LOVE AND DEATH.
Different from his former self became this young forester, Ab. He was
thinking of something other than wild beasts and their pursuit.
Instinctively, the course of his hunting expeditions tended toward the
northwest and soon the impulse changed to a design. He must look upon
Lightfoot again! Henceforth he haunted the hill region, and never keener
for quarry or more alert for the approach of some dangerous animal was the
eye of this woodsman than it was for the appearance somewhere of a slender
figure of a cave girl. Neither game nor things to dread were numerous in
the vicinity of the home of Hilltop, for there one of the hardiest and
wisest among hunters had occupied his cave for many years, and wild beasts
learn things. So it chanced that Lightfoot could wander farther afield
than could most girls of the time. Ab knew all this well, for the quality
of expert and venturesome old Hilltop was familiar to all the cave men
throughout a wide stretch of country. So Ab, somewhat shamefaced to his
own consciousness, hunted in a region not the best for spoil, and looked
for a girl who might appear on some forest path, moderately safe from the
rush of any of the hungry man-eaters of the wood.
But not all the time of this wild lover was wasted in haunting the
possible idling-places of the girl he wanted so. With love there had come
to him such sense and thoughtfulness as has come with earnest love to
millions since. What could he do with Lightfoot should he gain her? He was
but a big, young fighting man and hunter, still sleeping, almost nightly,
on one of the leaf beds in his father's cave. With a wife of his own he
must have a cave of his own. Compared with his first impulses toward the
girl, this was a new train of thought, and, as we recognize it to-day, a
nobler one. He wanted to care for his own. He wanted a cave fit for the
reception of such a woman as this, to him, the sweetest and proudest of
all beings, Lightfoot, daughter of old Hilltop, of the wooded highlands.
Far up the river, far beyond the home of Oak's father and beyond the
shining marshlands and the purple heather reaches which made the foothills
pleasant, extended to the river's bank a promontory, bold and picturesque
and clad heavily with the best of trees. It was a great stretch of land,
where, in some of nature's grim work, the earth had been up-heaved and
there had been raised good soil for giant forests, and at the same time
been made broad caverns to become future habitations of the creature known
as man. But the trees bore nuts and fruits, and such creatures as found
food in nuts and fruits, and, later, such as loved rich herbage, came to
the forest in great numbers, and then followed such as fed upon these
again, all the flesh eaters, to whom man was, as any other living thing,
to be seized upon and devoured. The promontory, so rich in game and nuts
and fruits, was, at the same time, the most dangerous in all the region
for human habitation. There were deep, dry caves within its limits, but in
none of them had a cave man yet ventured to make his home. It was toward
this promontory that the young man in love turned his eyes. Because others
had feared to make a home in this lone, high region should he also fear?
There was food there in plenty and if there were chance of fighting in
plenty, so much the better! Was he not strong and fleet; had he not the
best of spears and axes? Above all, had he not the new weapon which made
man far above the beasts? Here was the place for a home which should be
the best in all this region of the cave men. Here game and food of all
kinds would be most abundant. The situation would demand a brave man and a
woman scarcely less courageous, but would not he and the girl he was
determined to bring there meet all occasion? His mind was fixed.
Ab found a cave, one clean and dry and opening out upon a slight treeless
area, and this he, lover-like, improved for the woman he had resolved to
bring there, arranging carefully the interior of which must be a home. He
had fancies such as lovers have exhibited from since the time when the
plesiosaurus swashed away in the strand of a warm sea a hollow nursery for
the birth and first tending of the young of his odd kind, up to the later
time when men have squandered fortunes on the sleeping rooms of women they
have loved. He toiled for many days. With his ax he chipped away the
cavern's sharp protuberances at each side, and with the stone chips from
the walls and with what he brought from outside, he made the floor white
and clean and nearly level. He built a fireplace and chipped into a huge
stone, which, fortunately, lay inside the cave, a hollow for holding
drinking water, or for the boiling of meat. He built up a passage-way at
the entrance, allowing something but not too much more than his own width,
as the gauge for measurement of its breadth. He brought into the cave a
deep carpet of leaves and made a wide bed in one corner and this he
covered with furred skins, for many skins Ab owned in his own right. Then,
with a thick fragment of tough branch as a lever, he rolled a big stone
near the cave's entrance and left it ready to be occupied as a home. The
woman was still lacking.
There came a day when Ab, impatient after his searching and waiting, but
yet resolute, had killed a capercailzie--the great grouse-like bird of the
time, the descendants of which live to-day in northern forests--and had
built a fire and feasted, and then, instinctively careful, had climbed to
the first broad, low branch of an enormous tree and there adjusted himself
to sleep the sleep of one who has eaten heartily. He lay with the big
branch for a bed, supported on either side by green, upspringing twigs,
and slept well for an hour or two and then awoke, lazy and listless, but
with much good to him from the repast and rest. It was not yet very late
in the afternoon and the sun still shone kindly upon him, as upon a whole
world of rejoicing things. Something like a reflection of the life of the
morning was beginning to manifest itself, as is ever the way where forests
and wild things are. The wonderful noise of wood life was renewed. As the
young man awakened, he felt in every pulse the thrilling powers of
existence. Everything was fair to look upon. His ears took in the sound of
the voices of birds, already beginning vesper songs, though the afternoon
was yet so early as scarcely to hint of evening, and the scent from a
thousand plants and flowers, permeating and intoxicating, reached his
senses as he lounged sprawlingly upon his safe bed aloft.
It was attractive, the scene which Ab looked upon. The forest was in all
the glory of summer and nesting and breeding things were happy. There was
the fullness of the being of trees and plants and of all birds and beasts.
There was a soft commingling of sounds which told of the life about, the
effect of which was, somehow, almost drowsy in the blending of all
together. The great ferns waved gently along the hollows as the slight
breeze touched them. They were queer, those ferns. They were not quite so
slender and tapering and gothic as the ferns we see to-day. They were a
trifle more lush and ragged, and their tips were sometimes almost rounded.
But Ab noted little of fern or bird. It was only the general sensuousness
that was upon him. The smell of the pines was a partial tonic to the
healthy, half-awakened man, and, though he lay back upon the rugged wooden
bed and half dozed again, nature had aroused him a trifle beyond the point
of relapse into absolute, unknowing slumber. There was coming to him a
sharpness of perception which affected the quiescence of his enjoyment. He
rose to a sitting posture and looked about him. At once his eyes flashed,
every nerve and muscle became tense and the blood leaped turbulently in
his veins. He had seen that for which he had come into this region, the
girl who had so reached his rude, careless heart. Lightfoot was very near
him!
The girl, all unconscious, was sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree
which lay close beside a creek. There was an abundance of small pebbles
upon the little strand and the young lady was absent-mindedly engaged in
an occupation in which, to the observer, she took some interest, while
she, no doubt, was really thinking of something else. She sat there,
slender, beautiful and excelling, in her way, the belle of the period,
merely amusing herself. Her toes were charming toes. There could be no
debate on that point, for, while long and strong and flexible, they had a
certain evenness and symmetry. They were being idly employed just now. At
the creek's edge, half imbedded in the ground, uprose the crest of a
granite stone. Picking up pebble after pebble in her admirable toes,
Lightfoot was engaged in throwing them, one after another, at the
outstanding point of granite, utilizing in the performance only those toes
and the brown leg below the knee. She did exceedingly well and hit the
red-brown target often. Ab, hot-headed and fierce lover in the tree top,
looked on admiringly. How perfect of form was she; how bright the face!
and then, forgetting himself, he cried aloud and slid from the branch as
easily and swiftly as any serpent and started running toward the girl. He
must have her!
With his cry, the girl leaped to her feet, and as he reached the ground,
recognized him on the instant. She knew in the same instant that they had
felt together and that it was not by accident that he was near her. She
had felt as he; so far as a woman may feel with a man; but maidens are
maidens, and sweet lightness dreads force, and a modified terror came upon
her. She paused for a moment, then turned and ran toward the upland
forest.
Not a moment hesitating or faltering as affected by the girl's action was
the young man who had tumbled from the tree bed. The blood dancing within
him and the great natural impulse of gaining what was greatest to him in
life controlled him now. He was hot with fierce lovingness. He ran well,
but he did not run better than the graceful thing before him.
Even for the critical being of the great cities of to-day, the one who
"manages" races of all sorts, it would have been worth while to see this
race in the forest. As the doe leaps, scarcely touching the ground, ran
Lightfoot. As the wolf or hound runs, less swift for the moment, but
tireless, ran the man behind her. Yet of all the men in the cave region,
this flying girl wanted most this man to take her! It was the maidenly
force-dreading instinct alone which made her run.
Ab, dogged and enduring, lost no space as the race led away toward the
hill and home of the fleet thing ahead of him. There were miles to be
covered, and therein he had hope. They were on the straight path to
Hilltop's cave, though there were divergent, curving side paths almost as
available; but to avoid her pursuer, the fugitive could take none of
these. There were cross-cuts everywhere. In leaving the direct path she
would but lose ground. To reach soon enough by straight, clean running the
towering wooded hill in which was her father's cave seemed the only hope
of the half-unwilling fugitive.
There were descents and ascents in the long chase and plateaus where the
running was on level ground. Straining forward, gaining little, but
confident of overtaking the girl, Ab, deep-chested and physically
untroubled, pressed onward, when he noted that the girl made a sudden
spurt and bounded forward with a speed not shown before, while, at the
same time, she swerved from the right of the path.
It was not Ab who had made her swerve. Some new alarm had come to her. She
was about to reach and, as Ab supposed, pass one of the inletting paths
entering almost at right angles from the left. She did not pass it. She
leaped into it in evident terror and then, breaking out from the wood on
the right, came another form and one surely in swift following. Ab knew
the figure well. Oak was the new pursuer!
The awful rage which rose in the heart of Ab as he saw what was happening
is what can no more be described than one can tell what a tiger in the
jungle thinks. He saw another--the other his friend--pursuing and
intending to take what he wanted to be his and what had become to him more
than all else in the world; more than much eating and the skins of things
to keep him warm, more than a mammoth's tooth to carve, more than the
glorious skin of the great cave tiger, the possession of which made a rude
nobility, more than anything and all else! He leaped aside from the path.
He knew well the other path upon which were running Oak and Lightfoot. He
knew that he could intercept them, because, though the running was not so
good, the distance to be covered was much less, for to him path running
was a light matter. In the wood he ran as easily and leaped as well and
attained a point almost as quickly as the beasts. There was a stress of
effort and, as the shadows deepened, he burst in upon the cross path where
he knew were the fleeing Lightfoot and following Oak. He had thought to
head them off, but Ab was not the only man who was swift of foot in the
cave country. They passed, almost as he bounded from the forest. He saw
them close together not many yards ahead of him and, with a shout of rage,
bent himself in swift and terrible pursuit again.
It was all plain to Ab now as he flew along, unnoted by the two ahead of
him. He knew that Oak had, like him, determined to own Lightfoot, and had
like him, been seeking her. Only chance had made the chase thus cross
Oak's path; but that made no difference. There must be a grim meeting
soon. Ab could see that the endurance of the wonderfully fleet-footed
woman was not equal to that of the man so near her. She would soon be
overtaken. Before her rose the hill, not a mile in its slope, where were
her father's cave, and safety. He knew that she had not the strength to
breast it fleetly enough for covert. And, as he looked, he saw the girl
turn a frightened face toward her close pursuer and knew that she saw him
as well. Her pace slackened for a moment as this revelation came to her,
and he felt, somehow, that in him she recognized comparative protection.
Then she recovered herself and bent all the power she had toward the
ascent. But Oak had been gaining steadily, and now, with a sudden rush, he
reached her and grasped her, the woman shrieking wildly. A moment later Ab
rushed in upon them with a shout. Instinctively Oak released the girl, for
in the cry he heard that which meant menace and immediate danger. As
Lightfoot felt herself free she stood for a moment or two without a
movement, with wide-open eyes, looking upon what was happening before her.
Then she bounded away, not looking backward as she ran.
[Illustration: AB STOOD THERE WEAPONLESS, A CREATURE WANDERING OF MIND]
The two men stood there glaring at each other, Oak perched, and yet not
perched, so broad and perfect was his foothold, on the crest of a slight
shelf of the downward slope. There stood the two men, poised, the one
above, the other below, two who had been as close together from childhood
as all the attributes of mind and body might allow, and yet now as far
apart as human beings may be. They were beautiful in a way, each in his
murderous, unconscious posing for the leap. The sun hit the blue ax of Oak
and made it look a gray. The raised ax of Ab, which was of a lighter
colored stone, was in the shade and its yellowness was darkened into
brown. The spectacle lasted for but a second. As Oak leaped Ab bounded
aside and they stood upon a level, a tiny plateau, and there was fierce,
strong fencing. One could not note its methods; even the keen-eyed
wolverine, crouching low upon an adjacent monster limb, could never have
followed the swift movements of these stone axes. The dreadful play was
brief. The clash of stone together ceased as there came a duller sound,
which told that stone had bitten bone. Oak, slightly the higher of the
two, as they stood thus in the fray, leaned forward suddenly, his arms
aloft, while from his hand dropped the blue ax. He floundered down
uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still.
Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had
parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked
upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and
pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to
where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl
was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the waning day were
deepening.