week before he got back again to his old spryness.
Marrow-Bone was the only old member in the horde.
Sometimes, on looking back upon him, when the vision of
him is most clear, I note a striking resemblance
between him and the father of my father’s gardener.
The gardener’s father was very old, very wrinkled and
withered; and for all the world, when he peered through
his tiny, bleary eyes and mumbled with his toothless
gums, he looked and acted like old Marrow-Bone. This
resemblance, as a child, used to frighten me. I always
ran when I saw the old man tottering along on his two
canes. Old Marrow-Bone even had a bit of sparse and
straggly white beard that seemed identical with the
whiskers of the old man.
As I have said, Marrow-Bone was the only old member of
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the horde. He was an exception. The Folk never lived
to old age. Middle age was fairly rare. Death by
violence was the common way of death. They died as my
father had died, as Broken-Tooth had died, as my sister
and the Hairless One had just died–abruptly and
brutally, in the full possession of their faculties, in
the full swing and rush of life. Natural death? To
die violently was the natural way of dying in those
days.
No one died of old age among the Folk. I never knew of
a case. Even Marrow-Bone did not die that way, and he
was the only one in my generation who had the chance.
A bad rippling, any serious accidental or temporary
impairment of the faculties, meant swift death. As a
rule, these deaths were not witnessed.
Members of the horde simply dropped out of sight. They
left the caves in the morning, and they never came
back. They disappeared–into the ravenous maws of the
hunting creatures.
This inroad of the Fire People on the carrot-patch was
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the beginning of the end, though we did not know it.
The hunters of the Fire People began to appear more
frequently as the time went by. They came in twos and
threes, creeping silently through the forest, with
their flying arrows able to annihilate distance and
bring down prey from the top of the loftiest tree
without themselves climbing into it. The bow and arrow
was like an enormous extension of their leaping and
striking muscles, so that, virtually, they could leap
and kill at a hundred feet and more. This made them far
more terrible than Saber-Tooth himself. And then they
were very wise. They had speech that enabled them more
effectively to reason, and in addition they understood
cooperation.
We Folk came to be very circumspect when we were in the
forest. We were more alert and vigilant and timid. No
longer were the trees a protection to be relied upon.
No longer could we perch on a branch and laugh down at
our carnivorous enemies on the ground. The Fire People
were carnivorous, with claws and fangs a hundred feet
long, the most terrible of all the hunting animals that
ranged the primeval world.
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One morning, before the Folk had dispersed to the
forest, there was a panic among the water-carriers and
those who had gone down to the river to drink. The
whole horde fled to the caves. It was our habit, at
such times, to flee first and investigate afterward. We
waited in the mouths of our caves and watched. After
some time a Fire-Man stepped cautiously into the open
space. It was the little wizened old hunter. He stood
for a long time and watched us, looking our caves and
the cliff-wall up and down. He descended one of the
run-ways to a drinking-place, returning a few minutes
later by another run-way. Again he stood and watched
us carefully, for a long time. Then he turned on his
heel and limped into the forest, leaving us calling
querulously and plaintively to one another from the
cave-mouths.
CHAPTER XVI
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I found her down in the old neighborhood near the
blueberry swamp, where my mother lived and where
Lop-Ear and I had built our first tree-shelter. It was
unexpected. As I came under the tree I heard the
familiar soft sound and looked up. There she was, the
Swift One, sitting on a limb and swinging her legs back
and forth as she looked at me.
I stood still for some time. The sight of her had made
me very happy. And then an unrest and a pain began to
creep in on this happiness. I started to climb the
tree after her, and she retreated slowly out the limb.
Just as I reached for her, she sprang through the air
and landed in the branches of the next tree. From amid
the rustling leaves she peeped out at me and made soft
sounds. I leaped straight for her, and after an
exciting chase the situation was duplicated, for there
she was, making soft sounds and peeping out from the
leaves of a third tree.
It was borne in upon me that somehow it was different
now from the old days before Lop-Ear and I had gone on
our adventure-journey. I wanted her, and I knew that I
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wanted her. And she knew it, too. That was why she
would not let me come near her. I forgot that she was
truly the Swift One, and that in the art of climbing
she had been my teacher. I pursued her from tree to
tree, and ever she eluded me, peeping back at me with
kindly eyes, making soft sounds, and dancing and
leaping and teetering before me just out of reach. The
more she eluded me, the more I wanted to catch her, and
the lengthening shadows of the afternoon bore witness
to the futility of my effort.
As I pursued her, or sometimes rested in an adjoining
tree and watched her, I noticed the change in her. She
was larger, heavier, more grown-up. Her lines were
rounder, her muscles fuller, and there was about her
that indefinite something of maturity that was new to
her and that incited me on. Three years she had been
gone–three years at the very least, and the change in
her was marked. I say three years; it is as near as I
can measure the time. A fourth year may have elapsed,
which I have confused with the happenings of the other
three years. The more I think of it, the more
confident I am that it must be four years that she was
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away.
Where she went, why she went, and what happened to her
during that time, I do not know. There was no way for
her to tell me, any more than there was a way for
Lop-Ear and me to tell the Folk what we had seen when
we were away. Like us, the chance is she had gone off
on an adventure-journey, and by herself. On the other
hand, it is possible that Red-Eye may have been the
cause of her going. It is quite certain that he must
have come upon her from time to time, wandering in the
woods; and if he had pursued her there is no question
but that it would have been sufficient to drive her
away. From subsequent events, I am led to believe that
she must have travelled far to the south, across a
range of mountains and down to the banks of a strange
river, away from any of her kind. Many Tree People
lived down there, and I think it must have been they
who finally drove her back to the horde and to me. My
reasons for this I shall explain later.
The shadows grew longer, and I pursued more ardently
than ever, and still I could not catch her. She made
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believe that she was trying desperately to escape me,
and all the time she managed to keep just beyond reach.
I forgot everything–time, the oncoming of night, and
my meat-eating enemies. I was insane with love of her,
and with–anger, too, because she would not let me come
up with her. It was strange how this anger against her
seemed to be part of my desire for her.
As I have said, I forgot everything. In racing across
an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes.
They did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me,
but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a
python that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to
a tree-top. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift
One was going out of sight, and I sprang back to the
ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there
was my old enemy, the hyena. From my conduct he was
sure something was going to happen, and he followed me