The Stone Axe of Burkamukk

by Mary Grant Bruce

But the Magic that had helped him came to the aid of little Kur-bo-roo once more, and so he did not die. Suddenly, just as the angry blacks were upon him, with uplifted waddies and threatening faces, he changed under their gaze; and where there had been a little black boy there lay for a moment a Native Bear, his grey fur bristling, and fear filling his soft eyes. Then, very swiftly, he gathered himself up and ran up a tree, until he was out of sight among the branches.

Just then the blacks were too thirsty to pursue him. Overhead, Ta-jerr and Tarrn-nin were cutting at the branches of the great tree that held the tarnuks; and all the water came out and flowed back to the creek, and again the creek became wide and clear, running swiftly in its bed so that there was drink for all. Then Ta-jerr and Tarrn-nin came down to the ground, and the tribe hailed them as heroes. But when they looked for little Kur-bo-roo, the Native Bear, he had fled into another tree, and had disappeared.

From that time, the Native Bears became food for the black people. But it is law that they must not break their bones when they kill them, nor must they take off their skin before they cook them. So they take them carefully, hitting them on the head; and they cook them by roasting them whole in an oven of stones, sunk in the ground. If the law were broken, Kur-bo-roo would again become powerful, the magic-men say; and the first thing he would do would be to dry up all the creeks.

Now, Kur-bo-roo lives near the creeks and water holes, so that if the people broke the law he might at once carry away the water. He is not very wise, because he was only quite a little boy before he became a Native Bear, and so had not much time to gain wisdom: but he is soft, and fat, and gentle, unless you interfere with him when he wants to climb a tree, and then he can scratch very hard with his sharp claws. All he can do is to climb, and he does not see very well in the daytime: therefore, he thinks that whatever he meets is a tree, and at once he tries to climb it. If the blacks throw things at him when he is sitting in the fork of a tree, he blinks down at them, and sometimes you might think he smiles. But if they climb his tree and come near to knock him down, he cries always, very terribly—just as he cried long ago, when he was Magic and Ta-jerr and Tarrn-nin climbed his great tree and threw him to the people far below.

XIII
WURIP, THE FIRE-BRINGER

CHAPTER I

Once there was a time when the blacks had no fire. They had not learned the way to make it by rubbing two sticks together; or if they had once known the way, they had forgotten it. And they were very miserable, for it was often cold and wintry, and they had no fire to warm them, nor any way of cooking food.

Fire had been theirs once. But there came two women upon the Earth; strange women, speaking in unknown tongues, with great eyes in which there was no fear. They did not love the blacks. They lived in their camps for a time, and built for themselves a wurley, coming and going as they pleased; but always there was hatred in their wild eyes, and the blacks feared them exceedingly. Because they feared them, although they hated them, they gave them food, and the women cooked it for themselves, for at that time the fire blossomed at the door of every hut.

But one day, the blacks awoke to find the women gone. They had gone in the night, silently, and with them they took all the fire that the blacks had. There was not even a coal left to start the hearth-blaze for the shivering people.