The smoke was growing dreadfully thick even down there close to the ground. It was a black pall across the heavens by this time shutting out the sun completely and a draught was drawing thick billows of it into the canyon. The tree people began coughing and spitting and rubbing their eyes. Some of them were quick to discover that the air was clearer and fresher close to the ground and many of them threw themselves prone among the stones and lay that way breathing in the meager quantity of smoke-free air that lingered in crevices between the rocks.
A terrific wind was roaring through the canyon. It was a torrid wind, hot and scorching, for it was created by the fire itself, a terrific draught that whirled aloft great chunks of charred and still smoking wood and dropped them among the terror-stricken tree dwellers. Screams of pain and anguish were added to the noise of the fire and Og shuddered as he saw some among them clutch at back or side and shriek with pain.
But the hairy boy was just as uncomfortable as the tree people and in almost as much of a panic. It was all too evident to him now that he could not live long in the canyon. The thick acrid smoke was in his lungs and he was coughing and spitting with the rest of them. His eyes burned like balls of fire themselves, for the smoke had scorched them until they were raw and painful. He was busy, too, dodging the rain of charred wood and hot cinders and more than one singed his hair and bit deep into his flesh. It was a terrible situation and the hairy boy was put to it to find a way out of the difficulty.
He had clung to his refuge under the shelter of the bowlders where he had made his home for days past, but he was fast realizing now that this was a far from satisfactory place to hide in the face of this terrible threatening peril. But where was he to go? In desperation he peered through the smoke for some better rocky refuge; some more protected corner of the canyon. And suddenly he found it. Through a rift in the swirling smoke bank he beheld the black opening of the sabre-toothed tiger’s cave. It was an awesome place to think of venturing into, but better by far than any refuge the canyon afforded.
Eagerly Og gathered up his tiger skin, his best knife and hammer, and his still burning fire brand. Then, calling to the cowering wolf cubs, he started to bolt through the smoke. But suddenly he paused. He thought of the tree people. He knew they would never think of the cave as a refuge nor have the courage to venture into it if they did think of it, and they would all perish there in the canyon. He would show them. He would lead the way.
He raised his voice in a great glad shout which some of the ape men heard even above the roar of the fire. They looked at him in astonishment, and when they saw him beckoning and calling them to follow, one by one they broke away from the huddling, cringing mass and trailed him through the swirling smoke cloud. And presently Og was leading the whole tribe in the direction that safety lay.
It was a bold and daring thing that he was doing, and when Og reached the yawning entrance of the great cave he stood before it irresolutely, with the ape men cowering behind him and peering into the sinister blackness of the interior. Not so the wolf cubs, however. Once they saw the cave they dashed inside. Og noticed that they never hesitated, nor did they utter a single growl of warning. Indeed, it was with a relieved whimper that they sought this refuge and Og took heart and stepped inside, but he slung his tiger skin back over his shoulders and clutched his hammer and fire brand ready for action as he went deeper into the great cave.
Only a few moments longer did the tree people hesitate, then with much squealing and pushing and shoving the whole tribe crowded inside and began to follow the hairy boy whose fire brand torch dispelled some of the blackness and showed them the way through narrow passages that led deeper into the bowels of the mountain where the air was free from smoke and cool and damp and delightful to their singed and badly burned bodies.