Kutnar spat in disgust. “When am I to leave here?” he cried. “I hate these men and—and now I hate you.”
“Leave here?” sneered Gonch. “Impossible. I could not bear such a calamity. My people dote upon you. I am quite sure that they could not live without their youthful hunter.”
This last sentence contained much truth. The Muskman felt its humor and he chuckled at his own wit; but the boy only glared.
“Your people? Then this is what you have brought me to. These wretches are the fine people of the southland. Tell me, filthy beast-man, why am I here?”
Kutnar held his sling threateningly. He was furious. The cave-men were now gathering around the pair. “Be quiet, boy,” the Muskman warned in a low voice. “A word from me and the flesh will be torn from your body. You hate me. Good; but take care.”
That was all but in that short time, the boy in some ways had become a man. He said no more, only hung his head, crushed and humiliated with disappointment and revulsion of feeling. It was the sudden shattering of an ideal. Now he had no friends, for the one man whom he had trusted and befriended was a cannibal and traitor doubly vile. He returned to Castillo with the others and chose a spot by the fire as far removed from Gonch as possible and sat there staring vacantly into the blaze. The shades of night settled over the mountain and still he sat motionless, oblivious to what was going on about him. One by one the cave-men retired to Castillo’s yawning entrance and curled up in their hide-wrappings to secure their night’s rest. All were gone but two—the boy and Gonch.
“You who perform one task so well, can bear another,” the Muskman sneered. “Watch the fire, and watch it well until the light returns. Do not fall asleep or it will be the worse for you.”
These were Gonch’s parting instructions and then he too lay down in the cave-entrance. Kutnar smiled bitterly. Another task was now added to his already overburdened shoulders; one that no man dared neglect. Without fire, life would have been impossible during the cold season. The roaring blaze warmed and cheered many a body which without it would have succumbed sooner or later to rheumatism, influenza or other virulent disease. Fire, a most difficult thing to create, was rarely permitted to die out. The Castillans took turns watching and feeding it day and night. Woe to him who neglected his all-important task, a task that Kutnar was now obliged to assume.
But he neither rebelled nor complained. He was but a boy long accustomed to obey and respect his elders; and ingrained habits are slow to change. And yet as he gazed silently at the lashing flames and curling smoke-wreaths, his mind was experiencing one of those tremendous upheavals that, like the volcano or hurricane, preface their fury with outward calm. Kutnar was deadly calm. His thoughts surging one upon another were those of a sane and sober mind. But with all his illusions shattered, the child was become a man. He now knew that all of the southland wonders were the Muskman’s lies. There were no fine flints, no weapon-making; the men might have been wolves except for their human forms which however made their wretchedness and cannibalism even more beast-like in his eyes. So low had they fallen that they must needs depend upon himself, a mere boy, to feed them; but most dreadful of all was the knowledge that his best friend had sunken lower than any of them and had betrayed him from first to last.
As he watched the dancing firelight, bestirring himself at intervals to pile on fresh wood, the boy’s mind was saying, “I must do my best to be useful and earn the right to live. Brighter days are in store for me if only I will be patient and wait for them” and beneath this rumbled the voice of the man-mind, low and distant but ever coming nearer and nearer: “I despise these men; but he who has deceived me, I hate and loathe. Filthy beast-man whom I once called friend, the time will come when you must pay the penalty. When the sling sends you my message; listen to the stone-hiss, ‘Greetings from my master, son of the Mammoth Man. He bids me fly straight and fast, bearing to you his traitor-friend the reward that you have so nobly earned—death.’”