A FAMILY DINNER.
Despite the hyena and baby incident, the day had been a satisfactory one
for this cave family. Of course, had the woman failed to reach just when
she did the hollow in which her babe was left there would have come a
tragedy in the extinction of a young and promising cave child, and the
two would have been mourning, as even wild beasts mourn for their lost
young. But there was little reversion to past possibilities in the minds
of the cave people. The couple were not worrying over what might have
been. The mother had found food of one sort in abundance, and the
father's fortune had been royal. He had tossed a rock from a precipice a
hundred feet in height down into a passing herd of the little wild
horses, and great luck had followed, for one of them had been killed, and
so this was a holiday in the cave. The man and wife were at ease and had
each an appetite.
The nuts gathered by the woman were tossed in a heap among the ashes and
live coals were raked upon them, and the popping which followed showed
how well they were being roasted. A sturdy twig, two yards in length and
sharpened at the end, was utilized by the man in cooking the strips of
meat cut from the haunch of the wild horse and very savory were the odors
that filled the cave. There was the faint perfume of the crackling nuts
and there was the fragrant beneficence of the broiling meat. There are no
definite records upon the subject; the chef of to-day can give you no
information on the point, but there is reason to believe that a steak
from the wild horse of the time was something admirable. There is a sort
of maxim current in this age, in civilized rural communities, to the
effect that those quadrupeds are good to eat which "chew the cud or part
the hoof." The horse of to-day is a creature with but one toe to each
leg--we all know that--but the horse of the cave man's time had only
lately parted with the split hoof, and so was fairly edible, even
according to the modern standard.
The father and mother of Ab were not more than two years past their
honeymoon. They, in their way, were glad that their union had been so
blest and that a lusty man-child was rolling about and crowing and cooing
upon the earthen floor of the cave. They lived from hand to mouth, and
from day to day, and this day had been a good one. They were there
together, man, woman and child. They had warmth and food. The entrance to
the cave was barred so that no monster of the period might enter. They
could eat and sleep with a certainty of the perfect digestion which
followed such a life as theirs and with a certainty of all peace for the
moment. Even the child mumbled heartily, though not yet very strongly, at
the delicious meat of the little horse, and, the meal ended, the two lay
down upon a mass of leaves which made their bed, and the child lay
snuggled and warm within reach of them. The aristocracy of the time had
gone to sleep.
There was silence in the cave, but, outside, the world was not so still.
The night was not always one of silence in the cave man's time. The hours
of darkness were those when the creature which walked upon two legs was
no longer gliding through the forest with ready club or spear, and when
those creatures which used four legs instead of two, especially the
defenseless, felt more at ease than in the daytime. The grass-eating
animals emerged from the forest into the plateaus and upon the low plains
along the river side and the flesh-eaters began again their hunting. It
was a time of wild life, and of wild death, for out of the abundance much
was taken; there were nightly tragedies, and the beasts of prey were as
glutted as the urus or the elk which fed on the sweet grasses. It was but
a matter of difference in diet and in the manner of doing away with one
life which must be sacrificed to support another. There was liveliness at
night with the queer thing, man, out of the way, and brutes and beasts of
many sorts, taking their chances together, were happier with him absent.
They could not understand him, and liked him not, though the great-clawed
and sharp-toothed ones had a vast desire to eat him. He was a disturbing
element in the community of the plain and forest.
And, while all this play of life and death went on outside, the three
people, the man, woman and child, in the cave slept as soundly as sleep
the drunken or the just. They were full-fed and warm and safe. No beast
of a size greater than that of a lank wolf or sinewy wildcat could enter
the cave through the narrow entrance between the heaped-up rocks, and of
these, as of any other dangerous beast, there was none which would face
what barred even the narrow passage, for it was fire. Just at the
entrance the all-night fire of knots and hardest wood smoked, flamed and
smoldered and flickered, and then flamed again, and held the passageway
securely. No animal that ever lived, save man, has ever dared the touch
of fire. It was the cave man's guardian.