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_ 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.
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.
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.
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. _
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