CHAPTER XIX
GOG PASSES ON
Og, tired but triumphant, with a dead goat slung over his shoulders and the wolf dogs trotting at his heels, returned to the home cave just before nightfall, as all of the cave dwelling people did, for not even the bravest was willing to be caught far from the protection of the colony when darkness came on.
But as he approached the cave he experienced a sensation of fear and dread. He knew instinctively that something was wrong, for the fire in the doorway had burned down to just a smouldering heap of dying embers. Og knew that Wab would never have been so inattentive unless something had happened.
Hastily he went forward calling, but as he entered the big cave his heart fell, for Wab was not about. He noted instantly that one of his stone hammers was gone from its accustomed place and that Wab’s cherished flint knife had disappeared from the cleft in the rock wall where he always kept it.
The strange demeanor of the wolf dogs added a great deal to the discomfort that these observations caused him, for so soon as they entered the cave they bristled and growled and stepped about in stiff-legged anger just as they always did when Gog visited the cave. They sniffed at the ground, too, and trotted a little way from the cave in the direction of the forest.
Og could almost read the problem, but just then two hairy men, Big Face and Crooked Feet, passed, going toward the spring, and when they saw Og they told him of how they had seen Wab go off hunting with Gog that morning.
In an instant the whole situation dawned on Og. Gog had taken his helpless father off into the forest and Og instinctively knew that treachery of some sort or another was afoot.
He heaped sticks onto the fire and sat down for a few moments to think things over. Night was coming on. The forest would be a terrible place to travel in at night. But he thought too of his father and the terror that must come upon a man all but blind who might be left to wander about in the forest alone.