The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

They lived and feasted, slept and were warm three days in the cavern at the top of the runway. Then it became necessary again to get food. The provider and her guest hunted long hours, and came to the cave at dusk, carrying a beaver that they had trapped. Again the cavern knew food and contentment. They ate, and then they slept, with the red eye of the fire never quite closing through the night. The next day there was still food.

The provider lay by the fire in her cave and looked at the man. He sat in the entrance so that he could get the light, and with a stone in one hand and a piece of flint in the other, he was striking such pieces from the latter as would leave it edged and pointed. He was a strong man. More than that, he had a rudimentary good temper, though on occasions he could also show himself violent, crafty, and selfish. The provider possessed like qualities.

The two older children came from a trickling spring three stone-throws away. The lawgiver let them go that far from the cave. When food grew easier to get, and all the world of tooth and claw less keenly dangerous, she would take them, grown older and bigger, with her when she hunted—give them training, looking to their hunting in their turn. The two, pausing beside the man, watched him use flint and hand-stone. He was not fierce with the children; he laughed and spoke in a friendly voice.

The provider’s experience had been with fiercer men, who struck aside the children. The last one had done so, indeed, had well-nigh killed the child that was then the littlest. He had lived in the cave three days, and then had burst away, following a hunting woman who had chanced to pass that way. The provider had been glad when he was gone. That was a long while ago—a good long time, many moons before the littlest one came....

She could not well remember how that man had looked—but he had not been like this one. This one seemed like one who had been here before, and that for a long time. Yet that was not true, and no one stayed for a long time. In her world, as she knew it, men made a roving folk. This cave, that lair of brush and stretched skins, received them for a time—short time. Then they went, quitting women and the young of women that, together, made the only stable society.

The provider looked around her cavern. She thought of the wolves, then, with a backward stretch of her mind, of the bear she had fought and taken this cavern from. In between the two points of time she had fought many beasts. She had hunted in fair weather and foul. At times, being afar, she had doubted ever seeing again the cavern and her young. And she had held the cavern, as the other night, from attackers.... She gazed deeply upon the man sitting in the cave entrance.... Children, and feeding them, and keeping them fast from being slain. Children, and finding them food, and thrusting away their foes. Her own food, too, and her own foes. She thought again of the wolves, and of how he had thrown down the boulder, and of how much easier the hunting was with two than alone. Within her breast was born a warm, an aching desire for companionship. She thought, “If he would stay—not being fierce.”

She looked at the fire; then, raising herself upon her arm, laid sticks upon it so that the cave should still glow. She did this without reasoning, but when it was done she looked from the mended flame to the man who had been here now four days. He sat in the cave entrance and chipped and chipped at his flint knife. As he worked he made a humming sound to himself.... You could pen a child within the cave and keep it there, but you could not pen a man. To have him stay he must want to stay.... Her own desire that he should stay grew wider and deeper.

The provider raised herself and went and sat down also in the entrance. She looked at his work, and again without reasoning she admired it aloud. “Good knife!” she said. “Plenty flint here!”

He nodded his head and went on working and humming. Presently, one side being chipped sufficiently, he turned the knife in his hand, rested, and looked out of the cave mouth. The leaves of the forest below were growing brown, were dropping upon the chill earth. He looked over his shoulder at the fire in the rock chamber and the pile of skins. “Good warm here!” he said.

She nodded, then waved her hand toward the world beneath. “Soon all cold. But warm here. Good here.” She turned her body toward the cave. “Children good!”