A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

Lagk placed his hand upon her neck. He stood before her so that his broad body shut out the sun; his other hand lifted her toward him; her supineness thrilled him with a strange insanity. His thoughts ran pêle mêle towards the gratification of his love. And yet—and yet—; the circling eagle with its senile chatter rose flapping in the blazing light, a hundred scintillations seemed flashed before Lagk’s eyes, a breeze that had arisen brought to his ears the patter of the waves upon the highland lake, and off, far off beyond him the gray and white needles of the cordilleras, like blanched images of rebuke, stood waiting. Lagk spoke. His voice was thin and whispering, and the breath that came with it on the cheeks of Lhatto was hot and humid. He said, “Lhatto, you are mine.”

Then Lhatto sprang upward; at last her tired lips opened, and the faint vestiges of her strength which had grown together in that interval of resting, into something useful and vehement, forced him from her. Her words, “I hate you,” were not misunderstood, nor misconceived, nor welcomed. Lagk sprang back with tigerish zeal. The two, the Woman and the Intruder, fought together on the silent radiant granite table, while the horse nibbled the niggardly and grudging bunch grass.

It was an unequal effort. Lagk was strong and behind his strength was the grizzly power of his rage and desire, and Lhatto, whose, strength had been slowly ebbing, resisted only with the last cooperative fusion of muscle and of will. Lagk forced her to the stones. For an instant they rested, Lhatto’s head bent forward and pushed against Lagk’s breast, who held her arms twisted from him in a vice-like clutch. The coupled pair slowly fell backward to the rock they had for an instant deserted, the slow retreat broken only by sudden wrenchings and spasmodic returns of Lhatto’s expiring strength and revulsion.

It was over. Lagk bent down and bit Lhatto in the neck like any savage or wicked thing that feels the impulse of an unquenchable thirst. And then—a shadow from above shut out the light, a block of rock rolled down the wall, a groan like the muttering and imprisoned sighs of a tree bent in a storm of wind—all this happened in the acute silence and sunlit splendor of the place. Lagk raised his head. Above him on the tumbled stones stood Ogga.

Ogga had indeed hastened. His quick eye had followed the trail unhesitatingly and he had never paused. His chase had been unbroken. The springs or brooks here and there had quenched his thirst, but food had not passed his lips nor sleep visited his body. Perhaps he was not strong enough for the rescue. He had detected below the mountain desert the fleeing footsteps of his rival and he had crept upon the sandy mesa quite unseen. He had seen as he approached, bending behind bushes, stalking in the grass, running from boulder to boulder, the movements of the two before him. The approach he made had been a little circuitous and it was while he was skirting the opposite side of the cairn of stones that Lagk had attacked Lhatto. Ogga, the moment this screen removed the chances of his detection, ran rapidly forward, and climbing the rampart saw the waning fight. He stood almost directly above Lagk. He heard Lhatto speak.

In an instant the dark torrent of vengeance lost its worst, its deepest tint; the thought of Lhatto’s faith made him again more human. It was now against Lagk that the fierce mutiny of his thoughts turned. And as the agony of his rage burst forth, mixed with a strange sweetness of reassurance, his lips moved, and the moan, that made Lagk look up, issued on the rising wind. The two men—the prehistorics—were face to face, and now all scores were to be wiped out between them. Thus at the threshold, even beyond the threshold, in the untenanted spaces of origin, the play of love and retaliation and jealousy and hate, began its devastating path. Yes! and with one the sense of guilt was not unnoticed.

Lagk hastily abandoned Lhatto. He too knew the crisis was reached, and his old resentment against Ogga flamed up; expiation was at hand, or else—that silence that he had sometimes seen amongst his own people in the canyon. His mind worked quickly, and as he retreated, backing out over the level floor of rock, he bethought himself of his resources. He knew Ogga’s strength, his size and agility. He was himself strong, but he felt a safety in craft, and the implement of his cunning was the lasso, that had so often caught and tamed the wild horses.

Ogga leaped down towards Lagk, but turned to Lhatto. She was breathless, she said nothing, she only pointed to Lagk, and her eyes lit up with pleasure, with madness of joy even. Ogga had thrown away his spear, in his hand was only the stone knife. The instant lost in the recognition of the lovers allowed Lagk time to pass sideways and recover a long skin rope with a sort of noose in it. He wound this hastily, still hurrying away, anxious to bring Ogga after him in a running attack.

It came. Ogga, crouching, ran like a dart upon him. Lagk hoped to see him stumble and fall. The sure foot of the mastodon hunter skimmed the ground as a bird’s wing. Lagk trembled. He too crouched. In a dizzy circle, widening and contracting, thudding the air with a faint, steamy whizz and whirr, the thong sped above his head. Then it widened the rotating, undulous noose, and the line sprang from his hand and fell, vibrating in an irregular elipse over the head of Ogga, upon his neck. It lay unperceived by him upon his shoulders. It tightened; the quick restraint was noticed. Ogga seized it with his hands, his knife dropped to the rock and broke. He was already worsted.

As a spider, touching each radiating line of his web, feels the telltale tremble that acquaints it with a new capture, so Lagk realized his advantage, and with all his force, holding his place as best he could, against the manifold and plunging struggles of his prey, he drew him outward, outward over the granite ledge towards the lake. Ogga, blinded by his own rage and bewilderment, helped the sinister purpose of his enemy by too much resistance. The taut rope enabled Lagk to jerk him again and again, upsetting and felling him, and every time he hit the stone pavement over which in the hot sun, he was thus impatiently sprawling, harsh wounds were given.