CHAPTER III
THE FINDING OF FIRE
I
The people of the Little Hills were in extremity. Trouble aftertrouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, tillnow there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice thatnumber of women able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked asif but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them mustwipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it,would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of yearsto repair. For the People of the Little Hills had climbed higher fromthe pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at thattime struggling into being on the youthful Earth.
First and not least formidable to the tribe had been an incursion fromthe east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still moreplainly beasts. Had the tribe of the Little Hills but known it, theseApe-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness oftheir skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skullsand the heavy forward thrust of their lower jaws.
Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say just where, camea scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers anda few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not onlyslaughtered wholesale the game on which the Hillmen most depended,but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. Asthey raged against each other no less desperately than againsttheir human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt.The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunningof pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheerweight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When thelast of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek lessdifficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves.
This war had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summerof peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. Butwith winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from theunfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting insuch huge packs that many outlying sections of the tribe were cut offand devoured before the Hillmen could combine to withstand them.Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after thefirst shock the sagacious warrior who ruled the men of the LittleHills was able to get his diminished followers together, along withmost of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater ofthe central caves.
So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then suddenly the wolves,having exterminated or driven off all the game among the Little Hills,once more took the trail, though with diminished ranks, and swept offravaging to the south-westward. The People of the Little Hills werefree once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game tohunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in thereeking marshes by the estuary. The tribe was driven to fumbling inthe pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet whichtheir souls despised and their bodies resented.
The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the tribe toconcentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfullydisguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all overtheir domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardesttrial would surely have annihilated them.
It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trailof the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of asummer's day a woman of the tribe was grubbing for roots with apointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by apair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, shortbow-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young andvigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on thehead, which was not before both her assailants were streaming withblood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had arousedthe tribe, however, and her captors, appreciating in her a shapelinessand fairness beyond anything they had ever seen in their own females,hastened to make sure of their prize by dragging her off into thewoods. Three of the Hillmen, raging in pursuit, were intercepted by ahorde of the squat strangers suddenly leaping from the thickets,surrounded, pulled down after a heaving convulsion of struggle, tornto pieces and trodden into the earth.
The Chief of the tribe, from his vantage at the top of the slope whichled up to the little amphitheater of caves wherein he had gathered hispeople, saw and understood. The perils of the past two years had madehim cool and provident. One look at those foul and shaggy hordes,leaping like beasts, had told him that this was to be a battle to thedeath. Angrily beating back the hotheads who would have rushed down toavenge their kin and inevitably to share their fate, his shouts,bellowed sonorously from his deep and hairy chest, called up the wholetribe to the defense of the bottle-neck pass which led into theamphitheater. At a word, passed on breathlessly from mouth to mouth,the old men and the old women, with some of the bigger children,swarmed up among the rocks and ledges which formed the two walls ofthe pass, while others raced about collecting stones to hand up tothem. The younger women and grown girls, armed, like the men, withstone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears, took their places in thehinder ranks at the mouth of the pass.
The Bow-legs, their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts ofcoarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, cameplunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused massesalong the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other andmaking insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. Thehair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inkyblackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, whichwere for the most part of a dark brown or ruddy hue.
In other respects the contrast was still more striking, the Hillmen,erect and straight, were taller than their bestial-looking opponentsby a foot or fifteen inches. With less breadth of shoulder andheaviness of trunk, they had great depth of chest, great musculardevelopment in arm and leg, and a leanness of flank that gave them alook of breed. Their skins, very hairy in the case of the mature men,were of a reddish-tan color, paling to pink and cream in the childrenand younger women. They had ample foreheads under the wild thatch oftheir hair, and high, well-bridged noses, and fierce, steady eyes ofgreen, blue or brown-gray. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, and shrewdenough to see at a glance what ferocious power lurked in thosemisshapen frames at the foot of the slope, they stood staring downupon them in silence, with an undaunted loathing.
For some minutes the hordes of the Bow-legs clustered together,jabbering and waving their crude but massive clubs excitedly. Theyseemed to have no chief, no plan of attack, no discipline of any sort.Some of them even squatted down on the turf and scratched themselveslike monkeys, glaring malignantly but stupidly at the little array oftheir opponents, and snorting through their hideous upturned nostrils,which were little more than wide, red pits in their faces. Then someof those who were squatting on the ground began to play with adreadful red ball which had some wisps of hair yet clinging to it.
A snarling roar went up from the ranks of the Hillmen, and some ofthem would have rushed to accept the ghastly challenge. But theChief held them back sternly. Then he himself, half a head tallerthan all but one or two of his followers, with magnificent chest andshoulders, and a dark, lionlike mane thick-streaked with grey,strode out three or four paces to the front and stood leaning on hishuge, porphyry-headed club while he glared down contemptuously overthe gesticulating horde.
The Bow-legs stilled their jabbering for a moment to stare withinterest at this imposing figure. Then one of those who were seated onthe ground seized the ghastly ball that they were playing with,whirled it by the hair and hurled it two-thirds of the way up theslope. As it fell and rebounded, two young women sprang from theranks, their thick locks streaming like a cloud behind them, anddashed down the hill to meet it. The foremost caught it up, clutchedit to her naked breast, and screamed a curse upon the gapingmurderers. Then the two fled back, and were lost in the ranks of theHillmen.
The sight of the two women, with their bright skins, their strong,straight
limbs and their rich, floating hair, appeared to give theBow-legs just the spur to concerted action that they were needing.They rightly judged there were more of those desirable beings in thecrowd behind that tall, contemptuous chief. Those on the groundscrambled eagerly to their feet, and with shrill, bestial yells thewhole horde charged up the slope.
As the leaping and hideous forms approached the top the pent-up furyof the Hillmen, in spite of all the Chief could do, broke loose, andwith a roar the foremost ranks bounded forth to meet them. At thefirst crash of contact the enemy were crushed back, the stone-headedclubs and flint-tipped spears working havoc in the reeking masses.But, as the Chief had foreseen it would be, that forward rush was amistake, exposing the flanks; and sheer weight of numbers presentlyforced the Hillmen back till their front was once more level with thejaws of the pass. Here, however, with their flanks protected, theywere solid as a wall of granite.
Upon this narrow wall the yelling wave of the attack surged andrecoiled, and surged again, and made no impression. The clumsy weaponsof the enemy were no match for the pounding swing of the stone clubs,the long, lightning thrust of the flint-headed spears. But theBow-legs, their little pig-eyes red with lust for their prey, foughtwith a sort of frenzy, diving in headlong and clutching at the legs ofthe Hillmen with their ape-like, sinewy arms, dragging them down andtearing then with crooked, clawlike fingers.
Many of the Hillmen, and some women died in this way. But no woman wasdragged away alive; for if this fate threatened her, and rescue wasimpossible, she was instantly speared from her own ranks to save herfrom a fate which would have dishonored the tribe. And the womenindeed, in this battle were no less formidable than the menthemselves, for they fought with the swift venom of the she-wolf, thecunning fury of the mad heifer, intuitive and implacable. Theirinstincts of motherhood, the safeguard of the future, made them loathewith a blind, unspeakable hate these filthy and bestial males whothreatened to father their children.
The center of the Hillmen's front was securely held by the greatChief, whose massive club, wielded with the art acquired in manybattles, kept a space cleared before him across which no foe couldpass alive. As his followers went down on either side, others from theranks behind stepped eagerly into the gaps. At the extreme left, wherethe walls of the pass, lower and less abrupt than on the right,invited an attack as fierce as that upon the center, the defense wasled by a warrior named Grom, who seemed no less redoubtable than theChief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, savinghis breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command orencouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of theChief, kept a zone of death before him.
But his club was much smaller than that shattering mace of porphyrywielded by the Chief--smaller and lighter, considerably longer in thehandle and quite of another pattern. The head was of flint, a sort ofragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the headwas like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neatweapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it,now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, nowsuddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle toreach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club andspear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its beingwrenched from him in the melee, he held it secured to his wrist by athong of hide.
This warrior, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter andfighter, was second only to that of the great Chief himself, had neveraroused the Chief's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had alwaysloyally supported the Chief's authority, instead of scheming toundermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline.He was not so tall as the Chief, by perhaps half a handbreadth, andfor all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of aslimmer build; wherefore the Chief, while vastly respecting hiscounsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the timeof the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave,quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontierdefense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightlyyounger than the Chief, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense,ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless lookedolder, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity ofthe eyes.
In his remote cave Grom had had the companionship of his family,consisting of his old mother, his two wives, and his four children--threesons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expeditionthat the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolatedfamily, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out.
Conspicuous among the fighters at Grom's back was a young girl, tall,with a fair skin and masses of long, very dark hair. Armed with aspear, she fought savagely, but at the same time managed to keep aneye on all the warrior's movements.
Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry. To Grom's ears itseemed like the voice of one of his dead children. At the end of along stroke, when his arms and the club were outstretched full length,he glanced upwards in spite of himself. Instantly the club wasclutched by furious hands. He was pulled forward. At the same time oneof the enemy, ducking under his arms, plunged between his legs. And hecame down upon his face.
With a piercing scream, the tall girl bounded forth and stood acrosshim; and her spear stabbed his nearest assailant straight through theflat and grinning face. So lightning swift was the rage of her attackthat for one vital moment it held the whole horde at bay. Then theHillmen swarmed forward irresistibly, battered down the foremost ofthe foe, and dragged the fallen warrior back behind the lines torecover. In half a minute he was once more at the front, fighting withrenewed fury, his head and back and shoulders covered with blood. Andclose behind him stood the girl, breathless, clutching at her heartand staring at him with wide eyes, unaware that the blood whichcovered him was not his but her own.
Although to the invaders, their every charge broken and hurled backwith terrific slaughter, it must have seemed that their tall opponentshad all the best of the battle, to the wise old men and women up amongthe rocks it was clear that their warriors were being rapidly wornaway as a bank is eaten by the waves. But now from a high ledge on theright, where the wall of the pass was a sheer perpendicular, came twoshrill whistles. It was a signal which the Chief, now bleeding frommany wounds, had been waiting for. He roared a command, and his ranks,after one surge forward to recover their wounded, gave back sullenlytill their front was more than half-way down the pass. With yells oftriumph the Bow-legs followed, trampling their dead and wounded, tillthe bottle-neck was packed so tightly that there was no room to move.
From the left wall a ceaseless shower of stones came down upon theirheads; but from the right, for a few moments, only a rain of pebblesand dust, which blinded them and choked their hideous, upturnednostrils.
Above that dust a band of graybeards heaved upon a lever. They gruntedand strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on theirforeheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face beganto slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long,white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recoverthemselves in time, fell sprawling forward. Then with a thunderousgrowl a huge slab of rock and earth and debris crashed down upon thepacked hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went upfrom the Hillmen. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a secondor two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming,down the slope. On their heels the Hillmen pursued, slaughtering, tillthe brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly ascore escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migranthosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story theytold was of a tribe of tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in war,who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. Andthereafter, for a time, the Bow-legged hosts changed the path of theirmigration, sweeping far to the southward to avoid the land of theLittle Hills.
II
A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, where
the scarred remnant of the tribe of the Little Hills, squatting beforetheir cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverentlyburied, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder ofthe downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and otherscavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of theslain invaders.
Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old menand the women who had borne children being listened to as attentivelyas the warriors. The Chief, sitting on a rock which raised him abovethe rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all,glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing allsuggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Grom, leaning on hisclub, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.
Suddenly the Chief uttered a sharp word, and the tribe fell silent. Herose, yet stiff from his wounds, and, towering masterfully over thecouncil announced his decision.
"I have heard much foolishness," said he, "but also some wisdom. Andthe greatest wisdom has come from the lips of my father yonder, Alpthe old." He pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head was hiddenunder a mass of white hair. "My father's eyes are blind with age," hecontinued, "but behind their darkness they see many things that wecannot see. They have seen that all these disasters which have latelycome upon us have come out of the east. They see that there must be areason. They see that other terrible dangers must also be coming outof the east, and that we People of the Little Hills lie in their path.How many more can we withstand, and live? Not one more. Therefore, Isay we will leave this place, this home of our fathers, and we will gotoward the setting sun, and find a new home far from our enemies tillwe can grow strong again. I have said it."
As he sat down there was a low murmur, many thinking he was right;while others, not daring to dissent quite openly, yet were angry andafraid at the idea of leaving their familiar dwellings. But Grom, whohad turned on his club and listened to the Chief with shining eyes,now stepped forward into the circle and spoke.
"Bawr is our Chief," said he, in a clear, calm voice; "not onlybecause he is our mightiest in war, but because he is also our wisestin counsel. When do we go?"
The Chief thought for a moment. For the murmurs of the dissidents hecared nothing, having made up his mind. But he was glad of Grom'ssupport.
"Two moons hence," he answered presently. "Our wounded must be healed,for we must be strong on the journey. And as we go far, and know notwhere we go, we must gather much food to carry with us. When the moonis twice again full, we leave these caves and the Land of the LittleHills."
"Then," said Grom, "if Bawr will allow me, I will go and find a placefor us, and come again quickly and lead the tribe thither by theshortest way."
"It is good!" said Bawr, quick to see what dangerous wanderings mightbe spared to the tribe by this plan. "When will you go?"
"In to-morrow's morning-red," answered Grom.
At Grom's words, the young girl, A-ya, who had been watching thewarrior where he stood aloof, sprang to her feet in sharp agitationand clutched her dark hair to her bosom in two great handfuls. At thisa huge youth, who had been squatting as close as possible to the girl,and eyeing her averted face greedily, jumped up with a jealous scowl.
"Grom is a traitor!" he cried. "He deserts us in our need. Let him notgo, Chief!"
A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The girl faced round uponhim with blazing eyes. Grom gave him an indifferent glance, and turnedaway, half smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club, and saidcoldly:
"Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Grom is a true man. Heshall do as he will."
The youth's heavy features worked angrily for a moment as he soughtwords for a further attack. Then his face smoothed into a grin as heremembered that from so perilous a venture it was most unlikely hisrival would ever return. He gave a crafty side-glance at the girl, andsat down again, while she turned her back upon him. At a sign from theChief the council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, intotheir caves.
* * * * *
As the first pink light crept up the sky, Grom set forth on hismysterious venture. It was just such a venture as his sanguine andinquiring spirit, avid of the unknown, had always dreamed of. Butnever before had he had such an object before him as seemed to justifythe long risk. There was all a boy's eagerness in his deep eyes, undertheir shaggy brows, as he slipped noiselessly out of the bottle-neck,picked his way lightly over the well-gnawed bones of the slaininvaders, turned his back on the sunrise, and took his course up theedge of the stream. The weapons he carried were his war-club, twolight, flint-headed hunting-spears and a flint knife hung from hiswolf-skin girdle.
All that day, till mid-afternoon, he journeyed swiftly, straightahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch andto avoid dark coverts whence tiger or leopard might spring upon him.He was in a region which he had often hunted over, and where he feltat home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and whenhe wished to rest he climbed into a tree for security.
Several times during the day he had had a sensation of being followed;and, turning quickly, he had run back, in the hope of detecting hispursuer. But when he found no one, he concluded that it was merely oneof the ghosts the tribe so feared, but whom he himself rather held incontempt as futile.
Long before noon he had forsaken the brook, because its course hadceased to lead him westward. In the afternoon he reached a river whichmarked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swiftwater, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded itwith some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution,oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yetwas in no way greatly changed.
As the sun got low, Grom cast about for a safe tree in whose top topass the perilous hours of dark. As he stared around him a cry of fearcame from the bunch of woods which he had just quitted. The voice wasa woman's. He ran back. The next second the trees parted, and a girlcame rushing towards him, her dark hair streaming behind her. Closeafter her came three huge cave-wolves.
Grom shouted, and hurled a spear. It struck one of the wolves full inthe chest, splitting the heart. At this the other two haltedirresolutely. But as Grom's tall figure came bounding down upon them,their indecision vanished. They wheeled about, and ran off into thethickets. The girl came forward timorously, and knelt at Grom's feet.
At first with wonder and some annoyance, the warrior looked down uponher. Then recognition came into his eyes. He saw the tip of a deepwound on her shoulder, and knew that it ran, livid and angry, half-waydown her bosom. It was the young girl A-ya. His eyes softened, for hehad heard how it was she who had saved him in the battle, fighting sofuriously over him when he was down--she in whose blood he had foundhis shoulders bathed. Yet up to that time he had never noticed her,his mind being full of other matters than women. Now he looked at herand wondered. He was sorely afraid of being hampered in his greatenterprise, but he asked her gently why she had followed him.
"I was afraid for you," she answered, without looking up. "You go tosuch great dangers. I could not stay with the tribe, and wait."
"You think I need help?" he asked, with a self-confident look in hiseyes.
"You did need me in the battle!" answered the girl proudly.
"True!" said Grom. "But for you I should now have been sleeping underthe stones and the wind."
He looked at her with a feeling that surprised himself, a kind ofthrilling tenderness, such as he had never felt toward a woman before.His wives had been good wives and dutiful, and he had been contentwith them. But it occurred to him that neither of them would ever havethought to come with him on this expedition.
"I could not stay without you," said the girl again. "Also, I wasafraid of Mawg," she added cunningly.
A wave of jealous wrath surged through Grom's veins.
"If Mawg had troubled you, I would have killed him!" said he fiercely.And, snatching the girl to her feet, he crushed he
r for a momentvehemently to his great breast.
"But why," he went on, "did you follow me so secretly all day?"
"I was afraid you would be angry, and send me back," she answered,with a sigh of content.
"I could not have sent you back," said Grom, his indifference quiteforgotten. "But come, we must find a place for the night."
And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which Grom had alreadymarked for his retreat. As they climbed to the upper branches, duskfell quickly about them, some great beast roared thunderously from thedepths of the forest, and from a near-by jungle came sudden crashingsof the undergrowth.
III
For three weeks Grom and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging northto avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy shores were trodden bymonsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, nomatter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be,they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerousand so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate thestrange human trail.
Had Grom been alone he would soon have been worn out for want ofsleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemedutterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. Hehad never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regardedthe lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never beenafraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of thissweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.
Beyond the lake and the morasses they came to a strange, brokenland, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life,but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizonran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged againstthe pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murkyvapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others,spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shapeof a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. Itfilled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoidthis unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grom was filledwith interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust asideher fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject.
In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty andspreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forestgrowth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled pasttheir roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemedto offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with thedelicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herselfup lightly into the branches. Grom lingered a few moments below,letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls.Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep.
While he was in this helpless position--his sleepless vigilance forthe moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic,shaggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awfulswiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, fromher perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grombounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a graybear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost uponhim, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. Aspear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the sideof the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar,the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grom swunghimself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.
The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk andbegan to draw himself up. Grom struck at him with his club, but fromhis difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bearhardly seemed to notice it.
"We must lead him up, then drop down and run," said Grom. And the twomounted nimbly.
The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilouslybeneath his weight. Then Grom and the girl slipped over into the nexttree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, andapparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd,implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.
Grom looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had neverknown before.
"Can you run, very fast?" he demanded.
The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at havingonce more saved him.
"I ran from the wolves," she reminded him.
"Then we must run, perhaps very far," answered Grom, reassured, "tillwe find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope.For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuingus. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climbtrees."
When both bears were high in the two trees, Grom and the girl slippeddown by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly asfalling. They snatched up Grom's two spears and A-ya's broken one, andran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. Thebears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific,ponderous gallop.
The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grom who was famousin the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pacein her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on theirpursuers, Grom bade her slow down a little till they did no more thanhold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran alwaysa pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and herbreath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge.Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For heknew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his lastfight over her body.
For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signsof distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from heropen lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fearat his heart, Grom closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on hisrigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to aspur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valleycleaving them midway.
"There will be ledges," he said, "where we can defend ourselves, andwhere you can rest."
Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with massive cane and thornedcreepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon aspace of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening ofthe valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And itswalls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed andcleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenientretreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appallingbarrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on aslant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, wavingupwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, andbowing as if in some enchanted dance.
Grom's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second hepaused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her kneesgave way beneath her. As she sank, Grom's spirit rose to theemergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girlviolently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought herback to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for thebarrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side andran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.
"If they are gods, those bright, dancing things," said Grom, with aconfidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they aredevils, I will fight them."
A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, anopening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of thisopening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. Therunners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed herutterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fellin a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her upinto his arms, but as he did so he looked back.
The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they hadstopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous formsfrom side to side in angry irresolution.
"They fear the bright, dancing things," said Grom to himself;
andadded, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear."
Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, hereparched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carriedhis burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, andlaid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what thebears were going to do.
Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, thetwo monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought theywould dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to seethat the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared notcome nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if thesame notion had struck them both at once, they whirled aboutsimultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, anddisappeared.
Grom knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind tothink that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for thepresent, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, wassitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turnedall his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes towhich they owed their escape.
With an attitude of deference, yet carrying both club and spear inreadiness, he slowly approached the barrier, at the point where theflames were lowest and least imposing. Their heat made him veryuneasy, but under the eyes of the girl he would show no sign of fear.At a distance of six or eight feet he stopped, studying the thin,upcurling tongues of brightness. Their heat, at this distance, wasuncomfortable to his naked flesh, but as he stood there wondering andtook no further hurt, his confidence grew. At length he dared tostretch out his spear-tip and touch the flames, very respectfully. Thegreen-hide thongs which bound the flint to the wood smoked, shriveledand hissed. He withdrew the weapon in alarm, and examined the tip. Itwas blackened, and hot to the touch. But, seeing that the brightdancers had taken no notice, he repeated the experiment. Several timeshe repeated it, deeply pondering, while the girl, from her place atthe edge of the grass, stared with the wide eyes of a child.
At last, though the green thongs still held, the dry wood burst intoflame. Startled to find that when he drew the point back he brought aportion of the shining creature with it, Grom dashed the weapon downupon the ground. The flame, insufficiently started, flickered anddied. But it left a spark, winking redly on the blackened wood.Audacious in his consuming curiosity, Grom touched it with his finger.It stung smartly, and Grom snatched back his finger with anexclamation of alarm. But by that touch the spark itself wasextinguished. That was an amazing thing. Sucking his finger, Gromstood gazing down at the spear-tip, which had but now been so bright,and was now so black. Plainly, it was a victory for him. He did notunderstand it. But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible,however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, hesaid proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:
"The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to betouched. If you touch them, they bite."
His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilitieswhich he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain. Dimly, butoverpoweringly, he realized that he had passed the threshold of a newworld. He picked up the spear and turned to renew his experiments.
This time he let the fire take well hold upon the spear-tip before hewithdrew it. Then he held it upright, burning like a torch. As hegazed at it raptly a scream from the girl aroused him. She had sprungto her feet and stood staring behind her, not knowing which way to runbecause of her fear of the fire. And there, not twenty paces from her,their giant grey bulks half emerging from the thicket, stood thebears, slavering in their fury but afraid to come nearer the flame.
With a shout, Grom darted at them, and the wind of his going fannedhis spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at thesight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled,then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. Theflame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip.With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in thenearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy ofterror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. Thefire was speedily whipped out by the branches, but their panic wasuncontrollable; and long after they had passed out of sight the soundsof their wild flight could be followed. Grom's heart came nearbursting with exultation, but he disdained to show it. He turned tothe girl, and said quietly: "They will not come back." And the girlthrew herself at his feet in adoration.
And now for hours Grom sat motionless, pondering, pondering, andwatching the line of flames with deep eyes. The girl did not dare tointerrupt his thoughts. With the going of the sun came a chill breezedrawing down from the ridges. Grom rose, led the girl nearer theflames, and reseated himself. As the girl realized the kindly andcomforting warmth her fears diminished. She laughed softly, turned hershapely body round and round in the glow, and then curled herself uplike a cat at Grom's knees.
At last Grom arose once more. Picking up his remaining spear, heapproached the fire with decision, and thrust the butt, instead of thetip, into the flame. When it was well alight, he thrust it down upon atuft of withered grass. The stuff caught at once, blazed up and diedout. Then Grom rolled the burning spear-butt on the earth till it,too, was quite extinguished. The sparks still winking in the grass hestruck with his palm. They stung him, but they perished. He drewhimself up to his full height, turned to the girl and stretched outhis blackened hand. The girl sprang to her feet, thrilled andwondering.
"See," said Grom, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants.The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of allthings."
Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a god.But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheekagainst his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, andshe leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stoodstaring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions.
In the Morning of Time Page 3
