THE BENDING OF THE BOW
Before the Caves of the Pointed Hills the fires of the tribe burned
brightly. Within the caves reigned plenty and an unheard-of security;
for since the conquest of fire those monstrous beasts and gigantic
carnivorous, running birds, which had been Man's ceaseless menace ever
since he swung down out of the tree-tops to walk the earth erect, had
been held at a distance through awe of the licking flames. Though the
great battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legs
had cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves were
swarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grom, his
Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure.
So sharp had been the lessons lately administered to the prowling
beasts--the terrible saber-tooth, the giant red bear of the caves, the
proud black lion, and the bone-crushing cave hyena--that even the
stretch of bumpy plain outside the circle of the fires, to a distance
of several hundred paces, was considered a safe playground for the
children of the tribe. On the outermost skirts of this playground, to
be sure, just where the reedy pools and the dense bamboo thickets
began, there was a fire kept burning. But this was more as a reminder
than as an actual defense. When a bear or a saber-tooth had once had a
blazing brand thrust in his face, he acquired a measure of discretion.
Moreover, the activities of the tribe had driven all the game animals
to some distance up the valley; and it was seldom that anything more
formidable than a jackal or a civet-cat cared to come within a
half-mile of the fires.
It was now two years since the rescue of A-ya from her captivity among
the Bow-legs. Her child by Grom was a straight-limbed, fair-skinned
lad of somewhere between four and five years. She sat cross-legged
near the sentinel fire, some fifty yards or so from the edge of the
thickets, and played with the lad, whose eyes were alight with eager
intelligence. Behind her sprawled, playing contentedly with its toes
and sucking a banana, a fat brown flat-nosed baby of some fourteen or
fifteen months.
Both A-ya and the boy were interested in a new toy. It was, perhaps,
the first whip. The boy had succeeded in tying a thin strip of green
hide, something over three feet in length, to one end of a stick which
was several inches longer. The uses of a whip came to him by unerring
insight, and he began applying it to his mother's shoulders. The
novelty of it delighted them both. A-ya, moreover, chuckled slyly at
the thought that the procedure might, on some future occasion, be
reversed, not without advantage to the cause of discipline.
At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded, stung too hard
for even A-ya, with all her stoicism, to find it amusing. She snatched
the toy away and began playing with it herself. The lash, at its free
end, chanced to be slit almost to the tip, forming a loop. The butt of
the handle was formed by a jagged knot, where it had been broken from
the parent stem. Idly but firmly, with her strong hands she bent the
stick, and slipped the loop over the jagged knot, where it held.
Interested, but with no hint of comprehension in her bright eyes, she
looked upon the first bow--the stupendous product of a child and a
woman playing.
The child, displeased at this new, useless thing, and wanting his whip
back, tried to snatch the bow from his mother's hands. But she pushed
him off. She liked this new toy. It looked, somehow, as if it invited
her to do something with it. Presently she pulled the cord, and let it
go again. Tightly strung, it made a pleasant little humming sound.
This she repeated many times, holding it up to her ear and laughing
with pleasure. The boy grew interested thereupon, and wanted to try
the new game for himself. But A-ya was too absorbed. She would not let
him touch it. "Go get another stick," she commanded impatiently; but
quite forgot to see her command obeyed.
As she was twanging the strange implement which had so happily
fashioned itself under her hands, Grom came up behind her. He stepped
carefully over the sprawling brown baby. He was about to pull her
heavy hair affectionately; but his eyes fell upon the thing in her
hands, and he checked himself.
For minute after minute he stood there motionless, watching and
studying the new toy. His eyes narrowed, his brows drew themselves
down broodingly. The thing seemed to him to suggest dim, cloudy, vast
possibilities; and he groped in his brain for some hint of the nature
of these possibilities. Yet as far as he could see it was good for
nothing but to make a faintly pleasant twang for the amusement of
women and children. At last he could keep his hands off it no longer.
"Give it to me," said he suddenly, laying hold of A-ya's wrist.
But A-ya was not yet done with it. She held it away from him, and
twanged it with redoubled vigor. Without further argument, and without
violence, Grom reached out a long arm, and found the bow in his grasp.
A-ya was surprised that such a trifle should seem of such importance
in her lord's eyes; but her faith was great. She shook the wild mane
of hair back from her face, silenced the boy's importunings with an
imperative gesture, and gathered herself with her arms about both
knees to watch what Grom would do with the plaything.
First he examined it minutely, and then he fastened the thong more
securely at either end. He twanged it as A-ya had done. He bent it to
its limit and eased it slowly back again, studying the new force
imprisoned in the changing curve. At last he asked who had made it.
"I did," answered A-ya, very proud of her achievement now that she
found it taken so seriously by one being to whom her adventurous
spirit really deferred.
"No, _I_ did!" piped the boy, with an injured air.
The mother laughed indulgently. "Yes, he tied one end, and beat me
with it," said she. "Then I took it from him, and bent the stick and
tied the other end."
"It is very good!" said Grom, nodding his approval musingly. He
squatted down a few feet away, and began experimenting.
Picking up a small stone, he held it upon the cord, bent the bow a
little way, and let go. The stone flew up and hit him with amazing
energy in the mouth.
"_Oh!_" murmured A-ya, sympathetically, as the bright blood ran down
his beard. But the child, thinking that his father had done it on
purpose, laughed with hearty appreciation. Somewhat annoyed, Grom got
up, moved a few paces farther away, and sat down again with his back
to the family circle.
As to the force that lurked in this slender little implement he was
now fully satisfied. But he was not satisfied with the direction in
which it exerted itself. He continued his experiments, but was careful
to draw the bow lightly.
For a long time he found it impossible to guess beforehand the
direction which the pebbles, or the bits of stick or bark, would take
in their surprising leaps from the loosed bow-string. But at length a
dim idea of aim occurred to him. He lifted the bow--his left fist
grasping its middle--to the level of his eyes, at arm's length. He got
the cord accurately in the center of the pebble, and drew toward his
nose. This effort was so successful that the stone went perfectly
straight--and caught him fair on the thumb-knuckle.
The blow was so sharp that he dropped the bow with an angry
exclamation. Glancing quickly over his shoulder to see if A-ya had
noticed the incident, he observed that her face was buried between her
knees and quite hidden by her hair. But her shoulders were heaving
spasmodically. He suspected that she was laughing at him; and for a
moment, as his knuckle was aching fiercely, he considered the
advisability of giving her a beating. He had never done such a thing
to her, however, though all the other Cave Men, including Bawr
himself, were wont to beat their women on occasion. In his heart he
hated the idea of hurting her; and it would hardly be worth while to
beat her without hurting her. The idea, therefore, was promptly
dismissed. He eyed the shaking shoulders gloomily for some seconds;
and then, as the throbbing in the outraged knuckle subsided, a grin of
sympathetic comprehension spread over his own face. He picked up the
bow, sprang to his feet, and strolled over to the edge of a thicket of
young cane.
The girl, lifting her head, peered at him cautiously through her hair.
Her laughter was forgotten on the instant, because she guessed that
his fertile brain was on the trail of some new experiment.
Arriving at the cane-thicket, Grom broke himself half a dozen
well-hardened, tapering stems, from two to three feet in length, and
about as thick at their smaller ends as A-ya's little finger.
These seemed to suggest to him the possibility of better results than
anything he could get from those erratic pebbles.
By this time quite a number of curious spectators--women and children
mostly, the majority of the men being away hunting, and the rest too
proud to show their curiosity--had gathered to watch Grom's
experiments. They were puzzled to make out what it was he was busying
himself with. But as he was a great chief, and held in deeper awe than
even Bawr himself, they did not presume to come very near; and they
had therefore not perceived, or at least they had not apprehended,
those two trifling mishaps of his. As for Grom, he paid his audience
no attention whatever. Now that he had possessed himself of those
slender straight shafts of cane, all else was forgotten. He felt, as
he looked at them and poised them, that in some vital way they
belonged to this fascinating implement which A-ya had invented for
him.
Selecting one of the shafts, he slowly applied the bigger end of it to
the bow-string, and stood for a long time pondering it, drawing it a
little way and easing it back without releasing it. Then he called to
mind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavy
end first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end to
the bow-string. Then he pulled the string tentatively, and let it go.
The arrow, all unguided, shot straight up into the air, turned over,
fell sharply, and buried its head in a bit of soft ground. Grom felt
that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder,
but durst not venture any comment when Grom was at his mysteries.
Plucking the shaft from the earth, Grom once more laid it to the
bow-string. As he pulled the string, the shaft wobbled crazily. With a
growl of impatience, he clapped the fore-finger of his left hand over
it, holding it in place, and pulled it through the guide thus formed.
A light flashed upon his brooding intelligence. Slightly crooking his
finger, so that the shaft could move freely, he drew the string
backward and forward, with deep deliberation, over and over again. To
his delight, he found that the shaft was no longer eccentrically
rebellious, but as docile as he could wish. At last, lifting the bow
above his head, he drew it strongly, and shot the shaft into the air.
He shouted as it slipped smoothly through the guiding crook of his
finger and went soaring skyward as if it would never stop. The eyes of
the spectators followed its flight with awe, and A-ya, suddenly
comprehending, caught her breath and snatched the boy to her heart in
a transport. Her alert mind had grasped, though dimly, the wonder of
her man's achievement.
Now, though Grom had pointed his shaft skyward, he had taken no
thought whatever as to its direction, or the distance it might travel.
As a matter of fact, he had shot towards the Caves. He had shot
strongly; and that first bow was a stiff one. Most of the folk who
squatted before the Caves were watching; but there were some who were
too indifferent or too stupid to take an interest in anything less
arresting than a thump on the head. Among these was a fat old woman,
who, with her back to all the excitement, was bending herself double
to grub in the litter of sticks and bones for some tit-bit which she
had dropped. Grom's shaft, turning gracefully against the blue came
darting downward on a long slope, and buried its point in that
upturned fat and grimy thigh. With a yell the old woman whipped round,
tore out the shaft, dashed it upon the ground, stared at it in horror
as if she thought it some kind of snake, and waddled, wildly
jabbering, into the nearest cave.
An outburst of startled cries arose from all the spectators, but it
hushed itself almost in the same breath. It was Grom who had done this
singular thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old woman must
have done something to make Grom angry. They were all afraid; and
several, whose consciences were not quite at ease, followed the old
woman's example and slipped into the Caves.
As for Grom, his feelings were a mixture of embarrassment and elation.
He was sorry to have hurt the old woman. He had a ridiculous dislike
of hurting any one unnecessarily; and when he looked back and saw A-ya
rocking herself to and fro in heartless mirth, he felt like asking her
how she would have liked it herself, if she had been in the place of
the fat old woman. On the other hand, he knew that he had made a great
discovery, second only to the conquest of the fire. He had found a new
weapon, of unheard-of, unimagined powers, able to kill swiftly and
silently and at a great distance. All he had to do was to perfect the
weapon and learn to control it.
He strode haughtily up to the cave mouth to recover his shaft. The
people, even the mightiest of the warriors, looked anxious and
deprecating at his approach; but he gave them never a glance. It would
not have done to let them think he had wounded the old woman by
accident. He picked up the shaft and examined its bloodstained point,
frowning fiercely. Then he glared into the cave where the unlucky
victim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft to
the bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with further
chastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus of
shrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put the
shaft into the bundle under his arm, and strode back to rejoin A-ya.
He had done enough for the moment. His next step required deep thought
and preparation.
An hour or two later, Grom set out from the Caves alone in spite of
A-ya's pleadings. He wanted complete solitude with his new weapon.
Besides a generous bundle of canes, of varying lengths and sizes, he
carried some strips of raw meat, a bunch of plantains, his spear and
club, and a sort of rude basket, without handle, formed by tying
together the ends of a roll of green bark.
This basket was a device of A-ya's, which had added greatly to her
prestige in the tribe, and caused the women to regard her with
redoubled jealousy. By lining it thickly with wet clay, she was able
to carry fire in it so securely and simply that Grom had adopted it at
once, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes of
hollow bamboo.
Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Grom turned into a
high, winding ravine, and was soon lost to the sight of the tribe.
The ravine, the bed of a long-dry torrent, climbed rapidly,
bearing around to the eastward, and brought him at length to a high
plateau on a shoulder of the mountain. At the back of the plateau the
mountain rose again, abruptly, to one of those saw-tooth pinnacles
which characterized this range. At the base of the steep was a
narrow fissure in the rock-face, leading into a small grotto which
Grom had discovered on one of his hunting expeditions. He had used
it several times already as a retreat when tired of the hubbub of
the tribe and anxious to ponder in quiet some of the problems which
for ever tormented his fruitful brain.
Absorbed in meditations upon his new weapons, Grom set himself to
build a small fire before the entrance of the grotto. The red coals
from his fire-basket he surrounded and covered with dry grass, dead
twigs, and small sticks. Then, getting down upon all fours, he blew
long and steadily into the mass till the smoke which curled up from it
was streaked with thin flames. As the flames curled higher, his ears
caught the sound of something stirring within the cave. He looked up,
peering between the little coils of smoke, and saw a pair of eyes,
very close to the ground, glaring forth at him from the darkness.
With one hand, he coolly but swiftly fed the fire to fuller volume,
while with the other he reached for and clutched his club. The eyes
drew back slowly to the depths of the cave. Appearing not to have
observed them, Grom piled the fire with heavier and heavier fuel, till
it was blazing strongly and full of well-lighted brands. Then he stood
up, seized a brand, and hurled it into the cave. There was a harsh
snarl, and the eyes disappeared, the owner of them having apparently
shrunk off to one side.
A moment or two later the interior was suddenly lighted up with a
smoky glare. The brand had fallen on a heap of withered grass
which had formerly been Grom's couch. Grom set his teeth and swung
up his club; and in the same instant there shot forth two immense
cave-hyenas, mad with rage and terror.
The great beasts were more afraid of the sudden flare within than of
the substantial and dangerous fire without. The first swerved just in
time to escape the fire, and went by so swiftly that the stroke of
Grom's club caught him only a light, glancing blow on the rump. But
the second of the pair, the female, was too close behind to swerve in
time. She dashed straight through the fire, struck Grom with all her
frantic weight, knocked him flat, and tore off howling down the
valley, leaving a pungent trail of singed fur on the air.
Uninjured save for an ugly scratch, which bled profusely, down one
side of his face, Grom picked himself up in a rage and started after
the fleeing beasts. But his common sense speedily reasserted itself.
He grunted in disgust, turned back to the fire, and was soon absorbed
in new experiments with the bow. As for the blaze within the cave, he
troubled himself no more about it. He knew it would soon burn out. And
it would leave the cave well cleansed of pestilential insects.
All that afternoon he experimented with his bundle of shafts, to find
what length and what weight would give the best results. One of the
arrows he shattered completely, by driving it, at short range,
straight against the rock-face of the mountain. Two others he lost, by
shooting them, far beyond his expectations, over the edge of the
plateau and down into the dense thickets below him, where he did not
care to search too closely by reason of the peril of snakes. The bow,
as his good luck would have it, though short and clumsy was very
strong, being made of a stick of dry upland hickory. And the cord of
raw hide was well-seasoned, stout and tough; though it had a
troublesome trick of stretching, which forced Grom to restring it many
times before all the stretch was out of it.
Having satisfied himself as to the power of his bow and the range of
his arrows, Grom set himself next to the problem of marksmanship.
Selecting a plant of prickly pear, of about the dimensions of a man,
he shot at it, at different ranges, till most of its great fleshy
leaves were shredded and shattered. With his straight eye and his
natural aptitude, he soon grasped the idea of elevation for range, and
made some respectable shooting. He also found that he could guide the
arrow without crooking his finger around it. His elation was so
extreme that he quite forgot to eat, till the closing in of darkness
put an end to his practice. Then, piling high his fire as a warning to
prowlers, he squatted in the mouth of the cave and made his meal. For
water he had to go some little way below the lip of the plateau; but
carrying a blazing balsam-knot he had nothing to fear from the beasts
that lay in ambush about the spring. They slunk away sullenly at the
approach of the waving flame.
That night Grom slept securely, with three fires before his door.
Every hour or two, vigilant woodsman that he was, he would wake up to
replenish the fires, and be asleep again even in the act of lying
down. And when the dawn came red and amber around the shoulder of the
saw-toothed peak, he was up again and out into the chill, sweet air
with his arrows.
The difficulty which now confronted him was that of giving his shafts
a penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin to
bamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needle
sharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the point
was necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of the
flight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks,
which he could split into edged and pointed fragments. He tried
hardening his points in the fire; but the results were not altogether
satisfactory. He thought of tipping some of the shafts with thorns, or
with the steely points of the old aloe leaves; but he could not, at
the moment, devise such a method of fixing these formidable weapons in
place as would not quite destroy their efficiency. Finally he made up
his mind that the thing to use would be bone, ground into a suitable
shape between two stones. But this was a matter that would have to
await his return to the Caves, and would then call for much careful
devising. For the present he would perforce content himself with such
points as he had fined down and hardened in the fire.
This matter settled in his mind, Grom burned to put his wonderful new
weapon to practical test. He descended cautiously the steep slope from
the eastern edge of his plateau--a broken region of ledges,
subtropical thickets, and narrow, grassy glades, with here and there
some tree of larger growth rising solitary like a watch-tower. Knowing
this was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hid
himself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a green
glade, and waited.
He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from a
runway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge,
dun-colored bull, with horns like scimitars each as long as Grom's
arm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, and
Grom realized that he was a solitary, beaten and driven out from his
herd by some mightier rival. The bull glanced warily about him, and
then fell to cropping the grass.
The beast offered an admirable target. Grom's arrow sped noiselessly
between the curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull's
fore-shoulder. It penetrated--but not to a depth of more than two or
three inches. And Grom, though elated by his good shot, realized that
such a wound would be nothing more than an irritant.
Startled and infuriated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glared
about him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest idea
of the direction from which the strange attack had come. The galling
smart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at
it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of
his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this
new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up
and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grom let drive another
arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go
deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again,
stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plunged
headlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he went
through the close-set stems. Grom heard him crashing onward down the
slope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonist
that might cross the mad brute's path.
This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grom one thing clearly.
He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he could
carry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find some
shoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollow
canes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully and
warily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve his
purpose.
But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked or
gnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. It
was not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urging
him back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across something
worth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on the
mountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which had
evidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious of
life, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or two
in height to the level of Grom's head. They were as straight and slim
as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grom's satisfaction
when he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that he
almost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the best
way to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of the
fiber, where they sprang from the parent trunk or root. Having at
length gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded to
shape the refractory butts in the fire. As he squatted between the
cave door and the fire he made his meal of raw flesh and plantains,
and gazed out contemplatively over the vast, rankly-green landscape
below him, musing upon the savage and monstrous strife which went on
beneath that mask of wide-flung calm. And as he pondered, the fire
which he had subjugated was quietly doing his work for him.
The result was beyond his utmost expectations. After judicious
charring, the ends being turned continually in the glowing coals, he
rubbed away the charred portions between two stones, and found that he
could thus work up an evenly-rounded point. The point thus obtained
was keen and hard; and as he balanced this new shaft in his hand he
realized that its weight would add vastly to its power of penetration.
When he tried a shot with it, he found that it flew farther and
straighter. It drove through the tough, fleshy leaf of the prickly
pear as if it hardly noticed the obstruction. He fashioned himself a
half-dozen more of these highly-efficient shafts, and then set out
again--this time down the ravine--to seek a living target for his
practice.
The ravine was winding and of irregular width, terraced here and there
with broken ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrow
gullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was an
accumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up through the
fissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms of
canna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a dense
curtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was a
region well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grom moved
stealthily as a panther, keeping for the most part along the upper
ledges, crouching low to cross the open spots, and slipping into cover
every few minutes to listen and peer and sniff.
Presently he came to a spot which seemed to offer him every advantage
as a place of ambush. It was a ledge some twenty feet above the valley
level, with a sort of natural parapet behind which he could crouch,
and, unseen, keep an eye on all the glades and runways below. Behind
him the rock-face was so nearly perpendicular that no enemy could
steal upon him from the rear. He laid his club and his spear down
beside him, selected one of his best arrows, and hoped that a fat buck
would come by, or one of those little, spotted, two-toed horses whose
flesh was so prized by the people of the Caves. Such a prize would be
a proof to all the tribe of the potency of his new weapon.
For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for his ranging eyes, as
the rock on which he leaned. To a hunter like Grom, schooled to
infinite patience, this was nothing. He knew that, in the woods, if
one waits long enough and keeps still enough, he is bound to see
something interesting. At last it came. It was neither the fat buck
nor the little two-toed horse with dapple hide, but a young
cow-buffalo. Grom noticed at once that she was nervous and puzzled.
She seemed to suspect that she was being followed and was undecided
what to do. Once she faced about angrily, staring into the coverts
behind her, and made as if to charge. Had she been an old cow, or a
bull, she would have charged; but her inexperience made her
irresolute. She snorted, faced about again, and moved on, ears, eyes
and wide nostrils one note of wrathful interrogation. She was well
within range, and Grom would have tried a shot at her except for his
seasoned wariness. He would rather see, before revealing himself, what
foe it was that dared to trail so dangerous a quarry. The buffalo
moved on slowly out of range, and vanished down a runway; and
immediately afterwards the stealthy pursuer came in view.
To Grom's amazement, it was neither a lion nor a bear. It was a man,
of his own tribe. And then he saw it was none other than the great
chief, Bawr himself, hunting alone after his haughty and daring
fashion. Between Grom and Bawr there was the fullest understanding,
and Grom would have whistled that plover-cry, his private signal, but
for the risk of interfering with Bawr's chase. Once more, therefore,
he held himself in check; while Bawr, his eyes easily reading the
trail, crept on with the soundless step of a wild cat.
But Grom was not the only hunter lying in ambush in the sun-drenched
ravine. Out from a bed of giant, red-blooming canna arose the
diabolical, grinning head and monstrous shoulders of a saber-tooth,
and stared after Bawr. Then the whole body emerged with a noiseless
bound. For a second the gigantic beast stood there, with one paw
uplifted, its golden-tawny bulk seeming to quiver in the downpour of
intense sunlight. It was a third as tall again at the shoulders as the
biggest Himalayan tiger, its head was flat-skulled like a tiger's, and
its upper jaw was armed with two long, yellow, saber-like tusks,
projecting downwards below the lower jaw. This appalling monster
started after Bawr with a swift, crouching rush, as silent, for all
its weight, as if its feet were shod with thistledown.
Grom leapt to his feet with a wild yell of warning, at the same time
letting fly an arrow. In his haste the shaft went wide. Bawr, looking
over his shoulder, saw the giant beast almost upon him. With a
tremendous bound he gained the foot of a tree. Dropping his club and
spear, he sprang desperately, caught a branch, and swung himself
upward.
But the saber-tooth was already at his heels, before he had time to
swing quite out of reach. The gigantic brute gathered itself for a
spring which would have enabled it to pluck Bawr from his refuge like
a ripe fig. But that spring was never delivered. With a roar of rage
the monster turned instead, and bit furiously at the shaft of an arrow
sticking in its flank. Grom's second shaft had flown true; and Bawr,
greatly marveling, drew up his legs to a place of safety.
With the fire of that deep wound in its entrails the saber-tooth
forgot all about its quarry in the tree. It had caught sight of Grom
when he uttered his yell of warning, and it knew instantly whence the
strange attack had come. It bit off the protruding shaft; and then,
fixing its dreadful eyes on Grom, it ceased its snarling and came
charging for the ledge with a rush which seemed likely to carry it
clear up the twenty-foot perpendicular of smooth rock.
Grom, enamored of the new weapon, forgot the spear which was likely to
be far more efficient at these close quarters. Leaning far out over
the parapet, he drew his arrow to the head and let drive just as the
monster reared itself, open-jawed, at the wall. The pointed hickory
went down into the gaping gullet, and stood out some inches at the
side of the neck. With a horrible coughing screech the monster
recoiled, put its head between its paws, and tried to claw the anguish
from its throat. But after a moment, seeming to realize that this was
impossible, it backed away, gathered itself together, and sprang for
the ledge. It received another of Grom's shafts deep in the chest,
without seeming to notice the wound; and its impetus was so tremendous
that it succeeded in getting its fore-paws fixed upon the ledge.
Clinging there, its enormous pale-green eyes staring straight into
Grom's, it struggled to draw itself up all the way--an effort in which
it would doubtless have succeeded at once but for that first arrow in
its entrails. The iron claws of its hinder feet rasped noisily on the
rock-face.
Grom dropped his bow beside him and reached for the spear. His hand
grasped the club instead; but there was no time to change. Swinging
the stone-head weapon in air, he brought it down, with a grunt of huge
effort, full upon one of those giant paws which clutched the edge of
the parapet. Crushed and numbed, the grip of that paw fell away; but
at the same moment one of the hinder paws got over the edge, and
clung. And there the monster hung, its body bent in a contorted bow.
Bawr, meanwhile, seeing Grom's peril, had dropped from his tree,
snatched up his spear and club, and rushed in to the rescue. It was
courage, this, of the finest, counting no odds; for down there on the
level he would have stood no ghost of a chance had the beast turned
back upon him. Grom yelled to him to keep away, and swung up his club
for another shattering blow. But in that same moment the great glaring
eyes filmed and rolled upwards; blood spouted from between the gaping
jaws; and with a spluttering cough the monster lost its hold. It fell,
with a soft but jarring thud, upon its back, and slowly rolled over
upon its side, pawing the air aimlessly. The arrow in the throat had
done its work.
With fine self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking, that he might
seem to usurp no share in Grom's amazing achievement. He stood leaning
upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grom
came scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took the
bow and arrows, and examined them in silence. Then he turned upon Grom
with burning eyes.
"You found the Fire for our people. You saved our people from the
hordes of the Bow-legs. You have saved my life now, slaying the
monster from very far off with these little sticks which you have
made. It is you who should be Chief, not I."
Grom laughed and shook his head. "Bawr is the better man of us two,"
said he positively, "and he is a better chief. He governs the people,
while I go away and think new things. And he is my friend. Look, I
will teach him now this new thing. And we will make another just like
it, that when we return to the Caves Bawr also shall know how to
strike from very far off."
With their rough-edged spear-heads of flint they set themselves to the
skinning of the saber-tooth. Then they went back to the high plateau,
where Bawr was taught to shoot a straight shaft. And on the following
day they returned to the fires of the tribe, carrying between them,
shoulder high, slung upon their two spears, this first trophy of the
bow, the monstrous head and hide of the saber-tooth.