the second day away from the caves, Lop-Ear
led me a chase through the trees and down to the river. We came
out upon it where a large slough entered from the blueberry
swamp. The mouth of this slough was wide, while the slough
itself was practically without a current. In the dead water,
just inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks. Some
of these, what of the wear and tear of freshets and of being
stranded long summers on sand-bars, were seasoned and dry and
without branches. They floated high in the water, and bobbed up
and down or rolled over when we put our weight upon them.
Here and there between the trunks were water-cracks, and
through them we could see schools of small fish, like minnows,
darting back and forth. Lop-Ear and I became fishermen at once.
Lying flat on the logs, keeping perfectly quiet, waiting till
the minnows came close, we would make swift passes with our
hands. Our prizes we ate on the spot, wriggling and moist. We
did not notice the lack of salt.
The mouth of the slough became our favorite playground.
Here we spent many hours each day, catching fish and playing on
the logs, and here, one day, we learned our first lessons in
navigation. The log on which Lop-Ear was lying got adrift. He
was curled up on his side, asleep. A light fan of air slowly
drifted the log away from the shore, and when I noticed his
predicament the distance was already too great for him to leap.
At first the episode seemed merely funny to me. But when
one of the vagrant impulses of fear, common in that age of
perpetual insecurity, moved within me, I was struck with my own
loneliness. I was made suddenly aware of Lop-Ear's remoteness
out there on that alien element a few feet away. I called
loudly to him a warning cry. He awoke frightened, and shifted
his weight rashly on the log. It turned over, sousing him
under. Three times again it soused him under as he tried to
climb out upon it. Then he succeeded, crouching upon it and
chattering with fear.
I could do nothing. Nor could he. Swimming was something
of which we knew nothing. We were already too far removed from
the lower life-forms to have the instinct for swimming, and we
had not yet become sufficiently man-like to undertake it as the
working out of a problem. I roamed disconsolately up and down
the bank, keeping as close to him in his involuntary travels as
I could, while he wailed and cried till it was a wonder that he
did not bring down upon us every hunting animal within a mile.
The hours passed. The sun climbed overhead and began its
descent to the west. The light wind died down and left Lop-Ear
on his log floating around a hundred feet away. And then,
somehow, I know not how, Lop-Ear made the great discovery. He
began paddling with his hands. At first his progress was slow
and erratic. Then he straightened out and began laboriously to
paddle nearer and nearer. I could not understand. I sat down
and watched and waited until he gained the shore.
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But he had learned something, which was more than I had
done. Later in the afternoon, he deliberately launched out from
shore on the log. Still later he persuaded me to join him, and
I, too, learned the trick of paddling. For the next several
days we could not tear ourselves away from the slough. So
absorbed were we in our new game that we almost neglected to
eat. We even roosted in a nearby tree at night. And we forgot
that Red-Eye existed.
We were always trying new logs, and we learned that the
smaller the log the faster we could make it go. Also, we
learned that the smaller the log the more liable it was to roll
over and give us a ducking. Still another thing about small
logs we learned. One day we paddled our individual logs
alongside each other. And then, quite by accident, in the
course of play, we discovered that when each, with one hand and
foot, held on to the other's log, the logs were steadied and
did not turn over. Lying side by side in this position, our
outside hands and feet were left free for paddling. Our final
discovery was that this arrangement enabled us to use still
smaller logs and thereby gain greater speed. And there our
discoveries ended. We had invented the most primitive
catamaran, and we did not have sense enough to know it. It
never entered our heads to lash the logs together with tough
vines or stringy roots. We were content to hold the logs
together with our hands and feet.
It was not until we got over our first enthusiasm for
navigation and had begun to return to our tree-shelter to sleep
at night, that we found the Swift One. I saw her first,
gathering young acorns from the branches of a large oak near
our tree. She was very timid. At first, she kept very still;
but when she saw that she was discovered she dropped to the
ground and dashed wildly away. We caught occasional glimpses of
her from day to day, and came to look for her when we travelled
back and forth between our tree and the mouth of the slough.
And then, one day, she did not run away. She waited our
coming, and made soft peace-sounds. We could not get very near,
however. When we seemed to approach too close, she darted
suddenly away and from a safe distance uttered the soft sounds
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