The Wonder Stick
By Stanton A. Coblentz
Illustrated by S. Glanckoff
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation
New York
MCMXXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY
STANTON A. COBLENTZ
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THAT
OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN. PRINTED
IN THE U.S.A. BY J.J. LITTLE & IVES CO.,
NEW YORK
[Illustration: _Grumgra confronts Ru._]
CONTENTS
I. _Grumgra the Growling Wolf_
II. _Ru the Sparrow-Hearted_
III. _A Daughter of the Cave_
IV. _The Hunt and the Fire_
V. _The Migration Begins_
VI. _The Wrath of Grumgra_
VII. _The Fire-God Speaks_
VIII. _A New Misadventure_
IX. _Lost!_
X. _The Men of the Woods_
XI. _The Return of Ru_
XII. _The Tale of the Wind-God_
XIII. _Ru Accepts the Challenge_
XIV. _The Treachery of Yonyo_
XV. _The Magic of the River-God_
XVI. _The Conflict_
XVII. _When Wolf Meets Wolf_
XVIII. _The Migration Ends_
XIX. _Among the Labyrinths_
XX. _From Bad to Worse_
XXI. _The Arrival of the Beast-Men_
XXII. _The Beast-Men Score_
XXIII. _By the Light of the Half-Moon_
XXIV. _The Wonder Stick Strikes_
XXV. _The Ascension of Ru_
XXVI. _Ru the Eagle-Hearted_
_Conclusion_
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Grumgra confronts Ru_
_The migration_
_Ru frightens the bear with his torch_
_Ru hides from the sabertooth_
_Ru walks the waters_
_Ru plays with Wuff_
_The Umbaddu hunters were successful_
_The Umbaddu plunged to the attack_
THE WONDER STICK
CHAPTER I
_Grumgra the Growling Wolf_
A hundred thousand years have passed since a certain memorable twilight
in the forest of Umbaddu. Beyond a long ragged ridge of spruce, the
sun went down in forlorn crimson precisely like the suns of a later
day; across the winding valley, with its shaggy woods and age-battered
buttes and cliffs, an enchanted calm had settled, as though time had
ended and there were no other days to come. Only the Harr-Sizz or
Long-Snake River, foaming in tumultuous serpentine along its deep rocky
cañon, persistently broke the silence of the great wilderness; though
now and again the call of some belated bird, or howling of hyena, or
long-drawn, mournful plaint of some lonely wolf, would sound weirdly
and from far away like a voice from another world.
Yet birds, wolves, and hyenas were not the only inhabitants of those
houseless solitudes. Down by the brink of the river, where the waters
had widened for a space to a smooth-flowing glossy expanse, a curious
creature was threshing its way among the dense reeds and bushes. At
the first glance one might have mistaken it for some monstrous beast,
a cousin of the orang-utan or the gorilla; but a second glimpse would
have shown one that it belonged to a more advanced race.
Walking with a pronounced stoop on two massive legs, it reached a
height only slightly below that of a modern man. At its side was slung
a rabbit-skin pouch filled with pebbles, and in its huge right hand
it carried a rough-hewn club the size of a table leg; while its great
barrel-like chest, its short pugilistically thick neck, and enormously
developed arms gave proof of a strength that few moderns could equal.
For clothes it wore only a rudely cut strip of deerskin, which hung
loosely from the broad, curving shoulders not quite to the knees; and
over all the exposed parts of arms, legs, and breast there spread an
unbroken mat of dense black hair.
But most remarkable of all was the creature's face. In features more
beastlike than human, the savagery of the jungle seemed to be warring
with something that was not quite of the jungle, and in spite of the
heavy jowls and apelike jaws there was just a hint of a miracle to
come. The head was large and powerful, the forehead broad but low and
receding, the eyebrows perched on prominent bony ridges that went far
toward giving a brutish aspect. The nose was flat, and the nostrils
broadly dilated, the ears round, protruding and movable, the chin weak
and almost non-existent; the mouth was wide and the teeth ground down
almost to the jaw, while the cheeks, like the rest of the body, were
covered with a wilderness of black hair. And as for the eyes--they were
small and black, and yet keen and brilliantly lighted; and they burned
and sparkled with alert intelligence as their possessor pushed his way
warily through the thicket.
Arriving at the edge of the dense brush, he was confronted by a wall
of rock that shot precipitously upward for hundreds of feet. Even a
mountain-goat might have hesitated before attempting the seemingly
impossible ascent; but the hairy-limbed one did not so much as pause,
though handicapped by the weight of his pouch of pebbles and of his
club. With an air of absolute assurance, he turned a few paces to the
left, then began to scramble up an almost imperceptible little path
that twisted in and about among a jumbled pile of boulders. It was a
sort of natural stairway, though frequently there was a gap of five
or six feet between steps and the man had to lift himself from rock
to rock with much straining and pulling of his huge arms. Sometimes
he stood on ledges so narrow that one misstep would have plunged him
to destruction; sometimes it was not his feet but a powerful clinging
hand that preserved his balance, and one would have expected to see his
fingers slip and his huge form reel and stagger into the abyss. Yet
all the time he betrayed no fear, and continued on his way with the
apparent carelessness of a tight-rope walker.
The last gray of twilight was merging into the blackness of night when
at last the climber paused on a little shelf of rock two-thirds of the
way to the top. Out of a long irregular fissure in the cliff a dim
light was shining, a strange flickering light that might have brought
visions of goblins or ghosts. But the climber was neither surprised
nor alarmed; and after halting for a moment to give his panting heart
time to subside, he uttered a loud, thick-voiced grunt. Instantly, from
some unseen recess in the wall, dozens of responsive voices were raised
in a hoarse, excited chorus; then, after a second or two, the fissure
began to widen, and by the pale, eery illumination the watcher could
distinguish three or four grinning, apelike faces, and six or eight
curving hairy arms that tugged and tugged at a huge, slowly moving
boulder.
Meanwhile the shouts continued, louder and louder, growing and growing
in volume and excitement, until it seemed that hundreds of wildly
agitated voices were clamoring all at once. At the same time, the
tumult grew stranger and stranger, with hollow reverberations as of
men calling from some subterranean grotto; nor did the uproar diminish
before the straining arms had opened a cleft the size of a man's body.
Then suddenly, with a swift contortion of his limbs, the new arrival
slipped through the aperture; and once again the tugging arms were to
be seen, pulling, pulling the boulder back against its fellow rocks.
Soon, on that deserted terrace of the cliff, only the weird, wavering
light was visible through an opening as narrow as when the climber
had arrived. But, from within, a multitude of voices could be heard,
clamoring not quite so tumultuously as before, but chattering steadily
and excitedly, like enthusiastic children who have no end of things to
say.
And just beyond the replaced boulder, in the cavern whence the grinning
faces had appeared, a grotesque spectacle was in progress. To the
modern eye, it would have looked more like a scene from another
planet than of this world--and more striking, perhaps, than the scene
itself would have been the stage on which it was erected. Imagine a
long, curving, irregular gallery, roofed and paved and walled with
smoke-stained rock, in places so low that a man would have to stoop to
pass beneath it, in places arching to an ample vault from which slow
waters eternally drip and drip; imagine the dusky walls adorned with
strange-colored pictures, pictures of animals long extinct, of cave
wolves and cave bears, of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses; imagine
curious trophies hung side by side with the paintings, and above them,
the skulls and antlers of huge stags, the horns of aurochs, the hides
of wild boars and of mountain-sheep, the teeth of bears and the fangs
of serpents slung into great hideous chains; while at one end a tall
heap of bones, hundreds of which have been split and splintered for the
marrow, bears evidence of many a greedy repast. And picture the whole
scene illuminated from a single source, a great blazing pile of logs
near the mouth of the cavern, so that for a few yards the cave stands
forth clearly revealed, while for its greater length it is obscured in
a vague smoky twilight that gradually gives place to the blackness of
utter night.
Within the cave, all was tumult and confusion. Every shadow seemed to
be populated; and out of every dark recess crawled some hairy form,
with excited voice raised to greet the new arrival. That he was one
of them would have been apparent at a glance; they too were mantled
in furs and skins, whether of the deer, the wild horse, or the bison;
they too were stooping and brawny and covered with hair, with the same
retreating forehead, the same thick neck and powerful jaws, the same
bony eye-ridges and glittering black eyes.
As the newcomer entered, half a dozen long stout arms were flung about
his neck and shoulders, and half a dozen sinewy hands seized him in a
fierce grip of friendship. Then so closely did the swarm press about
him, so furiously did they squeeze and struggle to be near, that one
might have expected him to be crushed or suffocated.
"Welcome back!" they chorused, in a tongue crude as that of a
mid-African savage. "Welcome back, Mumlo the Trail-Finder!"
And in the confusion of voices that ensued, one might have
distinguished little more than a series of guttural clucks and
grunts--"Gru ghra, gru ghra, gru ghra!"--like the murmurings of a
bewildered mob.
Yet that throaty tumult was in reality a pandemonium of joy. "Welcome!
Welcome! Welcome!" rang out the voices--which is as near as the
primitive words can be given a modern equivalent. And mingled with the
greetings, there came a storm of questions: "Where have you been so
long? What have you done? What have you seen? Why are you alone? Where
is Grop the Tree-Climber? and Wamwa the Snake-Eyed?"
So insistent were these inquiries, and so determined was each
questioner to be answered, that the newcomer could only turn in
bewilderment from one to another, mumbling a monosyllable here and a
monosyllable there, but apparently saying nothing to satisfy anyone,
since for some time the confused jabbering continued unabated.
Then with lightning suddenness the tumult ceased. One of the mob
uttered a single frightened monosyllable--and all tongues stopped short
in mid-sentence. A look half of awe, half of actual fear, came across
the grimacing faces; the sharp glittering eyes were all fastened upon
the farther recesses of the cave, from whose midnight fastnesses a huge
shambling form was emerging into the nearer twilight.
"Grumgra the Growling Wolf!" muttered one or two under their breath;
and all drew back as if by instinct as the newcomer sullenly approached.
His great form, in the wavering shadows, seemed truly monstrous and
redoubtable, perhaps more monstrous than the clear radiance of day
would have shown it to be. As compared with his fellows, he was of
enormous build--not less than six feet in height, with gorilla-like
chest, thick-set sinewy limbs, and the solid stocky aspect of one whose
excess weight runs to muscles. His head was large, even in proportion
to his immense frame, and his broad forehead was not quite so low as
those of his kinsmen, although the glowering, ferocious aspect of
his long hairy face, with the exceptionally prominent jaws and high,
tapering cheek-bones, made him even more savage-looking than the
majority. Armed with an oaken club almost as tall as himself, clad in
the hide of a black wolf and adorned with a crown of wolf's teeth, he
was truly a figure to strike terror to the hearts of the timid.
Majestically he stalked toward the firelight, while at his coming his
tribesmen retreated as far as the walls would permit. Within a dozen
paces of the flames, he paused; then, lifting his club ceremoniously
above his head, he uttered a single deep-voiced sound, more like the
bellowing of a bull than the speech of a man. And, at this command,
the cowering mob began hesitatingly to approach him, though all
were careful to keep beyond range of the club. But one of their
number--he who had that evening scaled the cliff and been received
so tumultuously--made bold to step almost within arm's length of the
scowling one, and, without waiting to be bidden, launched into speech.
"O Grumgra, O great chief," he said, "I have done as you have ordered.
I have been many days' travel toward the land of the noonday sun, and
have seen wonderful things and met with queer adventures. And I have
entered a strange bright country, fairer than this country, a strange
and glorious place for our tribe to live. But evil spirits dwell there
and have done wicked things to my companions, for Wamwa the Snake-Eyed
was caught by the deep waters, and Grop the Tree-Climber was caught by
a wild beast--and none of us shall ever see them again!"
At these words a low moan issued from a far corner of the cavern.
But, disregarding the interruption, Grumgra burst out sonorously, in
tones more thunderous than those of his fellows: "Let us thank the
gods of the wood that brought Mumlo back, although he bears us sad
news. But what does the fate of a few men matter? Mumlo has saved us
from the bad spirits that try to destroy us. For a longer time than
any man can remember, our fathers have lived in this cave; but now,
my people, the day comes when we must leave. You know how the winters
have been growing longer and colder; how the sharp winds blow, and the
snow piles thick for many moons, while the great sheets of ice, in the
direction of the storm-wind, creep nearer and nearer every year. And
our game gets scarcer and scarcer, for the mammoth is huge and terrible
and hard to hunt, and the reindeer is wary and fleet, and the woolly
rhinoceros and the wolves and bears are ferocious and kill many of
our people. Yet there are stories in our tribe of a time when great
warmth-loving beasts bathed in our rivers, and when mammoths without
hair roamed in the woods. If we are wise, we may follow these creatures
to warmer lands. And that, as you know, is why we have sent Mumlo the
Trail-Finder to learn what sort of country lies under the noonday sun."
"Let Mumlo tell us what he has seen!" came the voice of one of the men.
"Let Mumlo tell us--"
But instantly the rash one regretted his words. An angry flash came
into the black eyes of the chieftain; with a resounding thud, his
great club smashed against a projecting spur of the cavern wall.
And while the splinters flew in a hundred directions, Grumgra bellowed,
"Mumlo will speak only when I bid him to!" And perversely he added, "I
do not bid him to speak now!"
For a second he paused, as if uncertain of his own intention; then
followed with the growling admonition: "Let him now be fed and given
sleep and rest after his long journey! And let none question him more!
Tomorrow, when the sun is awake again, we shall all gather here and
listen to his story--and then I shall tell you whether we shall leave
the cave or stay!"
And, having issued his ultimatum, he made a sedate about-face; and,
swinging his club commandingly, slouched away into the shadows.