CHAPTER VII
Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His motherlived in the caves, but two more children had come after him and he hadbeen thrust out to shift for himself. We had witnessed the performanceduring 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 cavehe sneaked back into it. When she returned and found him there her rageswere delightful. Half the horde made a practice of watching for thesemoments. First, from within the cave, would come her scolding andshrieking. Then we could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yellingof Broken-Tooth. About this time the two younger children joined in. Andfinally, like the eruption of a miniature volcano, Broken-Tooth wouldcome flying out.
At the end of several days his leaving home was accomplished. He wailedhis grief, unheeded, from the centre of the open space, for at leasthalf an hour, and then came to live with Lop-Ear and me. Our cavewas small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I have norecollection of Broken-Tooth spending more than one night with us, sothe accident must have happened right away.
It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we had eaten our fillof the carrots, and then, made heedless by play, we had ventured on tothe big trees just beyond. I cannot understand how Lop-Ear got over hishabitual caution, but it must have been the play. We were having a greattime playing tree tag. And such tag! We leaped ten or fifteen-foot gapsas a matter of course. And a twenty or twenty-five foot deliberate dropclear down to the ground was nothing to us. In fact, I am almost afraidto say the great distances we dropped. As we grew older and heavier wefound we had to be more cautious in dropping, but at that age our bodieswere all strings and springs and we could do anything.
Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game. He was "It" lessfrequently than any of us, and in the course of the game he discoveredone 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 loftybranch in a certain tree. From the end of the branch to the ground itmust have been seventy feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall.But about twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet out from theperpendicular, 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 teeteringthan that. He teetered with his back to the jump he was to make. Just aswe nearly reached him he would let go. The teetering branch was like aspring-board. It threw him far out, backward, as he fell. And as he fellhe turned around sidewise in the air so as to face the other branch intowhich he was falling. This branch bent far down under the impact, andsometimes there was an ominous crackling; but it never broke, and outof the leaves was always to be seen the face of Broken-Tooth grinningtriumphantly up at us.
I was "It" the last time Broken-Tooth tried this. He had gained the endof 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 downand saw him in the main fork of the tree crouching close against thetrunk. Instinctively I crouched down upon the thick limb. Broken-Toothstopped teetering, but the branch would not stop, and his body continuedbobbing up and down with the rustling leaves.
I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down saw my firstFire-Man. He was creeping stealthily along on the ground and peering upinto the tree. At first I thought he was a wild animal, because he worearound his waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece of bearskin. Andthen I saw his hands and feet, and more clearly his features. He wasvery much like my kind, except that he was less hairy and that his feetwere less like hands than ours. In fact, he and his people, as I waslater to know, were far less hairy than we, though we, in turn, wereequally less hairy than the Tree People.
It came to me instantly, as I looked at him. This was the terror of thenortheast, 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 ourstrong 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 limpedbadly with one leg. There was no doubt at all that we could out-run himand out-climb him. He could never catch us, that was certain.
But he carried something in his hand that I had never seen before. Itwas a bow and arrow. But at that time a bow and arrow had no meaning forme. 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 andknew something of their ways. The Fire-Man peered up at him and circledaround the tree. And around the main trunk above the fork Lop-Earcircled 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 untilafter the Fire-Man had twanged the bow.
I saw the arrow leap up, miss Lop-Ear, glance against a limb, and fallback 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 wesometimes threw things at one another.
The game continued a little longer, but Lop-Ear did not expose himselfa second time. Then the Fire-Man gave it up. I leaned far out over myhorizontal limb and chattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wantedto 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 slightlyand 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 nolonger cared to play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. A secondarrow and a third soared up, missing Broken-Tooth, rustling the leavesas they passed through, arching in their flight and returning to earth.
The Fire-Man stretched his bow again. He shifted his position, walkingaway several steps, then shifted it a second time. The bow-stringtwanged, the arrow leaped upward, and Broken-Tooth, uttering a terriblescream, fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down, turning overand over, all arms and legs it seemed, the shaft of the arrow projectingfrom his chest and appearing and disappearing with each revolution ofhis body.
Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing to the earth withan audible thud and crunch, his body rebounding slightly and settlingdown again. Still he lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with hishands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running forward with a stone andhammering him on the head...and then I remember no more.
Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the dream, did I wake upscreaming with fright--to find, often, my mother or nurse, anxious andstartled, by my bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair andtelling me that they were there and that there was nothing to fear.
My next dream, in the order of succession, begins always with the flightof Lop-Ear and myself through the forest. The Fire-Man and Broken-Toothand the tree of the tragedy are gone. Lop-Ear and I, in a cautiouspanic, 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 anarrow of the Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of it pain meseverely, but it bothered my movements and made it impossible for me tokeep up with Lop-Ear.
At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a tree. Lop-Ear wentright on. I called to him--most plaintively, I remember; and he stoppedand looked back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork andexamining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but one way the fleshresisted the barbed lead, and the other way it resisted the featheredshaft. 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 myselfwhimpering softly and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk, andyet his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I take as aforeshadowing of the altruism and comradeship that have helped m
ake manthe mightiest of the animals.
Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the flesh, and Iangrily stopped him. Then he bent down and began gnawing the shaft ofthe arrow with his teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in bothhands so that it would not play about in the wound, and at the sametime 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 hisfear, beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand byand succor the other. And there rises up before me all that was thereforeshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias, of life-savingcrews and Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of forlorn hopes, ofFather Damien, and of the Christ himself, and of all the men of earth,mighty of stature, whose strength may trace back to the elemental loinsof 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 waswithdrawn easily enough. I started to go on, but this time it was hethat stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely. Some of the smallerveins had doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a branch,Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves. These he stuffed into thewound. They accomplished the purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped.Then we went on together, back to the safety of the caves.