A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

It was late in the afternoon that as Lagk, yet in his stupor of admiration or uncertainty, looked upon the trough shaped table-land in which springs and brooks from the mountain, by slow approximation, formed the head waters of a stream, he saw a solitary horse moving with a limp and broken gait, upon the flat plain below him. It was at the river’s edge, and, with a stumbling and pained approach to the water, throwing up its head and whinneying, it slowly entered the stream and drank.

Lagk cautiously left his aery, swinging himself down the rocks by saplings, the tough branches of low rhododendrons, and sliding here and there over pine needles. It was not long before he too was on the upland, creeping out toward the spot where the lonely horse stood, snorting and switching its tail with nervous reiteration. As Lagk drew nearer, he could see that the animal had injured a fore-leg, and was yet, at intervals, shivering with terror. He raised himself, and as he did so the horse, turning, caught sight of him. With a broken plunge, he sprang from the river’s shallows and ran directly towards Lagk, whinneying in apparent recognition. It was a surprising and disconcerting issue. Lagk was motionless with wonder. The animal came nearer and nearer, and as its movements were friendly and reassuring Lagk awaited it.

It came forward sniffing portentously. Lagk raised his hand and called it soothingly; the wild beast submitted with nonchalant affection. It pushed its nose upon Lagk’s hand and pressed upon him with eagerness. Its spirit subdued by the anarchy in nature seemed tamed into obedience, and it almost nestled, in its big equine way, against the delighted horse-tamer. Lagk walked over the open plain and his complacent companion followed him. Lagk examined the wounded leg, and the horse noted his interest with satisfaction. Rest would soon restore the sprained ankle of the horse and Lagk, knowing a pine grove a mile or so further on, patted and encouraged the creature, and after intervals of halting, as night fell, the two slunk together into the wood. Lagk tied his willing comrade to a tree with the deepening shadows and, still weary with his own amazement and exposure, he lay down in the shielded spot and passed into the nebulous fancies of an over wrought and mystified mind.

It was the dawn, dewy and slumbrous, the mists rose from the river, they sped outward above the tips of the trees, they clung in tiny clouds to the ground. Lagk awoke and leading the horse, now somehow fastened to him by ties of friendliness, walked to the river and drank. He looked around him, his eye swept the hillside, and there in the mist just as he was, phantasmal and yet half expected, stood a man and woman. It was Ogga and Lhatto. Why half expected?

Lagk could not have explained his eagerness to see them closer nor how, in feeling this curiosity, expectations seemed to forestall all wonder that these new creatures should be there. There seemed to be a naturalness in it, that his heart, his mind, his eyes should meet, in the adumbrant day, some nascent answer to his dreaming thoughts. And so he walked toward them. Neither Ogga nor Lhatto moved. The tenderness of their own happiness forbade the consciousness of interruption.

Lagk came close; Ogga strong, triumphant, with the wildness of that younger day incorporated in his steel sinews, his dark lines, his piercing eye, the unchecked richness and color of his hair, in his arrowy and shooting gestures, in the demeanor of an unsoiled and dustless youth, gazed at him with recognition. It was Lagk, the son of the herdsman, whom he had thrown from the cliff in defense of his pet.

And Lagk, strong too, and though not triumphant, confident and brave, bearing many traces of physical nobility, not altogether dwarfed by his infirmity, and with a face not unlike the visage he beheld, gazed also with recognition. It was Ogga who had pushed him from the cliff, who had brought upon him the ridicule of the Medicine Men, who made him now hesitating before the charms of the wild woman before him. Lagk had never felt before the presence of a beautiful woman.

Small wonder that his blood rushed to his cheek, that his eyes blazed with retaliation, that his hands clutched tightly upon the knife in his belt. The sense of wrong unnerved and over-mastered him. He sprang at Ogga with an uplifted arm, but Lhatto ran between them, and Ogga, curbing his own quickly roused resentment, spoke even softly, “Lagk, let that be gone. It is over. I am your friend.”

Lagk stumbled backward, and his head fell against the warm shoulder of the horse, who had moved forward with himself. The mute friendship of the animal turned his thoughts, and the three, with the horse following, walked to the river in silence.

Ogga told Lagk of his life, how he had met Lhatto, that they were man and wife, and Lhatto also told her story. They asked Lagk about himself, they spoke of the death of the horses, of the terrors that had threatened Zit, and as soon as the sun rose and it grew warmer and the hunger of the night had been appeased, they seemed eager and happy in each other’s company, and the melancholy and brooding Lagk felt a strange pleasure entering his heart. It was a fitful and perilous joy.