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put a new complexion on the matter. I no longer cared
to play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. A
second arrow and a third soared up, missing
Broken-Tooth, rustling the leaves as they passed
through, arching in their flight and returning to
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earth.
The Fire-Man stretched his bow again. He shifted his
position, walking away several steps, then shifted it a
second time. The bow-string twanged, the arrow leaped
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upward, and Broken-Tooth, uttering a terrible scream,
fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down,
turning over and over, all arms and legs it seemed, the
shaft of the arrow projecting from his chest and
appearing and disappearing with each revolution of his
body.
Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing
to the earth with an audible thud and crunch, his body
rebounding slightly and settling down again. Still he
lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his
hands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running
forward with a stone and hammering him on the
head...and then I remember no more.
Always, during my childhood, at this stage of the
dream, did I wake up screaming with fright--to find,
often, my mother or nurse, anxious and startled, by my
bedside, passing soothing hands through my hair and
telling me that they were there and that there was
nothing to fear.
My next dream, in the order of succession, begins
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always with the flight of Lop-Ear and myself through
the forest. The Fire-Man and Broken-Tooth and the tree
of the tragedy are gone. Lop-Ear and I, in a cautious
panic, 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 an arrow of the
Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of it pain
me severely, but it bothered my movements and made it
impossible for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.
At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a
tree. Lop-Ear went right on. I called to him--most
plaintively, I remember; and he stopped and looked
back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork
and examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but
one way the flesh resisted the barbed lead, and the
other way it resisted the feathered shaft. 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 myself whimpering softly
and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk, and yet
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his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I
take as a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship
that have helped make man the mightiest of the animals.
Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the
flesh, and I angrily stopped him. Then he bent down
and began gnawing the shaft of the arrow with his
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teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both
hands so that it would not play about in the wound, and
at the same time 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 his fear,
beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to
stand by and succor the other. And there rises up
before me all that was there foreshadowed, and I see
visions of Damon and Pythias, of life-saving crews and
Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of forlorn
hopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, and
of all the men of earth, mighty of stature, whose
strength may trace back to the elemental loins of
Lop-Ear and Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of the
Younger World.
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When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, the
shaft was withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on,
but this time it was he that stopped me. My leg was
bleeding profusely. Some of the smaller veins had
doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a
branch, Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves.
These he stuffed into the wound. They accomplished the
purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped. Then we went
on together, back to the safety of the caves.
CHAPTER VIII
Well do I remember that first winter after I left home.
I have long dreams of sitting shivering in the cold.
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Lop-Ear and I sit close together, with our arms and
legs about each other, blue-faced and with chattering
teeth. It got particularly crisp along toward morning.
In those chill early hours we slept little, huddling
together in numb misery and waiting for the sunrise in
order to get warm.
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When we went outside there was a crackle of frost under
foot. One morning we discovered ice on the surface of
the quiet water in the eddy where was the
drinking-place, and there was a great How-do-you-do
about it. Old Marrow-Bone was the oldest member of the
horde, and he had never seen anything like it before.
I remember the worried, plaintive look that came into
his eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive look
always came into our eyes when we did not understand a
thing, or when we felt the prod of some vague and
inexpressible desire.) Red-Eye, too, when he
investigated the ice, looked bleak and plaintive, and
stared across the river into the northeast, as though
in some way he connected the Fire People with this
latest happening.
But we found ice only on that one morning, and that was
the coldest winter we experienced. I have no memory of
other winters when it was so cold. I have often
thought that that cold winter was a fore-runner of the
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