THE FIRE DEMON
The hairy boy followed the wolf cubs. These half famished animals, once
released, were even quicker than he was in scrambling off of the ledge
and down the hillside. The boy watched them go and followed after them
at a remarkably swift pace considering his short legs. He walked stooped
over as if his massive shoulders and head were too heavy for his stocky
legs to carry, and when he scrambled over rocks he occasionally stooped
very low and used his long arms as forelegs, resting the weight of his
body on clenched hands, the knuckles of which were used as the soles of
his forefeet. But this was only occasionally. He preferred to walk on two
feet, although it did seem to be an effort. He did not know, of course,
that he was only a few thousand years removed from ancestors who walked
on four feet and lived in trees and that his group of hairy men were only
just learning, comparatively speaking, to stand erect.
As he shambled down the hill other sensations besides that of hunger
began to manifest themselves. He realized that he was approaching the
domains of the Fire Demon. The atmosphere grew warmer, which troubled him
a little. Then as he got further down the hillside he found clouds of
white steam swirling about on the wind. These struck fear to his heart.
Smoke or steam were agents of the Fire Demon and to be avoided. He paused
in his hurry and wondered whether it was safe to go further. But still
the intoxicating odor assailed him and urged him on. He crouched beside
a big rock and watched with eager eyes the progress of the wolf cubs who
were making their way through the steamy mist with caution. Yet they
kept on, and the hairy boy seeing that nothing had yet happened to them
screwed up his courage and followed after them, always watchful and alert.
The fog grew thicker. Ahead he seemed to hear a soft hissing sound. There
was an occasional subterranean rumble too. This made cold chills race up
and down his spine and the hair between his shoulders began to bristle,
a sign that fear was making him ready for fight. He stopped now and
crouched irresolutely beside a stone for a long time, so long that the
wolf cubs became lost to him in the mist. He debated in his slow brain
whether he should go on or turn back. Thinking was a hard process for
him. It took him a long time to come to a decision. Presently, however,
he found himself reasoning thus: he was hungry, near to starving; he was
foodless now because the wolf cubs were gone, but they had gone on into
the mist and until he had lost sight of them nothing had happened to
them. If nothing had happened to them perhaps it was safe for him to go
on,—then too that enchanting odor was strong, very strong. That in the
end mastered his fears and he pushed on.
Deeper and deeper into that mysterious and awesome steam blanket he
penetrated, his courage screwed up to its highest notch. He felt he was
very brave; indeed he knew he was most brave for he knew that none of
the other hairy people would dare venture so far into the domains of the
terrible Fire Demon. But then he had the example of the wolf-dog cubs,
his terrific hunger and that overpowering odor to carry him on. Presently
he discovered that the ground was quite warm even to his feet that had
protective pads of callous skin nearly an inch thick. Some of the rocks
were hot. He stepped on one, and with a grunt of surprise jumped aside.
Had one of the Fire Demon’s evil spirits bitten him! That burn took a
great deal of courage out of him and it was some time before he could
force himself to go on. When he did start forward he avoided every stone
and trod the ground with care.
Suddenly through the mist he heard a sharp yelp. It was one of the
wolf-dog cubs. The hairy boy knew their language. This was the yelp of
one cub driving the other away from something to eat. The boy rushed
forward determined that if there was food to be had he wanted it before
the cubs devoured it. A moment later he saw a body prone on the ground.
One of the wolf cubs was standing on it and tearing great strips of flesh
from it which it devoured with great gusto. But there were other forms on
the ground. The hairy boy saw them everywhere. A band of horses had been
caught in the valley by the eruption of the volcano and killed by the
terrific heat. They were little horses with thin legs that ended in three
toed feet.
With a cry of joy the all but famished boy hurried forward for he
recognized in the dead horses a treat that rarely fell to the hairy
people. It was only by means of the greatest skill in hunting and the
concerted effort of the whole colony that one of these horses, veritable
antelopes, was ever killed or captured, and when this happened the whole
colony had a feast for the flesh was the most desirable meat attainable
then.
But when the boy reached the nearest of the band of dead horses he
stopped and fear showed in his eyes. The horse was dead, smitten by
the hand of the Fire Demon. Its flesh and hide looked far different
from that of any horse he had ever seen. Something had happened. But
whatever that something was the hairy boy knew it was also responsible
for that delectable odor that he had trailed down the hillside. He could
not understand that the horse, in fact all of the horses of the band,
for there were several hundred scattered about, had been killed by the
intense heat of the lava and roasted to a turn.
He circled the first horse suspiciously and looked it over thoroughly. It
was the one on the top of which the wolf-dog cub was standing and tearing
away luscious morsels. The boy watched the cub. It ate and ate like a
veritable glutton, yet nothing strange or out of the ordinary seemed to
happen to it. The feast of the cub and the odor of roasted horse were
too much for him. He approached the carcass and reached over to where the
cub was feasting. The cub growled and snarled at him. This made the hairy
boy angry and he cuffed it so hard that he knocked it to the ground. Then
he tore off a strip of flesh that the cub had been chewing at and tasted
it.
Never in all his life had anything passed his lips that gave him greater
pleasure. Horse meat had always seemed wonderful but this horse meat upon
which the hand of the Fire Demon had been laid was beyond anything he
had ever tasted. Fear, superstition and all else were dominated by his
overpowering hunger and he crouched beside the cooked horse and glutted
himself; indeed even when his paunch was distended so that his hairy
skin was tight, he still pulled off shreds of meat and chewed on them.
And as he sat there he felt very comfortable and very happy despite the
fact that steam clouds swirled about him. At this he wondered and as he
wondered his primitive brain began to reason.
It was a long slow process then and very hard. Sometimes when his
reasoning got too deep or too complex he found his thoughts wandering
and it was always with an effort that he brought his mind back to the
problem of why he was so comfortable. In doing this the hairy boy was
perhaps the first of us humans to mentally discipline himself and solve a
problem. There were only a few thinkers among the hairy people and their
thoughts did not go beyond the making of a stone hammer. They could not
even think to the point of providing clothing to help keep themselves
warm.
But gradually the hairy boy worked it out. Heat was the reason for his
comfortable feeling. The atmosphere was delightfully warm, the ground was
warm; so wonderfully warm that he stretched himself at full length upon
it. The food he had eaten was warm. Assuredly heat was the reason. The
only warmth he had ever known was the warmth of the sun, but never had he
been able to get as close to real warmth as here. And only occasionally
of late years was the sun so warm as the old men of the colony said it
used to be, while the cold had gone on year after year being more bitter
until the hair of the hairy folk grew thicker and thicker. The boy did
not know that a great change was in process; that the earth’s axis had
swung slowly out of position and that year after year the great ice
caps about the poles were edging their way toward the equator and that
centuries later great glaciers would cover the land miles deep with ice.
Neither did he know that the volcanic eruption he had witnessed was a
forerunner of this great change.
He did know though that the nights were very cold and that the days were
not the tropical days the old and weazened hairy men told about and as he
lay there prone on the warm earth struggling with this new found power
of reason, he wondered after all whether the Fire Demon was the fearsome
thing the hairy people believed it to be. Here was good that it gave him:
the good of warm food, warm air, warm ground to put his back against—yet,
and he realized it with a shudder, here were these hundreds of dead
horses on which he and the wolf-dog cubs had feasted, mute testimony of
the wrath of the Fire Demon. Why was it that one who possessed so much
good could be so fearful? Why was it—but here the problem became too
perplexing for even the hairy boy and, being full of stomach and warm of
body, he fell asleep, probably the first human being to sleep prone and
lying on his back.
And as he slept the wolf cubs, seeing strange shapes in the swirling
steam clouds, and hearing strange guttural sounds as of huge animals
eating, searched him out and crept closer to him. They were frightened at
these menacing apparitions, and being motherless they looked to the hairy
boy for protection, for somehow they felt that it was his presence that
had kept them safe from harm up there on the hillside under the cliff.