The boy with the pet wolf did not come again to the village where he had
first seen a holiday feast and heard what religion was, but he saw a great
deal of it for all that. His brother never cared to go back and seemed to
take no interest in what he had seen.
Pero, one of the shepherds, while out looking for stray lambs on the
hills, met the youngster and his wolf coming down with two of the woolly
black-faced truants. They had been hunting, the boy said, and had come
across these lambs far up on the heights where lambs had no business to
be, and brought them back. When the shepherd asked the lad his name, he
said the Cub was as good a name as any. The shepherd was an old man and
had seen many queer things in his life and heard of queerer ones. He had
found that most frightful stories, when one came to know the truth of
them, were some quite natural incident made large in the eyes of a
frightened man. This boy might, of course, be a wood demon, and his wolf
might be another, servants of some evil power, but the shepherd had never
seen any such beings and he did not know how they were supposed to look.
When he offered the Cub a piece of his bannock, made with salt and water
and meal and cooked on a hot stone, it was accepted and eaten, and Pincho
the wolf ate some of it also. Pincho would eat almost anything. But that
ought to prove that they were no devils, for if they were they would not
have eaten the salt.
Pero was a little lame from a fall he had had several years ago, although
he got about more nimbly than some younger men. He found the help of this
wild youth and his wilder companion very convenient at times. After awhile
he began to see that the Cub was very curious about the customs of the
Sabine village. He did not ask many questions, but he would listen as long
as Pero would talk. Many a long still hour the two spent, on the grass
while the sheep grazed, or coming slowly down the slope toward the village
at nightfall, but always, when they came near the village gate, Pero would
look around presently and find that he was alone.
The first time that Pero noticed this curiosity was one day when they were
high above the village so that they could look down on a level stretch of
land where the men were marking out a new field. Boundary lines were very
important with any people as soon as they stopped wandering from place to
place and settled down to work the same land, year after year. Of course,
it takes more than one season to make any plot of ground produce all it
can, and no man cares to do a year’s work of which he gets none of the
benefit; there must be a clear understanding on the subject of the
boundary.
In the beginning there were no writings, or deeds, or public records to
mark the line of a farm, and the only way to protect property rights was
by ceremonies which would make people remember the boundary lines, and the
landmarks which it was a horrible crime to move.
Pero began by explaining that every house of the village had to be
separated from every other house by at least two and one half feet. As
each house was a sort of family temple, the home of the spirits of the
ancestors of that family; naturally nobody but these spirits had any right
there. Two families could not occupy the same house any more than two
persons could occupy the same place. On the same plan, each field was
enclosed by a narrow strip of ground never touched by the plow or walked
on or otherwise used. This was the property of the god of boundaries,
Terminus.
The boundary line of each field was marked by a furrow, drawn at the time
the field was marked out for the village or the individual owner. At
certain times, this furrow would be plowed again, the owners chanting
hymns and offering sacrifices. On this line the men were now placing the
landmarks they called the _termini_. The _terminus_ was a wooden pillar,
or the trunk of a small tree, set up firmly in the soil. In its planting
certain ceremonies were observed.
First a hole was dug, and the post was set up close by, wreathed with a
garland of grasses and flowers. Then a sacrifice of some sort was
offered—in this case a lamb—and the blood ran down into the hole. In the
hole were placed also grain, cakes, fruits, a little honeycomb and some
wine, and burned, live coals from the hearth fire of the home or the
sacred fire of the village being ready for this. When it was all consumed
the post was planted on the still warm ashes. If any man in plowing the
field ran his furrow beyond the proper limit, his plowshare would be
likely to strike one of these posts. If he went so far as to overturn it
or move it, the penalty was death. There was really no excuse for him, for
the line was plainly marked for all to see.
The Cub looked down at the solemnly marching group, the white oxen, and
the setting of the posts with bright and interested eyes.
[Illustration: “I have seen something like this before,” he said]
“I have seen something like this before,” he said. “Everywhere it is death
to move a landmark. In some places not posts but stones are used. The dark
people across the river say that he who moves his neighbor’s landmark is
hated by the gods and his house shall disappear. His land shall not
produce fruits, his sons and grandsons shall die without a roof above
their heads, and in the end there shall be none left of his blood. Hail,
rust and the dog-star shall destroy his harvests, and his limbs shall
become sore and waste away.”
Pero stared in astonishment. “Where did you hear all that?” he asked.
“When I was younger I ran away and crossed the river,” said the Cub
calmly. “They are strange people over there, not like your people. They go
down to the sea in boats. I went in a boat also, but I did not like it.
There was a fat trader on the boat, and when we were outside the long
white waves along the shore, and the wind came up and rocked our boat, his
face turned the color of sick grass. Perhaps my face did also; I do not
know. We were both very sick. After that I came back to tend sheep again,
for I do not like that place.
“They have a god called Turms there who is the god of traders, and of
thieves, and of fortune tellers. They pray to him for good luck, for they
believe very much in luck. He is sometimes seen in the shape of a beggar
man with a dog and a staff that has snakes twisted about it, and a cap
with a feather in it.”
The Cub stood up laughing and slipped away down under the rocks with his
wolf; it almost seemed as if he had flown. As Pero stared after him, he
remembered that the lad had an eagle feather in his pointed cap, and his
staff had a twisted vine around it. But the next time they met the boy was
so clearly only a boy in a sheepskin tunic that Pero called himself an old
fool too ready to take fancies.
The Cub had spent time enough on the other side of the river to know
something about the people, and he had interesting things to tell. They
enjoyed bargaining and spent much time buying and selling. They could make
fine gold work, bright-colored cloth, and brown vases with black pictures
painted on them. Their walls were often painted with pictures. When a
trader from that country, named Toto, came to the village, Pero remembered
some of the things he had been told. The people bought some of his
trinkets, but by what they said of them when the brightness was worn off
and the color faded, he was not a very honest merchant. Pero remembered
then that this people had the same god for trading and for stealing.
The Cub said that he had been to other villages along this mountain slope,
and they seemed to be as separate as if they were islands on a sea of
waste wilderness. They did not have their feasts on the same day, they did
not measure time alike; in some ways they were almost as far apart in
their ideas as if they had been different kinds of animals. And yet they
all spoke nearly the same language and worshiped in much the same way. If
they knew each other better and met oftener they would be all one people,
strong enough to drive away their enemies. If he and Pero could meet in
this friendly way, surely others could. But this was a new idea to the
shepherd, and he was not used to thinking. When the Cub saw that he did
not understand he began talking of something else. The invisible boundary
lines were too strong to be crossed.
Often, late at night, after Pero had gone home, the Cub would lie on a
high rock that overlooked the village, looking down at the twinkling
circle of lights that meant altar fires in homes. Then he would look up at
the twinkling points of light in the sky, and wonder if the gods lived
there, and if the lights were the altar fires of their homes. If he had
known that Pero once half believed him to be a god in disguise, he would
have been very much surprised. He was only a boy, without father, mother
or home, and he wished he knew what lay before him in the life he had to
live.
He could keep sheep, he could hunt, he could fight, he could run and swim
better than most boys of his age, and there was no beast, fowl, bird,
reptile, fruit or tree in the wilderness that he did not know. But there
seemed to be no place for him to live among men unless he was a sort of
servant. This was not to his liking. He had never seen any man whose
orders he would be willing to obey. He had seen some who were wiser, far
wiser than he was, who could tell him a great deal that he wished to know.
But he had never seen any to whom he would be a servant. A servant had to
do what he was told and make himself over into the kind of person some one
else thought he ought to be. The old woman who was a witch had told him
that he was born to rule, but he did not see how he could, unless it was
ruling to command animals. To rule men he must live where they were, and
so far as he could see they had no place for him.
His brother never seemed to have such thoughts. Give him enough to eat and
drink, a fire to warm him in winter and a stream to bathe in when the
summer suns were hot, and his reed pipe to play, and that was enough. He
would spend hours playing some tune over and over with first one change
and variation and then another. Even the wolf, now grown large and
powerful, with his gaunt muzzle and fierce eyes, was more of a companion
than that. He was always ready for a wrestle or a race or a swim with his
master. The two of them were feared wherever they went, and treated with
unqualified respect.
One day the Cub lay on his favorite rock, hidden by a low-sweeping
evergreen bough, when he heard shrieks and outcries. Peering over the
edge, he saw that in the edge of the woods below, where some women and
children were picking up nuts the men had shaken down for them, something
was happening. Half a dozen fierce men had rushed upon them and caught up
one of the children and run away, so quickly that by the time the fathers
and brothers got there no one could say which way they had gone. They
joined some others hidden in the woods, and came straight past the rock
where the Cub was watching. They were going to keep the child until they
got what they wanted. He could hear them talking. The biggest man had the
child on his shoulder. Her little face, as he got a glimpse of it, was
very white, but she did not cry out.
The boy rose and followed them with his wolf at his heels. He knew a
spring some distance above, where he thought they would be likely to stop
for a drink. They did. They were far enough away by this time not to fear
pursuit, and they had passed a rocky place where they could hold the
narrow trail against many times their number. But long before the men
could get up there they would have gone on.
The Cub crept up, inch by inch, until he was within a few feet of the
savage, careless group by the spring, and behind them, on a bank about six
feet high. Only the child was facing him. He showed himself for an
instant, and laid a finger on his lips, and beckoned. She struggled free
from the man who was holding her, striking at him with her little hands,
and he laughed and let her go. Even if she tried to run away, they would
catch her. But she only staggered unsteadily toward the bank, as if to
gather some bright berries there.
The instant she was clear of the group two figures hurled themselves
through the air,—a man and a wolf, or so it seemed in the moment or so
before the thing was over. There was a snarling, growling, breathless
struggle, and then the two strange figures were gone, and so was the
child, and the bandits were nursing half a dozen wolf bites and various
cuts on their shoulders and arms. Some they had given each other in the
confusion, and some were from the long, keen knife the Cub had ready when
he leaped among them.
The lad went straight down the mountainside with his wolf at his heels and
the child on his shoulder, and came out on the path that led upward just
as the men from the village were coming up. He set down the child, and
with a cry of delight she rushed into the arms of her father. A spear
hurtled through the air from the hasty hand of one of the men, who had
caught a glimpse of a brown shoulder and a sheepskin tunic. The Cub
disappeared. He was rather disgusted. If that was the way that the
villagers repaid a kindness—
[Illustration: The lad went straight down the mountainside with his wolf
at his heels]
From his rock he watched them returning with the child, all talking at
once. It seemed to him a great deal of talk about what could not be helped
by talking. He called Pincho, and only silence answered. He slid off the
rock and retraced his steps. When he reached the place where he had set
down little Emilia, he found the body of his pet, quite dead, with a spear
wound straight through the heart. Then he remembered that in the flash of
time when the spear was hurled, Pincho had sprung at the man. He had taken
the death wound meant for his master.
Pero never saw the boy with the wolf again. When he heard Emilia’s story
of her rescue, he was inclined to think that they were gods after
all,—Mars himself, for all any one could say. But the Cub, feeling much
older, was far away, and it was long before he returned to that
countryside.