It was in the early fall of the following year that it happened. After
his failure to get the Swift One, Red-Eye had taken another wife; and,
strange to relate, she was still alive. Stranger still, they had a baby
several months old—Red-Eye’s first child. His previous wives had never
lived long enough to bear him children. The year had gone well for all
of us. The weather had been exceptionally mild and food plentiful. I
remember especially the turnips of that year. The nut crop was also
very heavy, and the wild plums were larger and sweeter than usual.
In short, it was a golden year. And then it happened. It was in the
early morning, and we were surprised in our caves. In the chill gray
light we awoke from sleep, most of us, to encounter death. The Swift
One and I were aroused by a pandemonium of screeching and gibbering.
Our cave was the highest of all on the cliff, and we crept to the mouth
and peered down. The open space was filled with the Fire People. Their
cries and yells were added to the clamor, but they had order and plan,
while we Folk had none. Each one of us fought and acted for himself,
and no one of us knew the extent of the calamity that was befalling us.
By the time we got to stone-throwing, the Fire People had massed thick
at the base of the cliff. Our first volley must have mashed some heads,
for when they swerved back from the cliff three of their number were
left upon the ground. These were struggling and floundering, and one
was trying to crawl away. But we fixed them. By this time we males were
roaring with rage, and we rained rocks upon the three men that were
down. Several of the Fire-Men returned to drag them into safety, but
our rocks drove the rescuers back.
The Fire People became enraged. Also, they became cautious. In spite of
their angry yells, they kept at a distance and sent flights of arrows
against us. This put an end to the rock-throwing. By the time half a
dozen of us had been killed and a score injured, the rest of us
retreated inside our caves. I was not out of range in my lofty cave,
but the distance was great enough to spoil effective shooting, and the
Fire People did not waste many arrows on me. Furthermore, I was
curious. I wanted to see. While the Swift One remained well inside the
cave, trembling with fear and making low wailing sounds because I would
not come in, I crouched at the entrance and watched.
The fighting had now become intermittent. It was a sort of deadlock. We
were in the caves, and the question with the Fire People was how to get
us out. They did not dare come in after us, and in general we would not
expose ourselves to their arrows. Occasionally, when one of them drew
in close to the base of the cliff, one or another of the Folk would
smash a rock down. In return, he would be transfixed by half a dozen
arrows. This ruse worked well for some time, but finally the Folk no
longer were inveigled into showing themselves. The deadlock was
complete.
Behind the Fire People I could see the little wizened old hunter
directing it all. They obeyed him, and went here and there at his
commands. Some of them went into the forest and returned with loads of
dry wood, leaves, and grass. All the Fire People drew in closer. While
most of them stood by with bows and arrows, ready to shoot any of the
Folk that exposed themselves, several of the Fire-Men heaped the dry
grass and wood at the mouths of the lower tier of caves. Out of these
heaps they conjured the monster we feared—_FIRE_. At first, wisps of
smoke arose and curled up the cliff. Then I could see the red-tongued
flames darting in and out through the wood like tiny snakes. The smoke
grew thicker and thicker, at times shrouding the whole face of the
cliff. But I was high up and it did not bother me much, though it stung
my eyes and I rubbed them with my knuckles.
Old Marrow-Bone was the first to be smoked out. A light fan of air
drifted the smoke away at the time so that I saw clearly. He broke out
through the smoke, stepping on a burning coal and screaming with the
sudden hurt of it, and essayed to climb up the cliff. The arrows
showered about him. He came to a pause on a ledge, clutching a knob of
rock for support, gasping and sneezing and shaking his head. He swayed
back and forth. The feathered ends of a dozen arrows were sticking out
of him. He was an old man, and he did not want to die. He swayed wider
and wider, his knees giving under him, and as he swayed he wailed most
plaintively. His hand released its grip and he lurched outward to the
fall. His old bones must have been sadly broken. He groaned and strove
feebly to rise, but a Fire-Man rushed in upon him and brained him with
a club.
And as it happened with Marrow-Bone, so it happened with many of the
Folk. Unable to endure the smoke-suffocation, they rushed out to fall
beneath the arrows. Some of the women and children remained in the
caves to strangle to death, but the majority met death outside.
When the Fire-Men had in this fashion cleared the first tier of caves,
they began making arrangements to duplicate the operation on the second
tier of caves. It was while they were climbing up with their grass and
wood, that Red-Eye, followed by his wife, with the baby holding to her
tightly, made a successful flight up the cliff. The Fire-Men must have
concluded that in the interval between the smoking-out operations we
would remain in our caves; so that they were unprepared, and their
arrows did not begin to fly till Red-Eye and his wife were well up the
wall. When he reached the top, he turned about and glared down at them,
roaring and beating his chest. They arched their arrows at him, and
though he was untouched he fled on.
I watched a third tier smoked out, and a fourth. A few of the Folk
escaped up the cliff, but most of them were shot off the face of it as
they strove to climb. I remember Long-Lip. He got as far as my ledge,
crying piteously, an arrow clear through his chest, the feathered shaft
sticking out behind, the bone head sticking out before, shot through
the back as he climbed. He sank down on my ledge bleeding profusely at
the mouth.
It was about this time that the upper tiers seemed to empty themselves
spontaneously. Nearly all the Folk not yet smoked out stampeded up the
cliff at the same time. This was the saving of many. The Fire People
could not shoot arrows fast enough. They filled the air with arrows,
and scores of the stricken Folk came tumbling down; but still there
were a few who reached the top and got away.
The impulse of flight was now stronger in me than curiosity. The arrows
had ceased flying. The last of the Folk seemed gone, though there may
have been a few still hiding in the upper caves. The Swift One and I
started to make a scramble for the cliff-top. At sight of us a great
cry went up from the Fire People. This was not caused by me, but by the
Swift One. They were chattering excitedly and pointing her out to one
another. They did not try to shoot her. Not an arrow was discharged.
They began calling softly and coaxingly. I stopped and looked down. She
was afraid, and whimpered and urged me on. So we went up over the top
and plunged into the trees.
This event has often caused me to wonder and speculate. If she were
really of their kind, she must have been lost from them at a time when
she was too young to remember, else would she not have been afraid of
them. On the other hand, it may well have been that while she was their
kind she had never been lost from them; that she had been born in the
wild forest far from their haunts, her father maybe a renegade
Fire-Man, her mother maybe one of my own kind, one of the Folk. But who
shall say? These things are beyond me, and the Swift One knew no more
about them than did I.
We lived through a day of terror. Most of the survivors fled toward the
blueberry swamp and took refuge in the forest in that neighborhood. And
all day hunting parties of the Fire People ranged the forest, killing
us wherever they found us. It must have been a deliberately executed
plan. Increasing beyond the limits of their own territory, they had
decided on making a conquest of ours. Sorry the conquest! We had no
chance against them. It was slaughter, indiscriminate slaughter, for
they spared none, killing old and young, effectively ridding the land
of our presence.
It was like the end of the world to us. We fled to the trees as a last
refuge, only to be surrounded and killed, family by family. We saw much
of this during that day, and besides, I wanted to see. The Swift One
and I never remained long in one tree, and so escaped being surrounded.
But there seemed no place to go. The Fire-Men were everywhere, bent on
their task of extermination. Every way we turned we encountered them,
and because of this we saw much of their handiwork.
I did not see what became of my mother, but I did see the Chatterer
shot down out of the old home-tree. And I am afraid that at the sight I
did a bit of joyous teetering. Before I leave this portion of my
narrative, I must tell of Red-Eye. He was caught with his wife in a
tree down by the blueberry swamp. The Swift One and I stopped long
enough in our flight to see. The Fire-Men were too intent upon their
work to notice us, and, furthermore, we were well screened by the
thicket in which we crouched.
Fully a score of the hunters were under the tree, discharging arrows
into it. They always picked up their arrows when they fell back to
earth. I could not see Red-Eye, but I could hear him howling from
somewhere in the tree.
After a short interval his howling grew muffled. He must have crawled
into a hollow in the trunk. But his wife did not win this shelter. An
arrow brought her to the ground. She was severely hurt, for she made no
effort to get away. She crouched in a sheltering way over her baby
(which clung tightly to her), and made pleading signs and sounds to the
Fire-Men. They gathered about her and laughed at her—even as Lop-Ear
and I had laughed at the old Tree-Man. And even as we had poked him
with twigs and sticks, so did the Fire-Men with Red-Eye’s wife. They
poked her with the ends of their bows, and prodded her in the ribs. But
she was poor fun. She would not fight. Nor, for that matter, would she
get angry. She continued to crouch over her baby and to plead. One of
the Fire-Men stepped close to her. In his hand was a club. She saw and
understood, but she made only the pleading sounds until the blow fell.
Red-Eye, in the hollow of the trunk, was safe from their arrows. They
stood together and debated for a while, then one of them climbed into
the tree. What happened up there I could not tell, but I heard him yell
and saw the excitement of those that remained beneath. After several
minutes his body crashed down to the ground. He did not move. They
looked at him and raised his head, but it fell back limply when they
let go. Red-Eye had accounted for himself.
They were very angry. There was an opening into the trunk close to the
ground. They gathered wood and grass and built a fire. The Swift One
and I, our arms around each other, waited and watched in the thicket.
Sometimes they threw upon the fire green branches with many leaves,
whereupon the smoke became very thick.
We saw them suddenly swerve back from the tree. They were not quick
enough. Red-Eye’s flying body landed in the midst of them.
He was in a frightful rage, smashing about with his long arms right and
left. He pulled the face off one of them, literally pulled it off with
those gnarly fingers of his and those tremendous muscles. He bit
another through the neck. The Fire-Men fell back with wild fierce
yells, then rushed upon him. He managed to get hold of a club and began
crushing heads like eggshells. He was too much for them, and they were
compelled to fall back again. This was his chance, and he turned his
back upon them and ran for it, still howling wrathfully. A few arrows
sped after him, but he plunged into a thicket and was gone.
The Swift One and I crept quietly away, only to run foul of another
party of Fire-Men. They chased us into the blueberry swamp, but we knew
the tree-paths across the farther morasses where they could not follow
on the ground, and so we escaped. We came out on the other side into a
narrow strip of forest that separated the blueberry swamp from the
great swamp that extended westward. Here we met Lop-Ear. How he had
escaped I cannot imagine, unless he had not slept the preceding night
at the caves.
Here, in the strip of forest, we might have built tree-shelters and
settled down; but the Fire People were performing their work of
extermination thoroughly. In the afternoon, Hair-Face and his wife fled
out from among the trees to the east, passed us, and were gone. They
fled silently and swiftly, with alarm in their faces. In the direction
from which they had come we heard the cries and yells of the hunters,
and the screeching of some one of the Folk. The Fire People had found
their way across the swamp.
The Swift One, Lop-Ear, and I followed on the heels of Hair-Face and
his wife. When we came to the edge of the great swamp, we stopped. We
did not know its paths. It was outside our territory, and it had been
always avoided by the Folk. None had ever gone into it—at least, to
return. In our minds it represented mystery and fear, the terrible
unknown. As I say, we stopped at the edge of it. We were afraid. The
cries of the Fire-Men were drawing nearer. We looked at one another.
Hair-Face ran out on the quaking morass and gained the firmer footing
of a grass-hummock a dozen yards away. His wife did not follow. She
tried to, but shrank back from the treacherous surface and cowered
down.
The Swift One did not wait for me, nor did she pause till she had
passed beyond Hair-Face a hundred yards and gained a much larger
hummock. By the time Lop-Ear and I had caught up with her, the Fire-Men
appeared among the trees. Hair-Face’s wife, driven by them into panic
terror, dashed after us. But she ran blindly, without caution, and
broke through the crust. We turned and watched, and saw them shoot her
with arrows as she sank down in the mud. The arrows began falling about
us. Hair-Face had now joined us, and the four of us plunged on, we knew
not whither, deeper and deeper into the swamp.