_The Return of Ru_
Two or three hours had passed before Ru would venture away from the
shelter of the lake. And when finally he paddled to land, he chose a
point a mile or more from the scene of the conflict--a secluded little
inlet not far below the mouth of the Harr-Sizz River. Here, he knew,
he was secure from the gaze of his foes, even had they been watching
for him. But he could not be sure that others of their kind were not
lurking in the woods; and it was with extreme caution that he took his
way along the beaches and around the dense clumps of greenery, his club
gripped in readiness for immediate action.
No sign of anything hostile appeared, however, save now and then a
serpent squirming out of his path. Neither wild beast nor wild man
seemed to be abroad; he gained the Harr-Sizz River unmolested; and,
with tension relaxed, followed its turbulent course toward the spot
where his tribe had crossed.
This point proved to be somewhat farther than he had expected. More
than once, as he glided through the seemingly endless woods just above
the river bank, he asked himself whether he might not be following the
wrong stream by mistake. But he continued in spite of his doubts; and
at last, shortly before sundown, his efforts were rewarded. Rounding an
abrupt turn in the river, he recognized all of a sudden the scene of
his recent misfortune, the fording place of his people.
After a few minutes' search, he found the clear marks of their passage.
Innumerable tracks stared at him from the soft soil, as plainly as
if made only that day--tracks of all sizes, which wandered from the
river bank into the shadowy wilderness, trampling down the grass and
underbrush and curving through the open spaces in long meandering loops.
It was with mixed feelings that Ru read these silent messages from
his kinsmen. He had something of the feelings of an exile who beholds
from afar the shore-line of his country; the full bitterness of his
loneliness flooded back over him again, the sense of isolation and
of loss, mingled with renewed anger that--through no fault of his
own--he should have been subjected to such humiliation, suffering, and
peril. But, above all, the remembrance of Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed came
back to him. Useless for him to reflect that she was unworthy of his
attention, that she would only laugh at his wretchedness, ridicule his
misfortunes, and contemptuously forget him were he to die--the thought
of her filled him at once with fury and with a deep but tender emotion.
Yet Ru lost no time in idle ruminations. Having found his people's
tracks, he followed them as far as the waning daylight permitted, then
warily set about the business of finding a tree for the night.
This time he was to be disturbed by no mysterious screams. There were
only the usual night noises--the cry of some nocturnal bird, the
far-off call of some predatory beast, the stirring and the rustling of
the breeze amid the foliage.
The following morning he awakened in happier spirits. Now, for the
first time, he felt that he was actually on the way back to his people!
He realized, to be sure, that they had preceded him by nearly three
days; but, retarded as they were by implements and provisions, by women
with babes in arms and by the younger children, they could travel no
farther in two hours than he could travel in one.
For many miles he followed hopefully on their trail, which ran through
the forest up a slope that ascended first gently and then with bold
and difficult grades, until Ru realized with apprehension that he
was climbing a mountainside. Enormous boulders littered his way, and
there were places where he had to crawl on hands and knees up the
steep and jutting rocks; a tumultuous stream ran at his side, foaming
in loud rapids or plunging in cascades; above him, through rifts in
the woods, he caught glimpses from time to time of appalling slopes
of white. Had his people mounted straight into that snowy desolation?
He could not believe they had; but that they had passed this way was
all too evident, not only from their tracks where the soil was damp
and leaf-matted, but from the clues they had left even in the rockier
places--here a flint tool that had been unwittingly dropped; there
the rib of a buffalo or wild boar, chewed and discarded; yonder the
torn-off strip of a deerskin robe.
Once or twice, indeed, Ru did fear that he had lost the tracks, and for
a while wandered about aimlessly amid a stony wilderness. But always,
after a few minutes, he discovered some reassuring token, and continued
on his way. The sun stood about midway in the heavens when at length,
to his relief, the trail swerved and led him over an open shoulder of
the mountain, then down toward a gently sloping wooded valley, so wide
that the farther end was lost in a blue haze.
Not far below the divide, and just above the border of the woods, Ru
paused in sudden consternation. His watchful eyes had detected a little
reddened bit of stone in a crevice between two boulders--one of the
flint knives used by his people! Stooping down eagerly and seizing the
implement, he examined it in uncertainty--could the clotted blood on
the edge be that of some slaughtered beast? There was no possibility
of proof; but Ru remembered once more the man-eating savages he had
encountered, and wondered with what bloodthirsty foe his tribe had
clashed.
A few yards farther down the slope he found other signs to confirm
his misgivings. From a clump of dense brush he observed a bit of fur
protruding; and he pulled forth a long strip of bison hide of the
size of one of his tribesmen's robes! In the center it was pierced as
by some half blunt implement; and on the ragged edge of the cut were
streaks and blots of crimson.
As if this evidence were not sufficient, the very ground beneath him
bore witness to a conflict. In places the weeds and shrubs had been
crushed or uprooted, and lay torn and broken in withering masses; in
places even the stones seemed to have been dislocated, and sharply
outlined holes in the soil testified to where large rocks had been;
while in one spot there was a blur of footprints, crowding on top of
each other, and most of them half obliterated--some pointing up-hill
and some down-hill, as though from the mad surging of a multitude.
Half persuaded that some dire fate had overtaken his people, Ru
hastened on into the woods, guided by a swarm of tracks, which might
have been those of his tribesmen and might have been those of their
foes. What terrific struggle had taken place during his absence? He
asked himself again and again, as he glided noiselessly through those
dim winding forest spaces. In his mind there was no longer a doubt that
his people had battled some strange tribe; but what the issue of the
conflict had been, and how many of his kinsmen had survived to tell the
tale, were questions for which he could have no answers.
Nor did he expect an answer for several days--if at all. If the Umbaddu
had fled before some marauding foe, they must already be many hours
away. And what if the enemy barred the path between him and his people,
so that he would have no way of reaching them?
But a great surprise lay in store for him. Approaching a break in
the forest not half a dozen miles below the scene of the ominous
footprints, he was startled by hearing a faint murmuring of voices,
which gradually grew louder as he stole warily forward through the
shadows, until it was recognizable as the gibbering of a multitude.
A shudder of fear shot through Ru's heart. Might he not again be
approaching a settlement of the man-eaters? Halting abruptly, he stood
as though petrified; his impulse was to flee while flight might still
be of avail. Yet once again curiosity mastered him--curiosity, and a
glad surmise which seemed too fantastic to be true. Cautious not to
expose his presence by a sound or a gesture, he crept forward inch by
inch like a prowling cat, his shoulders bent far toward the ground, his
arms reaching down beneath his knees, his frightened gray eyes alert
for the least suspicious sound or movement.
But there was nothing suspicious to interrupt his progress. And at
length, after a few minutes that seemed interminable, he reached the
final line of the bushes; at length he was able to push the concealing
leaves gently aside, and to peer out upon the meadow from which the
gibbering voices still proceeded.
At the first glance, he uttered a low exclamation of relief. And
impetuously he rose to his full height--the need for concealment was
over!
Sprawled in a rude circle by the banks of a river, were scores of
familiar fur-clad figures!
Trembling with happiness, Ru strode forward to meet them. "My people!
My people!" it was on his lips to say, when he observed that his
arrival was creating a peculiar effect.
Immediately upon his emergence, some of the nearer tribesmen had sprung
to their feet, startled and amazed--as well they might be! As if at an
electrical signal, others followed their example, with little shocked
and horrified exclamations, until, almost in a flash, the entire tribe
stood confronting him speechlessly.
Overpowered though he was by his own astonishment, Ru could see that
the eyes of some were distended with terror; that the limbs of others
were quivering; that the lips of one were moving silently as if in
frightened prayer.
Before he could find words to demand the reason for this strange
reception, the explanation was shrilled into his ears.
"It's Ru! It's the Sparrow-Hearted! It's his dead spirit come back!"
shrieked one of the younger tribesmen, taking to his heels. And the
others took up his cry, "It's his dead spirit come back!" until those
fearsome words echoed and reechoed in a terrified din, and on all sides
the panic-stricken people were fleeing toward the woods.
For an instant the bewildered Ru did not quite grasp what was
happening. Then, as full understanding came to him, his paralyzed
tongue was loosened, and he shouted, at the top of his voice, "It is no
spirit you see! It is I, Ru! It is Ru come back to you!"
But so thoroughly alarmed were the people that most of them continued
full-tilt toward the woods, as if the shouted words only confirmed
their belief that they had seen a ghost.
Yet two or three, less timorous than their fellows, did turn at the
sound of Ru's voice. While he continued to cry, "It is only I come
back! I will not harm you!" they seemed half convinced that he spoke
the truth, and began tentatively and hesitatingly to approach.
By some peculiar chance, these audacious spirits were all women. And
among them Ru recognized, with a tremor of delight, Zubu the Prattling
Brook and Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed!
It did not now seem to matter that the tribe had fled. As Yonyo drew
near, Ru entirely forgot his vanished kinsmen under the fascination of
those glittering black eyes.
"So the Sparrow-Hearted has come back?" she called, striding ahead
of her more cautious tribeswomen, and coming almost within touching
distance of the supposed phantom. "For three days already we have
believed the Sparrow-Hearted drowned." And half tauntingly, and with an
admonishing smile, she added: "It is not right to pretend to pass the
great mountains of the dead."
"Oh, Yonyo, I did not pretend!" he pleaded. And then, as she came
within arm's grasp and halted, he felt once more the full fury of his
loneliness and of his longing for her.
"Are you not glad to see me back, Yonyo?" he cried. "Do you have no
word of joy for me? Is it nothing to you that I have been saved from
the wild beasts, and from men more savage than wolves? Oh, Yonyo, do
you not care?"
One of her most taunting, tantalizing smiles overspread her face; and
he could not be certain whether she intended to reassure him or to dash
all hope from his heart.
But her reply, although trembling on her lips, was never to be spoken,
for at that instant Zubu the Prattling-Brook came panting up to him;
and, scarcely taking time to regain her breath, burst into a storm of
questions.
"Ru, where have you been all these days? Have you not been drowned, as
Kuff and Woonoo said? Have you not gone beyond the mountains of the
sky, where those spirits live who can never come back? Or have you been
there and escaped? Have you done that wonderful deed? Have you been
dead, Ru, and walked down from the sky?"
"Yes, I have been dead, and walked down from the sky," he assured her,
on an impulse that startled even himself. And as an awestricken light
came into her eyes, he felt an audacious plan gathering form and power
within him.
"I have been dead, and come back!" he repeated, with a boldness born
of the effect his words had produced. "I am the only man who has
ever escaped from the great wind-spirit that blows beyond the last
mountains. Woonoo and Kuff spoke truth when they said they saw me
drowned. For a whole day my body lay under the water, and I could not
move nor speak; and in that day my spirit flew far, far away, and saw
things that no man has ever seen before. But of all that I shall tell
you later."
By this time two or three more women, observing that the apparition
had not harmed Yonyo or Zubu, had approached and silently joined the
group. They too gaped in wide-eyed wonder; but not a murmur of doubt or
incredulity escaped their lips.
"Tell us more!" they begged, when Ru cut his recitation short. "Do not
wait! Tell us more, Ru! We want to know what happened to you beyond the
last mountains!"
"I cannot tell you until all our people are here to listen," declared
Ru, with finality. "Go, call the people--and when they are all here, I
shall speak of the strange things that happened to me."
And while several of the women hastened away to reassemble their
frightened tribesfolk, Ru's imagination was busy constructing a story
fitted to astound his kinsmen.
But even as he reflected, he took care to observe his surroundings; his
eyes traveled appraisingly from detail to detail of the landscape. He
noted that he stood in the midst of a small tract of grassland, bounded
on three sides by the woods, and on the fourth by the river; and he
was surprised to see how wide was the stream--wider than he had ever
known any man to swim, so wide that the trees on the opposite bank made
little more than a dim blur. Near the edge of the waters, whose current
was so slow as to be barely perceptible, he beheld the ashes of three
or four camp-fires, one of which was still smoldering feebly; while in
several spots were unsightly piles of picked bones or of the discarded
entrails of animals.
Glancing out across the broad reaches of the river, Ru could surmise
the reason why his tribe had halted. But there was much about their
recent adventures that he could not surmise--much that perplexed and
troubled him, particularly since he saw several of his tribesmen
returning with red gashes in their heads and foreheads, or with broken
arms dangling limply from their shoulders.
Hence, while he stood awaiting his people's return, he asked Yonyo to
relate all that had happened during his absence.
To his disappointment, it was not Yonyo that replied. A faint smile
came into her eyes, though whether of acquiescence or refusal he
could not say; but, almost before she had had time to speak, Zubu
the Prattling-Brook--evidently thinking the question addressed to
her--launched into an eager recital.
"Ever since we left the Harr-Sizz River," she said, "bad spirits have
been with us. When we had gone as far from the stream as a man can run
at top speed, an evil sign appeared: a strange beast, with great paws
and growling lips, and two teeth as long as your arms. At this terrible
sight, we all ran for the trees. But before we could get there, we
heard a woman cry out horribly; and we saw the beast sneaking away into
the woods, trailing the body of poor old Awoo.
"When Zunzun the Marvel-Worker heard about this, he looked very sad,
and said that evil days were ahead. He thought that the good spirits
were angry because we had left our cave; and he told us the bad spirits
would come and take many more of us away. And he began to groan and
grumble, and I heard him say we should all turn around and go back to
our cave.
"But Grumgra the Growling Wolf swung his club very heavily, and there
was no one that would cry out when he was near. For a while we all
trembled and were much afraid, and there was nothing we could do. But
Zunzun the Marvel-Worker was right when he said we should go back to
our cave, for at last a terrible thing was made known. We had climbed
a long mountain and were on an open space near the top, when we all
stopped and Mumlo the Trail-Finder looked around him as if he did not
know whether to go up or down. Then someone heard him say we had gone
the wrong way! He did not think he had ever seen this mountain before!
And no one knew where we were or where we were going!"
Zubu paused, and her tiny black eyes were softened momentarily with a
sad expression. Then, while several of her kinsmen silently came up
and joined the group, she continued:
"You do not know, Ru, what a bad time we had then. You should have seen
the way Grumgra howled and swung his club, so that Mumlo had to keep
hidden all the time. Nearly everyone was screaming like a frightened
animal, but Grumgra's voice was the loudest of all. He cried out that
we must keep on toward the noonday sun even if we did not know the way.
And everyone was afraid to say no, until suddenly there came a yell
from one corner of our camp--and we saw the beast with the teeth as
long as a man's leg; and he ran away with another of our people.
"Some of us now cried out that this was a sign from the gods of the
woods that we must not go on. And Zunzun said they would punish us, and
turn us all into meat for the wild beasts; and then all the people were
so frightened that they were like wild beasts themselves. Many of us
shouted that we would not go on and let ourselves be eaten by the evil
things of the woods; and we said that we wanted to go back again to our
old cave. Then came Grumgra, swinging his club; and he roared that we
must go on; but this time we were too frightened to do as he told us.
Some of the other men swung their clubs and growled when Grumgra came
their way--yes, growled and swung their clubs against Grumgra himself!"
"And what then?" demanded Ru, in breathless interest, when the
Prattling-Brook came to a sudden stop. "Did the Growling Wolf have to
do as they wanted?"
"The Growling Wolf never does as anyone wants," pointed out Zubu; and
her eyes shone with admiration of the leader. "There was a fight--but
do we not know how any fight will end when Grumgra is in it? There
was much swinging of clubs, and much throwing of stones, and striking
of heavy blows, and shouting and hissing of oaths; and some were
on Grumgra's side, and some on Zunzun's side, and some on neither
side--they just fought for the fun of fighting. All the while half of
us women stood watching, and crying out for our own men to win; but the
other half did not want to watch, but left their babes and fought with
the men--and very good fighters they were, too!
"When at last everything was over, two of our people lay bleeding on
the ground, and could not rise again; and most of the rest of us were
hurt on the arms or legs or shoulders. But those on Grumgra's side were
not hurt so much as those on Zunzun's, for many a man had known the
touch of Grumgra's club. And in the end we all cried out that we would
do as Grumgra said, since one so mighty as he could not be wrong. And
then Grumgra and Zunzun were friends once more, and the Marvel-Worker
said we should go with Grumgra anywhere, for he was stronger than the
beast with the teeth as long as a man's whole body.
"Yet"--here Zubu hesitated perceptibly, and her face was overspread
by a rueful smile--"they have not been able to go with him past this
river. It is very deep, and so wide we cannot swim across, and no man
knows what to do, whether to go along its banks, or turn back, or--"
"Then did you meet no tribes of wild men?" interrupted Ru, unable to
suppress the question that had been uppermost in his mind for hours.
"You only fought with yourselves? You saw no men that eat other men?"
"Men that eat other men?" echoed several of the hearers, bursting into
laughter. And, remembering the old discredited legends about human
man-eaters, one of the women muttered to herself, "Ru has been hearing
silly stories!" And one or two nudged their neighbors and murmured
slyly, but loud enough for Ru to hear, "The Sparrow-Hearted is having
dreams again!"
But before Ru could frame a retort, a great lumbering figure burst into
view from a recess in the woods, and began to approach at a brisk pace.
And a silence fell across the little assemblage, for who could be merry
when Grumgra the Growling Wolf was drawing near?