THE MOOSE
But No Foot carried the flints to his cave, and fitted them to his
arrows, and he fitted feathers to the string ends, and having devoured,
raw, a seven pound fish that had been given him (for fire and cooking
had not yet been discovered) he lay down and slept till the hour before
sunrise.
As he slept, his brow wrinkled and unwrinkled, his hands and feet
twitched and contracted. Sometimes he made a noise in his throat that was
like growling, sometimes he started as if in fear.
For when the first men dreamed, they dreamed, for the most part, about
the ancient ages when they had not been men; of long, cool leaps from
tree to tree; of feet that had the grip of strong hands, and of the great
fear that had driven them to become men—fear of the other beasts, fear
of the night.
That which turned into man, differed only from the other beasts in the
acuteness of its sensations. Fear, pain, shadows, and lust. Fear worked
upon its intelligence and it survived, where nobler and stronger and more
courageous animals perished—the ship-size creatures of the deep, and the
mastadon and the mammoth.
Man in his fear found out many inventions by which he proved his fitness
to survive. And the battle did not go to the strong.
But when No Man awoke, he did not remember his dreams. He arose, shook
himself, took up his bow and his arrows, and trotted into the forest. He
trotted with caution, for he wished his secret to be his secret, until
the sun stood over his head and he was far from the caves of his tribe.
Then he began to hunt.
He had probably less notion of hunting than any member of the tribe, but
if we had seen him and had not seen the others, we would have thought
him the most astute hunter imaginable.
He had the instinct of the chase, dormant in all of us, but better, he
had senses nearly as acute as those of a dog. Eyes that could see in
the dark, ears that could hear the rose-leaf footfall of a wolf on soft
ground, and a nose that could scent that same wolf half a mile away if
the wind blew right.
All the time that he had been running, from sunrise to high noon, his
nose and ears had been twitching with the smells and sounds of the
forest. But now he ran in a great circle, with his eyes on the ground,
and paid strict attention.
Presently clear, deep, black, and shining in the wet, rank ground by a
stream, he saw where a moose had stepped. The track pointed into the
wind, and was fresh and clear. He followed, twitching and silent.
The track followed the stream bed, and then turned a steep angle and
made for the deep shades of the forest, where the moose goes to rest
during the heat of the day.
No Man came upon him lying on his side among cool, green bushes. Trees,
two hundred feet high and straight as masts, towered above in a twilight
of their own making. And there was a mighty hush and silence, the silence
of high noon in the forest where no beast stirs save only man.
Then there was a twanging jar and the sound of an arrow cleaving the air
and jolting into flesh and muscle.
The great moose rose to his feet, very black, maned, bearded, extended
of horn and terrible. He searched for his enemy with little, venomous,
blood-shot eyes. But he swayed as he searched, for just behind his
fore-shoulder, as if part of him, as if something that had mysteriously
grown out of him, there projected a bunch of bright blue feathers, and
dark blood throbbed forth like a spring at their root.
[Illustration: UNCONQUERED—BLEEDING TO DEATH]
No Man, for he knew that the moose is not good at seeing, had hidden
himself among the bushes, and he looked cautiously between the leaves to
watch his victim die.
For an hour he did not move. And the moose, save for swaying of the head
from side to side, and dartings of his dimming eyes, did not move either.
He stood grandly in his tracks, arrogant, fearless, unconquered, and
bleeding to death. At the end of the hour he had staggered and recovered.
But he only stiffened his legs and held his head the more proudly.
A little later, dizziness overcame him and he fell like a thing struck.
But instantly he sprang to his feet, alert and menacing. But he knew that
the end was near.
Once he turned his head and sniffed at the thing that was killing him—not
angrily, not even impatiently, but curiously, to see what it was. Then
when he felt that unsupported he must fall, he walked slowly and quietly
to a great tree and leaned against it.
He remained there till late in the afternoon, then his knees buckled, and
he fell, and when No Man went to him, he was dead.
No Man drew the arrow from the moose and withdrawing a little distance
shot it into him again, together with his two other arrows. And he kept
this up till dark; for it was in his mind that it would be best not to
miss when it came to shooting at Strong Hand.
When night came, No Man tore meat from the moose and ate till he was
full; then he went back to the stream and drank deep; then he returned to
the moose’s carcass and, lying against it, slept.
Wolves came up thro’ the forest, and looked longingly at the dead moose,
and smelt him—at a safe distance; but it was the summer season and they
were not hungry enough to run straight into the smell of man. And they
withdrew, coughing, whining, snarling, and returned again to feast in
imagination.
When the moon rose, they went to an open space in the forest and howled
dismally, so that No Man twitching as to ears and nose awoke. It was some
little time before he composed himself to sleep, for his mind was teeming
with thoughts. But he did not think of Strong Hand and woman and revenge
as had been his wont of late. He thought rather of the pictures that he
made upon bone, for what little soul he had was the soul of an artist.
And he planned in the dark of the night, how upon a great, clean bone,
the shovel of its own antlers, he would inscribe the moose with the arrow
in him, standing arrogantly among the bushes as he bled to death, and
leaning unconquered against the tree. Then fear of the night descended
upon No Man, and he closed his eyes and slept—twitching, coughing and
snarling as the dreams of ancient days possessed him.
But when he awakened in the strong light of day, he thought of the bow
and arrows which he had made, of how he was going to hunt man, and of the
sweetness which is revenge. But he put off that hunt until another day.
[Illustration]