Og—Son of Fire

by Irving Crump

For a moment Og was petrified with fear. But presently he beheld huddled in a far corner the shapes of two cub tigers, dead now and rotting.

Og could see that they had been dead for some time and his brain quickened by fear and all that he had recently gone through told him that these were cubs of the female tiger he had slain weeks before. They had starved to death there in the cave when their mother did not return.

Og smiled grimly, for he was glad to rid the world of the whelp of this ferocious cat. But he smiled, too, because he realized that all his recent panic had been groundless. From the den he could look down along the passageway ahead of him and see, not far off, a shaft of soft, warm light that he knew was sunlight. The exit to the cave was close at hand.

The hairy boy did not linger. He made for the entrance and presently he and the wolf dogs found themselves on a ledge overlooking a valley that extended away northward. And as he stood there, below him Og beheld a figure moving; a man, and one of his own kind.

Og gave a loud halloo, and waved his smoking fire torch toward him. The hairy man in the valley looked up at him thoroughly startled, then as he saw Og move to climb down from the shelf into the valley, he gave a cry of fear and dashed off toward some cliffs on the other side of the valley. Og paused and with disappointment on his face, watched him go. Then the hairy boy beheld the cliffs toward which the man was running and his heart gave a great bound. The cliffs were pockmarked with holes that Og knew were the cave dwellings of the hairy men. And at the alarm cry of the running hairy man, heads appeared at many of these holes and looked out across the valley, while from various points in the woods, other hairy men and women appeared and ran scrambling up the cliff to dodge into their home caves for protection.

Og descended into the valley as swiftly as he could. The tiger had worn a narrow, but well defined trail from his den into the forest on the valley bottom, and Og had little difficulty in following it. Presently he was running through the forest, with the wolf dogs romping after him. It was a long way across the valley but the hairy boy was so eager to reach the colony of hairy men that he never noticed the distance. He plunged forward recklessly, making a great noise, and occasionally shouting in pure joy at having found his own people once more.

After a time he arrived at the foot of the cliff. Here, at the base of the almost perpendicular wall, was a great rock-strewn flat, where the hairy folk doubtless worked and played. Above in the cliffs were a number of holes and crevices, from which looked many curious faces. Og stood below and shouted upward:

“Hallo. I am returned. The son of Wab has come back. I am Og now. I have won my name.”

But in answer came a chorus of shouts of derision, and from several doorways stones came pelting down, and Og was forced to duck and dodge as the ugly missiles whizzed by.

“Stop, stop. You are my people. I am the son of Wab. Wab, the mighty hunter. Where is he?” cried Og, from behind a boulder whence he had dodged to avoid further stones that were hurled at him.