FIRE
Og paid small heed to the tree people who gathered at a safe distance to
watch him. This task of skinning the great cave tiger was too absorbing
and too important. He worked diligently until the sun was overhead
before he had the huge pelt removed and spread out on the surface of a
sun-warmed rock to dry. But he did not stop there. He fancied the long
knife-like claws of the great cat, and with his stone hammer he broke all
of these off. He wanted the sabres, too; the long tusks that protruded
from the upper jaw and were almost as long as his forearm. With his stone
hammer he broke these off and laid them aside with his other trophies.
All this accomplished, he sat down to rest and suck the blood from his
messy fingers. It was then that he realized for the first time that he
was hungry. But the strong, unsavory cat flesh did not appeal to him,
despite the fact that he had not tasted meat for several days. With his
flint knife he hacked a muscle from the carcass and tried it. It was not
pleasant and he flung it to the wolf cubs.
They devoured it greedily and turned to the carcass for more, and Og knew
that with the help of the vultures that already circled overhead or sat
hunched on nearby rocks, they would soon leave nothing but gnawed bones
to remind the tree people of the terrible cave-dwelling tiger.
His hunger recalled to Og that the tree people had provided him with
food. He looked out toward the mouth of the canyon, where a number of
them were gathered in little groups in trees and on the tops of rocks,
watching him curiously, and he noted with a sense of satisfaction that as
he watched them they became uneasy, and chattered among themselves, and
some that had ventured a little too far from the security of the trees
scrambled back and took refuge among the palm tops, nor did they jabber
at him derisively as ape people did at hairy folk when they felt safely
out of reach. They held him in awe and Og knew that his triumph over
Sabre-Tooth was accountable for it. Even the powerful Scar Face and his
band of warriors moved to a distance with the others.
Og was elated, nor was he slow to take advantage of this new situation.
With a rolling walk that had about it a faint suggestion of swagger, he
walked to the mouth of the canyon and looked at the flat rock on which
the tree people had each day placed the fruit and nuts that were his
food. It was bare. He looked at it in silence for a moment then up among
the palms at the peering, chattering tree people. In the fiercest voice
he could muster he began shouting for food, at the same time brandishing
his stone hammer.
Much to his satisfaction his easily interpreted actions caused a
commotion among the ape men and forthwith Scar Face and a number of
others began chattering loudly, and presently the whole horde was
scurrying about among the tree tops. Og, with the demeanor of a tyrant,
which he already felt himself to be, walked back to his tiger skin and
sat there watching, and before long he was gratified to see timid tree
folk hurrying toward the food rock with armfuls of fruit, and it was not
long before they had deposited there a pile of food that was staggering
in its proportions. It contained more than Og could eat in many days,
all of which gave the primitive boy grim satisfaction. He was fast
beginning to feel his importance as the slayer of the cave tiger and
it delighted him to see that the tree people were awed to fear by his
prowess.
Still, his fast developing egotism did not overbalance his discretion,
for that night and many nights thereafter he and the wolf cubs sought
out protecting rocks on the sloping sides of the canyon, behind which to
crouch and slumber.
Nor did the fact that he was held in awe and feared by the tree people
incline him toward being a bully and a despot. Og was developing too
swiftly for that. There were too many things he wanted to do and he did
not want to spare time to make life miserable for Scar Face and his
people through their fear of him. True, he did demand that they bring him
food, but that was no hardship. Indeed, it soon became apparent that this
was in the nature of a pleasure for the ape people, for daily scores of
the food carriers gathered among the rocks and trees at the mouth of the
canyon and watched him as he went about accomplishing the things that
he had set out to do. They watched him with the curiosity that only ape
folk can display, and many of them tried to imitate him in some of the
things he did. Especially was this true of Scar Face, the leader of the
tree folk. When Og chipped stone diligently for half a day, Scar Face and
several of the other tree men, after watching him in silence for a time,
would get two stones and knock them together too and watch the result
curiously. But, of course, they never achieved anything from their effort
for they had no object in knocking the stones together in the first
place, save that of imitating the hairy boy.
Og spent a great deal of time in knocking stones together, for _he_ had a
real object. He was determined to find out how to get the fire from the
black rock in a form that would make it of service to him as a protector
and to furnish him light and heat and cook his food. Og thought longingly
of the fire-scorched horse that he had first eaten and he was determined,
if it were possible, to once again eat cooked meat.
For that reason he spent days at a time working with the piece of flint
rock that gave off the sparks each time he struck it against another
stone. He tried every way he could think of to catch the fire, but not
once was his patient effort rewarded with even the tiniest spiral of
smoke. Still he kept at his work with determination. Time and again he
held sticks against the black stone and watched the results eagerly. He
struck the stone against the stick for hours at a time until he wore
out the stick, yet the result was always the same. When he struck stone
against stone he always got sparks, yet neither stone would catch fire.
Og worked and worried and fretted and tired his brain out trying to
accomplish the thing he desired.
He had set himself up a veritable workshop there in the canyon, under
the shelter of some big bowlders. There he kept his precious tiger skin,
and the claws and teeth, and there he kept choice pieces of wood that he
hoped some day to make into torches, his hammers—for he had made several
now that he had found an interest in making things—his stone knives,
for he had wrought several of these with patient chipping, and numerous
pieces of flint that he had gathered up about the canyon. Always he sat
on a smooth flat rock to work at his stone chipping, and beneath this
rock was a litter of stone chips and, most conspicuous of all, a pile of
splintered wood, some of it ground almost to powder as a result of his
almost incessant beating of flint against wood and wood against flint in
his vain hope of transferring the sparks from the stone to a torch.
Of course Og did not realize it, but this litter of powdery splinters
of wood was the key to the solution of his problem, and doubtless he
would have gone on with his patient experimenting for days, with his
fire material close at hand, had it not been for a fortunate accident.
The hairy boy found a new piece of the black fire rock, a large piece,
twice as big as his head, and he had carried it from a remote corner of
the canyon back to his workshop beside the flat stone. Here he dropped
it on the ground and surveyed it reflectively. It was much too large to
do anything with and he realized that pieces of it could be more easily
handled. He decided to break it into fragments and forthwith he smote it
a terrific blow with his stone hammer.
A perfect shower of sparks and a ruined stone hammer rewarded him, for
the flint was a terrifically hard smoothgrained piece and not easily
broken. Og looked at the shattered hammer-head ruefully, and then at the
flint. Then he gave a sharp cry of astonishment, for, behold, from the
pile of litter, from the powdered wood splinters, a tiny spiral of smoke
curled up, while a spark glowed before his eyes.
For a moment Og did not know just what to do. Suddenly he recalled that
this fire thing was a peculiar animal that could be both killed and
brought to life by breathing on it. But before he could put this thought
into action the wisp of smoke went out, and the glowing spark became
black. In vain did he try to nurse it back to life. It was gone.
Og’s disappointment was overwhelming for a little while. He just crouched
there in dejection, looking at the pile of splinters and wood dust. But
presently he aroused himself and began to ponder the matter. He ran his
fingers through the wood dust and realized that it was soft and pulpy. He
remembered, too, how much more readily soft wood had burned in his first
fire, and he wondered whether that was not the solution of the whole
problem.
He let the great piece of flint lie where it was and, finding a heavy
stone that he could conveniently handle, he crashed it down upon the
fire rock with as much force as he had used when he had shattered his
stone hammer. Once more there was a shower of sparks and once more a
tiny spiral of smoke began to rise from the litter of wood dust. Og was
quickly on his knees this time breathing on the glowing spark. And, as he
blew against it softly, he saw it increase in size and grow brighter and
the smoke wisp grow larger and larger.
Suddenly, with a tiny explosive sound, the live coal leaped into a
flame and Og, with a cry of elation, hastily began to feed it wood
splinters until presently his whole heap of litter was alive and burning
and a smoke column was rising skyward. That night was the first since
the beginning of time that a camp fire glowed in the canyon, and the
tree people from the safety of the tall palm trees watched it with a
sense of fear, for to them it seemed like the eye of another giant,
more formidable even than the cave tiger, looking at them through the
blackness.