STOLEN FLAMES
Og had learned the secret of fire. Not content with having kindled
flames by accident, the hairy boy continued his experimenting with the
black fire stone. True, the accidental lighting of the wood dust litter
revealed the secret to him, but even after that it was some time before
he really felt that he had mastered the situation to the extent where he
could kindle flames whenever he chose, providing he possessed the fire
stone.
Again and again he scraped wood dust and tiny splinters from a piece of
soft wood with his flint knife, then bent over them with two fire stones,
learning the art of striking the sparks so that they would leap from the
stones into the powdered wood and immediately start glowing. But finally
he achieved what to him was perfection in the art of fire building and he
was extremely happy.
The fire, of course, was a mystery to the tree people. That was evident
from the way they gathered about the entrance of the canyon and watched
it curiously. Some of them even overcame their fear of the canyon and the
hairy boy to the extent of coming well inside the rocky declivity and
sitting there among the bowlders for long periods, just blinking solemnly
at the flames and chattering softly among themselves. Chief among those
who mustered courage enough to come close to the flames was old Scar
Face. He finally reached the point where he would sit for hours there and
stare first at the fire and then at the hairy boy with an expression of
profound thought.
Indeed, so often did Scar Face and certain others gather in a circle
about Og’s fire, that after a time there developed a certain intimacy
between the hairy boy and the ape men. They lost their fear of this
mighty one who had slain the great cave tiger and who had proved himself
master of the Fire Demon, and in its place developed a wholesome respect
for him and his ability. Scar Face and all of his lusty fighting men
would often gather in a semi-circle at a respectful distance from
Og, and watch him with a strange expression in their eyes, which Og
gradually perceived was admiration, the admiration of loyal subjects to
a chieftain, and Og soon realized that, if he cared to, he could be the
ruler of the tree people, with Scar Face and his warriors as his devoted
henchmen.
But for some strange reason this did not appeal to Og. To be ruler of the
tree people was not to his liking. He had watched them closely during
the time he had been among them and he had found them tremendously
interesting. So like the hairy men they were in many ways, and yet so
different.
Og had always looked upon them as animals, but he perceived now, as a
result of his intimacy with Scar Face, that they were not, yet they were
not men as he knew them. They had a language that consisted of grunts
and querulous chattering but it was so crude that Og could see that they
had great difficulty in expressing even the simplest thought. They could
think. Og realized this when he analyzed their reasons for bringing
him to the canyon a prisoner. Scar Face, who represented the height of
development among them, had doubtless thought out the idea of making him
a sacrifice to the cave tiger. They built tree top homes for themselves
especially in mating time, and though they were crude structures they
showed a homing instinct. And some among them, notably Scar Face and his
warriors, occasionally carried weapons in the form of clubs, though they
often forgot that they possessed them, as they forgot many other things.
Here Og could see was one of two distinct differences between the tree
people and his own race. Most hairy men (although there were still many
who were not capable) followed an idea or a task to its conclusion.
If a hairy man wanted to find a smooth round stone for a new stone
hammer-head, he usually set about searching for it and searched until he
found it, although there were some even among his people who could be
turned aside from such a quest and made to forget all about the object
they had started after by a bit of bright quartz, or the discovery of a
bird’s nest or something else that might amuse them.
This was the way of all the tree people. They no sooner found one thing
that interested them, than they dropped it for another. Og perceived,
however, that this was not entirely true of some of them, especially old
Scar Face, who seemed to have more steadfastness of purpose than most of
his kind.
Og marked another difference between the tree people and the race of
hairy men. It was a physical difference. Under his own long hair Og knew
that his skin was a yellowish white. The skin under the hair of the tree
people was dark; in truth it was quite black. Og, thinker though he was
slowly growing to be, noted this with only passing interest, for he could
not know that this was the key to the whole mystery, and this difference
in skin color marked the ape men as a different race, a race that even at
that early date was still thousands of years behind his own people. Nor
could he understand that a million years hence, when his race should have
achieved the heights of civilization, the offsprings of the tree people
would still be savages.
Yet Og could see that some of them, especially their leader, were
making slow progress. Their interest in his fire and all that he did
was evidence of this to him. The fact that Scar Face imitated him in
everything he did, to the best of his ability, also helped Og in this
conclusion. The scarred one walked more upright than the rest of his
kind. He carried a club for a weapon more frequently than the rest and he
always watched Og’s stone hammers with interest whenever he came close
to his fire. Og noted this fact and one day, more out of curiosity than
anything else, he gave Scar Face one of his best weapons.
Og needed no interpreter to understand from the grunts and gibberish
that Scar Face was grateful. Indeed, he was so delighted that his antics
were childish. He paraded before his warriors with the hammer over his
shoulder, and smote trees and bushes for no other reason than just to
show off his weapon, and his warriors were duly impressed.
Scar Face watched with interest, too, Og’s handling of the fire, and
often when he sat near it he would toss a stick onto the flames, and
chatter excitedly when he saw the flames consume his contribution. The
fact that Og always carried a smoking and flaming firebrand about with
him wherever he went impressed old Scar Face, too, for he perceived that
that was equally as important a weapon as the stone hammer.
First he had a wholesome respect for the fire, although for some reason
he did not fear it as many of his people did. This respect for the flames
increased when he inadvertently stepped on a hot coal that had popped
some distance from Og’s stone fireplace. But he could appreciate its
virtues, too. Its biggest appeal to him was the fact that it dispelled
the darkness of night, the darkness which he and his people feared. It
gave light and he knew that monsters like the sabre-toothed tiger, the
cave-lion, and other beasts of prey shunned light and hunted only during
the hours of darkness.
He appreciated its warmth, too, for it was a delightful sensation to
crouch within its circle of radiance and feel the warmth against his
hairy coat. The rites that Og performed over the flames each time he
killed a rabbit or some other small animal, and the transition of the red
and bloody meat to rich savory brown food, was something he could not
understand.
He often gnawed at the few bones that the wolf cubs left and found that
the taste was pleasing, and several times Og flung him a small piece of
cooked meat, which he sampled and ate with great gusto. Scar Face and his
people were not meat eaters like the hairy men, for the chief reason that
they had never had the ability or the weapons with which to procure this
kind of food. They never shunned the contents of birds’ nests, however,
and small rodents that they were able to catch, they always gobbled down
with relish. Scar Face soon perceived that flesh, and especially cooked
flesh, was well worth the eating and, as a result of his introduction to
this form of food by Og, he was to become the first meat eater among the
tree people.
Soon after he had sampled the cooked food that Og gave him, and some time
after he had acquired the stone hammer, he took to hunting as diligently
as Og did, and the first day he was rewarded by killing one of the many
rabbit-like animals that were abundant in the pleasant valley. After
surprising it and crushing it with a blow of the stone hammer, he brought
the mangled form to Og and told him gruntingly that he’d like to have the
hairy boy cook it for him.
Og obligingly skinned it and cooked it, and Scar Face devoured it with
much smacking and sucking. The bones he tossed to the wolf cubs as he had
seen Og do, and when he finished he licked his fingers in imitation of
the boy.
After that Scar Face wanted a fire of his own. For some time he tried
to make Og understand his desires and finally, when the hairy boy did
comprehend him, he flatly refused by a vigorous shaking of his head. The
disappointment of Scar Face was very evident. He sulked and grew ugly. He
showed his teeth at Og and even clutched the handle of his stone hammer
menacingly. It was a show of belligerence that the hairy boy could not
tolerate for a moment, and angrily Og snatched up a burning fire brand
and hurled it at the ape man with such accuracy that it hit him in the
pit of the stomach and singed the hair and burned the flesh until old
Scar Face shrieked with pain and ran away clutching at his paunch and
squealing.
Og sat by his fire and grinned at the tree man’s discomfort, for
although he was perfectly willing to have old Scar Face possess a stone
hammer he was not at all inclined to share with him his most valuable
of all weapons, the fire brands. Og knew now that he could drive off
the fiercest of the hunting animals, even the cave tiger, with the fire
brands, and he knew, too, that if it ever became necessary he could hold
Scar Face and his whole clan at bay. Under those circumstances he was
not willing to put any of the tree people in possession of the weapon he
depended upon most.
Scar Face, off in the bush, nursed his burns, and later he tried as best
he knew how to make a fire for himself. He got stones and a litter of
wood, as he had watched Og do, and he clashed the stones together until
they broke in fragments, but not a single spark of fire did he ever
produce.
Yet the desire to have a fire of his own still persisted, and although
the leader of the tree folk never came near Og’s fire again while the
hairy boy was present, he watched the actions of Og from a hiding place
at the mouth of the canyon. For several days he lurked there, hidden even
from his own people, and finally the opportunity that he was hoping for
arrived.
Og, as was his custom, lighted a fire brand from the flames, and with his
stone hammer and some throwing stones in his hands, and the wolf dogs at
his heels, started out across the pleasant valley on a hunting trip to
replenish his larder, Scar Face, from his hiding place, watched him until
he was well out of sight. Then, marking that none of his own people were
watching his actions either, he made his way craftily into the canyon
and, slipping from rock to rock, reached the place where Og’s fire still
burned in the rude stone fireplace. From wood that he found there he made
himself a torch as he had often seen the hairy boy do, and dipped it into
the still smoldering ashes, he breathed upon it after the fashion of Og
and presently tiny flames appeared at the end of his torch. He had a fire
brand, too!
He held it up and watched it with eager, yet fearful eyes. Then he did
a curious little dance of elation, as if he sought to tell himself in
that way that he was as great a man as Og. But quite suddenly he stopped
dancing, for he realized that the owner of the fire might presently
appear again. Then, too, for some curious reason, he did not want even
his own people to know that he possessed this fire torch. He glanced
about cautiously, and stealthily made his way out of the canyon. Then,
holding the burning torch at arm’s length as he had seen the hairy boy
do, he slipped into the forests and disappeared.