Bolo the cave boy

by Katharine Atherton Grimes

“I will make them look more like animals,” said Bolo. “I will cut them out with my flint knife.” So after he had drawn a picture of a reindeer he cut it out very carefully.

Now it was Bek’s turn to be surprised.

“I had never thought of doing that,” he said. So he, too, tried to carve pictures of animals he had drawn.

By and by other cave men began to be interested in the pictures that Bek and Bolo made, and soon many of the men were trying their skill. The women brought a sort of red and brown clay, and painted the animals after the men had drawn them on the cave walls.

And although all this was thousands and thousands of years ago, the drawings and paintings are still to be seen. They tell us many things more than have been related here about the cave men of Bolo’s time. They tell us of another animal, more terrible than the cave bear or the mammoth, the dreaded Sabre-Tooth, striped with rich, velvety brown like a tiger, and strong and bloodthirsty as a lion. They tell us of the ways in which the cave men fought and lived and learned, and so came to know many things that were never dreamed of in the days of Bolo. But all that is another story.

What is of more interest to us just now is to know that when Flame died, many years after the great hunt, Fisher was made Keeper of the Great Fire in her stead. This was the highest honor the Clan could show, excepting only the honor they had shown to One Eye when they made him their leader.

“Bolo must learn many things,” said One Eye. “I am growing old and the Clan must never again be without a lawmaker. And the man who is to make the laws must be fearless and wise and good.”

It was long after that, however, before Bolo took his place at the head of the Clan. For One Eye lived to an old age, and became wiser and more just with every year.

Little Antelope grew up as pretty and graceful as the beautiful animal whose name she bore. When the young Chief of another Clan, living in a valley far across the hills, saw her as she sat sewing skins beside her mother, and called to her to follow him, she did so gladly, for he was tall and brave and handsome.

There was another pretty maiden, too, whom Bolo thought the loveliest he had ever seen. So, one day he found a new cave, where no one had ever lived, and made it ready for his own home.