Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His mother
lived in the caves, but two more children had come after him and he had
been thrust out to shift for himself. We had witnessed the performance
during the several preceding days, and it had given us no little glee.
Broken-Tooth did not want to go, and every time his mother left the
cave he sneaked back into it. When she returned and found him there her
rages were delightful. Half the horde made a practice of watching for
these moments. First, from within the cave, would come her scolding and
shrieking. Then we could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling
of Broken-Tooth. About this time the two younger children joined in.
And finally, like the eruption of a miniature volcano, Broken-Tooth
would come flying out.
At the end of several days his leaving home was accomplished. He wailed
his grief, unheeded, from the centre of the open space, for at least
half an hour, and then came to live with Lop-Ear and me. Our cave was
small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I have no
recollection of Broken-Tooth spending more than one night with us, so
the accident must have happened right away.
It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we had eaten our fill
of the carrots, and then, made heedless by play, we had ventured on to
the big trees just beyond. I cannot understand how Lop-Ear got over his
habitual caution, but it must have been the play. We were having a
great time playing tree tag. And such tag! We leaped ten or
fifteen-foot gaps as a matter of course. And a twenty or twenty-five
foot deliberate drop clear down to the ground was nothing to us. In
fact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances we dropped. As we
grew older and heavier we found we had to be more cautious in dropping,
but at that age our bodies were all strings and springs and we could do
anything.
Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game. He was “It” less
frequently than any of us, and in the course of the game he discovered
one difficult “slip” that neither Lop-Ear nor I was able to accomplish.
To be truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.
When we were “It,” Broken-Tooth always ran out to the end of a lofty
branch in a certain tree. From the end of the branch to the ground it
must have been seventy feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall.
But about twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet out from the
perpendicular, was the thick branch of another tree.
As we ran out the limb, Broken-Tooth, facing us, would begin teetering.
This naturally impeded our progress; but there was more in the
teetering than that. He teetered with his back to the jump he was to
make. Just as we nearly reached him he would let go. The teetering
branch was like a spring-board. It threw him far out, backward, as he
fell. And as he fell he turned around sidewise in the air so as to face
the other branch into which he was falling. This branch bent far down
under the impact, and sometimes there was an ominous crackling; but it
never broke, and out of the leaves was always to be seen the face of
Broken-Tooth grinning triumphantly up at us.
I was “It” the last time Broken-Tooth tried this. He had gained the end
of the branch and begun his teetering, and I was creeping out after
him, when suddenly there came a low warning cry from Lop-Ear. I looked
down and saw him in the main fork of the tree crouching close against
the trunk. Instinctively I crouched down upon the thick limb.
Broken-Tooth stopped teetering, but the branch would not stop, and his
body continued bobbing up and down with the rustling leaves.
I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down saw my first
Fire-Man. He was creeping stealthily along on the ground and peering up
into the tree. At first I thought he was a wild animal, because he wore
around his waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece of bearskin. And
then I saw his hands and feet, and more clearly his features. He was
very much like my kind, except that he was less hairy and that his feet
were less like hands than ours. In fact, he and his people, as I was
later to know, were far less hairy than we, though we, in turn, were
equally less hairy than the Tree People.
It came to me instantly, as I looked at him. This was the terror of the
northeast, of which the mystery of smoke was a token. Yet I was
puzzled. Certainly he was nothing of which to be afraid. Red-Eye or
any of our strong men would have been more than a match for him. He was
old, too, wizened with age, and the hair on his face was gray. Also, he
limped badly with one leg. There was no doubt at all that we could
out-run him and out-climb him. He could never catch us, that was
certain.
But he carried something in his hand that I had never seen before. It
was a bow and arrow. But at that time a bow and arrow had no meaning
for me. How was I to know that death lurked in that bent piece of wood?
But Lop-Ear knew. He had evidently seen the Fire People before and knew
something of their ways. The Fire-Man peered up at him and circled
around the tree. And around the main trunk above the fork Lop-Ear
circled too, keeping always the trunk between himself and the Fire-Man.
The latter abruptly reversed his circling. Lop-Ear, caught unawares,
also hastily reversed, but did not win the protection of the trunk
until after the Fire-Man had twanged the bow.
I saw the arrow leap up, miss Lop-Ear, glance against a limb, and fall
back to the ground. I danced up and down on my lofty perch with
delight. It was a game! The Fire-Man was throwing things at Lop-Ear as
we sometimes threw things at one another.
The game continued a little longer, but Lop-Ear did not expose himself
a second time. Then the Fire-Man gave it up. I leaned far out over my
horizontal limb and chattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wanted
to have him try to hit me with the thing. He saw me, but ignored me,
turning his attention to Broken-Tooth, who was still teetering slightly
and involuntarily on the end of the branch.
The first arrow leaped upward. Broken-Tooth yelled with fright and
pain. It had reached its mark. This put a new complexion on the matter.
I no longer cared to play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. A
second arrow and a third soared up, missing Broken-Tooth, rustling the
leaves as they passed through, arching in their flight and returning to
earth.
The Fire-Man stretched his bow again. He shifted his position, walking
away several steps, then shifted it a second time. The bow-string
twanged, the arrow leaped upward, and Broken-Tooth, uttering a terrible
scream, fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down, turning over
and over, all arms and legs it seemed, the shaft of the arrow
projecting from his chest and appearing and disappearing with each
revolution of his body.
Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing to the earth with
an audible thud and crunch, his body rebounding slightly and settling
down again. Still he lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his
hands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running forward with a stone
and hammering him on the head...and then I remember no more.
Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the dream, did I wake up
screaming with fright—to find, often, my mother or nurse, anxious and
startled, by my bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair and
telling me that they were there and that there was nothing to fear.
My next dream, in the order of succession, begins always with the
flight of Lop-Ear and myself through the forest. The Fire-Man and
Broken-Tooth and the tree of the tragedy are gone. Lop-Ear and I, in a
cautious panic, are fleeing through the trees. In my right leg is a
burning pain; and from the flesh, protruding head and shaft from either
side, is an arrow of the Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of
it pain me severely, but it bothered my movements and made it
impossible for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.
At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a tree. Lop-Ear went
right on. I called to him—most plaintively, I remember; and he stopped
and looked back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork and
examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but one way the flesh
resisted the barbed head, and the other way it resisted the feathered
shaft. Also, it hurt grievously, and I stopped him.
For some time we crouched there, Lop-Ear nervous and anxious to be
gone, perpetually and apprehensively peering this way and that, and
myself whimpering softly and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk,
and yet his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I take as
a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship that have helped make
man the mightiest of the animals.
Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the flesh, and I
angrily stopped him. Then he bent down and began gnawing the shaft of
the arrow with his teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both
hands so that it would not play about in the wound, and at the same
time I held on to him. I often meditate upon this scene—the two of us,
half-grown cubs, in the childhood of the race, and the one mastering
his fear, beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand
by and succor the other. And there rises up before me all that was
there foreshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias, of
life-saving crews and Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of
forlorn hopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, and of all
the men of earth, mighty of stature, whose strength may trace back to
the elemental loins of Lop-Ear and Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of
the Younger World.
When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, the shaft was
withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on, but this time it was he
that stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely. Some of the smaller
veins had doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a branch,
Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves. These he stuffed into the
wound. They accomplished the purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped.
Then we went on together, back to the safety of the caves.