THE FINDING OF FIRE
I
The people of the Little Hills were in extremity. Trouble after
trouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, till
now there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice that
number of women able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked as
if but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them must
wipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it,
would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of years
to repair. For the People of the Little Hills had climbed higher from
the pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at that
time struggling into being on the youthful Earth.
First and not least formidable to the tribe had been an incursion from
the east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still more
plainly beasts. Had the tribe of the Little Hills but known it, these
Ape-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness of
their skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skulls
and the heavy forward thrust of their lower jaws.
Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say just where, came
a scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers and
a few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not only
slaughtered wholesale the game on which the Hillmen most depended,
but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. As
they raged against each other no less desperately than against
their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt.
The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning
of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer
weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the
last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less
difficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves.
This war had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summer
of peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. But
with winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from the
unfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting in
such huge packs that many outlying sections of the tribe were cut off
and devoured before the Hillmen could combine to withstand them.
Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after the
first shock the sagacious warrior who ruled the men of the Little
Hills was able to get his diminished followers together, along with
most of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater of
the central caves.
So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then suddenly the wolves,
having exterminated or driven off all the game among the Little Hills,
once more took the trail, though with diminished ranks, and swept off
ravaging to the south-westward. The People of the Little Hills were
free once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game to
hunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in the
reeking marshes by the estuary. The tribe was driven to fumbling in
the pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet which
their souls despised and their bodies resented.
The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the tribe to
concentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfully
disguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all over
their domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardest
trial would surely have annihilated them.
It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trail
of the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of a
summer's day a woman of the tribe was grubbing for roots with a
pointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by a
pair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, short
bow-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young and
vigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on the
head, which was not before both her assailants were streaming with
blood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had aroused
the tribe, however, and her captors, appreciating in her a shapeliness
and fairness beyond anything they had ever seen in their own females,
hastened to make sure of their prize by dragging her off into the
woods. Three of the Hillmen, raging in pursuit, were intercepted by a
horde of the squat strangers suddenly leaping from the thickets,
surrounded, pulled down after a heaving convulsion of struggle, torn
to pieces and trodden into the earth.
The Chief of the tribe, from his vantage at the top of the slope which
led up to the little amphitheater of caves wherein he had gathered his
people, saw and understood. The perils of the past two years had made
him cool and provident. One look at those foul and shaggy hordes,
leaping like beasts, had told him that this was to be a battle to the
death. Angrily beating back the hotheads who would have rushed down to
avenge their kin and inevitably to share their fate, his shouts,
bellowed sonorously from his deep and hairy chest, called up the whole
tribe to the defense of the bottle-neck pass which led into the
amphitheater. At a word, passed on breathlessly from mouth to mouth,
the old men and the old women, with some of the bigger children,
swarmed up among the rocks and ledges which formed the two walls of
the pass, while others raced about collecting stones to hand up to
them. The younger women and grown girls, armed, like the men, with
stone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears, took their places in the
hinder ranks at the mouth of the pass.
The Bow-legs, their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts of
coarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, came
plunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused masses
along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and
making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The
hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky
blackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, which
were for the most part of a dark brown or ruddy hue.
In other respects the contrast was still more striking, the Hillmen,
erect and straight, were taller than their bestial-looking opponents
by a foot or fifteen inches. With less breadth of shoulder and
heaviness of trunk, they had great depth of chest, great muscular
development in arm and leg, and a leanness of flank that gave them a
look of breed. Their skins, very hairy in the case of the mature men,
were of a reddish-tan color, paling to pink and cream in the children
and younger women. They had ample foreheads under the wild thatch of
their hair, and high, well-bridged noses, and fierce, steady eyes of
green, blue or brown-gray. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, and shrewd
enough to see at a glance what ferocious power lurked in those
misshapen frames at the foot of the slope, they stood staring down
upon them in silence, with an undaunted loathing.
For some minutes the hordes of the Bow-legs clustered together,
jabbering and waving their crude but massive clubs excitedly. They
seemed to have no chief, no plan of attack, no discipline of any sort.
Some of them even squatted down on the turf and scratched themselves
like monkeys, glaring malignantly but stupidly at the little array of
their opponents, and snorting through their hideous upturned nostrils,
which were little more than wide, red pits in their faces. Then some
of those who were squatting on the ground began to play with a
dreadful red ball which had some wisps of hair yet clinging to it.
A snarling roar went up from the ranks of the Hillmen, and some of
them would have rushed to accept the ghastly challenge. But the
Chief held them back sternly. Then he himself, half a head taller
than all but one or two of his followers, with magnificent chest and
shoulders, and a dark, lionlike mane thick-streaked with grey,
strode out three or four paces to the front and stood leaning on his
huge, porphyry-headed club while he glared down contemptuously over
the gesticulating horde.
The Bow-legs stilled their jabbering for a moment to stare with
interest at this imposing figure. Then one of those who were seated on
the ground seized the ghastly ball that they were playing with,
whirled it by the hair and hurled it two-thirds of the way up the
slope. As it fell and rebounded, two young women sprang from the
ranks, their thick locks streaming like a cloud behind them, and
dashed down the hill to meet it. The foremost caught it up, clutched
it to her naked breast, and screamed a curse upon the gaping
murderers. Then the two fled back, and were lost in the ranks of the
Hillmen.
The sight of the two women, with their bright skins, their strong,
straight limbs and their rich, floating hair, appeared to give the
Bow-legs just the spur to concerted action that they were needing.
They rightly judged there were more of those desirable beings in the
crowd behind that tall, contemptuous chief. Those on the ground
scrambled eagerly to their feet, and with shrill, bestial yells the
whole horde charged up the slope.
As the leaping and hideous forms approached the top the pent-up fury
of the Hillmen, in spite of all the Chief could do, broke loose, and
with a roar the foremost ranks bounded forth to meet them. At the
first crash of contact the enemy were crushed back, the stone-headed
clubs and flint-tipped spears working havoc in the reeking masses.
But, as the Chief had foreseen it would be, that forward rush was a
mistake, exposing the flanks; and sheer weight of numbers presently
forced the Hillmen back till their front was once more level with the
jaws of the pass. Here, however, with their flanks protected, they
were solid as a wall of granite.
Upon this narrow wall the yelling wave of the attack surged and
recoiled, and surged again, and made no impression. The clumsy weapons
of the enemy were no match for the pounding swing of the stone clubs,
the long, lightning thrust of the flint-headed spears. But the
Bow-legs, their little pig-eyes red with lust for their prey, fought
with a sort of frenzy, diving in headlong and clutching at the legs of
the Hillmen with their ape-like, sinewy arms, dragging them down and
tearing then with crooked, clawlike fingers.
Many of the Hillmen, and some women died in this way. But no woman was
dragged away alive; for if this fate threatened her, and rescue was
impossible, she was instantly speared from her own ranks to save her
from a fate which would have dishonored the tribe. And the women
indeed, in this battle were no less formidable than the men
themselves, for they fought with the swift venom of the she-wolf, the
cunning fury of the mad heifer, intuitive and implacable. Their
instincts of motherhood, the safeguard of the future, made them loathe
with a blind, unspeakable hate these filthy and bestial males who
threatened to father their children.
The center of the Hillmen's front was securely held by the great
Chief, whose massive club, wielded with the art acquired in many
battles, kept a space cleared before him across which no foe could
pass alive. As his followers went down on either side, others from the
ranks behind stepped eagerly into the gaps. At the extreme left, where
the walls of the pass, lower and less abrupt than on the right,
invited an attack as fierce as that upon the center, the defense was
led by a warrior named Grom, who seemed no less redoubtable than the
Chief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, saving
his breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command or
encouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of the
Chief, kept a zone of death before him.
But his club was much smaller than that shattering mace of porphyry
wielded by the Chief--smaller and lighter, considerably longer in the
handle and quite of another pattern. The head was of flint, a sort of
ragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the head
was like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neat
weapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it,
now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, now
suddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle to
reach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club and
spear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its being
wrenched from him in the melee, he held it secured to his wrist by a
thong of hide.
This warrior, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter and
fighter, was second only to that of the great Chief himself, had never
aroused the Chief's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had always
loyally supported the Chief's authority, instead of scheming to
undermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline.
He was not so tall as the Chief, by perhaps half a handbreadth, and
for all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of a
slimmer build; wherefore the Chief, while vastly respecting his
counsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the time
of the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave,
quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontier
defense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightly
younger than the Chief, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense,
ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless looked
older, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity of
the eyes.
In his remote cave Grom had had the companionship of his family,
consisting of his old mother, his two wives, and his four children--three
sons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expedition
that the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolated
family, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out.
Conspicuous among the fighters at Grom's back was a young girl, tall,
with a fair skin and masses of long, very dark hair. Armed with a
spear, she fought savagely, but at the same time managed to keep an
eye on all the warrior's movements.
Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry. To Grom's ears it
seemed like the voice of one of his dead children. At the end of a
long stroke, when his arms and the club were outstretched full length,
he glanced upwards in spite of himself. Instantly the club was
clutched by furious hands. He was pulled forward. At the same time one
of the enemy, ducking under his arms, plunged between his legs. And he
came down upon his face.
With a piercing scream, the tall girl bounded forth and stood across
him; and her spear stabbed his nearest assailant straight through the
flat and grinning face. So lightning swift was the rage of her attack
that for one vital moment it held the whole horde at bay. Then the
Hillmen swarmed forward irresistibly, battered down the foremost of
the foe, and dragged the fallen warrior back behind the lines to
recover. In half a minute he was once more at the front, fighting with
renewed fury, his head and back and shoulders covered with blood. And
close behind him stood the girl, breathless, clutching at her heart
and staring at him with wide eyes, unaware that the blood which
covered him was not his but her own.
Although to the invaders, their every charge broken and hurled back
with terrific slaughter, it must have seemed that their tall opponents
had all the best of the battle, to the wise old men and women up among
the rocks it was clear that their warriors were being rapidly worn
away as a bank is eaten by the waves. But now from a high ledge on the
right, where the wall of the pass was a sheer perpendicular, came two
shrill whistles. It was a signal which the Chief, now bleeding from
many wounds, had been waiting for. He roared a command, and his ranks,
after one surge forward to recover their wounded, gave back sullenly
till their front was more than half-way down the pass. With yells of
triumph the Bow-legs followed, trampling their dead and wounded, till
the bottle-neck was packed so tightly that there was no room to move.
From the left wall a ceaseless shower of stones came down upon their
heads; but from the right, for a few moments, only a rain of pebbles
and dust, which blinded them and choked their hideous, upturned
nostrils.
Above that dust a band of graybeards heaved upon a lever. They grunted
and strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on their
foreheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face began
to slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long,
white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recover
themselves in time, fell sprawling forward. Then with a thunderous
growl a huge slab of rock and earth and debris crashed down upon the
packed hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went up
from the Hillmen. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a second
or two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming,
down the slope. On their heels the Hillmen pursued, slaughtering, till
the brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly a
score escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migrant
hosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story they
told was of a tribe of tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in war,
who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. And
thereafter, for a time, the Bow-legged hosts changed the path of their
migration, sweeping far to the southward to avoid the land of the
Little Hills.
II
A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, where
the scarred remnant of the tribe of the Little Hills, squatting before
their cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverently
buried, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder of
the downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and other
scavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of the
slain invaders.
Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old men
and the women who had borne children being listened to as attentively
as the warriors. The Chief, sitting on a rock which raised him above
the rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all,
glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing all
suggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Grom, leaning on his
club, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.
Suddenly the Chief uttered a sharp word, and the tribe fell silent. He
rose, yet stiff from his wounds, and, towering masterfully over the
council announced his decision.
"I have heard much foolishness," said he, "but also some wisdom. And
the greatest wisdom has come from the lips of my father yonder, Alp
the old." He pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head was hidden
under a mass of white hair. "My father's eyes are blind with age," he
continued, "but behind their darkness they see many things that we
cannot see. They have seen that all these disasters which have lately
come upon us have come out of the east. They see that there must be a
reason. They see that other terrible dangers must also be coming out
of the east, and that we People of the Little Hills lie in their path.
How many more can we withstand, and live? Not one more. Therefore, I
say we will leave this place, this home of our fathers, and we will go
toward the setting sun, and find a new home far from our enemies till
we can grow strong again. I have said it."
As he sat down there was a low murmur, many thinking he was right;
while others, not daring to dissent quite openly, yet were angry and
afraid at the idea of leaving their familiar dwellings. But Grom, who
had turned on his club and listened to the Chief with shining eyes,
now stepped forward into the circle and spoke.
"Bawr is our Chief," said he, in a clear, calm voice; "not only
because he is our mightiest in war, but because he is also our wisest
in counsel. When do we go?"
The Chief thought for a moment. For the murmurs of the dissidents he
cared nothing, having made up his mind. But he was glad of Grom's
support.
"Two moons hence," he answered presently. "Our wounded must be healed,
for we must be strong on the journey. And as we go far, and know not
where we go, we must gather much food to carry with us. When the moon
is twice again full, we leave these caves and the Land of the Little
Hills."
"Then," said Grom, "if Bawr will allow me, I will go and find a place
for us, and come again quickly and lead the tribe thither by the
shortest way."
"It is good!" said Bawr, quick to see what dangerous wanderings might
be spared to the tribe by this plan. "When will you go?"
"In to-morrow's morning-red," answered Grom.
At Grom's words, the young girl, A-ya, who had been watching the
warrior where he stood aloof, sprang to her feet in sharp agitation
and clutched her dark hair to her bosom in two great handfuls. At this
a huge youth, who had been squatting as close as possible to the girl,
and eyeing her averted face greedily, jumped up with a jealous scowl.
"Grom is a traitor!" he cried. "He deserts us in our need. Let him not
go, Chief!"
A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The girl faced round upon
him with blazing eyes. Grom gave him an indifferent glance, and turned
away, half smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club, and said
coldly:
"Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Grom is a true man. He
shall do as he will."
The youth's heavy features worked angrily for a moment as he sought
words for a further attack. Then his face smoothed into a grin as he
remembered that from so perilous a venture it was most unlikely his
rival would ever return. He gave a crafty side-glance at the girl, and
sat down again, while she turned her back upon him. At a sign from the
Chief the council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, into
their caves.
* * * * *
As the first pink light crept up the sky, Grom set forth on his
mysterious venture. It was just such a venture as his sanguine and
inquiring spirit, avid of the unknown, had always dreamed of. But
never before had he had such an object before him as seemed to justify
the long risk. There was all a boy's eagerness in his deep eyes, under
their shaggy brows, as he slipped noiselessly out of the bottle-neck,
picked his way lightly over the well-gnawed bones of the slain
invaders, turned his back on the sunrise, and took his course up the
edge of the stream. The weapons he carried were his war-club, two
light, flint-headed hunting-spears and a flint knife hung from his
wolf-skin girdle.
All that day, till mid-afternoon, he journeyed swiftly, straight
ahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch and
to avoid dark coverts whence tiger or leopard might spring upon him.
He was in a region which he had often hunted over, and where he felt
at home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and when
he wished to rest he climbed into a tree for security.
Several times during the day he had had a sensation of being followed;
and, turning quickly, he had run back, in the hope of detecting his
pursuer. But when he found no one, he concluded that it was merely one
of the ghosts the tribe so feared, but whom he himself rather held in
contempt as futile.
Long before noon he had forsaken the brook, because its course had
ceased to lead him westward. In the afternoon he reached a river which
marked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swift
water, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded it
with some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution,
oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yet
was in no way greatly changed.
As the sun got low, Grom cast about for a safe tree in whose top to
pass the perilous hours of dark. As he stared around him a cry of fear
came from the bunch of woods which he had just quitted. The voice was
a woman's. He ran back. The next second the trees parted, and a girl
came rushing towards him, her dark hair streaming behind her. Close
after her came three huge cave-wolves.
Grom shouted, and hurled a spear. It struck one of the wolves full in
the chest, splitting the heart. At this the other two halted
irresolutely. But as Grom's tall figure came bounding down upon them,
their indecision vanished. They wheeled about, and ran off into the
thickets. The girl came forward timorously, and knelt at Grom's feet.
At first with wonder and some annoyance, the warrior looked down upon
her. Then recognition came into his eyes. He saw the tip of a deep
wound on her shoulder, and knew that it ran, livid and angry, half-way
down her bosom. It was the young girl A-ya. His eyes softened, for he
had heard how it was she who had saved him in the battle, fighting so
furiously over him when he was down--she in whose blood he had found
his shoulders bathed. Yet up to that time he had never noticed her,
his mind being full of other matters than women. Now he looked at her
and wondered. He was sorely afraid of being hampered in his great
enterprise, but he asked her gently why she had followed him.
"I was afraid for you," she answered, without looking up. "You go to
such great dangers. I could not stay with the tribe, and wait."
"You think I need help?" he asked, with a self-confident look in his
eyes.
"You did need me in the battle!" answered the girl proudly.
"True!" said Grom. "But for you I should now have been sleeping under
the stones and the wind."
He looked at her with a feeling that surprised himself, a kind of
thrilling tenderness, such as he had never felt toward a woman before.
His wives had been good wives and dutiful, and he had been content
with them. But it occurred to him that neither of them would ever have
thought to come with him on this expedition.
"I could not stay without you," said the girl again. "Also, I was
afraid of Mawg," she added cunningly.
A wave of jealous wrath surged through Grom's veins.
"If Mawg had troubled you, I would have killed him!" said he fiercely.
And, snatching the girl to her feet, he crushed her for a moment
vehemently to his great breast.
"But why," he went on, "did you follow me so secretly all day?"
"I was afraid you would be angry, and send me back," she answered,
with a sigh of content.
"I could not have sent you back," said Grom, his indifference quite
forgotten. "But come, we must find a place for the night."
And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which Grom had already
marked for his retreat. As they climbed to the upper branches, dusk
fell quickly about them, some great beast roared thunderously from the
depths of the forest, and from a near-by jungle came sudden crashings
of the undergrowth.
III
For three weeks Grom and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging north
to avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy shores were trodden by
monsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, no
matter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be,
they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerous
and so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate the
strange human trail.
Had Grom been alone he would soon have been worn out for want of
sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed
utterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. He
had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded
the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been
afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this
sweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.
Beyond the lake and the morasses they came to a strange, broken
land, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life,
but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizon
ran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged against
the pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murky
vapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others,
spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shape
of a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. It
filled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoid
this unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grom was filled
with interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside
her fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject.
In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty and
spreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forest
growth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled past
their roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemed
to offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with the
delicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herself
up lightly into the branches. Grom lingered a few moments below,
letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls.
Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep.
While he was in this helpless position--his sleepless vigilance for
the moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic,
shaggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awful
swiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, from
her perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grom
bounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a gray
bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost upon
him, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. A
spear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the side
of the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar,
the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grom swung
himself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.
The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk and
began to draw himself up. Grom struck at him with his club, but from
his difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bear
hardly seemed to notice it.
"We must lead him up, then drop down and run," said Grom. And the two
mounted nimbly.
The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously
beneath his weight. Then Grom and the girl slipped over into the next
tree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, and
apparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd,
implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.
Grom looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had never
known before.
"Can you run, very fast?" he demanded.
The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at having
once more saved him.
"I ran from the wolves," she reminded him.
"Then we must run, perhaps very far," answered Grom, reassured, "till
we find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope.
For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuing
us. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climb
trees."
When both bears were high in the two trees, Grom and the girl slipped
down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as
falling. They snatched up Grom's two spears and A-ya's broken one, and
ran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. The
bears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific,
ponderous gallop.
The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grom who was famous
in the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pace
in her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on their
pursuers, Grom bade her slow down a little till they did no more than
hold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran always
a pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and her
breath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge.
Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For he
knew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his last
fight over her body.
For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signs
of distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from her
open lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fear
at his heart, Grom closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on his
rigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to a
spur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valley
cleaving them midway.
"There will be ledges," he said, "where we can defend ourselves, and
where you can rest."
Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with massive cane and thorned
creepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon a
space of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening of
the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its
walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and
cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient
retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling
barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a
slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving
upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and
bowing as if in some enchanted dance.
Grom's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second he
paused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her knees
gave way beneath her. As she sank, Grom's spirit rose to the
emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl
violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her
back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the
barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and
ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.
"If they are gods, those bright, dancing things," said Grom, with a
confidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they are
devils, I will fight them."
A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, an
opening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of this
opening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. The
runners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.
It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed her
utterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fell
in a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her up
into his arms, but as he did so he looked back.
The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they had
stopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous forms
from side to side in angry irresolution.
"They fear the bright, dancing things," said Grom to himself; and
added, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear."
Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, here
parched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carried
his burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, and
laid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what the
bears were going to do.
Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, the
two monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought they
would dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to see
that the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared not
come nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if the
same notion had struck them both at once, they whirled about
simultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, and
disappeared.
Grom knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind to
think that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for the
present, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, was
sitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turned
all his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes to
which they owed their escape.
With an attitude of deference, yet carrying both club and spear in
readiness, he slowly approached the barrier, at the point where the
flames were lowest and least imposing. Their heat made him very
uneasy, but under the eyes of the girl he would show no sign of fear.
At a distance of six or eight feet he stopped, studying the thin,
upcurling tongues of brightness. Their heat, at this distance, was
uncomfortable to his naked flesh, but as he stood there wondering and
took no further hurt, his confidence grew. At length he dared to
stretch out his spear-tip and touch the flames, very respectfully. The
green-hide thongs which bound the flint to the wood smoked, shriveled
and hissed. He withdrew the weapon in alarm, and examined the tip. It
was blackened, and hot to the touch. But, seeing that the bright
dancers had taken no notice, he repeated the experiment. Several times
he repeated it, deeply pondering, while the girl, from her place at
the edge of the grass, stared with the wide eyes of a child.
At last, though the green thongs still held, the dry wood burst into
flame. Startled to find that when he drew the point back he brought a
portion of the shining creature with it, Grom dashed the weapon down
upon the ground. The flame, insufficiently started, flickered and
died. But it left a spark, winking redly on the blackened wood.
Audacious in his consuming curiosity, Grom touched it with his finger.
It stung smartly, and Grom snatched back his finger with an
exclamation of alarm. But by that touch the spark itself was
extinguished. That was an amazing thing. Sucking his finger, Grom
stood gazing down at the spear-tip, which had but now been so bright,
and was now so black. Plainly, it was a victory for him. He did not
understand it. But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible,
however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, he
said proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:
"The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to be
touched. If you touch them, they bite."
His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilities
which he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain. Dimly, but
overpoweringly, he realized that he had passed the threshold of a new
world. He picked up the spear and turned to renew his experiments.
This time he let the fire take well hold upon the spear-tip before he
withdrew it. Then he held it upright, burning like a torch. As he
gazed at it raptly a scream from the girl aroused him. She had sprung
to her feet and stood staring behind her, not knowing which way to run
because of her fear of the fire. And there, not twenty paces from her,
their giant grey bulks half emerging from the thicket, stood the
bears, slavering in their fury but afraid to come nearer the flame.
With a shout, Grom darted at them, and the wind of his going fanned
his spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at the
sight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled,
then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. The
flame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip.
With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in the
nearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of
terror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The
fire was speedily whipped out by the branches, but their panic was
uncontrollable; and long after they had passed out of sight the sounds
of their wild flight could be followed. Grom's heart came near
bursting with exultation, but he disdained to show it. He turned to
the girl, and said quietly: "They will not come back." And the girl
threw herself at his feet in adoration.
And now for hours Grom sat motionless, pondering, pondering, and
watching the line of flames with deep eyes. The girl did not dare to
interrupt his thoughts. With the going of the sun came a chill breeze
drawing down from the ridges. Grom rose, led the girl nearer the
flames, and reseated himself. As the girl realized the kindly and
comforting warmth her fears diminished. She laughed softly, turned her
shapely body round and round in the glow, and then curled herself up
like a cat at Grom's knees.
At last Grom arose once more. Picking up his remaining spear, he
approached the fire with decision, and thrust the butt, instead of the
tip, into the flame. When it was well alight, he thrust it down upon a
tuft of withered grass. The stuff caught at once, blazed up and died
out. Then Grom rolled the burning spear-butt on the earth till it,
too, was quite extinguished. The sparks still winking in the grass he
struck with his palm. They stung him, but they perished. He drew
himself up to his full height, turned to the girl and stretched out
his blackened hand. The girl sprang to her feet, thrilled and
wondering.
"See," said Grom, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants.
The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of all
things."
Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a god.
But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheek
against his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, and
she leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stood
staring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions.