CHAPTER VI
While the more courageous of the youngsters played in and out of thelarge-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 preyinganimals 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 theadvantage of the narrow-mouthed caves. It was just daylight when oldSaber-Tooth, the tiger, walked into the open space. Two of the Folk werealready 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 toscramble up the bluff to the crevices, I do not know; but at any ratethey dashed into the wide-mouthed cave wherein Lop-Ear and I had playedthe afternoon before.
What happened inside there was no way of telling, but it is fair toconclude that the two Folk slipped through the connecting crevice intothe other cave. This crevice was too small to allow for the passage ofSaber-Tooth, and he came out the way he had gone in, unsatisfied andangry. It was evident that his night's hunting had been unsuccessful andthat he had expected to make a meal off of us. He caught sight of thetwo Folk at the other cave-mouth and sprang for them. Of course, theydarted through the passageway into the first cave. He emerged angrierthan ever and snarling.
Pandemonium broke loose amongst the rest of us. All up and down thegreat bluff, we crowded the crevices and outside ledges, and we wereall chattering and shrieking in a thousand keys. And we were all makingfaces--snarling faces; this was an instinct with us. We were as angryas Saber-Tooth, though our anger was allied with fear. I remember that Ishrieked and made faces with the best of them. Not only did they set theexample, but I felt the urge from within me to do the same things theywere 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 theone cave and then the other. But the two Folk merely slipped back andforth through the connecting crevice and eluded him. In the meantime therest of us up the bluff had proceeded to action. Every time he appearedoutside we pelted him with rocks. At first we merely dropped them onhim, but we soon began to whiz them down with the added force of ourmuscles.
This bombardment drew Saber-Tooth's attention to us and made him angrierthan ever. He abandoned his pursuit of the two Folk and sprang up thebluff toward the rest of us, clawing at the crumbling rock and snarlingas he clawed his upward way. At this awful sight, the last one of ussought refuge inside our caves. I know this, because I peeped out andsaw the whole bluff-side deserted, save for Saber-Tooth, who had losthis footing and was sliding and falling down.
I called out the cry of encouragement, and again the bluff was coveredby the screaming horde and the stones were falling faster than ever.Saber-Tooth was frantic with rage. Time and again he assaulted thebluff. Once he even gained the first crevice-entrances before he fellback, but was unable to force his way inside. With each upward rush hemade, waves of fear surged over us. At first, at such times, most of usdashed inside; but some remained outside to hammer him with stones, andsoon all of us remained outside and kept up the fusillade.
Never was so masterly a creature so completely baffled. It hurt hispride terribly, thus to be outwitted by the small and tender Folk. Hestood 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 astone, and just at the right moment he looked up. It caught him full onthe end of his nose, and he went straight up in the air, all four feetof him, roaring and caterwauling, what of the hurt and surprise.
He was beaten and he knew it. Recovering his dignity, he stalked outsolemnly from under the rain of stones. He stopped in the middle of theopen space and looked wistfully and hungrily back at us. He hatedto forego the meal, and we were just so much meat, cornered butinaccessible. This sight of him started us to laughing. We laughedderisively and uproariously, all of us. Now animals do not like mockery.To be laughed at makes them angry. And in such fashion our laughteraffected 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 hugedelight in pelting him.
But this attack did not last long. He quickly recovered his commonsense, and besides, our missiles were shrewd to hurt. Vividly do Irecollect the vision of one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut byone of the stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retain the pictureof him as he stood on the edge of the forest whither he had finallyretreated. He was looking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clearof the very roots of his huge fangs, his hair bristling and his taillashing. 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 thebluff, all of us talking at once. One of the two Folk who had beencaught in the double cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.They had come out proudly from their refuge, and we surrounded them inan admiring crowd. Then the young fellow's mother broke through and fellupon him in a tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, andshrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman, very hairy, andthe thrashing she gave him was a delight to the horde. We roared withlaughter, holding on to one another or rolling on the ground in ourglee.
In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the Folk were alwaysgreat laughers. We had the sense of humor. Our merriment was Gargantuan.It was never restrained. There was nothing half way about it. Whena thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation of it, and thesimplest, crudest things were funny to us. Oh, we were great laughers, Ican tell you.
The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we treated all animalsthat invaded the village. We kept our run-ways and drinking-places toourselves by making life miserable for the animals that trespassed orstrayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest hunting animalswe so bedevilled that they learned to leave our places alone. We werenot fighters like them; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was becauseof our cunning and cowardice, and our inordinate capacity for fear,that we survived in that frightfully hostile environment of the YoungerWorld.
Lop-Ear, I figure, was a year older than I. What his past history washe had no way of telling me, but as I never saw anything of his motherI believed him to be an orphan. After all, fathers did not count in ourhorde. Marriage was as yet in a rude state, and couples had a way ofquarrelling and separating. Modern man, what of his divorce institution,does the same thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom was all we wentby, and our custom in this particular matter was rather promiscuous.
Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, we betrayedglimmering adumbrations of the monogamy that was later to give power to,and make mighty, such tribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at thetime I was born, there were several faithful couples that lived in thetrees in the neighborhood of my mother. Living in the thick of the hordedid not conduce to monogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly, thatthe faithful couples went away and lived by themselves. Through manyyears these couples stayed together, though when the man or woman diedor was eaten the survivor invariably found a new mate.
There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during the first days ofmy residence in the horde. There was a nameless and incommunicable fearthat rested upon all. At first it appeared to be connected whollywith direction. The horde feared the northeast. It lived in perpetualapprehension of that quarter of the compass. And every individual gazedmore frequently and with greater alarm in that direction than in anyother.
When Lop-Ear and I went toward the north-east to eat the stringy-rootedcarrots that at that season were at their best, he became unusuallytimid. He was content to eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and thelittle ropy ones, rather than to venture a short distance farther on towhere the carrots were as yet untouched. When I so ventured, he scoldedme and quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in that
direction was some horrible danger, but just what the horrible dangerwas his paucity of language would not permit him to say.
Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while he scolded and chatteredvainly at me. I could not understand. I kept very alert, but I couldsee no danger. I calculated always the distance between myself and thenearest tree, and knew that to that haven of refuge I could out-foot theTawny One, or old Saber-Tooth, did one or the other suddenly appear.
One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproar arose. The horde wasanimated with a single emotion, that of fear. The bluff-side swarmedwith the Folk, all gazing and pointing into the northeast. I did notknow what it was, but I scrambled all the way up to the safety of my ownhigh little cave before ever I turned around to see.
And then, across the river, away into the northeast, I saw for the firsttime 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 abovethe trees and swaying back and forth. And yet, somehow, I seemed togather from the conduct of the Folk that the smoke itself was not thedanger. They appeared to fear it as the token of something else. Whatthis 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 terriblethan the Tawny One, than old Saber-Tooth, than the snakes themselves,than which it seemed there could be no things more terrible.