"Little child!
Little sweet one!
Little girl!
Though a baby,
Soon a-hunting after berries
Will be going.
Little girl!
Little sweet one!
Little child!"
The baby went to sleep, and Burr laid her on a bear skin on the floor. Soon afterwards Pineknot fell asleep on another skin, and in a little while Thorn lay beside him. Then Burr put ashes over the coals, while Strongarm threw burning logs before the door. Soon all was quiet in the cave. The cave folks had gone to sleep.
[Illustration: Ram horns]
CHAPTER II
THE NEEDLE, THE CLUB, AND THE BOW
Nearly every day Strongarm went out to hunt. But he did not always bring back meat to the cave, for he could not always kill an animal. But sometimes he brought home the meat of deer or bison, and then again it was that of mammoth or ox.
Burr always took the meat when Strongarm brought it home, and sometimes she cut tendons from it. A tendon is a strong white cord that fastens a muscle to a bone. There are long tendons in the backs of big animals. Burr cut these out sometimes and hung them in the sun to dry. When they were dry, she broke the thin outside skin and tore the tendon apart with her fingers. It came to pieces in many little threads. Burr took some of the little threads and twisted them together and made a good strong thread for sewing.