A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

The salutation to the parting day completed, they sat down again with their eyes fixed on the almost irresolvable depths of gloom beneath them. The full moon was just then climbing in the east. Suddenly there emerged amongst them from the shadows a short stalwart figure with a face, could it have seen clearly, of real distinction and aboriginal comeliness. It was Lagk, the son of the headman of the little tribe, a hunchback.

A voice from the shadows—“Are there any horse?”

“No,” from the four doctors, in a basso from Shan, a falsetto from Flitout, a tenor from Slin, and a barytone from Slaggar. The four started to their feet and faced the inquirer.

Then came the voice, even and monotonous in intonation, “I go to fetch them.”

“Not to-night,” exclaimed Flitout with a nasal snarl, as he directed his expectoration at a moving object at his feet.

“Why! The moon is up—the way I know. To-morrow I will be at the fields. I will drive in many.”

“Well,” added the nonchalant Slaggar, as the moon, peering now upon them with its orb almost fully developed above the rim of cliffs, revealed the entire group, “Luck and return.” “Pray to Zit and watch the eye of the moon,” was the adjuration from Shan. The interview might have ended then had not the insolent Slin ventured to interject, “And keep your hump on your back.”

The young man dropped the thongs and ropes and lassos of hide which he held, the stone knife from his hand also, and flung himself with a loud imprecation upon the grinning and wriggling Silenus before him. Slin, surprised by the sudden resentment, and fearing his capacious abdomen might meet with some untoward violence from his young assailant, jumped behind his companions, who quite unwilling to incur the enmity of the young brave, avoided the efforts of Slin to form of their interposed bodies a screen, and quickly jumped aside. Slin, quivering with uncertainty, his talon-like hands spread in deprecation before him, still dodging and screaming some unintelligible apology for his insult, was struck fairly in his rumpled and creased visage by the irate youth. He stumbled and fell on his back, a piteous spectacle of helplessness, his short legs kicking in the air in an exposure not altogether deprived of some of the coarser elements of comedy.

His official comrades seemed irresolute in this extremity, as to whether their rival should be left to his humiliation, or whether the dignity of their craft required some united assertion of self-protection. Lagk, half expecting their attack, stood with clenched fists, one hand reaching to the ground to recover the dropped knives. The outlook was somewhat too serious for the spirit of the three religious mendicants, and they drew back, quite aware that their recoil was interpreted as cowardice, and yet quite unable to conduct any action that might save their dignity.

Slin had recovered his upright position but not his equanimity. The struggle between his rage and the sense of his own physical impotence was not unnoticed by Lagk, who taunted him to some sort of explosion: “Put more toads in the hump on your own belly, and then you can touch the hump on my back, old liar.”