“I have seen something like this before,” he said. “Everywhere it is death to move a landmark. In some places not posts but stones are used. The dark people across the river say that he who moves his neighbor’s landmark is hated by the gods and his house shall disappear. His land shall not produce fruits, his sons and grandsons shall die without a roof above their heads, and in the end there shall be none left of his [pg 73]blood. Hail, rust and the dog-star shall destroy his harvests, and his limbs shall become sore and waste away.”
Pero stared in astonishment. “Where did you hear all that?” he asked.
“When I was younger I ran away and crossed the river,” said the Cub calmly. “They are strange people over there, not like your people. They go down to the sea in boats. I went in a boat also, but I did not like it. There was a fat trader on the boat, and when we were outside the long white waves along the shore, and the wind came up and rocked our boat, his face turned the color of sick grass. Perhaps my face did also; I do not know. We were both very sick. After that I came back to tend sheep again, for I do not like that place.
“They have a god called Turms there who is the god of traders, and of thieves, and of fortune tellers. They pray to him for good luck, for they believe very much in luck. He is sometimes seen in the shape of a beggar man with a dog and a staff that has snakes twisted about it, and a cap with a feather in it.”
The Cub stood up laughing and slipped away down under the rocks with his wolf; it almost seemed as if he had flown. As Pero stared after him, he remembered that the lad had an eagle [pg 74]feather in his pointed cap, and his staff had a twisted vine around it. But the next time they met the boy was so clearly only a boy in a sheepskin tunic that Pero called himself an old fool too ready to take fancies.
The Cub had spent time enough on the other side of the river to know something about the people, and he had interesting things to tell. They enjoyed bargaining and spent much time buying and selling. They could make fine gold work, bright-colored cloth, and brown vases with black pictures painted on them. Their walls were often painted with pictures. When a trader from that country, named Toto, came to the village, Pero remembered some of the things he had been told. The people bought some of his trinkets, but by what they said of them when the brightness was worn off and the color faded, he was not a very honest merchant. Pero remembered then that this people had the same god for trading and for stealing.
The Cub said that he had been to other villages along this mountain slope, and they seemed to be as separate as if they were islands on a sea of waste wilderness. They did not have their feasts on the same day, they did not measure time alike; in some ways they were almost as far apart in their ideas as if they had been [pg 75]different kinds of animals. And yet they all spoke nearly the same language and worshiped in much the same way. If they knew each other better and met oftener they would be all one people, strong enough to drive away their enemies. If he and Pero could meet in this friendly way, surely others could. But this was a new idea to the shepherd, and he was not used to thinking. When the Cub saw that he did not understand he began talking of something else. The invisible boundary lines were too strong to be crossed.
Often, late at night, after Pero had gone home, the Cub would lie on a high rock that overlooked the village, looking down at the twinkling circle of lights that meant altar fires in homes. Then he would look up at the twinkling points of light in the sky, and wonder if the gods lived there, and if the lights were the altar fires of their homes. If he had known that Pero once half believed him to be a god in disguise, he would have been very much surprised. He was only a boy, without father, mother or home, and he wished he knew what lay before him in the life he had to live.
He could keep sheep, he could hunt, he could fight, he could run and swim better than most boys of his age, and there was no beast, fowl, [pg 76]bird, reptile, fruit or tree in the wilderness that he did not know. But there seemed to be no place for him to live among men unless he was a sort of servant. This was not to his liking. He had never seen any man whose orders he would be willing to obey. He had seen some who were wiser, far wiser than he was, who could tell him a great deal that he wished to know. But he had never seen any to whom he would be a servant. A servant had to do what he was told and make himself over into the kind of person some one else thought he ought to be. The old woman who was a witch had told him that he was born to rule, but he did not see how he could, unless it was ruling to command animals. To rule men he must live where they were, and so far as he could see they had no place for him.
His brother never seemed to have such thoughts. Give him enough to eat and drink, a fire to warm him in winter and a stream to bathe in when the summer suns were hot, and his reed pipe to play, and that was enough. He would spend hours playing some tune over and over with first one change and variation and then another. Even the wolf, now grown large and powerful, with his gaunt muzzle and fierce eyes, was more of a companion than that. He was always ready for a wrestle or a race or a swim [pg 77]with his master. The two of them were feared wherever they went, and treated with unqualified respect.