While the more courageous of the youngsters played in and out of the
large-mouthed caves, I early learned that such caves were unoccupied.
No one slept in them at night. Only the crevice-mouthed caves were
used, the narrower the mouth the better. This was from fear of the
preying animals that made life a burden to us in those days and nights.
The first morning, after my night’s sleep with Lop-Ear, I learned the
advantage of the narrow-mouthed caves. It was just daylight when old
Saber-Tooth, the tiger, walked into the open space. Two of the Folk
were already up. They made a rush for it. Whether they were
panic-stricken, or whether he was too close on their heels for them to
attempt to scramble up the bluff to the crevices, I do not know; but at
any rate they dashed into the wide-mouthed cave wherein Lop-Ear and I
had played the afternoon before.
What happened inside there was no way of telling, but it is fair to
conclude that the two Folk slipped through the connecting crevice into
the other cave. This crevice was too small to allow for the passage of
Saber-Tooth, and he came out the way he had gone in, unsatisfied and
angry. It was evident that his night’s hunting had been unsuccessful
and that he had expected to make a meal off of us. He caught sight of
the two Folk at the other cave-mouth and sprang for them. Of course,
they darted through the passageway into the first cave. He emerged
angrier than ever and snarling.
Pandemonium broke loose amongst the rest of us. All up and down the
great bluff, we crowded the crevices and outside ledges, and we were
all chattering and shrieking in a thousand keys. And we were all making
faces—snarling faces; this was an instinct with us. We were as angry as
Saber-Tooth, though our anger was allied with fear. I remember that I
shrieked and made faces with the best of them. Not only did they set
the example, but I felt the urge from within me to do the same things
they were doing. My hair was bristling, and I was convulsed with a
fierce, unreasoning rage.
For some time old Saber-Tooth continued dashing in and out of first the
one cave and then the other. But the two Folk merely slipped back and
forth through the connecting crevice and eluded him. In the meantime
the rest of us up the bluff had proceeded to action. Every time he
appeared outside we pelted him with rocks. At first we merely dropped
them on him, but we soon began to whiz them down with the added force
of our muscles.
This bombardment drew Saber-Tooth’s attention to us and made him
angrier than ever. He abandoned his pursuit of the two Folk and sprang
up the bluff toward the rest of us, clawing at the crumbling rock and
snarling as he clawed his upward way. At this awful sight, the last one
of us sought refuge inside our caves. I know this, because I peeped out
and saw the whole bluff-side deserted, save for Saber-Tooth, who had
lost his footing and was sliding and falling down.
I called out the cry of encouragement, and again the bluff was covered
by the screaming horde and the stones were falling faster than ever.
Saber-Tooth was frantic with rage. Time and again he assaulted the
bluff. Once he even gained the first crevice-entrances before he fell
back, but was unable to force his way inside. With each upward rush he
made, waves of fear surged over us. At first, at such times, most of us
dashed inside; but some remained outside to hammer him with stones, and
soon all of us remained outside and kept up the fusillade.
Never was so masterly a creature so completely baffled. It hurt his
pride terribly, thus to be outwitted by the small and tender Folk. He
stood on the ground and looked up at us, snarling, lashing his tail,
snapping at the stones that fell near to him. Once I whizzed down a
stone, and just at the right moment he looked up. It caught him full on
the end of his nose, and he went straight up in the air, all four feet
of him, roaring and caterwauling, what of the hurt and surprise.
He was beaten and he knew it. Recovering his dignity, he stalked out
solemnly from under the rain of stones. He stopped in the middle of the
open space and looked wistfully and hungrily back at us. He hated to
forego the meal, and we were just so much meat, cornered but
inaccessible. This sight of him started us to laughing. We laughed
derisively and uproariously, all of us. Now animals do not like
mockery. To be laughed at makes them angry. And in such fashion our
laughter affected Saber-Tooth. He turned with a roar and charged the
bluff again. This was what we wanted. The fight had become a game, and
we took huge delight in pelting him.
But this attack did not last long. He quickly recovered his common
sense, and besides, our missiles were shrewd to hurt. Vividly do I
recollect the vision of one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut by
one of the stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retain the picture of
him as he stood on the edge of the forest whither he had finally
retreated. He was looking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clear of
the very roots of his huge fangs, his hair bristling and his tail
lashing. He gave one last snarl and slid from view among the trees.
And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed out of our holes,
examining the marks his claws had made on the crumbling rock of the
bluff, all of us talking at once. One of the two Folk who had been
caught in the double cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.
They had come out proudly from their refuge, and we surrounded them in
an admiring crowd. Then the young fellow’s mother broke through and
fell upon him in a tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair,
and shrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman, very hairy,
and the thrashing she gave him was a delight to the horde. We roared
with laughter, holding on to one another or rolling on the ground in
our glee.
In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the Folk were
always great laughers. We had the sense of humor. Our merriment was
Gargantuan. It was never restrained. There was nothing half way about
it. When a thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation of it,
and the simplest, crudest things were funny to us. Oh, we were great
laughers, I can tell you.
The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we treated all animals
that invaded the village. We kept our run-ways and drinking-places to
ourselves by making life miserable for the animals that trespassed or
strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest hunting animals
we so bedevilled that they learned to leave our places alone. We were
not fighters like them; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was
because of our cunning and cowardice, and our inordinate capacity for
fear, that we survived in that frightfully hostile environment of the
Younger World.
Lop-Ear, I figure, was a year older than I. What his past history was
he had no way of telling me, but as I never saw anything of his mother
I believed him to be an orphan. After all, fathers did not count in our
horde. Marriage was as yet in a rude state, and couples had a way of
quarrelling and separating. Modern man, what of his divorce
institution, does the same thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom
was all we went by, and our custom in this particular matter was rather
promiscuous.
Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, we betrayed
glimmering adumbrations of the monogamy that was later to give power
to, and make mighty, such tribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at
the time I was born, there were several faithful couples that lived in
the trees in the neighborhood of my mother. Living in the thick of the
horde did not conduce to monogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly,
that the faithful couples went away and lived by themselves. Through
many years these couples stayed together, though when the man or woman
died or was eaten the survivor invariably found a new mate.
There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during the first days of my
residence in the horde. There was a nameless and incommunicable fear
that rested upon all. At first it appeared to be connected wholly with
direction. The horde feared the northeast. It lived in perpetual
apprehension of that quarter of the compass. And every individual gazed
more frequently and with greater alarm in that direction than in any
other.
When Lop-Ear and I went toward the north-east to eat the stringy-rooted
carrots that at that season were at their best, he became unusually
timid. He was content to eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and
the little ropy ones, rather than to venture a short distance farther
on to where the carrots were as yet untouched. When I so ventured, he
scolded me and quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in
that direction was some horrible danger, but just what the horrible
danger was his paucity of language would not permit him to say.
Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while he scolded and chattered
vainly at me. I could not understand. I kept very alert, but I could
see no danger. I calculated always the distance between myself and the
nearest tree, and knew that to that haven of refuge I could out-foot
the Tawny One, or old Saber-Tooth, did one or the other suddenly
appear.
One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproar arose. The horde was
animated with a single emotion, that of fear. The bluff-side swarmed
with the Folk, all gazing and pointing into the northeast. I did not
know what it was, but I scrambled all the way up to the safety of my
own high little cave before ever I turned around to see.
And then, across the river, away into the northeast, I saw for the
first time the mystery of smoke. It was the biggest animal I had ever
seen. I thought it was a monster snake, up-ended, rearing its head high
above the trees and swaying back and forth. And yet, somehow, I seemed
to gather from the conduct of the Folk that the smoke itself was not
the danger. They appeared to fear it as the token of something else.
What this something else was I was unable to guess. Nor could they tell
me. Yet I was soon to know, and I was to know it as a thing more
terrible than the Tawny One, than old Saber-Tooth, than the snakes
themselves, than which it seemed there could be no things more
terrible.