GOG’S TREACHERY
Gog was a strong man. He was a fighter, fierce and brave and able,
otherwise he could not have been the leader of the clan. But he was a
thinker, too; at least his brain was developed in proportion to his
strong body, and he could reason more clearly than the average man of the
caves. And he was terribly jealous of Og because of his wisdom and the
popularity he had won among the hairy folk because of his gift of fire.
Gog saw that the people of the tribe looked more to Og for guidance than
they did to him now. This was a terrible blow to the old leader’s pride.
Day after day he sat in the doorway of his cave and muttered and mumbled
to himself, and sometimes he crunched his short, strong yellow teeth, so
angry did he get at the thoughts of this young hairy one, hardly more
than a boy, who was undermining his position as leader of the tribe.
With a single blow of his stone hammer Gog could have settled all this.
Time and again he was moved to do the deed that would put an end to
this boy of the Fire. But each time he changed his mind. For one thing
he feared Og’s weapon, the fire torch. For another he realized that the
boy’s popularity was steadily growing; that he had a great many friends
who would fight for him now, and while he felt equal to any one—yes, any
two or three—of the clan’s best fighters, he did not have the courage to
face an uprising of all of Og’s friends, which he feared might be the
situation if he should kill or injure the hairy boy.
Gog thought and thought of how he might revenge himself on Og. And as he
thought, treachery began to take root. He remembered Wab, Og’s father.
In other days Wab had also been a thorn in Gog’s foot, so to speak. He
had been a brave man and a mighty hunter; a better hunter than Gog had
ever been. He had been a brave fighter, too, as Gog remembered, but in
this Gog was better. Yet in council meetings Wab had sometimes ridiculed
him. And in boasting Wab had often made Gog’s stories of prowess small
and trifling. Wab had laughed at him more than once. Several times they
had come to blows and fought for hours until both were exhausted, and,
although Gog had always had a little the better of each encounter, Wab’s
defeat was never without glory among certain members of the tribe. Gog
and Wab had always been rivals for honors among the hairy men.
But all that had passed with Wab’s encounter with the cave tiger. The old
hunter had been made helpless and as such almost an outcast, for one who
was helpless among the hairy people could expect little in the way of
assistance from others. Life was too hard even for the best of them, and
they had all that they could do to look after themselves and little to
share with others. And so Wab had been removed as an obstacle in the path
of Gog’s leadership and the savage old warrior had gone on being the head
man of the clan until Og came.
Now Og was caring for Wab. Through Wab, Gog could hurt Og; of this the
fighter felt certain. His brain took many daylights and many darknesses
to conceive the plan, and more than once his head hurt so from thinking
that he was almost moved to give up the idea entirely.
But gradually he worked out a treacherous scheme. First he must
make peace with Og. Be friendly to him. This would not be entirely
distasteful for the present at least, for Gog was more eager than any
of the other hairy men to possess a fire of his own, and he regretted
exceedingly that he had not smothered his pride to the extent of building
a pile of sticks in front of his cave when Og had given all the other
hairy folk flames.
That was the plan. He would go to Og and pretend he was sorry he had been
so stiff in the back as to refuse his fire. He would ask for a firebrand.
He would visit Og’s cave again and again. He would even talk to Wab. He
would talk of old times. Of hunting and roaming in the forest. He knew
that Wab must long for such sport once more. He would make friends with
Wab, and one day when Og was not around he would take Wab off into the
forest on his last hunt. Wab would never come back. Og perhaps would go
to find him. And while Og was gone something might happen. Who could
tell? Perhaps Og would never come back either.
Crafty old Gog was so full of pride after he had worked out such an
elaborate scheme that he felt Og to be nothing but a boy when it came
to pitting his wits against such brains as he possessed. He grinned
silently as he thought how really clever he was to think all these things
out, even though it had taken him weeks and many headaches.
So Gog put his plan into action, and one day, with a freshly killed goat
over his shoulder, he appeared in the doorway of Og’s cave. But Og was
not there. Wab was sitting by the fire. The old hunter could see Gog only
faintly, but his keen old nose could scent the fresh goat blood.
“Who are you? The step sounded like Gog. Is it you, Gog, come to make
life miserable for a helpless man?” asked Wab.
“It is I, Gog,” said the treacherous one, “but I come as a friend and
bring goat as a present. I seek Og. From him I would get fire. My back
was stiff. I would not take the flames when he offered them. But I am
wise now. I see my mistake. I come seeking it.”
“Your back was always stiff, Gog,” said Wab, still with a spark of the
old fire.
“Yes. But that was wrong. I am wiser now, and more friendly. I guess I
am getting old and tired. I wish that I had nothing to do but sit in the
warmth as you do and be fed by my sons. The hunt is hard on a man growing
gray in the face.”
“The hunt! Oh, Gog, you speak as a man who knows little of the misery of
sitting and remembering; only remembering, never doing. The hunt! Oh,
Gog, I would give much to feel a stone hammer once more in my hands, to
stalk slyly through the long grass and creep upon some foolish goat. That
is life. Remembering only is next to death. Come sit a while and tell me
of the hunt.”
And so Gog sat beside Wab and talked, and Wab was pleased; so pleased
that when Og came back to the home cave the warrior and the hunter were
as old friends and Og looked at them and wondered. Gog asked for the
fire, and, because of Wab, Og gave it to him; and the savage old leader
went back to his cave with a strange smile on his ugly, scarred face, for
he knew that he had laid the plans for his treachery wisely.
He went again and again to Og’s cave and always he talked of the hunt
with the old man. He told him about the goats in the long grass in the
meadow down the valley, and he told him of the wild horses that were
passing in droves over the plains beyond the mountain ranges. He talked
of old hunting trips when Og was but a baby and Wab was the mightiest
hunter of them all, and this thrilled and pleased the old man and made
Og happy, too, for he found a strong interest in listening to the tales.
He preferred to listen rather than to talk, for in listening he learned
many things that were new and useful but when he talked he gathered no
knowledge.
In this way Gog soon found himself on really friendly terms with the boy
and the man, and after a time neither of them suspected him of treachery
and he was welcome in the big cave in the base of the cliff, by Og and
Wab at least. But the other occupants of the cave, the wolf-dogs, never
reached that point. Indeed, they mistrusted Gog from the first, and they
always growled and showed their teeth when they heard his footsteps.
This caused Og to wonder a great deal, for he placed great confidence in
the instinct of these animals. Yet time went on and Gog grew more and
more friendly and came more often until Og was thoroughly disarmed.
And then one day Gog came to the home cave of Og and Wab when the hairy
boy was away on a meat quest. It was planned that way, for Gog had been
watching the boy for several days and waiting for just this opportunity.
With his biggest stone hammer clutched in his powerful hand he stood in
the doorway of Og’s cave and spoke to Wab.
“Oh, lucky one! You can sit by the fire and dream while others hunt for
you. Gog in his old age has still to go hunting his own food and food for
his children. My sons, thankless wretches, have caves of their own to
provide for, and I have only babies home now who cannot do anything but
squall and eat.”
“No, Gog, you are the lucky one. You can still hunt your own meat. Wab
wishes that he could do likewise, but he is doomed to sit here by the
fire and get fat and lazy. This is harder than hunting.”
“Why not go, then? You can still see the daylight, and with a strong
companion you might still stalk the goat.”
“I have thought so, too. I might still feel the thrill of the hunt. But
Og says no. He tells me to rest and be content to dream and grow fat. He
will not take me. If he only knew how hard it is for me to do nothing,
perhaps he would take me with him sometimes.”
“Oh, Og is too cautious! Come; go with me. I will not go far. I am still
strong and my eyes are keen. I will see for you. No harm will come to
you.”
A strange, wistful expression flashed across Wab’s face for a moment.
Then he became greatly excited.
“Would you take me, Gog, and bring me back safely?” he exclaimed, getting
to his feet.
“And why not? Are we not friends now, Wab?” said the treacherous Gog.
“Oh, if I could go but once! It would make me happy again. It would give
me fresh thoughts to dream about. Surely it would do me no harm,” he said
wistfully, thinking of Og.
“Harm! No harm shall come to you while Gog is with you,” said the old
leader boastfully, yet smiling slyly as he thought of the plans he had
laid.
“Good! Then I will go,” said Wab; “but look first for me and see that Og
is not near. He will not want me to go if he sees me.”
But Gog had already made certain of this and he assured Wab that his son
was nowhere near.
Wab, atremble with excitement, took one of Og’s well-shaped stone hammers
and a flint knife that his son had made for him, and thus armed he came
out of the cave to Gog’s side.
Almost stealthily they stole away from the caves and into the forest, for
Gog did not want many of the cave dwellers to see him taking Wab into the
forest where the partly blind hunter could so easily be lost.
With Gog leading and Wab following behind, keeping close to the
treacherous old chief by watching him as best he could with his dimmed
eye and listening with alert ears to his footsteps, the two hairy men
progressed with remarkable swiftness through the thick and dark forest.
Occasionally Gog grunted directions or fragments of conversation.
“On the plains of the valley, toward the warm lands, I am told are herds
of horses. It is many days since I have tasted horse flesh. With the once
great hunter, Wab, beside me, it would be pleasant to hunt the horse.”
Wab could not help feeling a sense of pride at being referred to again as
the great hunter, yet sober judgment made him reply with caution.
“Do not be misled, Gog. Wab is no longer the great hunter he was when he
had two eyes. And remember the horse is swift of foot and keen of vision.
Two good men can scarcely expect to be successful in hunting them, so I
fear we will stand small chance.”
Gog grunted in disgust.
“Times have changed since you hunted last, Wab. We are craftier than the
horse and keener witted. I am a thinker. Trust me to find a way to bring
one down when the time comes. I can do it. Come; we will go over the
mountains to the broad plains. We will be back by nightfall, each with
all the dripping horse flesh we can carry.”
And Wab, partly because he had to follow Gog and partly because a horse
hunt appealed to him, still followed.
Soon they began to climb the slope of the mountains to the southward. Up
they mounted, Gog picking pathways through the forest that clothed the
heights. The traveling was hard for Wab, because he had grown fat and
soft of flesh since he had been spending most of his time sitting in the
warmth of the camp fire.
For a long time they toiled upward and very little in the way of
conversation passed between them save occasional grunts, for each needed
to spare their lungs of extra strain. But soon they mounted the rolling
summit where they could look outward across the wide pleasant valley and
the plain beneath; at least Gog observed the scene and imparted what he
saw to his partly blind companion.
But midway in his description of all that he beheld, he paused and
grunted.
“What is it?” demanded Wab, sensing that his companion had seen something
that he had not located before.
“It is strange forms moving on the edge of the forest down the mountain
here below us. They are not horses. They climb in the trees. Ah, I know
now. The tree people. Ho! ho! the tree people. Wab, we are in luck. Here
is sport, indeed. We will make war on these great cowards,” exclaimed Gog
viciously, his fighting instinct dominating every other emotion or desire.
“Make war on them? Why?” asked Wab. “We do not want their forest. We do
not care to drive them out of here as we did out of the valley of the
volcano so long ago. Why make war? We are hunters now.”
“Ho! ho! Why make war? Just for the love of it, perhaps. Just to hear
them squeal and to see them run. They are great cowards, afraid of hairy
men. We two can put the whole tribe to flight. Come; it will be great
sport. Think of the skulls we can smash! Think of the blood we can
spill,” and the savage old fighter grinned wickedly and, grasping his
stone hammer menacingly, he started down the mountain.
And Wab followed, but not without a strange presentiment that all was not
well. He knew that he would make a poor adversary in any conflict.