A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

Scarcely had the amphitheatre before them become filled with the equine multitude, accessions to whose numbers seemed constantly received, until it seemed as if no possible foothold could be secured by a new individual, when, in some way, developed through the volcanic outbursts upon Zit, a stupendous electric storm burst upon the valley. Before it came the picture before the man and woman was a strange one. Lhatto reached and touched the sweating breast of a stallion pinned against the tree behind which she stood. The vast breathing mass emitting the ordurous odors of their steaming bodies, seemed crushed into one dark palpitation, its unity here and there broken by some plunging horse smitten with madness, and rearing upward, an image of sudden art with mane and distended nostrils, bloodshot eyes and beating hoofs falling in a hail of blows upon the back of a quivering companion. Sudden shocks of agitation swept through them, and then, by reason of an increased compression, the agonized cries increased, as if, in the almost human susceptibility of the horse, his sounds took on the piteous vocality of suffering men.

In an instant the ragged or bold outlines of the rising mountains bore along their crests rushing pinnacles of clouds, a wind sucked through the valley, driving, the shallow water of the lake into waves, and tearing millions of leaves from the trees, hurling them broadcast or projecting them in vortices through the air; upon this followed a lurid twilight, beneath whose stifling solemnity the equine concourse became stilled, and then a dreadful cold, some precursor of disaster, sank upon the doomed multitude. It was the awful pause before destruction. Leaping with incredible frequency from cloud to cloud, great forks of lightning rent the sky; the bulging and cavernous outlines of vapor dissolved in sheets of water, beneath the reverberations, peal upon peal, of incessant thunder. The blackness of night descended, the wind rose in tornadoes, and in the shrill blast, like some inconstant titanic accompaniment of voices, the multitudinous wail of the horses rose and fell.

The descending torrents swept through the forests, tearing gulches in the ground, ripping out boulders from their beds and racing madly through the herd of animals. Ogga, with superhuman strength, held Lhatto and himself to the trunk of a small sapling that had twined its roots about a deeply sunken stone.

And the horses? With the last pathetic impulse of unbearable panic, they plunged by thousands into the insatiable lake of mud and water, its extent now swollen beyond all limits by the avalanches pouring in on every side. They were ingulfed almost as soon as they entered this inland sea, and as the lightning flung its quick and keen glances into the valley, the awful horror of the scene, converted into a saturnalia of animal carnage, made Ogga and Lhatto shudder with a horrible surprise.

The storm slowly abated, the rolling thunders receded amongst the mountains, the lightnings shrank back northward, the rainfall was over. With the dying storm the tumult in the valley ceased. The dreadful sounds of drowning and submerging beasts, the spasms of conflict amongst those on the banks and in the plain had passed. The decimated host, now free to move in the unencumbered space, had taken flight. The thud and impact of their fleeing hoofs were plainly heard by Ogga and Lhatto. They moved southward, out through the embrasure by which they had come, into the long reaches of valley land that perhaps extended for leagues and from which, by some common whim of madness, they had converged into the fatal pool.

When the sun stood upon the mountains, in the morning, only the cruel vestiges of their presence remained. The disturbed and hideous lake exposed their bodies, erect legs sticking up from reversed trunks, heads enveloped in tangled manes, carcasses broken and bleeding, their convex sides excavated and yawning, and over the plain in heaps rose the signals of the shocking struggle.

Nature, with that stoical placidity, that unruffled and heartless evenness of temper that often seems to make her beauty only the mask of some implacable enmity, was again calm and beautiful. The palls of ash had been washed from the heavens, the mountains were radiant, the trees radiant also; the torn ground yet bore witness to the slaughter of the night, and the fouled lake, its islands of vegetation riotously dismembered, like some dishevelled bacchanale, lay in the morning light a picture of shame.

Ogga and Lhatto, sleepless through the long and dreadful night, wearied with fatigue of body and soul, stumbled out from the shadows of the forest into the sunlit valley. Lhatto motioned to the entrance from the river by which they had yesterday ascended. Ogga said—“It is best,” and they left the hateful spot, where the processes of death had worked so triumphantly. The fecundity of life and the powers of destruction move with even foot, and in the necessary and remorseless balance of life and death, Nature involves no blame for her equanimity, for in the eternity of her design, all incidents of joy or woe are equally invisible and unimportant.

Observations on the heartlessness of nature were certainly not made by Ogga and Lhatto, whatever indefinite mutiny the woman’s heart of the latter may have felt against it. They hurried away from the fateful place, and returned to the river valley. The tree over whose convenient boughs they had crossed the stream was swept away and, ferried by the flood, had been cast ashore some distance down, high on the terrace, from which the subsiding waters had again retreated. It lay there gaunt with every naked root extended. Neither one of them knew exactly their present position, but Ogga, watching the wind above them, concluded that eastward there was escape from the walled-in gorge. They were the more willing to reach higher ground because they could again see Zit, and, if the struggle between him and the Fire-Breather had given him the upper hand, as both believed, his serene and splendid brow would be again visible.

The travellers were indeed worn and hungry. The warm light revived their spirits, and—shall it be recorded—they embraced each other with tears and smiles and kisses. Hunger was to be appeased, for no circumstances of sentiment or grief will ever permit us to forget that both sentiment and grief live on food and drink. The water of the river was fresh and pure, and Ogga, who yet carried his sturdy and useful spear, and wore about his neck the green stone knife, though the basket had been abandoned when they began their flight from the shore, knew he would soon secure food.