The Story of Ab Part 7

CHAPTER XVIII.

LOVE AND DEATH.

Different from his former self became this young forester, Ab. He was thinking of something other than wild beasts and their pursuit.

Instinctively, the course of his hunting expeditions tended toward the northwest and soon the impulse changed to a design. He must look upon Lightfoot again! Henceforth he haunted the hill region, and never keener for quarry or more alert for the approach of some dangerous animal was the eye of this woodsman than it was for the appearance somewhere of a slender figure of a cave girl. Neither game nor things to dread were numerous in the vicinity of the home of Hilltop, for there one of the hardiest and wisest among hunters had occupied his cave for many years, and wild beasts learn things. So it chanced that Lightfoot could wander farther afield than could most girls of the time. Ab knew all this well, for the quality of expert and venturesome old Hilltop was familiar to all the cave men throughout a wide stretch of country. So Ab, somewhat shamefaced to his own consciousness, hunted in a region not the best for spoil, and looked for a girl who might appear on some forest path, moderately safe from the rush of any of the hungry man-eaters of the wood.

But not all the time of this wild lover was wasted in haunting the possible idling-places of the girl he wanted so. With love there had come to him such sense and thoughtfulness as has come with earnest love to millions since. What could he do with Lightfoot should he gain her? He was but a big, young fighting man and hunter, still sleeping, almost nightly, on one of the leaf beds in his father's cave. With a wife of his own he must have a cave of his own. Compared with his first impulses toward the girl, this was a new train of thought, and, as we recognize it to-day, a n.o.bler one. He wanted to care for his own. He wanted a cave fit for the reception of such a woman as this, to him, the sweetest and proudest of all beings, Lightfoot, daughter of old Hilltop, of the wooded highlands.

Far up the river, far beyond the home of Oak's father and beyond the s.h.i.+ning marshlands and the purple heather reaches which made the foothills pleasant, extended to the river's bank a promontory, bold and picturesque and clad heavily with the best of trees. It was a great stretch of land, where, in some of nature's grim work, the earth had been up-heaved and there had been raised good soil for giant forests, and at the same time been made broad caverns to become future habitations of the creature known as man. But the trees bore nuts and fruits, and such creatures as found food in nuts and fruits, and, later, such as loved rich herbage, came to the forest in great numbers, and then followed such as fed upon these again, all the flesh eaters, to whom man was, as any other living thing, to be seized upon and devoured. The promontory, so rich in game and nuts and fruits, was, at the same time, the most dangerous in all the region for human habitation. There were deep, dry caves within its limits, but in none of them had a cave man yet ventured to make his home. It was toward this promontory that the young man in love turned his eyes. Because others had feared to make a home in this lone, high region should he also fear?

There was food there in plenty and if there were chance of fighting in plenty, so much the better! Was he not strong and fleet; had he not the best of spears and axes? Above all, had he not the new weapon which made man far above the beasts? Here was the place for a home which should be the best in all this region of the cave men. Here game and food of all kinds would be most abundant. The situation would demand a brave man and a woman scarcely less courageous, but would not he and the girl he was determined to bring there meet all occasion? His mind was fixed.

Ab found a cave, one clean and dry and opening out upon a slight treeless area, and this he, lover-like, improved for the woman he had resolved to bring there, arranging carefully the interior of which must be a home. He had fancies such as lovers have exhibited from since the time when the plesiosaurus swashed away in the strand of a warm sea a hollow nursery for the birth and first tending of the young of his odd kind, up to the later time when men have squandered fortunes on the sleeping rooms of women they have loved. He toiled for many days. With his ax he chipped away the cavern's sharp protuberances at each side, and with the stone chips from the walls and with what he brought from outside, he made the floor white and clean and nearly level. He built a fireplace and chipped into a huge stone, which, fortunately, lay inside the cave, a hollow for holding drinking water, or for the boiling of meat. He built up a pa.s.sage-way at the entrance, allowing something but not too much more than his own width, as the gauge for measurement of its breadth. He brought into the cave a deep carpet of leaves and made a wide bed in one corner and this he covered with furred skins, for many skins Ab owned in his own right. Then, with a thick fragment of tough branch as a lever, he rolled a big stone near the cave's entrance and left it ready to be occupied as a home. The woman was still lacking.

There came a day when Ab, impatient after his searching and waiting, but yet resolute, had killed a capercailzie--the great grouse-like bird of the time, the descendants of which live to-day in northern forests--and had built a fire and feasted, and then, instinctively careful, had climbed to the first broad, low branch of an enormous tree and there adjusted himself to sleep the sleep of one who has eaten heartily. He lay with the big branch for a bed, supported on either side by green, upspringing twigs, and slept well for an hour or two and then awoke, lazy and listless, but with much good to him from the repast and rest. It was not yet very late in the afternoon and the sun still shone kindly upon him, as upon a whole world of rejoicing things. Something like a reflection of the life of the morning was beginning to manifest itself, as is ever the way where forests and wild things are. The wonderful noise of wood life was renewed. As the young man awakened, he felt in every pulse the thrilling powers of existence. Everything was fair to look upon. His ears took in the sound of the voices of birds, already beginning vesper songs, though the afternoon was yet so early as scarcely to hint of evening, and the scent from a thousand plants and flowers, permeating and intoxicating, reached his senses as he lounged sprawlingly upon his safe bed aloft.

It was attractive, the scene which Ab looked upon. The forest was in all the glory of summer and nesting and breeding things were happy. There was the fullness of the being of trees and plants and of all birds and beasts.

There was a soft commingling of sounds which told of the life about, the effect of which was, somehow, almost drowsy in the blending of all together. The great ferns waved gently along the hollows as the slight breeze touched them. They were queer, those ferns. They were not quite so slender and tapering and gothic as the ferns we see to-day. They were a trifle more lush and ragged, and their tips were sometimes almost rounded.

But Ab noted little of fern or bird. It was only the general sensuousness that was upon him. The smell of the pines was a partial tonic to the healthy, half-awakened man, and, though he lay back upon the rugged wooden bed and half dozed again, nature had aroused him a trifle beyond the point of relapse into absolute, unknowing slumber. There was coming to him a sharpness of perception which affected the quiescence of his enjoyment. He rose to a sitting posture and looked about him. At once his eyes flashed, every nerve and muscle became tense and the blood leaped turbulently in his veins. He had seen that for which he had come into this region, the girl who had so reached his rude, careless heart. Lightfoot was very near him!

The girl, all unconscious, was sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree which lay close beside a creek. There was an abundance of small pebbles upon the little strand and the young lady was absent-mindedly engaged in an occupation in which, to the observer, she took some interest, while she, no doubt, was really thinking of something else. She sat there, slender, beautiful and excelling, in her way, the belle of the period, merely amusing herself. Her toes were charming toes. There could be no debate on that point, for, while long and strong and flexible, they had a certain evenness and symmetry. They were being idly employed just now. At the creek's edge, half imbedded in the ground, uprose the crest of a granite stone. Picking up pebble after pebble in her admirable toes, Lightfoot was engaged in throwing them, one after another, at the outstanding point of granite, utilizing in the performance only those toes and the brown leg below the knee. She did exceedingly well and hit the red-brown target often. Ab, hot-headed and fierce lover in the tree top, looked on admiringly. How perfect of form was she; how bright the face!

and then, forgetting himself, he cried aloud and slid from the branch as easily and swiftly as any serpent and started running toward the girl. He must have her!

With his cry, the girl leaped to her feet, and as he reached the ground, recognized him on the instant. She knew in the same instant that they had felt together and that it was not by accident that he was near her. She had felt as he; so far as a woman may feel with a man; but maidens are maidens, and sweet lightness dreads force, and a modified terror came upon her. She paused for a moment, then turned and ran toward the upland forest.

Not a moment hesitating or faltering as affected by the girl's action was the young man who had tumbled from the tree bed. The blood dancing within him and the great natural impulse of gaining what was greatest to him in life controlled him now. He was hot with fierce lovingness. He ran well, but he did not run better than the graceful thing before him.

Even for the critical being of the great cities of to-day, the one who "manages" races of all sorts, it would have been worth while to see this race in the forest. As the doe leaps, scarcely touching the ground, ran Lightfoot. As the wolf or hound runs, less swift for the moment, but tireless, ran the man behind her. Yet of all the men in the cave region, this flying girl wanted most this man to take her! It was the maidenly force-dreading instinct alone which made her run.

Ab, dogged and enduring, lost no s.p.a.ce as the race led away toward the hill and home of the fleet thing ahead of him. There were miles to be covered, and therein he had hope. They were on the straight path to Hilltop's cave, though there were divergent, curving side paths almost as available; but to avoid her pursuer, the fugitive could take none of these. There were cross-cuts everywhere. In leaving the direct path she would but lose ground. To reach soon enough by straight, clean running the towering wooded hill in which was her father's cave seemed the only hope of the half-unwilling fugitive.

There were descents and ascents in the long chase and plateaus where the running was on level ground. Straining forward, gaining little, but confident of overtaking the girl, Ab, deep-chested and physically untroubled, pressed onward, when he noted that the girl made a sudden spurt and bounded forward with a speed not shown before, while, at the same time, she swerved from the right of the path.

It was not Ab who had made her swerve. Some new alarm had come to her. She was about to reach and, as Ab supposed, pa.s.s one of the inletting paths entering almost at right angles from the left. She did not pa.s.s it. She leaped into it in evident terror and then, breaking out from the wood on the right, came another form and one surely in swift following. Ab knew the figure well. Oak was the new pursuer!

The awful rage which rose in the heart of Ab as he saw what was happening is what can no more be described than one can tell what a tiger in the jungle thinks. He saw another--the other his friend--pursuing and intending to take what he wanted to be his and what had become to him more than all else in the world; more than much eating and the skins of things to keep him warm, more than a mammoth's tooth to carve, more than the glorious skin of the great cave tiger, the possession of which made a rude n.o.bility, more than anything and all else! He leaped aside from the path.

He knew well the other path upon which were running Oak and Lightfoot. He knew that he could intercept them, because, though the running was not so good, the distance to be covered was much less, for to him path running was a light matter. In the wood he ran as easily and leaped as well and attained a point almost as quickly as the beasts. There was a stress of effort and, as the shadows deepened, he burst in upon the cross path where he knew were the fleeing Lightfoot and following Oak. He had thought to head them off, but Ab was not the only man who was swift of foot in the cave country. They pa.s.sed, almost as he bounded from the forest. He saw them close together not many yards ahead of him and, with a shout of rage, bent himself in swift and terrible pursuit again.

It was all plain to Ab now as he flew along, unnoted by the two ahead of him. He knew that Oak had, like him, determined to own Lightfoot, and had like him, been seeking her. Only chance had made the chase thus cross Oak's path; but that made no difference. There must be a grim meeting soon. Ab could see that the endurance of the wonderfully fleet-footed woman was not equal to that of the man so near her. She would soon be overtaken. Before her rose the hill, not a mile in its slope, where were her father's cave, and safety. He knew that she had not the strength to breast it fleetly enough for covert. And, as he looked, he saw the girl turn a frightened face toward her close pursuer and knew that she saw him as well. Her pace slackened for a moment as this revelation came to her, and he felt, somehow, that in him she recognized comparative protection.

Then she recovered herself and bent all the power she had toward the ascent. But Oak had been gaining steadily, and now, with a sudden rush, he reached her and grasped her, the woman shrieking wildly. A moment later Ab rushed in upon them with a shout. Instinctively Oak released the girl, for in the cry he heard that which meant menace and immediate danger. As Lightfoot felt herself free she stood for a moment or two without a movement, with wide-open eyes, looking upon what was happening before her.

Then she bounded away, not looking backward as she ran.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AB STOOD THERE WEAPONLESS, A CREATURE WANDERING OF MIND]

The two men stood there glaring at each other, Oak perched, and yet not perched, so broad and perfect was his foothold, on the crest of a slight shelf of the downward slope. There stood the two men, poised, the one above, the other below, two who had been as close together from childhood as all the attributes of mind and body might allow, and yet now as far apart as human beings may be. They were beautiful in a way, each in his murderous, unconscious posing for the leap. The sun hit the blue ax of Oak and made it look a gray. The raised ax of Ab, which was of a lighter colored stone, was in the shade and its yellowness was darkened into brown. The spectacle lasted for but a second. As Oak leaped Ab bounded aside and they stood upon a level, a tiny plateau, and there was fierce, strong fencing. One could not note its methods; even the keen-eyed wolverine, crouching low upon an adjacent monster limb, could never have followed the swift movements of these stone axes. The dreadful play was brief. The clash of stone together ceased as there came a duller sound, which told that stone had bitten bone. Oak, slightly the higher of the two, as they stood thus in the fray, leaned forward suddenly, his arms aloft, while from his hand dropped the blue ax. He floundered down uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still.

Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the waning day were deepening.

CHAPTER XIX.

A RACE WITH DREAD.

Ab looked toward the forest wherein Lightfoot had fled and then looked upon that which lay at his feet. It was Oak--there were the form and features of his friend--but, somehow, it was not Oak. There was too much silence and the blood upon the leaves seemed far too bright. His rage departed, and he wanted Oak to answer and called to him, but Oak did not answer. Then came slowly to him the idea that Oak was dead and that the wild beasts would that night devour the dead man where he lay. The thought nerved him to desperate, sudden action. He leaped forward, he put his arms about the body and carried it away to a hollow in the wooded slope. He worked madly, doing some things as he had seen the cave people do at other buryings. He placed the weapons of Oak beside him. He took from his belt his own knife, because it was better than that of Oak, and laid it close to the dead man's hand, and then, first covering the body with beech leaves, he worked frantically upon the overhanging soil, prying it down with a sharp-pointed fragment of limb, and tossing in upon all as heavy stones as he could lift, until a great cairn rose above the hunter who would hunt no more.

Panting with his efforts, Ab sat himself down upon a rock and looked upon the monument he had raised. Again he called to Oak, but there was still no answer. The sun had set, evening shadows thickened around him. Then there came upon the live man a feeling as dreadful as it was new, and, with a yell, which was almost a shriek, he leaped to his feet and bounded away in fearful flight.

He only knew this, that there was something hurt his inside of body and soul, but not the inside of him as it had been when once he had eaten poisonous berries or when he had eaten too much of the little deer. It was something different. It was an awful oppression, which seemed to leave his body, in a manner, unfeeling but which had a great dread about it and which made him think and think of the dead man, and made him want to run away and keep running. He had always run far that day, but he was not tired now. His legs seemed to have the hard sinews of the stag in them but up toward the top of him was something for them to carry away as fast and far as possible from somewhere. He raced from the dense woodland down into the broad mora.s.s to the west--beyond which was the rock country--and into which he had rarely ventured, so treacherous its ways. What cared he now!

He made great leaps and his muscles and sinews responded to the thought of him. To cross that mora.s.s safely required a touch on tussocks and an upbounding aside, a zig-zag exhibition of great strength and knowingness and recklessness. But it was unreasoning; it was the instinct begotten of long training and, now, of the absence of all nervousness. Each taut toe touched each point of bearing just as was required above the quagmire, and, all unperceiving and uncaring, he fled over dirty death as easily as he might have run upon some hardened woodland pathway. He did not think nor know nor care about what he was doing. He was only running away from the something he had never known before! Why should he be running now? He had killed things before and not cared and had forgotten. Why should he care now? But there was the something which made him run. And where was Oak? Would Oak meet him again and would they hunt together? No, Oak would not come, and he, this Ab, had made it so! He must run. No one was following him--he knew that--but he must run!

The marsh was pa.s.sed, night had fallen, but he ran on, pressing into the bear and tiger haunted forest beyond. Anything, anything, to make him forget the strange feeling and the thing which made him run! He plunged into a forest path, utterly reckless, wanting relief, a seeker for whatever might come.

In that age and under such conditions as to locality it was inevitable that the creature, man, running through such a forest path at night, must face some fierce creature of the carnivora seeking his body for food. Ab, blinded of mood, cared not for and avoided not a fight, though it might be with the monster bear or even the great tiger. There was no reason in his madness. He was, though he knew it not, a practical suicide, yet one who would die fighting. What to him were weight and strength to-night? What to him were such encounters as might come with hungry four-footed things? It would but relieve him were some of the beasts to try to gain his life and eat his body. His being seemed valueless, and as for the wild beasts--and here came out the splendid death-facing quality of the cave man--well, it would be odd if there were not more deaths than one! But all this was vague and only a minor part of thought.

Sometimes, as if to invite death, he yelled as he ran. He yelled whenever in his fleeting visions he saw Oak lying dead again. So ran the man who had killed another.

There was a growl ahead of him, a sudden breaking away of the bushes, and then he was thrown back, stunned and bleeding, because a great paw had smitten him. Whatever the beast might be, it was hungry and had found what seemed easy prey. There was a difference, though, which the animal,--it was doubtless a bear--unfortunately for him, did not comprehend, between the quality of the being he proposed to eat just now and of other animals included in his ordinary menu. But the bear did not reason; he but plunged forward to crush out the remaining life of the runner his great paw had driven back and down and then to enjoy his meal.

The man was little hurt. His skin coat had somewhat protected him and his sinewy body had such toughness that the hurling of it backward for a few feet was not anything involving a fatality. Very surely and suddenly had been thrust upon him now the practical lesson of being or dying, and it was good for the half-crazed runner, for it cleared his mind. But it made him no less desperate or careless. With strength almost maniacal he leaped at what he would have fled from at any other time, and, swinging his ax with the quickness of light, struck tremendously at the great lowering head. He yelled again as he felt stone cut and crash into bone, though himself swept aside once more as a great paw, sidestruck, hurled him into the bushes. He bounded to his feet and saw something huge and dark and gasping floundering in the pathway. He thought not but ran on panting. By some strange freak of forest fortune abetting might the man wandering of mind had driven his ax nearly to the haft into the skull of his huge a.s.sailant. It may be that never before had a cave man, thus armed, done so well. The slayer ran on wildly, and now weaponless.

Soon to the runner the scene changed. The trees crowded each other less closely and there was less of denned pathway. There came something of an ascent and he breasted it, though less swiftly, for, despite the impelling force, nature had claims, and muscles were wearying of their work. Fewer and fewer grew the trees. He knew that he was where there was now a sweep of rocky highlands and that he was not far from the Fire Country, of which Old Mok had so often told him. He burst into the open, and as he came out under the stars, which he could see again, he heard an ominous whine, too near, and a distant howl behind him. A wolf pack wanted him.

He shuddered as he ran. The life instinct was fully awakened in him now, as the dread from which he had run became more distant. Had he heard that close whine and distant howl before he fairly reached the open he would have sought a treetop for refuge. Now it was too late. He must run ahead blindly across the treeless s.p.a.ce for such harborage as might come. Far ahead of him he could see light, the light of fire, reaching out toward him through the darkness. He was panting and wearied, but the sounds behind him were spur enough to bring the nearly dead to life. He bowed his head and ran with such effort as he had never made before in all his wild and daring existence.

The wolves of the time, greater, swifter and fiercer than the gaunt gray wolves of northern lat.i.tudes and historic times, ran well, but so did contemporaneous man run well, and the chase was hard. With his life to save, Ab swept panting over the rocky ground with a swiftness begotten of the grand last effort of remaining strength, running straight toward the light, while the wolf pack, now gathered, hurled itself from the wood behind and followed swiftly and relentlessly. Ever before the man shone the light more brightly; ever behind him became more distinct the sound made by the following pack. It was a dire strait for the running man. He was no longer thinking of what he had lately done. He ran.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WITH A GREAT LEAP HE WENT AT AND THROUGH THE CURLING CREST OF THE YELLOW FLAME]

The light he had seen extended as he neared it into what looked like a great fence of flame lying across his way. There were gaps in the fence where the flame, still continuous, was not so high as elsewhere. He did not hesitate. He ran straight ahead. Closer and closer behind him crowded the pursuing wolves, and straight at the flame he ran. There was one chance in many, he thought, and he took it without hesitation. Close before him now loomed the wall of flame. Close behind him slavering jaws were working in antic.i.p.ation, and there was a strain for the last rush.

There was no alternative. Straight at the fire wall where it was lowest rushed Ab, and with a great leap he went at and through the curling crest of the yellow flame!

The man had found safety! There was a moment of heat and then he knew himself to be sprawling upon green turf. A little of the strength of desperation was still with him and he bounded to his feet and looked about. There were no wolves. Beside him was a great flat rock, and he clambered upon this, and then, over the crest of the flames could see easily enough the glaring eyes of his late pursuers. They were running up and down, raging for their prey, but kept from him beyond all peradventure by the fire they could not face. Ab started upright on the rock panting and defiant, a splendid creature erect there in the firelight.

Soon there came to the man a more perfect sense of his safety. He shouted aloud to the flitting, snarling creatures, which could not harm him now; he stooped and found jagged stones, which he sent whirling among them.

There was a savage satisfaction in it.

Suddenly the man fell to the ground, fairly groaning with exhaustion.

Nature had become indignant and the time for recuperation had been reached. The wearied runner lay breathing heavily and was soon asleep. The flames which had afforded safety gave also a grateful warmth in the chill night, and so it was that scarcely had his body touched the ground when he became oblivious to all about him, only the heaving of the broad chest showing that the man lying fairly exposed in the light was a living thing.

The varying wind sometimes carried the sheet of flame to its utmost extent toward him, so that the heat must have been intense, and again would carry it in an opposite direction while the cold air swept down upon the sleeping man. Nothing disturbed him. Inured alike to heat and cold, Ab slept on, slept for hours the sleep which follows vast strain and endurance in a healthy human being. Then the form lying on the ground moved restlessly and muttered exclamations came from the lips. The man was dreaming.

For as the sleeper lay there--he remembered it when he awoke and wondered over it many times in after years--Oak sprang through the flames, as he himself had done, and soon lay panting by his side. The lapping of the fire, the snapping and snarling of the wolves beyond and the familiar sound of Oak's voice all mingled confusedly in his ears, and then he and Oak raced together over the rough ground, and wrestled and fought and played as they had wrestled and fought and played together for years. And the hours pa.s.sed and the wind changed and the flames almost scorched him and Ab started up, looking about him into the wild aspect of the Fire Country; for the night had pa.s.sed and the sun had risen and set again since the exhausted man had fallen upon the ground and become unconscious.

Ab rolled instinctively a little away from the smoky sheets of flame and, sitting up, looked for Oak. He could not see him. He ran wildly around among the rocks looking for him and despairingly called aloud his name.

The moment his voice had been hoa.r.s.ely lifted, "Oak!" the memory of all that had happened rushed upon him. He stood there in the red firelight a statue of despair. Oak was dead; he had killed Oak, and buried him with his own hands, and yet he had seen Oak but a minute ago! He had bounded through the flames and had wrestled and run races with Ab, and they had talked together, and yet Oak must be lying in the ground back there in the forest by the little hill. Oak was dead. How could he get out of the ground? Fear clutched at Ab's heart, his limbs trembled under him. He whimpered like a lost and friendless hound and crouched close to the hospitable fire. His brain wavered under the stress of strange new impressions. He recalled some mutterings of Old Mok about the dead, that they had been seen after it was known that they were deep in the ground, but he knew it was not good to speak or think of such things. Again Ab sprang to his feet. It would not do to shut his eyes, for then he saw plainly Oak in his shallow hole in the dark earth and the face Ab had hurried to cover first when he was burying his friend, there under the trees. And so the night wore away, sleep coming fitfully from time to time. Ab could not explore his retreat in the strange firelight nor run the risks of another night journey across the wild beasts' chosen country.

He began to be hungry, with the fierce hunger of brute strength, sharpened by terrific labors, but he must wait for the morning. The night seemed endless. There was no relief from the thoughts which tortured him, but, at last, morning broke, and in action Ab found the escape he had longed for.