________________________________________________
_ Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived by
himself. His mother lived in the caves, but two more
children had come after him and he had been thrust out
to shift for himself. We had witnessed the performance
during the several preceding days, and it had given us
no little glee. Broken-Tooth did not want to go, and
every time his mother left the cave he sneaked back
into it. When she returned and found him there her
rages were delightful. Half the horde made a practice
of watching for these moments. First, from within the
cave, would come her scolding and shrieking. Then we
could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling of
Broken-Tooth. About this time the two younger children
joined in. And finally, like the eruption of a
miniature volcano, Broken-Tooth would come flying out.
At the end of several days his leaving home was
accomplished. He wailed his grief, unheeded, from the
centre of the open space, for at least half an hour,
and then came to live with Lop-Ear and me. Our cave was
small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I
have no recollection of Broken-Tooth spending more than
one night with us, so the accident must have happened
right away.
It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we
had eaten our fill of the carrots, and then, made
heedless by play, we had ventured on to the big trees
just beyond. I cannot understand how Lop-Ear got over
his habitual caution, but it must have been the play.
We were having a great time playing tree tag. And such
tag! We leaped ten or fifteen-foot gaps as a matter of
course. And a twenty or twenty-five foot deliberate
drop clear down to the ground was nothing to us. In
fact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances we
dropped. As we grew older and heavier we found we had
to be more cautious in dropping, but at that age our
bodies were all strings and springs and we could do
anything.
Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game.
He was "It" less frequently than any of us, and in the
course of the game he discovered one difficult "slip"
that neither Lop-Ear nor I was able to accomplish. To
be truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.
When we were "It," Broken-Tooth always ran out to the
end of a lofty branch in a certain tree. From the end
of the branch to the ground it must have been seventy
feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall. But
about twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet
out from the perpendicular, was the thick branch of
another tree.
As we ran out the limb, Broken-Tooth, facing us, would
begin teetering. This naturally impeded our progress;
but there was more in the teetering than that. He
teetered with his back to the jump he was to make.
Just as we nearly reached him he would let go. The
teetering branch was like a spring-board. It threw him
far out, backward, as he fell. And as he fell he
turned around sidewise in the air so as to face the
other branch into which he was falling. This branch
bent far down under the impact, and sometimes there was
an ominous crackling; but it never broke, and out of
the leaves was always to be seen the face of
Broken-Tooth grinning triumphantly up at us.
I was "It" the last time Broken-Tooth tried this. He
had gained the end of the branch and begun his
teetering, and I was creeping out after him, when
suddenly there came a low warning cry from Lop-Ear. I
looked down and saw him in the main fork of the tree
crouching close against the trunk. Instinctively I
crouched down upon the thick limb. Broken-Tooth
stopped teetering, but the branch would not stop, and
his body continued bobbing up and down with the
rustling leaves.
I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down saw
my first Fire-Man. He was creeping stealthily along on
the ground and peering up into the tree. At first I
thought he was a wild animal, because he wore around
his waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece of
bearskin. And then I saw his hands and feet, and more
clearly his features. He was very much like my kind,
except that he was less hairy and that his feet were
less like hands than ours. In fact, he and his people,
as I was later to know, were far less hairy than we,
though we, in turn, were equally less hairy than the
Tree People.
It came to me instantly, as I looked at him. This was
the terror of the northeast, of which the mystery of
smoke was a token. Yet I was puzzled. Certainly he
was nothing; of which to be afraid. Red-Eye or any of
our strong men would have been more than a match for
him. He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hair
on his face was gray. Also, he limped badly with one
leg. There was no doubt at all that we could out-run
him and out-climb him. He could never catch us, that
was certain.
But he carried something in his hand that I had never
seen before. It was a bow and arrow. But at that time
a bow and arrow had no meaning for me. How was I to
know that death lurked in that bent piece of wood? But
Lop-Ear knew. He had evidently seen the Fire People
before and knew something of their ways. The Fire-Man
peered up at him and circled around the tree. And
around the main trunk above the fork Lop-Ear circled
too, keeping always the trunk between himself and the
Fire-Man.
The latter abruptly reversed his circling. Lop-Ear,
caught unawares, also hastily reversed, but did not win
the protection of the trunk until after the Fire-Man
had twanged the bow.
I saw the arrow leap up, miss Lop-Ear, glance against a
limb, and fall back to the ground. I danced up and
down on my lofty perch with delight. It was a game!
The Fire-Man was throwing things at Lop-Ear as we
sometimes threw things at one another.
The game continued a little longer, but Lop-Ear did not
expose himself a second time. Then the Fire-Man gave
it up. I leaned far out over my horizontal limb and
chattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wanted to
have him try to hit me with the thing. He saw me, but
ignored me, turning his attention to Broken-Tooth, who
was still teetering slightly and involuntarily on the
end of the branch.
The first arrow leaped upward. Broken-Tooth yelled
with fright and pain. It had reached its mark. This
put a new complexion on the matter. I no longer cared
to play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. A
second arrow and a third soared up, missing
Broken-Tooth, rustling the leaves as they passed
through, arching in their flight and returning to
earth.
The Fire-Man stretched his bow again. He shifted his
position, walking away several steps, then shifted it a
second time. The bow-string twanged, the arrow leaped
upward, and Broken-Tooth, uttering a terrible scream,
fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down,
turning over and over, all arms and legs it seemed, the
shaft of the arrow projecting from his chest and
appearing and disappearing with each revolution of his
body.
Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing
to the earth with an audible thud and crunch, his body
rebounding slightly and settling down again. Still he
lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his
hands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running
forward with a stone and hammering him on the
head...and then I remember no more.
Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the
dream, did I wake up screaming with fright--to find,
often, my mother or nurse, anxious and startled, by my
bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair 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. _
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