THE PULLER-DOWN OF TREES
On the broken hill-slope overlooking the Valley of Fire, in the two
great caves known as the Cave of the Bears and the Cave of the Hyenas,
the tribe of the Children of the Shining One now dwelt secure and
began to recover heart. Before each cave-mouth, tended night and day,
burned the sacred flame, its tongues licked upwards in gold and
scarlet with a radiance from which all the tribe, with the sole
exceptions of Bawr, the Chief, and Grom, his right hand and councilor,
were wont to avert their eyes in awe whenever they passed it in their
comings and goings. Only from a distance would they presume to look at
the flames directly; and ever as they looked their wonder and their
reverence grew. Their trust in the protection of the Shining One came
to have no bounds, for night after night would the great red bears
return, prowling in the mysterious gloom just beyond the ring of
light, with their dreadful eyes turned fixedly upon their former
habitation, only to be driven off ignominiously when Grom rushed at
them with a shout and a flaming torch above his head. And night after
night would the troops of the hyenas come back, their monstrous-jowled
heads swinging low from their mighty shoulders, to sit and howl their
devilish laughter above their ancient lair, only to slink off in cowed
silence when the Chief would hurl a blazing brand among them. When the
beasts were thus discomfited and abashed, the boldest of the warriors
would go leaping after them and bring down the hindermost with spears.
So it came about that presently the great animals knew themselves
beaten, and sullenly withdrew to the other side of the hills.
It was just this country at the other side of the hills which most
appealed to the restless imagination of Grom. Within the valley--which
widened out, as it receded from its fiery gateway, to enclose league
upon league of fertile plain--was good hunting, along with an
abundance of roots, fruits and edible herbs. But in Grom's heart
burned that spirit of unquenchable expectation which has led the race
of Man upwards through all obstacles--the urge to find out ever what
lies beyond. So the saw-toothed line of these dark, volcanic summits
drew him irresistibly, with the promise of unknown wonders hidden
behind them.
During these few weeks since coming to the Valley of the Fire, Grom
had been tirelessly experimenting with the bright element, trying this
kind of fuel and that, one after another, in order to learn what food
was most acceptable to it. He learned that certain substances it would
devour in raging haste, only to fail and die soon after; or not truly
to die, he imagined, but to flee back unseen to its dancing,
flickering source at the valley mouth. Other substances he found that
it would consume slowly, but pertinaciously. While into yet others,
such as dry turf and punk, it would eat its way and hide, maintaining
therein for a long time a retired but potent existence, ready to leap
into radiant life under certain provocation. His invention stimulated
by these experiments, he had made himself several hollow tubes of a
thick green bark whipped about with thongs, and had stuffed them with
that mixture of turf and punk which he found best calculated to hold
the furtive seeds of fire alive.
With one of these slow torches alight, and several spare ones slung
over his shoulders, Grom set out to cross the pointed hills and seek
new wonders in the lands beyond. The tall girl, A-ya, went with him.
This not being customary in the tribe, they gave reasons. Grom said
that he needed the girl because she alone knew how rightly to serve
and tend the Shining One in combat. It was a good reason, but he was
amazed to find in his heart so deep a desire for her that he was
ill-content whenever his eyes could not rest upon her. There was no
one in the tribe with whom he could discuss this strange emotion, for
no one, not even the wise and subtle-minded Chief, would have
comprehended it--romantic love not yet having come openly to these men
of the Morning of Time. So Grom gave the lesser reason, which all,
including himself, could understand. As for the girl, she said that
whatever her lord commanded she must needs obey, which she did with a
most seemly readiness. But in her heart she knew that if her man had
commanded her to stay behind, she would have obeyed only so long as he
remained in sight, and would then have followed him.
Like Grom, the girl carried two flint-headed spears. Both wore clumsy
but effective slivers of flint, for knives, in their girdles of
twisted skin. The girl, besides her weapons, carried a substantial
burden of strips of meat dried hard in the sun, in case game should
prove scarce or elusive in the land beyond the hills. But when they
had got well out of sight of the caves, Grom turned, relieved her of
her burdens which, according to tribal conventions, it was her duty to
carry for her man, and gave her instead the light but precious tube of
fire.
As they ascended the ragged slopes, vegetation grew sparse, and when
toward nightfall they gained the pass which Grom was making for--a
deep cleft between two steep red and purple peaks--the rock beneath
their feet was naked but for a low growth of flowering herbs and
thorn. The pass was too high for the aloe and mesembryanthemum to
flourish, and the lava-bed which floored it was yet too new to have
clothed itself in any of the larger mountain-loving trees. Here they
passed the night, in a shallow niche of rock with a fire before it;
and the fire being visible from a long way off, no prowlers cared even
to approach it.
On the following day they traveled swiftly, but the pass was long. It
was near sunset again when at last the rocks fell away to either side,
and they saw spread out below their feet the land which they had come
to explore.
It was a vast, rolling plain, golden-green with rank, cane-like
grasses, dotted with innumerable clumps of trees, and laced with full
watercourses which lay in spacious loops of blue and silver. Here and
there lay broad, irregular patches where the grass did not flourish,
and these were of vivid emerald-green from some unknown growth.
Along the horizon to the north sparkled a great water. And half-way
down the steep, toward the right, smoked and smouldered a shallow,
saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brown
serpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curves
across the intense green.
Somewhat to the girl's apprehension, Grom seemed anxious to
investigate the smoking crater, but the only practicable path down the
mountain led them away from it, so he was content to leave it for
another time and another, perhaps less repellent, approach.
Descending presently into a region of ledges and ravines clothed with
dense thickets, they found on every hand traces of the giant bears and
the saber-tooth tigers whom they had driven from the caves in the
Valley of Fire. Grom hurriedly whirled the smoldering torch into a
flame, and from it lighted a couple of resinous brands, one for
himself, and one for A-ya to carry. Thus armed, they fearlessly
followed the broad trail of bears, which led them very conveniently
down the steep. And bear and saber-tooth alike, at sight of the flame
thus apparently seeking them out, remembered their recent scorching
discomfiture, and slunk off like whipped curs.
Grom's immediate object was to make his way straight to the shores of
that great water, whose gleaming on the horizon had been like an
invitation to his inquiring spirit. But when early in the forenoon of
the fourth day they reached the lowlands, he found that his way would
be anything but straight. The immense grasses, a species of cane, grew
so tall, so dense and so thick in the stem, that it was impossible to
force a path through them just where he would.
He saw that he must use the trails of the wild beasts, which
intersected it in all directions. There were the tracks of every
animal he knew--the hunters and the hunted alike--and of many more
which he did not know. But one broad trail in particular arrested his
attention. It struck such fear to the heart of the girl, whose eyes
were keen and understanding, that her knees trembled beneath her, and
had she dared she would have begged Grom to turn back from a land
which held such monsters.
Even Grom himself felt a thrill of awe as he stared at the trail which
bespoke so mighty a traveler. Wherever it led, the sturdiest growths
were crushed flat as if some huge bowlder from the mountains had been
rolled over them. And the monster footprints, which here and there
stamped themselves clearly in the trail, were thrice the size of those
of the hugest mammoth.
Grom stooped and studied these footprints, pondering them with knit
brows. What manner of giant it might be which moved on such colossal
and misshapen members it was beyond his wits to guess. But of a surety
it was a fine roadmaker!
With a confident arrogance born of the knowledge that he was the lord
of Fire, he deliberately chose to pursue this dreadful trail. And the
girl, hiding her terror lest it should diminish her credit in his
sight, followed close at his elbow, her bright eyes tirelessly
searching the jungle on either side.
Suddenly behind them came a confused, terrifying noise of panting
breaths and trampling feet. It came sweeping down the broad trail.
There were grunting cries, also; and Grom understood at once that a
herd of pig-tapirs--heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall as
heifers--were sweeping down upon them in mad flight before some
unknown pursuer.
Against that blind panic, that headlong frantic rush, he knew that
blazing brands would avail nothing. He clutched the girl by the hand.
"Come!" he ordered. And they fled side by side down the trail.
It was in their minds to climb the first suitable tree they should
come to, and let the rout go by. In half a minute or so, over the tops
of the giant grasses, they sighted such a tree, only a few hundred
yards ahead. The trail, swerving opportunely, appeared to lead
directly towards its foot, and they raced on, the girl now laughing
softly with excitement, and forgetting her fear of the unknown because
of the known peril behind her. It pleased her curiously to find that
her man had not grown too divine to be ready to run away on fitting
occasion; and she kept glancing at him from under her dark tangle of
hair with eyes of passionate possession.
The wild uproar behind was drawing nearer swiftly, but the refuge was
now not more than fifty paces ahead. All at once the way to it was
barred. Out from a little side-track on the right came lumbering a
gigantic rhinoceros, his creased and folded hide clothed in matted
brown wool and caked with clay. He swung round into the trail, almost
blocking it with his bulk, stared for a couple of seconds with evil
little eyes at the two slim beings before him, then lowered the huge
double horn that armed his snout, and charged at them with a grunt of
fury.
Caught thus fairly between the devil before, and the deep sea of
trampling hoofs behind, Grom had no choice. A second's waving of the
lighted brands convinced him that the rhinoceros was too dense of
brain to fear the fire, or even to notice it. Once more clutching the
girl's hand, he ran back a little way, seeking to draw the two perils
together, and give them an opportunity to distract each other's
attention.
He ran back till the flying, plunging herd of the pig-tapirs came into
full view around the curve of the trail. Then, with all his strength,
he forced his way into the grass, on the left, shouldering aside the
upright stems to make room for the girl to enter. She hurled her
blazing brand full into the face of the rhinoceros, hoping to confuse
or divert him for an instant, then thrust herself lithely in past
Grom.
The rhinoceros was diverted for an instant. The smoke and sparks half
blinded him, and in a paroxysm of fury he checked himself to trample
the strange assailant under foot. Then he thundered forward. But the
tough stems of the grass had closed up again. The two fugitives were
hidden. He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him;
and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused his
anger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe.
Realizing well enough that in three or four seconds more the crash
would come, and that the struggle between the rhinoceros and the
maddened herd would be little short of a cataclysm, Grom and the girl
struggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lest
they should be crushed in the melee.
The sweat ran down into their eyes, and swarms of tiny insects,
breeding in the giant stems, choked their throats and nostrils; but
they wrestled their way onward blindly, foot by foot. Behind them, out
in the trail, came a ponderous crash, and, then an appalling explosion
of squeals, screams, grunts and roars. The next instant the rigid
stems gave way suddenly before them, and they fell forward, with a
startled cry from the girl, into a deep and sunless water.
They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon as she could catch
breath the girl laughed, whereupon the grimness of Grom's face
relaxed. The water was a deep creek, perfectly overshadowed and hidden
by the rank growth along its banks. But just opposite was the tree
whose refuge they had been trying to gain. They swam across in
half-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ashore, and shook themselves
like a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effort
among the grass-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kept
tenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But--their fire was
out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire
lurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless.
For a moment or two Grom looked into the girl's eyes steadily,
conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance of
their loss. The girl responded, after a second's dismay, with a look
of trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grom's heart.
He smiled proudly, and shook his club as if to reassure himself. Then,
climbing hurriedly into the tree, they stared back over the plumed
tops of the grasses.
The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot in
the grass which they had just escaped from was a shambles. The
foremost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of the
rhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his double
horn, and hurled to either side as if by some titanic plough. A couple
more had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayed
by the irresistible pressure of the surging, squealing mass.
There he had stood fast, like a jagged promontory in the surges,
tossing his mighty head and thrusting hideously, while the rest of the
herd passed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down the
canes and pouring around on either side. Of those that passed over him
about one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, and
went staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden out
by their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitives
came the cause of their panic--two immense black lions, who had
apparently been playing with their prey like cats.
When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood among
his victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, they
stopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match for
him. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew the
almost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, his
imperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engage
themselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat.
With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to set
the very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off in
enormous bounds through the grass, circling about as if to intercept,
in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. At
the sight Grom frowned anxiously, thinking how helpless he and the
girl would be against such foes, now that they no longer had the
Shining One to protect them.
Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past the
tree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, where
doubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. But
they had yet another adversary to reckon with.
Just past the tree, at a thicket of immense scarlet poinsettias, the
trail curved sharply. From behind the poinsettias arose a gigantic
shape unlike anything that Grom had ever dreamed of. And he knew that
the maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous footprints was
before him.
With a trumpeting bray of indignation the monster sat upright on
hind-quarters far more ponderous than those of a mammoth. Its tail, as
thick at the base as the body of a bear, helped to support it, while
its clumsy frame towered to a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Its
hind legs were very short, thick like tree-trunks, grotesquely bowed;
and its thighs like buttresses. Its fore legs were more arms than
legs, of startling length and massive strength, draped in long, stiff
hair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws for
fingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazing
coarseness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top and
prolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look of
being deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, or
lower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue,
some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave a
hurried look at something crouching behind its mighty thighs.
"Its baby!" muttered the girl, with a little indrawn breath of
sympathy.
Then the strange being sat up again to meet and ward off the rush of
the maddened pig-tapirs.
For a moment it beat off the assault, seizing the frantic beasts and
hurling them this way and that as if they had been so many rabbits.
Then it was completely surrounded by the reeking squealing bleeding
horde, which paid no more personal attention to it than if it had been
a mass of rock. They rolled over the little one, unheeding, and trod
it flat. Its death cry split the air; and at that sound the mother
seemed to sink down into her haunches. In her agony of rage and grief
she literally tore some of her assailants in halves, throwing the
awful fragments impatiently from her in order to lose no time in
seizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; and
presently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashing
into the water. The monster looked around for more victims--and was
just in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging down
upon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed back
to slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any other
time he would have given such an antagonist as the colossal
megatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses.
His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood which
dripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn was
plunged into the monster's paunch; but at the same time one of those
gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering the
vertebrae through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He
collapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed him
aside.
It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a few
moments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking the
trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At
length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she
brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off
slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides
of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a
wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her
wound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside the
trail, but effectively screened from it.
From their place in the tree Grom and the girl had followed
breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grom spoke:
"This is a country of very great beasts," he remarked, with the air of
one announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever to
dissent from this statement, he presently went on to his conclusion,
leaving her to infer his minor premise.
"We must go back and recover the Shining One. It is not well for us to
go on without him."
"Yes," agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and passionate
trust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over the
tops of the towering grasses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She feared
no beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lower
branches of the trees. "Yes!" she repeated. "Let us go back for the
Shining One, lest he be angry at us for having put him in the water."
"But for yet a day more we will stay here in this tree, and rest and
sleep in safety," continued Grom, "that we may travel the more
swiftly, till we get beyond the grasses."
Then, climbing higher into the tree, he proceeded to build a platform
and roof of interlaced branches for their temporary home. In this task
the girl did not help him, because of the great muscular strength
which it required. She lay in a crotch, her hairy but long and shapely
legs coiled under her like a leopard's, now gazing at her man with
ardent eyes, now staring out apprehensively across the sun-drenched,
perilous landscape.
Suddenly she gave a cry of amazement, and pointed excitedly down the
trail. Beyond the water wherein the pig-tapirs had found refuge,
beyond the lurking-place of the wounded megatherium, came three men,
running desperately. Shading his eyes, Grom made out that they were
nearly exhausted. They were clearly men of the type of his own tribe,
light-skinned and well shaped; and the leader, who carried a long
club, was a man of stature equal to his own. Grom's sympathies went
out to them, and his impulse was to hasten to their assistance.
Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlong
flight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two which
had been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier. They were
coming on at such a pace that Grom feared the weary fugitives would be
overtaken before they could reach the tree of refuge. Instinctively he
started to climb down. But, his eyes falling upon the girl, he
remembered that he had no right to enter upon a venture so utterly
hopeless while he had her to take care of. His eager clutch upon his
spear relaxed.
"They are spent. They'll never get here!" he muttered anxiously.
"No!" said A-ya, with blank unconcern. "The lions will get them. It's
Mawg, and his two cousins."
Grom growled an exclamation of astonishment. The girl's eyes--or her
intuitions--were keener than his. But he saw at a second glance that
she was right.
At this moment Mawg, running a few paces in advance by reason of his
superior speed and stamina, passed the spot where the wounded
megatherium lay hidden. The monster lifted her dreadful head. The next
second the other two arrived, running elbow to elbow, with drooped
shoulders of exhaustion. Through the screen of canes a gigantic hand
shot out above their heads and came down upon them, crushing the two
together. They had not time for outcry; but it was clear that some
sound caught the leader's ears, for he glanced back over his shoulder.
He was near enough now for the keen-eyed watchers in the tree to see
his face change with horror. He ran on without a pause, but now with
fresh speed, as if the sight had shocked him into new vigor. Seeing
that there was, after all, a good prospect of his reaching the tree in
time, Grom swung down to be ready to help him up. As he did so he saw
the two lions approach the hiding-place of the monster.
The vast, clawed hand still lay there on the two crushed bodies in the
middle of the trail. The lions saw it, and they checked themselves at
a safe distance. They knew that just behind the grass-screen lurked
another such shaggy and monstrous member, waiting to rend them as they
would rend an antelope. They shrank, and drew back, snarling angrily.
It is possible they feared lest the screen on either side of the trail
might conceal more than one of the monsters; for they sprang far aside
as if to make a wide circuit of the perilous spot.
"There's plenty of time!" muttered Grom, and dropped upon his feet in
the middle of the trail. The girl came in mad haste after him, but at
his sharp command "Stay there!" she contented herself with slipping
out upon the lowest branch, just over his head, and holding her spear
ready.
"Kill him!" she cried. But Grom seemed not to hear.
Staggering, and half blind with exhaustion Mawg was within twenty
paces before he noticed who was confronting him. Then his dull eyes
blazed. With a snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Grom's
face, missing him only by a hand's-breadth. But the effort, and the
disappointment at finding himself thus balked, as he imagined, on the
very threshold of escape, seemed to finish him. He stumbled on with
groping hands outstretched, and fell just at Grom's feet.
Grom hesitated, wondering how he could get this inert weight up into
the tree. The girl did not understand his hesitation.
"Kill him!" she hissed, leaning down eagerly from her branch
overhead.
"No, he's a great warrior, and the tribe needs him," answered Grom,
stooping to shake the prostrate form.
Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Grom shook him again.
"Up into the tree, quick!" he ordered in a loud, sharp voice. "The
lions are coming."
Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a look of bewilderment
changing swiftly into hate.
"Up!" shouted Grom again. "The tree. They're coming!"
At this the fellow growled, but sprang up as if he had been jabbed
with a spear, and clambered into the tree as nimbly as a monkey. Grom
followed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyes
watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Grom's side; and all three swung
upwards into the higher branches as the two lions arrived beneath.
Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent eyes, the great
beasts realized that, for the present at least, the tree man-creatures
were quite out of reach. Lashing their tufted tails in disappointment,
they turned aside to sniff, in surly scorn, at the dead, mountainous
hulk of the rhinoceros, which lay with one ponderous foot stuck up in
the air as if in clumsy protest at Fate. Comprehending readily the
manner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, and
fell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which the
megatherium had torn in two. They had the air of intending to stay
some time, so Grom presently turned his attention to his rescued
rival.
Mawg was sitting on the next branch, a good spear's length distant,
and glowering at A-ya's lithe shapeliness with eyes of savage greed.
Grom knit his brows, and significantly passed an arm about the girl's
shoulders. Mawg shifted his attention to him.
"What do you want of me?" he demanded, in a thick, guttural voice.
"I thought you ran as if you did not want the lions to eat you,"
answered Grom.
Mawg stared with a stupid brutality and incomprehension; and the eyes
of the two men, meeting fairly, seemed to lock in a duel of
personalities.
They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically, superb
specimens of their race--the highest then evolved upon the youthful
earth--the elder man, in his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes,
displayed all the promise of the future; while the youth, low skulled
and with his dull but pugnacious eyes set under enormous bony brows,
suggested the mere brute from which the race had mounted. His hair was
shorter and coarser than Grom's, and foully matted; and his neck was
set very far forward between his powerful but lumpy shoulders. The
color of his coarse and furrowed skin was so dark as to make the
weathered tan of Grom and A-ya look white by contrast.
In no way lacking courage, but failing in will and steadiness, in a
dozen seconds Mawg involuntarily shifted his gaze, and looked down at
the lions.
"What do you want of me?" he demanded again, as if he had had no
answer before.
"The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take you back to the
tribe!" replied Grom with authority.
Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great yellow dog-teeth in a
snarling laugh of incredulity.
"You want to kill me!" said he, nodding his head.
Grom stared at him for a moment or two with a look of fatigued
contempt, then tore off a substantial strip of dried flesh from the
bundle hanging on the branch, and tossed it to him. The fellow
snatched it, and hid it behind him, being too hungry to refuse it,
but too savage to eat it under his captor's eye. Grom smiled
slowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand of A-ya's hair
which had fallen over his arm. But to this caress the girl paid no
attention. She was puzzled and outraged at Grom's action in protecting
his rival. Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily under
each cheek-bone.
Suddenly from down the trail came a noise of cracking grass-stems. The
two lions got up from their meal, and turned their heads inquiringly
toward the sound. The next moment they went stalking off the opposite
way with an air of haughty indignation, ignoring all the bodies of the
slain pig-tapirs. When they had rounded the first turn in the trail
they leaped into the grass, and went bounding off in a straight line
toward a large patch of wood some miles distant. The wounded
megatherium was returning.
Perhaps stung into restlessness by the anguish of that rending thrust,
the monster came dragging herself back toward the tree, crawling on
the sides of her feet. Arriving at the scene of battle, she sniffed
once more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Then
turning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began to
tear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. While
thus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caught
sight of the three figures looking down upon her.
On the instant her rage was diverted to them. Braying like a steam
siren, she came under the tree, reared herself against it, flung her
giant arms about it, and strove to pull it down. The tree rocked as if
struck by a tornado; and Mawg, who had been too slow to notice what
was about to happen, gave a yell of horror as he barely saved himself
from falling. The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing look
which so enraged her that she raised her spear as if to transfix him.
But there was too much happening below for her attention to remain on
Mawg. Finding the tree quite too sturdy to be pulled down off-hand,
the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inches
through, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery.
Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once more
pumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching to
the next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking another
great strip from the main trunk. Grom saw that her purpose obviously
was to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at her
intended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too much
for him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, he
slipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster's
sight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran out
along it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed upon
the two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam the
creek, thrust his way through the grass-stems, darted back to snatch
up his club, shook it at Grom, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced
off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.
Neither Grom nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. The
monster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk was
almost split in half by its loss. Grom saw that unless he could stop
this process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would be
overthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the next
great bough. Spear in hand, Grom slipped down to meet her, and halted
on a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively,
stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendous
muscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down her
insignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch of
succeeding. Grom just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside
nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful red
tongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The next
moment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grom
drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. The
weapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flint
lodged in the vertebrae of the monster's neck. Then the shaft was
wrenched violently from his hand; and the monster, blowing blood and
foam from mouth and nostrils, fell with a crash among the litter of
great branches which she had pulled down.
Grom drew a deep breath of relief, and commended the girl for her
timely and effective stroke at that terrible tongue. Then he set
himself coolly to the task of completing their shelter for the night.
As he wove leafy branches into the floor of the platform to make it
soft, she contemplated his work with satisfaction. Presently he
remarked:
"I'm glad we are rid of that Mawg."
"You should have killed him!" said the girl curtly.
"But why?" demanded Grom, in some surprise. In his eyes the fellow was
a valuable piece of property belonging to the tribe, a fighting
asset.
"He wants _me_!" answered the girl, meeting his eyes resentfully.
Grom let his eyes roam all over her--face, hair and form--and such a
look of passionate admiration glowed in their steady depths that her
anger faded, her own eyes dropped, and her breast gave a happy,
incomprehensible flutter. She had never seen such a look in any man's
face before, or even dreamed of such a look as possible.
"Of course, he wants you," said Grom, wondering, as he spoke, at the
ring of his own voice. "You are the fairest thing, and the most
desirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must want
you. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shall
tear you from me."
And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for having
neglected to kill Mawg.
That night sleep was impossible for them, though their lofty shelter
was comfortable and secure. A vast orange moon, near the full,
illuminated the spacious landscape; and beneath the tree came all the
giant night-prowlers, gathering to the unparallelled banquet which the
day had spread for them. Only the two black lions, perhaps already
glutted, did not come. Wolves, a small pack of self-disciplined wild
dogs, a troop of hyenas, and several enormous leopards, howled,
snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely scattered carcases, each
group watching its neighbors with suspicion and deadly animosity.
A gigantic red bear came lumbering up, and all the lesser prowlers
scattered discreetly but resentfully before him. He strode straight to
the chief place, under the rent, dishevelled tree, and fell to tearing
at the mountainous corpse of the megatherium. He was undisturbed till
two saber-tooths arrived, their tawny coats spectral in the moonlight,
their foot-long tusks giving their broad masks a dreadful grin.
Before one saber-tooth the bear would have stood his ground
scornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly,
and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of the
rhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split and
battered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came,
and then another bear.
There were swift, sudden battles, as swiftly dropped because
neither combatant wished to fight to a finish when there was
feasting so abundant for all. And once a leopard, dodging the paw
of a saber-tooth, sprang into the tree, only to fall back howling
from the spears thrust at him through the floor of Grom's platform.
Just before dawn the girl slept, while Grom kept watch beside her lest
another leopard should fancy to explore their refuge. An hour later,
when the first pallor was spreading, she awoke with a cry of fear, and
clung to Grom's arm, shuddering strongly.
"But--what is it?" he asked, in a tender voice, stroking her heavy
mane.
"I was afraid!" she answered, like a child.
"What were you afraid of?" asked Grom.
"I was afraid of Mawg. I _am_ afraid of him!" she answered, sitting up
and shaking the hair from her eyes, and staring out fearfully over the
gray transparent plains.
"Why should you fear Mawg?" demanded Grom proudly. "Am not I your man?
And am not I always with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could not
take you from me."
"I know," answered the girl, "that he and such as he would be as
straws in my lord's hands. But--even Grom must sometimes sleep!"
Grom laughed gently at her forebodings.
"He must sleep now, indeed, for we have a long and perilous journey
before us," said he. Laying his great shaggy head in her lap, and
stretching his limbs as far as the tiny platform would allow he was
asleep in two seconds. The girl, stooping forward till her rich hair
shadowed the rugged, sleeping face, with its calm brows, pondered
deeply over his inexplicable forbearance toward his rival. Her
instincts all assured her that it was dangerous; but something else
within her, something which she strove in vain to grasp, suggested to
her that in some way it was noble, and made her glad of it. Then, all
at once, the first of the sunrise, flooding into the tree-top, bathed
her face with a rosy glow, and wonderfully transfigured it.