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The Story of Ab

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And Ab reached the Fire Valley again. He found it as comfortable and
untenanted as when the leap through the ring of flame had saved his life.
He clambered up the creek and wandered along its banks, where the grass
was green because of the warmth about, and studied all the qualities of
the naturally defended valley. "I will make my home here," he said.
"Lightfoot shall come with me."

The man returned to his cave and his lonely mate again and told her of
the Fire Country. He said that in the Fire Valley they would be safer and
happier, and told her how he had found an opening underneath the cliff
which they could soon enlarge into a cave to meet all wants. Not that a
cave was really needed in a fire valley, but they might have one if they
cared. And Lightfoot was glad of the departure.

The pair gathered their belongings together and there was the long
journey over again which Ab had just accomplished. But it was far
different from either journey that he had made. There with him was his
wife, and he was all equipped and was to begin a new sort of life which
would, he felt, be good. Lightfoot, bearing her load gallantly, was not
less jubilant. As a matter of plain fact, though Lightfoot had been happy
in the cave in the forest, she had always recognized certain of its
disadvantages, as had, in the end, her fearless husband. It is, in a
general way, vexatious to live in a locality where, as soon as you leave
your hearthstone, you incur, at least, a chance of an exciting and
uncomfortable episode and then lodgment in the maw of some imposing
creature of the carnivora. Lightfoot was quite ready to seek with Ab the
Fire Valley of which he had so often told her. She was a plucky young
matron, but there were extremes.

There were no adventures on the journey worth relating. The Fire Valley
was reached at nightfall and the two struggled weariedly up the rugged
path beside the creek which issued from the valley's western end. As they
reached the level Ab threw down his burden, as did Lightfoot, and as the
woman's eyes roved over the bright scene, she gave a great gasp of
delight. "It is our home!" she cried.

They ate and slept in the light and warmth of surrounding flames, and
when the day came they began the work of enlarging what was to be their
cave. But, though they worked earnestly, they did not care so much for
the prospective shelter as they might have done. What a cave had given
was warmth and safety. Here they had both, out of doors and under the
clear sky. It was a new and glorious life. Sometimes, though happy, the
woman worked a little wearily, and, not long after the settlement of the
two in their new home, a child was born to them, a son, robust and
sturdy, who came afterward to be known as Little Mok.




CHAPTER XXV.


A GREAT STEP FORWARD.

There came to Ab and Lightfoot that comfort which comes with laboring for
something desired. In all that the two did amid their pleasant
surroundings life became a greater thing because its dangers were so
lessened and its burdens lightened. But they were not long the sole human
beings in the Fire Valley. There was room for many and soon Old Mok took
up his permanent abode with them, for he was most contented when with Ab,
who seemed so like a son to him. A cave of his own was dug for Mok,
where, with his carving and his making of arrows and spearheads, he was
happy in his old age. Soon followed a hegira which made, for the first
time, a community. The whole family of Ab, One-Ear, Red-Spot and Bark and
Beech-leaf and the later ones, all came, and another cave was made, and
then old Hilltop was persuaded to follow the example and come with
Moonface and Branch and Stone Arm, his big sons, and the group, thus
established and naturally protected, feared nothing which might happen.
The effect of daily counsel together soon made itself distinctly felt,
and, under circumstances so different, many of the old ways were departed
from. Half a mile to the south the creek, which made a bend adown its
course, tumbled into the river and upon the river were wild fowl in
abundance and in its depths were fish. The forest abounded in game and
there were great nut-bearing trees and the wild fruits in their season.
Wild bees hovered over the flowers in the open places and there were
hoards of wild honey to be found in the hollows of deadened trunks or in
the high rock crevices. A great honey-gatherer, by the way, was
Lightfoot, who could climb so well, and who, furthermore, had her own
fancy for sweet things. It was either Bark or Moonface who usually
accompanied her on her expeditions, and they brought back great store of
this attractive spoil. The years passed and the community grew, not
merely in numbers, but intelligence. Though always an adviser with Old
Mok, Ab's chief male companion in adventure was the stanch Hilltop, who
was a man worth hunting with. Having two such men to lead and with a
force so strong behind them the valley people were able to cope with the
more dangerous animals venturesomely, and soon the number of these was so
decreased that even the children might venture a little way beyond the
steep barriers which had been raised where the flame circle had its gaps.
The opening to the north was closed by a high stone wall and that along
the creek defended as effectively, in a different way. They were having
good times in the valley.

At first, the home of all was in the caves dug in the soft rock of the
ledge, for of those who came to the novel refuge there was, for a season,
none who could sleep in the bright light from the never-waning flames.
There came a time, though, when, in midsummer, Ab grumbled at the heat
within his cave and he and Lightfoot built for themselves an outside
refuge, made of a bark-covered "lean-to" of long branches propped against
the rock. Thus was the first house made. The habitation proved so
comfortable that others in the valley imitated it and soon there was a
hive of similar huts along the foot of the overhanging precipice. When
the short, sharp winter came, all did not seek their caves again, but the
huts were made warmer by the addition to their walls of bark and skins,
and cave dwelling in the valley was finally abandoned. There was one
exception. Old Mok would not leave his warm retreat, and, as long as he
lived, his rock burrow was his home.

There came also, as recruits, young men, friends of the young men of the
valley, and the band waxed and waned, for nothing could at once change
the roving and independent habits of the cave men. But there came
children to the mothers, the broad Moonface being especially to the fore
in this regard, and a fine group of youngsters played and straggled up
and down the creek and fought valiantly together, as cave children
should. The heads of families were friendly, though independent. Usually
they lived each without any reference to anyone else, but when a great
hunt was on, or any emergency called, the band came together and fought,
for the time, under Ab's tacitly admitted leadership. And the young men
brought wives from the country round.

The area of improvement widened. Around the Fire Village the zone of
safety spread. The roar of the great cave tiger was less often heard
within miles of the flaming torches of the valley so inhabited. There
grew into existence something almost like a system of traffic, for, from
distant parts, hitherto unknown, came other cave men, bringing skins, or
flints, or tusks for carving, which they were eager to exchange for the
new weapon and for instruction in its uses. Ab was the first chieftain,
the first to draw about him a clan of followers. The cave men were taking
their first lesson in a slight, half unconfessed obedience, that first
essential of community life where there is yet no law, not even the
unwritten law of custom.

Running in and out among the children, sometimes pummeled by them, were a
score or two of gray, four-footed, bone-awaiting creatures, who, though
as yet uncounted in such relation, were destined to furnish a factor in
man's advancement. They were wolves and yet no longer wolves. They had
learned to cling to man, but were not yet intelligent enough or taught
enough to aid him in his hunting. They were the dogs of the future, the
four-footed things destined to become the closest friends of men of
future ages, the descendants of the four cubs Ab and Oak had taken from
the dens so many years before.

It was humanizing for the children, this association of such a number
together, though they ran only a little less wildly than those who had
heretofore been born in the isolated caves. There came more of an average
of intelligence among them, thus associated, though but little more
attention was paid them than the cave men had afforded offspring in the
past. There had come to Ab after Little Mok two strong sons, Reindeer and
Sure-Aim, very much like him in his youth, but of them, until they
reached the age of help and hunting, he saw little. Lightfoot regarded
them far more closely, for, despite the many duties which had come upon
her, there never disappeared the mother's tenderness and watchfulness.
And so it was with Moonface, whose brood was so great, and who was like a
noisy hen with chickens. So existed the hovering mother instinct with all
the women of the valley, though then the mothers fished and hunted and
had stirring events to distract them from domesticity and close affection
almost as much as had the men.

From this oddly formed community came a difference in certain ways of
doing certain things, which changed man's status, which made a revolution
second only to that made by the bow and for which even men of thought
have not accounted as they should have done, with the illustration before
them in our own times of what has followed so swiftly the use of steam
and, later, of electricity. Men write of and wonder at the strange gap
between what are called the Paleolithic and the Neolithic ages, that is,
between the ages when the spearheads and ax and arrowheads were of stone
chipped roughly into shape, and the age of stone even-edged and smoothly
polished. There was really no gap worth speaking of. The Paleolithic age
changed as suddenly into the Neolithic as the age of horse power changed
into that of steam and electricity, allowance being always made for the
slower transmission of a new intelligence in the days when men lived
alone and when a hundred years in the diffusion of knowledge was as a
year to-day.

One day Ab went into Old Mok's cave grumbling. "I shot an arrow into a
great deer," he said, "and I was close and shot it with all my force, but
the beast ran before it fell and we had far to carry the meat. I tore the
arrow from him and the blood upon the shaft showed that it had not gone
half way in. I looked at the arrow and there was a jagged point uprising
from its side. How can a man drive deeply an arrow which is so rough? Are
you getting too old to make good spears and arrows, Mok?" And the man
fumed a little. Old Mok made no reply, but he thought long and deeply
after Ab had left the cave. Certainly Ab must have good arrows! Was there
any way of bettering them? And, the next day, the crippled old man might
have been seen looking for something beside the creek where it found its
exit from the valley. There were stones ground into smoothness tossed up
along the shore and the old man studied them most carefully. Many times
he had bent over a stream, watching, thinking, but this time he acted. He
noted a small sandstone block against which were rasping stones of harder
texture, and he picked this from the tumbling current and carried it to
his cave. Then, pouring a little water upon a depression in the stone's
face, he selected his best big arrowhead and began rubbing it upon the
wet sandstone. It was a weary work, for flint and sandstone are different
things and flint is much the harder, but there came a slow result.
Smoother and smoother became the chipped arrowhead, and two days
later--for all the waking hours of two days were required in the weary
grinding--Old Mok gave to Ab an arrow as smooth of surface and keen of
edge as ever flew from bow while stone was used. And not many years
passed--as years are counted in old history--before the smoothed stone
weaponhead became the common property of cave men. The time of chipped
stone had ended and that of smoothed stone had begun. There was no space
between them to be counted now. One swiftly became the other. It was a
matter of necessity, this exhibition of enterprise and sense by the early
man in the prompt general utilization of a new discovery. And not alone
in the improvements in means which came when men of the hunting type were
so gathered in a community were the bow and the smoothed implements,
though these were the greatest of the discoveries of the epoch. The
fishermen who went to the river were not content with the raft-like
devices of the aquatic Shell People and learned, in time, that hollowed
logs would float and that, with the aid of fire and flint axes, a great
log could be hollowed. And never a Phoenician ship-builder, never a
Fulton of the steamer, never a modern designer of great yachts, stood
higher in the estimation of his fellows than stood the expert in the
making of the rude boats, as uncouth in appearance as the river-horse
which sometimes upset them, but from which men could, at least, let down
their lines or dart their spears to secure the fish in the teeming
waters. And the fishermen had better spears and hooks now, for comparison
was necessarily always made among devices, and bone barbs and hooks were
whittled out from which the fish no longer often floundered. There came,
in time, the making of rude nets, plaited simply from the tough marsh
grasses, but they served the purpose and lessened somewhat the gravity of
the great food question.




CHAPTER XXVI.


FACING THE RAIDER.

One day, at noon, a man burst, panting, through the wide open entrance to
the Fire Valley. His coat of skin was rent and hung awry and, as all
could see when he staggered down the pathway, the flesh was torn from one
cheek and arm, and down his leg on one side was the stain of dried blood.
He was exhausted from his hurt and his run and his talk was, at first,
almost unmeaning. He was met by some of the older and wiser among those
who saw him coming and to their questions answered only by demanding Ab,
who came at once. The hard-breathing and wounded man could only utter the
words "Big tiger," when he pitched forward and became unconscious. But
his words had been enough. Well understood was it by all who listened
what a raid of the cave tiger meant, and there was a running to the
gateway and soon was raised the wall of ready stone, upbuilt so high that
even the leaping monster could not hope to reach its summit. Later the
story of the wounded, but now conscious and refreshed runner, was told
with more of detail and coherence.

The messenger brought out what he had to tell gaspingly. He had lost much
blood and was faint, but he told how there had taken place something
awful in the village of the Shell Men. It was but little after dusk the
night before when the Shell Men were gathered together in merrymaking
after good fishing and lucky gathering of what there was to eat along the
shores of the shell fish and the egg-laying turtles and the capture of a
huge river-horse. It had been, up to midnight, one of the greatest and
most joyous meetings the Shell People had joined in for many years. They
were close-gathered and prosperous and content, and though there was
daily turmoil and risk of death upon the water and sometimes as great
risk upon the land, yet the village fringing the waters had grown, and
the midden--the "kitchen-midden" of future ages--had raised itself
steadily and now stretched far up and down the creek which was a river
branch and far backward from the creek toward the forest which ended with
the uplands. They had learned to dread the forest little, the water
people, but from the forest now came what made for each in all the
village a dread and horror. The cave tiger had been among them!

The Shell People had gathered together upon the sward fronting their line
of shallow caves and one of them, the story-teller and singer, was
chanting aloud of the river-horse and the great spoil which was theirs,
when there was a hungry roar and the yell or shriek of all, men or women
not too stricken by fear to be unable to utter sound, and then the leap
into their midst of the cave tiger! Perhaps the story-teller's chant had
called the monster's attention to him, perhaps his attitude attracted it;
whatever may have been the influence, the tiger seized the singer and
leaped lightly into the open beyond the caves and, as lightly, with long
bounds, into the blackness of the forest beyond.

There was a moment of awe and horror and then the spirit of the brave
Shell Men asserted itself. There was grasping of weapons and an
outpouring in pursuit of the devourer. Easy to follow was the trail, for
a monster beast carrying a man cannot drop lightly in his leaps. There
was a brief mile or two traversed, though hours were consumed in the
search, and then, as morn was breaking, the seekers came upon what was
left of the singer. It was not much and it lay across the forest pathway,
for the cave tiger did not deign to hide his prey. There came a half
moaning growl from the forest. That growl meant lurking death. Then the
seekers fled. There was consultation and a resolve to ask for help. So
the runner, the man stricken down by a casual stroke in the tiger's rush,
but bravest among his tribe, had come to the Fire Valley.

To the panting stranger Ab had not much to say. He saw to it that the man
was refreshed and cared for and that the deep scars along his side were
dressed after the cave man's fashion. But through the night which
followed the great cave leader pondered deeply. Why should men thus live
and dread the cave tiger? Surely men were wiser than any beast! This one
monster must, anyhow, be slain!

But little it mattered to all surrounding nature that the strong man in
the Fire Valley had resolved upon the death of the cave tiger. The tiger
was yet alive! There was a difference in the pulse of all the woodland.
There was a hush throughout the forest. The word, somehow, went to every
nerve of all the world of beasts, "Sabre-Tooth is here!" Even the huge
cave bear shuffled aside as there came to him the scent of the invader.
The aurochs and the urus, the towering elk, the reindeer and the lesser
horned and antlered things fled wildly as the tainted air brought to them
the tale of impending murder. Only the huge rhinoceros and mammoth stood
their ground, and even these were terror-stricken with regard for their
guarded young whenever the tiger neared them. The rhinoceros stood then,
fierce-fronted and dangerous, its offspring hovering by its flanks, and
the mammoths gathered in a ring encircling their calves and presenting an
outward range of tusks to meet the hovering devourer. The dread was all
about. The forest became seemingly nearly lifeless. There was less
barking and yelping, less reckless playfulness of wild creatures, less
rustling of the leaves and pattering along the forest paths. There was
fear and quiet, for Sabre-Tooth had come!

The runner, refreshed and strengthened by food and sleep, appeared before
Ab in the morning and told his story more in detail and got in return the
short answer: "We will go with you and help you and your people. Tigers
must be killed!"

Rarely before had man gone out voluntarily to hunt the great cave tiger.
He had, sometimes in awful strait, defended himself against the monster
as best he could, but to seek the encounter where the odds were so great
against him was an ugly task. Now the man-slayer was to be the pursued
instead of the pursuer. It required courage. The vengeful wounded man
looked upon Ab with a grim, admiring regard. "You fear not?" he said.

There was bustling in the valley and soon a stalwart dozen men were armed
with bow and spear and the journey was taken up toward the Shell Men's
home. The village was reached at mid-day and as the little troop emerged
from the forest the death wail fell upon their ears. "The tiger has come
again!" exclaimed the runner.

It was true. The tiger had come again! Once more with his stunning roar
he had swept through the village and had taken another victim, a woman,
the wife of one of the head men. Too benumbed by fear, this time, to act
at once, the Shell Men had not pursued the great brute into the darkness.
They had but ventured out in the morning and followed the trail and found
that the tiger had carried the woman in very nearly the same direction as
he had borne the man and that what remained from his gorging of the night
lay where his earlier feast had been. It was the first tragedy almost
repeated.

The little group of Fire Valley folk entered the village and were
received with shouts from the men, while from the throats of the women
still rose the death wail. There were more people about the huts than Ab
had ever seen there and he recognized at once among the group many of the
cave men from the East, strong people of his own kind. As the wounded
runner had gone to the Fire Valley, so another had been sent to the East,
to call upon another group for aid, and the Eastern cave people, under
the leadership of a huge, swarthy man called Boarface, had come to learn
what the strait was and to decide upon what degree of help they could
afford to give. Between these Eastern and the Western cave men there was
a certain coldness. There was no open enmity, though at some time in the
past there had been family battles and memories of feuds were still
existent. But Ab and Boarface met genially and there was not a trace of
difference now. Boarface joined readily in the council which was held and
decided that he would aid in the desperate hunt, and certainly his aid
was not to be despised when his followers were looked upon. They were a
stalwart lot.

The way was taken by the gathered fighting men toward where, across the
forest path, lay part of a woman. As the place was neared the band
gathered close together and there were outpointing spears, just as the
mammoths' tusks outpointed when the beasts guarded their young from the
thing now hunted. But there came no attack and no sound from the forest.
The tiger must be sleeping. Beneath a huge tree bordering the pathway lay
what remained of the woman's body. Fifty feet above, and almost directly
over this dreadful remnant of humanity, shot out a branch as thick as a
man's body. There was consultation among the hunters and in this Ab took
the lead, while Boarface and the Shell Men who had come to help assented
readily. No need existed for the risk of an open fight with this great
beast. Craft must be used and Ab gave forth his swift commands.

The Fire Valley leader had seen to it that his company had brought what
he needed in his effort to kill the tiger. There were two great tanned,
tough urus hides. There were lengths of rhinoceros hide, cut thickly,
which would endure a strain of more than the weight of ten brawny men.
There was one spear, with a shaft of ash wood at least fifteen feet in
length and as thick as a man's wrist. Its head was a blade of hardest
flint, but the spear was too heavy for a man's hurling. It had been made
for another use.

There was little hesitation in what was done, for Ab knew well the
quality of the work he had in hand. He unfolded his plan briefly and then
he himself climbed to the treetop and out upon the limb, carrying with
him the knotted strip of rhinoceros hide. In the pouch of his skin
garment were pebbles. He reached a place on the big limb overhanging the
path and dropped a pebble. It struck the earth a yard or two away from
what remained of the woman's body and he shouted to those below to drag
the mangled body to the spot where the pebble had hit the earth. They
were about to do so when from the forest on one side of the path came a
roar, so appalling in every way that there was no thought of anything
among most of the workers save of sudden flight. The tiger was in the
wood and very near and a scent had reached him. There was a flight which
left upon the ground beneath the tree branches only old Hilltop and the
rough Boarface and some dozen sturdy followers, these about equally
divided between the East and the West men of the hills. There was swift
and sharp work then.

The tiger might come at any moment, and that meant death to one at least.
But those who remained were brave men and they had come far to encompass
this tiger's ending. They dragged what remained of the tiger's prey to
where the pebble had hit the earth. Ab, clinging and raging aloft, afar
out upon the limb, shouted to Hilltop to bring him the spear and the urus
skins, and soon the sturdy old man was beside him. Then, about two deep
notches in the huge shaft, thongs were soon tied strongly, and just below
its middle were attached the bag-shaped urus skins. Near its end the
rhinoceros thong was knotted and then it was left hanging from the limb
supported by this strong rope, while, three-fourths of the way down its
length, dangled on each side the two empty bags of hide. Short orders
were given, and, directed by Boarface, one man after another climbed the
tree, each with a weight of stones carried in his pouch, and each
delivering his load to old Hilltop, who, lying well out upon the limb,
passed the stones to Ab, who placed them in the skin pouches on either
side the suspended and threatening spear. The big skin pouches on either
side were filling rapidly, when there came from the forest another roar,
nearer and more appalling than before, and some of the workers below fled
panic-stricken. Ab shouted and frothed and foamed as the men ran. Old
Hilltop slid down the tree, ax in hand, followed by the dark Boarface,
and one or two of the men below were captured and made to work again.
Soon all the work which Ab had in mind was done. Above the path, just
over what remained of the woman, hung the great spear, weighted with half
a thousand pounds of stone and sure to reach its mark should the tiger
seek its prey again. The branch was broad and the line of rhinoceros skin
taut, and Ab's flint knife was keen of edge. Only courage and calmness
were needed in the dread presence of the monster of the time. Neither the
swarthy Boarface nor the gaunt Hilltop wanted to leave him, but Ab forced
them away.

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