________________________________________________
_ While the more courageous of the youngsters played in
and out of the large-mouthed caves, I early learned
that such caves were unoccupied. No one slept in them
at night. Only the crevice-mouthed caves were used,
the narrower the mouth the better. This was from fear
of the preying animals that made life a burden to us in
those days and nights.
The first morning, after my night's sleep with Lop-Ear,
I learned the advantage of the narrow-mouthed caves.
It was just daylight when old Saber-Tooth, the tiger,
walked into the open space. Two of the Folk were
already up. They made a rush for it. Whether they
were panic-stricken, or whether he was too close on
their heels for them to attempt to scramble up the
bluff to the crevices, I do not know; but at any rate
they dashed into the wide-mouthed cave wherein Lop-Ear
and I had played the afternoon before.
What happened inside there was no way of telling, but
it is fair to conclude that the two Folk slipped
through the connecting crevice into the other cave.
This crevice was too small to allow for the passage of
Saber-Tooth, and he came out the way he had gone in,
unsatisfied and angry. It was evident that his night's
hunting had been unsuccessful and that he had expected
to make a meal off of us. He caught sight of the two
Folk at the other cave-mouth and sprang for them. Of
course, they darted through the passageway into the
first cave. He emerged angrier than ever and snarling.
Pandemonium broke loose amongst the rest of us. All up
and down the great bluff, we crowded the crevices and
outside ledges, and we were all chattering and
shrieking in a thousand keys. And we were all making
faces--snarling faces; this was an instinct with us.
We were as angry as Saber-Tooth, though our anger was
allied with fear. I remember that I shrieked and made
faces with the best of them. Not only did they set the
example, but I felt the urge from within me to do the
same things they were doing. My hair was bristling,
and I was convulsed with a fierce, unreasoning rage.
For some time old Saber-Tooth continued dashing in and
out of first the one cave and then the other. But the
two Folk merely slipped back and forth through the
connecting crevice and eluded him. In the meantime the
rest of us up the bluff had proceeded to action. Every
time he appeared outside we pelted him with rocks. At
first we merely dropped them on him, but we soon began
to whiz them down with the added force of our muscles.
This bombardment drew Saber-Tooth's attention to us and
made him angrier than ever. He abandoned his pursuit
of the two Folk and sprang up the bluff toward the rest
of us, clawing at the crumbling rock and snarling as he
clawed his upward way. At this awful sight, the last
one of us sought refuge inside our caves. I know this,
because I peeped out and saw the whole bluff-side
deserted, save for Saber-Tooth, who had lost his
footing and was sliding and falling down.
I called out the cry of encouragement, and again the
bluff was covered by the screaming horde and the stones
were falling faster than ever. Saber-Tooth was frantic
with rage. Time and again he assaulted the bluff.
Once he even gained the first crevice-entrances before
he fell back, but was unable to force his way inside.
With each upward rush he made, waves of fear surged
over us. At first, at such times, most of us dashed
inside; but some remained outside to hammer him with
stones, and soon all of us remained outside and kept up
the fusillade.
Never was so masterly a creature so completely baffled.
It hurt his pride terribly, thus to be outwitted by the
small and tender Folk. He stood on the ground and
looked up at us, snarling, lashing his tail, snapping
at the stones that fell near to him. Once I whizzed
down a stone, and just at the right moment he looked
up. It caught him full on the end of his nose, and he
went straight up in the air, all four feet of him,
roaring and caterwauling, what of the hurt and
surprise.
He was beaten and he knew it. Recovering his dignity,
he stalked out solemnly from under the rain of stones.
He stopped in the middle of the open space and looked
wistfully and hungrily back at us. He hated to forego
the meal, and we were just so much meat, cornered but
inaccessible. This sight of him started us to
laughing. We laughed derisively and uproariously, all
of us. Now animals do not like mockery. To be laughed
at makes them angry. And in such fashion our laughter
affected Saber-Tooth. He turned with a roar and
charged the bluff again. This was what we wanted. The
fight had become a game, and we took huge delight in
pelting him.
But this attack did not last long. He quickly
recovered his common sense, and besides, our missiles
were shrewd to hurt. Vividly do I recollect the vision
of one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut by one
of the stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retain
the picture of him as he stood on the edge of the
forest whither he had finally retreated. He was
looking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clear of
the very roots of his huge fangs, his hair bristling
and his tail lashing. He gave one last snarl and slid
from view among the trees.
And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed out
of our holes, examining the marks his claws had made on
the crumbling rock of the bluff, all of us talking at
once. One of the two Folk who had been caught in the
double cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.
They had come out proudly from their refuge, and we
surrounded them in an admiring crowd. Then the young
fellow's mother broke through and fell upon him in a
tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, and
shrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman,
very hairy, and the thrashing she gave him was a
delight to the horde. We roared with laughter, holding
on to one another or rolling on the ground in our glee.
In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the
Folk were always great laughers. We had the sense of
humor. Our merriment was Gargantuan. It was never
restrained. There was nothing half way about it. When
a thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation
of it, and the simplest, crudest things were funny to
us. Oh, we were great laughers, I can tell you.
The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we
treated all animals that invaded the village. We kept
our run-ways and drinking-places to ourselves by making
life miserable for the animals that trespassed or
strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest
hunting animals we so bedevilled that they learned to
leave our places alone. We were not fighters like
them; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was because
of our cunning and cowardice, and our inordinate
capacity for fear, that we survived in that frightfully
hostile environment of the Younger World.
Lop-Ear, I figure, was a year older than I. What his
past history was he had no way of telling me, but as I
never saw anything of his mother I believed him to be
an orphan. After all, fathers did not count in our
horde. Marriage was as yet in a rude state, and
couples had a way of quarrelling and separating.
Modern man, what of his divorce institution, does the
same thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom was
all we went by, and our custom in this particular
matter was rather promiscuous .
Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, we
betrayed glimmering adumbrations of the monogamy that
was later to give power to, and make mighty, such
tribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at the time I
was born, there were several faithful couples that
lived in the trees in the neighborhood of my mother.
Living in the thick of the horde did not conduce to
monogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly, that
the faithful couples went away and lived by themselves.
Through many years these couples stayed together,
though when the man or woman died or was eaten the
survivor invariably found a new mate.
There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during the
first days of my residence in the horde. There was a
nameless and incommunicable fear that rested upon all.
At first it appeared to be connected wholly with
direction. The horde feared the northeast. It lived
in perpetual apprehension of that quarter of the
compass. And every individual gazed more frequently
and with greater alarm in that direction than in any
other.
When Lop-Ear and I went toward the north-east to eat
the stringy-rooted carrots that at that season were at
their best, he became unusually timid. He was content
to eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and the
little ropy ones, rather than to venture a short
distance farther on to where the carrots were as yet
untouched. When I so ventured, he scolded me and
quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in
that direction was some horrible danger, but just what
the horrible danger was his paucity of language would
not permit him to say.
Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while he
scolded and chattered vainly at me. I could not
understand. I kept very alert, but I could see no
danger. I calculated always the distance between
myself and the nearest tree, and knew that to that
haven of refuge I could out-foot the Tawny One, or old
Saber-Tooth, did one or the other suddenly appear.
One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproar
arose. The horde was animated with a single emotion,
that of fear. The bluff-side swarmed with the Folk,
all gazing and pointing into the northeast. I did not
know what it was, but I scrambled all the way up to the
safety of my own high little cave before ever I turned
around to see.
And then, across the river, away into the northeast, I
saw for the first time the mystery of smoke. It was
the biggest animal I had ever seen. I thought it was a
monster snake, up-ended, rearing its head high above
the trees and swaying back and forth. And yet,
somehow, I seemed to gather from the conduct of the
Folk that the smoke itself was not the danger. They
appeared to fear it as the token of something else.
What this something else was I was unable to guess.
Nor could they tell me. Yet I was soon to know, and I
was to know it as a thing more terrible than the Tawny
One, than old Saber-Tooth, than the snakes themselves,
than which it seemed there could be no things more
terrible. _
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