THE ARMOURERS
I was aroused by the sound of a strange hammering, blows following
each other rapidly and with a quality of sound it seemed to me I had
never heard before. It was not like that of stone upon wood or of stone
upon stone, but had at times a faint ring, a something altogether
unfamiliar. I had been sleeping peacefully in the sun, lying in the
grass of a plot among bushes which grew in a valley-like gorge between
rocky walls and having many boulders scattered about upon its surface.
I sprang to my feet and emerged from the bushes to discover the cause
of the curious hammering, and recognized the scene, though somewhat
slowly. The Hammer was at work with two companions, and I knew that I
should have been helping him had I not become tired and gone to the
sunny spot in the bushes to rest and sleep a little.
The Hammer--he had gained the name because he was, nowadays, doing
little else than swing his big stone hammer in seeking to acquire
what had never been much sought before--saw me approaching and hailed
me boisterously: “Ho! Did you sleep, Scar, big laggard? Here is more
mauling for you.”
There was mauling to be done, assuredly. All three of the men were at
work, standing beside a flat boulder upon which they were seeking to
pound to little fragments uneven chunks of rock, which, from their
shape, must have been somehow broken from a larger body. As I drew
nearer I saw that among the fragments the men were thus seeking to
pulverize, there appeared lumps and shreds and strips of a substance
which did not break beneath the blows, though it might bend and
flatten. Then what remained of the daze of my sleeping went away in a
moment and I knew the why and wherefore of what was here before me. The
red substance was the thing Hammer had found in the pronged rock and
was copper, as we came to call it, something now most precious to us
and in the getting of which we were all assisting Hammer to the utmost.
What arrow-heads and spear-heads he had given us! There had been never
others to equal them.
It had been a curious discovery and one unlikely to have been made by
other than this Hammer, friend and hut-mate of mine, and the shrewdest
and most thinking man among us. He, who was ever alert to discover the
reason of what was unusual, was attracted one day by the appearance of
a particular boulder in the valley. It was different from the others in
that it had upon it many outstanding points and bulges, as if the stone
were harder in those spots and had yielded less to the chippings of the
cold, heat and storms or whatever might make it grow smaller with time.
He picked a small rock from the ground and struck a heavy blow upon one
slender projection, longer than his hand, thinking to break it off, but
it did not break; it only bent instead. Then, indeed, was the curiosity
of Hammer aroused mightily. He would have that strange projection!
Fiercely and strenuously he pounded upon it, and very wearily, at last,
for he had set himself a serious task, though he finally succeeded in
loosening the prong from the rock after long battering of it back and
forth. He held in his hand something well worthy of his study.
Hammer brought to our hut the red piece, which surely was not of the
rock itself, and much we considered of what it might be and of what use
it could be made to us. That last thought took but little time. Hammer
decided it:
“It will not break,” he said; “it will only bend, and that not easily,
yet it may be hammered into many shapes. Such hammering it shall have.
I will make a spear-head such as men have never seen!” He took the
fragment of metal and one of the heaviest of our stone hammers and went
with them to the hard flat boulder in the ravine and there began his
pounding.
All that afternoon came to our ears in the village the sound of the
hammering at the rock. I did not go there, for I had other things to
do out in the lower hills where I had seen a group of little deer, and
where I thought I might get a chance at one as they came from the wood
at sundown. I got none, and darkness had come when I reached our hut
again and found Hammer by the fire, whereon he had roasted meat, which
tasted good to both of us. I asked concerning his labour, and he showed
me the piece of copper.
What a change had come to it! Very nearly in the shape of a spear-head
it was now, and fine to look upon in its bright redness. Hammer said he
had not sought to do more when the light began to fail, for the work
must be finer now and he must use a lighter hammer. He was at the rock
again in the early morning and wrought all day again, meanwhile having
lying on the rock beside him as he worked the best and most beautifully
shaped stone spear-head that we owned, one of the hardest flint, most
perfect in its form and so polished by rubbing upon sandstone and
afterward with the bark of trees that it was as smooth as the shell
of a beechnut. This Hammer used as a model, and the “tap-tapping” of
his light hammer of stone upon the metal was like the tapping of a
woodpecker who never wearied. He would not show me that night what he
had accomplished, but said that his task would be done in the day to
come. At night when we met again in the hut he showed me the copper
spear-head.
It was something wonderful, that spear-head. It was smoother than any
stone one ever made, for Hammer had tapped so gently, at the end, that
there was left no trace of indentation, and afterward he had polished
it until now it glittered in the firelight. Its edge was better than
could be given to any stone knife, and, Hammer told me, it could be
ground upon our sandstone whetstones, or if it became dulled, could be
easily hammered into sharpness again. It could not be broken! There was
no other such spear-head in the world--and we could make others like it!
There was such excitement in the village as had not often been known
before when Hammer, who had set the spear-head in its shaft, displayed
it to the tribe. There was wonder and great envy and desire and a
demand that henceforth Hammer should do naught else but make such
spear-heads, that each might possess one and so the tribe be made
superior to all about us. And Hammer promised this, if only they would
bring to him the copper with which to work, and he told of how he had
found that which he had. This was agreed upon, and soon as many men
as could work together were assailing the copper-holding boulder with
their heaviest hammers and mauls of stone. A weary task must it be to
break that rock to pieces, but the hammers were of a harder stone than
it, and all day the blows were falling and in time each scrap of copper
which it held must needs be in our possession.
And, as it had been agreed upon, so it came to pass, though long was
the labour. Strips and bits and fragments of copper of all sizes, from
those fitted for arrow-heads and spear-heads up to those large enough
for axes, were gained from the gradually crushed rock, and Hammer, whom
I now aided, laboured from dawn until night. The time came when each
man in the tribe bore proudly a shining copper spear-head and when
some had axes or copper arrow-heads as well. It was a great thing, but
the rock was gone! Where could we get more copper? There was none to
answer, and upon this problem Hammer and I thought much and discussed
it many times.
The matter, as well it might, had become one meaning much to all of
us. We were not a tribe at all mighty as to numbers, but here had come
to us what, were it to continue, would lift us above all others, for
we would have the best of weapons and, furthermore, that which would
enable us to get by barter whatever others had which we most desired.
What allies we could make! No little thing in those days was such
alliance, when warfare for spoil alone was not uncommon and none of the
weak was safe without a strong alliance. And what other good might
come to a tribe with such a possession held by itself alone! All saw
the need we had--a puny force, an offshoot from a greater one which
long since had moved to the western forests and of whom we had lost all
trace. Less than half a thousand of us were in the village, and, though
we were most prosperous and content, we knew not what might come. Far
up toward the north and west of the new land we were, and in a region
of scattered forests and bright rivers and wild vines and nuts and
fruits. There was a stream behind the village; there was an abundance
of game; the women tilled a little, giving us a store of wheat and
barley; we had sturgeon from the not far distant greater river to which
we made expeditions at times, and there were the little half-wild
horses to give us food in any strait. The winters were not severe,
though the snow fell deeply and sometimes the famished wolves were out,
but all the rest of the year was beautiful and bountiful to us. Nomads,
mere wanderers, our forefathers may have been, but upon us had come at
last something of the home-clinging way. What better place to guard
and, if need be, fight for? So it came that we were glad of whatever
might make us greater and stronger, and we were proud and glad of what
had come from the copper rock, and disquieted because we knew not where
to find another like it.
Long, one night, were Hammer and I debating in our hut concerning what
had become the common problem. To both of us it seemed that there must
be more than a single rock in all the world which held that which we
wanted.
“And it is not distant,” said Hammer, “this other rock of the same
kind; there may be a host of rocks.” Then he spoke still more
earnestly. “We, even you and I, are the ones. We must seek more copper
and we shall find it. It lies somewhere in the gorges, surely! Will you
come with me until we have gone far enough and searched most closely?
What greater thing could we be doing? Will you come with me?”
As he well knew, he need not have asked the question. I had long since
become as earnest as was he in the great thing upon which so depended
our fortunes and the fortunes of all our tribe. Surely I consented,
for I had lost myself in the fancy for this wonderful new adventure of
search and labour which might assure us weapons and many other things
of a different and better sort, and give to us of the plains and hills
an advantage over all other tribes. I had become a joyous copper-seeker
and earnest artisan! My fortunes should be henceforth joined with those
of Hammer, as he would have it, and as it was now pledged. What if we
should somewhere find the red substance in abundance and perhaps not so
firmly imbedded in such rock! What things would happen then! Utterly
abandoned were we now in this quest to come. What cared we for the
women or the breaking of the horses or the wild chase of the stag or
urus? A greater thing was ours! Soon were we prepared for the journey,
the course of which we had not yet determined, except that it must
follow the base of the low mountain range and lead up its many valleys
and gorges and canyons until, if fortune were with us, we had come upon
what we sought.
Straight descendants of the first Tamers were we, so our legends
said, and there were horses with us, though many other tribes had not
yet learned to tame and use them, or sometimes count upon them for
meat. Should we take horses? It was finally decided between us that we
should, since with the region close about us we were of course well
acquainted, and searching would be wasted in it, and it would be a
day’s journey afoot along the base of the range, which trended to the
southwest, before we could reach the place where began the succession
of upward extending ravines in which we hoped to find more of the red
metal. We hoped this, not from any definite belief, but because so
many of these openings resembled the one in which Hammer had made the
first discovery. After we had reached the first of these we could turn
our horses loose, knowing that they would find their way back to the
village.
We caught our rough little steeds, small, hairy and shaggy, but sinewy
and enduring, and, with ropes of hide about our shoulders, fastened to
us the heavy hammers we hoped to need, and, after the usual struggle
with the animals, got fairly on our way. A half day’s ride brought
us to the first ravine, and then we took off the rawhide halters,
which were our only bridles, and let the horses go. They started back
whinnying and galloping. The horse of the time took most unkindly to
the carrying of any burden. He was to learn much concerning that matter
very soon.
Two of the openings of the hills we explored most thoroughly that
day. They were not at a great distance from each other and were very
much alike--narrow gorges or ravines with narrow bottoms and almost
perpendicular sides. We found nothing to even remind us of the sort of
rock in which Hammer had discovered copper in the first place. We took
up our march again and, just at nightfall, came to an opening, not so
narrow and gloomy in appearance as the others. This we would explore in
the morning, and so we lay down for the night before a little fire we
had built. It was early autumn and was not cold.
The old men in the tribe do not all have the same thoughts as to
dreams, the things which come in the night when one is sleeping and
make him think he is alive at some other place, or, at least, seeing
and doing other things than those which are. Those whom I think are the
most sensible say that dreams are as nothing, but others say that they
mean much and may speak of the past or even foretell what is to come. I
know nothing of it, but I know that I dreamed much as I lay beside the
fire that night, and that I thought myself, first, in a land of lakes
and strange abodes supported above the water, and that, later, I was
again searching with Hammer for the rocks with the red metal in them.
I dreamed, too, that we came to a small round mountain that was made
up altogether of copper, and that all around it was more of the copper
made into spears and arrow-heads and knives and axes and all manner of
other things we needed in our huts. It was a very foolish dream, but it
made me pleased when I woke in the night, though, as I have said, I had
no faith in such things.
It was a wonderfully shining morning which came to us and, as we ate,
I still kept my high spirits from the dream and was so filled with
cheer and made such buoyant talk that Hammer said I must have arisen
early and gone into the forest and eaten of a root which, it was said,
would make men laugh. I cared not. I was most courageous and full of
lightness. I felt that the Things, the makers of happenings, in which
we believed a little, though heeding little as well, were going to
smile upon us some time that day. Of this I spoke afterward to Hammer
many times.
We started up the opening in the hills, and the prospect was fairer
than we had seen yet. It was not a gorge, but wide enough to be almost
like a narrow ascending valley, and its sides were not perpendicular,
but sloping and bearing many stunted oaks and pines, and shrubbery,
as did the bottom. Over the bottom were distributed boulders of all
sizes, and some of them appeared certainly not to have come from the
mountainsides adjoining, so different were they in appearance from the
rock of the sloping walls. Such a thing I had often seen, however,
and I thought little of it. Hardly had we entered the gap than we
began testing the rocks with our heavy hammers, battering away at them
until the moss and incrustations of any kind were knocked away and the
nature of the rocks made clear to us. Our hammers, which I have not yet
described, were most excellent for this. They were of much weight and
of the hardest kind of stones of proper size that we could find in our
region. These stones, half as large as a man’s head, we had grooved
around, after much labour in the chipping, and, fitting in the grooves
and holding firmly, had laid withes of the toughest willow, which were
twisted into handles of the length we wanted. So we made hammers which
would crush the common rock most easily. Never were better hammers
than these of the hard, unbreaking porphyry and greenstone, though
these were not the names we called them, if, indeed, we gave them
names at all. It was sufficient that they served our purpose well.
So we hammered our way up the slope, but found nothing to reward us.
At midday we rested for a time and ate, and then took up our testing
again, not far from each other, with Hammer, as it chanced, a little in
the lead. We had not gone half a furlong when there came from him the
longest, loudest and most ear-splitting yell I had ever heard. I was
with him in a moment.
Hammer was standing beside a rock of about the height of his shoulder.
It was, in a general way, not unlike the rocks through which we had
passed, but it had the difference that it was not altogether smooth of
surface and that here and there upon it obtruded lumps and points. One
of these points Hammer had smitten in his testing and now it glittered
in the sun, a spike of purest copper! There could be no mistake about
it. We had found what we were seeking. In that one rock, could we but
in any way break it apart, were hundreds of the new and amazing weapons
which were such prizes. We attacked the most obtruding and slender and
most promising of the outstanding parts with our great hammers, working
most feverishly until we sweated like the wild boar at the end of the
long hunt. I won in the race, and very proud I was. The spikelike mass
upon which I hammered, beating it back and forth and this way and that,
parted at last from the mass and fell to the ground only a moment
before that upon which Hammer had been spending his mighty blows. We
had what would make a spear-head apiece, enough in themselves to have
made our journey worth while!
All day we laboured, beating off some half-score of the red
protuberances, and then, to breathe ourselves, went farther up the
somewhat narrowing valley to learn whether or not there were other
rocks of the kind which meant so much to us. One other we found, to
our great delight, but one only, though we followed the defile until
it lost itself in what was little more than a crevice in the now close
looming mountainside.
We resolved that for two days we would labour on the rocks and that
then we would return to the village, where Hammer would work upon the
copper we had gained, and I would return with others to do what we
could with further hammering of the two rocks and make, perhaps, some
further search. That plan we did not carry out. It was about the middle
of the afternoon of the first of these two days when I heard from the
forest of beech and oak which lay at the foot of the slope the call
of the grouse--doubtless feeding on the many nuts. We had, in our
excitement and absorption, been eating only of the dried food we had
brought with us, and my stomach clamoured for roasted grouse as soon
as the cries of the birds reached me. It affected Hammer as it did me,
and I took my bow and arrows from where they were left at our sleeping
place and crept into the forest. There were grouse in abundance there
and soon I had a pair big enough and fat enough to satisfy even such
labourers as we with a supper worth the eating. I had gone well into
the wood in my hunting, and now strode swiftly toward the gap, paying
little attention to what was about me. So carelessly did I walk that I
stumbled sharply against a small rock which lay half hidden beneath the
brown leaves which were beginning to fall thickly. I glanced downward
at the obstacle, which was a flattish stone not a quarter of a yard
across, and, I know not why, save that I was at this time curious about
all rocks, stooped and turned it over. Its bottom, clean upon the sand,
was red! It was copper! Then went out from me a yell which could by no
means have been less mighty than was that of Hammer when he had found
the rich rock in the defile. He could have heard me from anywhere.
His answering shout came back, and soon he was with me looking upon
what I had discovered. We stood there silently for a moment and then
involuntarily looked about us. Among the beech leaves on every side
lay smaller or greater rocks of similar kind. We turned some of them
over. They were copper, seemingly almost pure and not so great of size
that they could not be beaten apart. Then, it seems to me, that for a
time we lost our senses. We shouted to each other without meaning and
capered about like wolves in the moonlight. We could not but know that
a new thing, one of the greatest ever known, had come to men, and that
we and our tribe would be the first to own it in abundance. No longer
at this time would we trifle with the two rocks in the valley!
Long we talked that night beside our fire, glorying in our good fortune
and wondering, too, not a little, how it could be that copper should
exist in such a form. Much we speculated and suggested of this strange
thing which had brought such fortune to us. Hammer thought it possible
that the red metal was something which grew of itself where there were
the things in the earth and water which gave such growth, whatever it
was it needed for its formation and sustenance, but in this I could
not agree with him. I could not believe that anything that was hard as
rock and did not change its shape as the trees and plants did, could
really grow of itself. I believed that all solid things must have been
so always and that, if they were found out of what seemed to have been
their place, they must have been moved by something else, it might be
by men--though that could hardly be so with huge rocks--or by great
floods, or, it might be, by the ice, which, in ages gone, had crept
down from the far north and pushed many things before it. No one could
tell. Perhaps the copper had not moved far at most. It might have come
down from the mountains. We ended the talk as vain; it was sufficient
that we had found what we sought. We had much to do on the morrow.
At daylight we took up our journey for the village, carrying with us
only what we had beaten from the rocks, and one of the smallest of the
fragments we had found among the beeches and oaks. Henceforth our work
with copper was to be in a different way. We had reasoned upon it and
had decided what we would do. At first it had seemed wise to move our
belongings to where the metal lay to our hand, but there were other
things to be considered.
The mouth of the wide ravine where Hammer had found the first
red-pronged rock, near a blasted and hollow tree trunk, faced the
village squarely, and, fortunately for him, there also stood near an
almost square boulder of the hardest stone, of about half its height,
which served him as an anvil. Such another rock it would be hard to
find in a convenient locality, and we had seen none like it in the
beech wood or in the ravine of the two rocks on which we had been
working. It would cost labour to transport the metal from the wood to
the village, but, once it was there, it would be where we could most
easily convert it into weapons. We would be near the village and all
its conveniences, and, besides, we would be where those would come
who wished to barter, as we knew they must in time. Little traffic
had there been between the tribes, however friendly they might be, at
any time, for the things possessed were very much alike and, besides,
the bartering was something new. Our ancestors did not barter. They
took what they wanted or, if not strong enough, must go without it.
Relations had changed, and now men were engaged in fighting each other
only part of the time. Now a new reason for trade had come, and we felt
its importance and its promise. So it was resolved between us that the
forging should be done in the ravine facing the village, and the copper
brought from where we had found it in the wood. We could use our little
horses.
It is hard to tell how great was the excitement in the village when we
showed what we had with us, and the news of our discovery went about.
Excellent and very curious was the story of our tribe from that same
day. There began a new life, for we had another interest now than
mere living upon what the earth and land and water might give us for
the eating or the wearing. Surely never before did a tribe of men so
change in character, because never before had arisen conditions so
splendidly compelling. I devised double pouches from the skins we had,
one to hang on each side of a horse, and the youth of the tribe were
set at work bringing the copper rocks from the distant forest, while
men there toiled to break the larger ones to fragments suited for such
carrying. There was a procession of boys and horses between the village
and the treasure ground, and soon there arose a small mountain of the
copper rocks beside the stone anvil near the great tree trunk, and the
sound of hammering never ceased. I worked with Hammer at the shaping,
as did two other men, and it was not long, since the anvil rock would
accommodate but four workers, before we had rolled down from farther up
the valley four or five more of the hard rocks to also serve as they
might for other anvils, though to accomplish this required many men as
did the later hard work in chipping the tops of the new rocks down to
the proper level. Then still more of the men were set to work to learn
the way of the hammering and shaping, and became expert according to
their gifts, though none could ever hope to equal the way of Hammer.
How he rejoiced in his own skill! There appeared nothing he could not
fashion from the glittering copper brought to him. With mighty blows at
first he would beat the metal more nearly into the shape desired than
could any other of us while wielding the heaviest hammers, and then,
such crude shape gained, it was marvellous to watch him. He played
with the thing as if he loved it. The sound of his beating, as he
changed from each hammer to a lighter one in his fashioning, was like
the slope from hand to finger tip, until the gentle “tap-tap” could be
scarcely heard and beneath his hand lay, finally, such perfect weapon
or utensil as had never been before. Once, in sheer bravado it may be,
he devised and made a brooch so delicate and fine and beautiful that
all stood wondering, and there came dark looks and jealousies among
both men and women, but he gave the splendid bauble to the most aged of
the women, saying that old women had once been young, and so the faces
brightened. Very wise was Hammer in his way, and both he and I were
above the woman hunger. As for the lucky beldame, she was the proudest
among us all and would surely die most unwillingly, since, now, the
world was so good!
We went together, Hammer and I, and more thoroughly explored the
forest and found that the “float” there, as we had called it, would
last perhaps a lifetime at the rate we were using it, and found also
that there were many of the copper boulders in the ravines and glens
farther along the mountainsides than we had explored at first. This
discovery it was which caused me to have a new belief as to whence the
copper had come. One of the heights of the range had once been a fire
mountain, as was easy to see from where its vomitings had run down the
valleys, and was it not possible that the copper had thus been tossed
up from the very bowels of the earth? This I thought must be true, and
Hammer agreed with me regarding the thing. So concerning that we gave
no further thought. It came at last that those working in and about
the forest built themselves huts there and that another village arose,
though not a large one, and it came, too, that others built huts along
what was now become a beaten highway such as never had been seen, and
so we were for a time a long and straggling community. Then came
another change and a most potent one.
Some leagues to the north of us was a village of a strong tribe with
whom we had always been on close and pleasant terms, for they were of
our own blood and so we understood each other well. Thus it chanced
that they were the first to barter with us for our excellent copper
weapons and that there was much commingling of the people and, as a
consequence, from that man-woman happening which always seems to come
when the youth of each kind are brought much together, the young men
and women of each tribe began taking each other for mates and so the
commingling became still closer and better. Then followed what was most
wise. There was held a council of the chief men of each tribe, in which
Hammer and I had much to say, and it was decided that the two should
join and that the formidable tribe thus made should build its village
upon the copper fields. There were shelter and water and streams, and
game and fish, and it was a fine village site in every way. And thus
it came. Barriers were built that we might defy all enemies. Not a
man or youth but had keen copper-headed spear and arrows and knife
and axe and was trained in the sharpening and care of them. We were
bravely weaponed. Not always, though, did we use the copper arrows,
for they were too precious to be shot lightly in the hunting, those
made of stone still serving for the killing of the smaller game. Then
followed a small thing which proved in the end a great one: a youth of
the tribe, that he might not easily lose his copper arrows, had tied
the scarlet feather of a bird to each arrow shaft close to its end in
a little groove, that it might not hit the bow and mar his shooting.
The brilliant feather would reveal the arrow wherever it might chance
to fall, which was a good thing. But more came of it. The youth soon
learned that an arrow flew more smoothly and evenly and that with it
thus feathered he was far surer of his game. This was counted a curious
thing, and some held that the red colour made a spell or charm and so
guided the arrow rightly, but with the trying of other feathers of any
colour, even those from the drab geese, it was found that they served
as well. The gray goose shaft sufficed. It was most curious, but it was
a potent thing, and soon all arrows were thus feathered and the tribe
became the greatest of all archers. Bad would it be for any foeman who
might attack us. Much I thought upon this thing and of how always it
seemed that one discovery was followed in its needs and new calls by
another.
There happened about this time another thing most interesting to us
all and fine in its results, following what was conceived by Hammer.
He had long looked enviously upon the smaller boulder of the two we
had found in the canyon, because it seemed so full of copper of the
finest quality, though we paid no attention to it since we had such an
abundance of the “float” about us. He would not be denied, though I
made much sport of him.
Hammer caused a pit to be dug close beside the boulder and a little
deeper than its height, and the bottom of this he had filled with
the dryest of wood. Then he brought to the pit’s side a veritable
mountain of wood as dry, and was ready for the test. The strong men of
the tribe were summoned and there was a great upheaval of the rock
with levers, and it was tumbled down upon its bed of wood, which was
promptly fired. As the flames rose other wood was heaped upon the rock
until it was hidden from view, and so, night and day, was the great
hot fire continued, men bringing more fuel all the time and working
by watches to keep at reddest heat the bed of coals in the midst of
which the rock lay. None cared to approach very near that astounding
fire. It was on the fourth night that the climax came, and well it was
for the firemen at the time that they were resting behind a boulder at
a little distance from the flames, for there came an explosion which
fairly lifted the village from its sleep and sent that copper rock in
fragments in all directions. Great was the reward of the experiment,
and it was good that we should thus learn what fire could do.
And ever our bartering increased with the tribes on every side. Those
distant purchased the new weapons and those still farther away saw and
must have them, until our community became the most prosperous, as
it was becoming the most numerous, in all that far-extending country
of plain and hill and forest. There came even some from that huge
illimitable forest to the south, peopled by the tall strong men who had
come from the far East even as had come our own people, though at some
different time, albeit with these our trading was but a little, for
they were fierce and dangerous and we cared not much for their close
acquaintance, despite our growing strength. As for Hammer and me, we
were growing older and less inclined to risk or venture. Yet there was
no abatement in our constant thought of all that might be done with the
red copper. There followed a time when Hammer spoke less often and
seemed lost in some new thought. One day he told me of it.
“If,” he said, “we could only melt and mould the copper!” And he said
also, “You and I will go to the village and work there a while and try
to do certain things.” So I went with him.
The flat rock which had been our anvil was in its place, and sound as
ever, seemingly, stood the hollow tree trunk near it, and I saw that
it was at this trunk with the hollow opening at its bottom that Hammer
looked first and examined most carefully. In the times of our working
here I had noticed one thing about this opening at the base of the
trunk--that, especially when the wind blew up the valley, it roared and
whistled up the trunk through the opening and even drew curvingly the
flames of any fire which chanced to be made near it. Could it be this,
I thought, that was now in the mind of Hammer? I was not mistaken.
He called to the men in the village and bade them bring from the banks
of the stream behind the village a great quantity of the soft tenacious
clay such as we used in making our pottery, at which work both men and
women among us were most skilful, and this clay he spread upon the
earth in and before the opening, thus making a clay platform. He also
plastered the inside of the trunk upward as far as he could reach,
with this same clay; then upon the clay platform he made a fire, not
too high, and fed this fire until nightfall, and for some time later.
Then we slept, for we were older men now and cared not to work into the
night.
The clay floor and the clay above it were well baked when we came to
the tree in the morning, though not yet enough, Hammer said, yet he did
not at once rebuild the fire, but sent for a slender and knowing lad of
the village to whom he gave a task of merit. The youth was to wriggle
his slim body through the opening and ascend and plaster the trunk
inside from bottom to top! It was a feat, but the youngster was equal
to it, with the aid provided him. The men cut down a tree and from it
took a long slender limb equal to the height of the dead trunk, and
sheared off its twigs and many side branches, leaving always enough of
each to make a foothold. They climbed the trunk and drew up the limb
and let it down inside and thus provided the boy with a sort of ladder
from which to do his work. The clay was passed up to him at first and
later slung down to him from the top in a skin pouch which one of the
men drew up. Two days it required for the resolute lad to complete the
work well, but at its end he had bestowed upon him such spear-head and
arrows and knife and hatchet of glittering copper as made him mightiest
of small warriors and loftiest of men among a thousand. Then in the
clay-bottomed and lined old tree trunk a mighty fire was built by
Hammer and kept going until the clay was turned to brick. He had made a
furnace! The fire roared up the opening as if drawn by all the demons
of the sky in time of storm.
Now Hammer took a lump of the clay and, working very carefully, pressed
down into it, to half its thickness, a copper axe; upon this he laid
a part, exceedingly thin, of the bladder of a stag, and afterward he
pressed down more of the clay, so that the axe was all embedded save
a portion of its handle; he then left the mess to dry for a time in
the sun, and later heated it for a long time in a fire outside. When
he drew it forth and it had cooled, the wooden handle outside the clay
was burned away, and, by a little careful prying, the two halves of
the mould which had been separated by the bladder came apart. These he
fitted together again and enclosed in another mass of clay, leaving
open only the opening into the hollow mould. The clay was set upon the
ground, with the hole upward.
Next Hammer brought from the village a covered earthen pot, not very
deep, into one side of which he made a hole to receive the end of a
long handle of wood, though before he put the handle in he covered it
also with clay which he baked about it in a long fire. He had now a
vessel which he could thrust unharmed into even such a dreadful furnace
as he had made within the base of the tree. Into it he placed half a
dozen ingots of the purest copper and thrust it, with its lid on, into
the white-red heart of the flaming coals. The long handle was propped
into place upon a crotch near the flames, and then we fed the fire, and
waited!
The day passed into the night, one of us awake at all times and feeding
the raging furnace as it needed. Morning came, and then Hammer, who had
been sleeping last, arose and looked at me and beckoned. Together we
neared the white-hot mass of coals and embers and, taking hold of the
long handle very carefully, withdrew the pot from where it rested in
the eye-blistering furnace. We took it away from the fire and rested
it a moment on the ground, while, with a long stick in hand, Hammer
lifted off the still red cover. Then rose such a yell of triumph as
had not been heard since we found the copper in the forest. The metal
had melted! We did not speak. Carefully as men had ever performed an
action, and holding the ungainly handle firmly, we poured the molten
stuff into the hole in the awaiting mold. It filled and overflowed and
ran upon the ground, but we cared not. What was left we poured into a
hollow in the soil and then threw ourselves upon the ground to wait
again. It was noon when we broke away the clay, and later, when the
mould had cooled enough to be handled, the two parts separated easily
and there came forth a copper axe! The great thing was accomplished!
It was not a perfect axe, but it would be so after a little grinding
and polishing. Henceforth the making of copper things would be done in
a new and easier way. Furthermore, one man, two men indeed, would die
something more content. The tribe--the whole world--had a part in what
had come that day!
And now for a time there were life and labour and clamour in the old
village again, because of the tree furnace and the convenient clay, but
later we learned to build a better furnace and to provide at the forest
village all things required for easier casting. With the training to
the labour from the getting of the copper to the time when it was made
into weapons or other things, there came, too, a new orderliness and
sense of what was best among us, and we established what was something
like a government; in a council of the older men, and less like the
ways of the barbarian, we sometimes met who had no law save that of
might. We feared them not, though once the ever-dreaded westward drift
from we know not where brought to our doors a small horde of barbarians
who thought to overrun us easily, but who fell in windrows at our
barricades before such archery as ours, or died beneath our copper
spears and axes and fled, a remnant, to seek somewhere an easier
conquest. There were not too many left for such adventure, and the
tribe next to us, a strong and warlike one, received them fiercely and
finished them completely.
But Hammer and I were growing old now and, to me especially, came a
weakness which I could not overcome. I was sick long and was well
tended, though it did not avail, I know not why, for I had but little
pain and still helped to advise, as was my duty as one of the elder
council, and still felt every interest in the welfare of my prosperous
tribe. Prosperous indeed it was, for now we and what we possessed
were known to all. From far and wide came the riches of the time to
us--many things--deep furs from the north, amber from the western sea,
and a host of other things of worth. And, as the barter grew, so did
a greater acquaintance between the tribes of all the land, and all
learned much and came to understand each other better and what was
beyond the region of each. All this because of our great discovery and
of what we had done with it!
And might there not yet, I dreamed, be hidden in the rocks other and
even more useful metals which men would sometimes find and smelt? These
thoughts pleased me much in the days when I lay helpless and weakening
from day to day, and much I spoke of them in the times when Hammer sat
beside me after bringing such food as I could eat. But it was not for
long!