A Cave-man could wound an animal with a spear, but he could not give a deadly blow. There was always danger of the wounded animal turning upon the hunter. A skilled hunter with a good spear ran little risk in throwing it. But not all the Cave-men had enough skill. Not all of the Cave-men made good enough weapons to be thrown with a sure aim.
And so the Cave-men learned new ways of making and using spears. Perhaps they did not want to do it. But they had to do it or die. So you see why the men and boys spent most of their time in learning to follow the chase. Even the women and girls learned to hunt and to make all sorts of weapons.
Long before Scarface lived the Cave-men began to make lighter spears. The straighter they made the shaft, the easier it was to hit the mark. And so the Cave-men began to vie with one another in making the straightest and smoothest shafts.
A stone scraper.
When they cut the sticks for the shafts the Cave-men made gifts to the wood-gods, and asked for the straightest and toughest branches that grew on the trees. Then they cut the branches carefully and carried them home to the cave. There they peeled them from butt to tip and smoothed them with stone scrapers. Sometimes they rubbed them with fat and laid them away to dry. It was hard work to make a crooked stick straight. But the Cave-men tried many ways and at last they learned to make as beautiful shafts as ever have been made.
A shaft-straightener.
When the Cave-men pulled the shaft back and forth on the sandstone, they made deep grooves in it. We have found pieces of grooved sandstone that the later Cave-men used. Sometimes they would clamp a crooked stick between a grooved piece of sandstone and a flat bone. Then they would pull and twist, and pull and twist, and pull and twist that stick back and forth until the crooked place was made straight.
When Scarface was very old he made a shaft-straightener of a piece of reindeer horn. He carved the head of the reindeer upon it, and made a hole for the shaft. Then he thrust the crooked stick through the hole and turned the shaft-straightener round and round as we turn a wrench, until he straightened the shaft.