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
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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
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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,
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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
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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,
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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.
CHAPTER VII
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
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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
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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.
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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