The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

Something moved in the wood below. Bushes and little trees bent this way or that. Something that was strong was moving. The children’s mouths opened, they raised themselves to their knees. The bushes shook again and nearer to the stony slope; there was heard the snapping of a branch. The children scrambled to their feet. The provider must not see them out here—if she did, there would be blows. The thought arrived, maybe it was not the provider! Terror took them—they turned in haste. One struck foot against a root of a tree, was thrown down, delaying both. Open-mouthed, they looked over shoulder, and saw that it was not the provider.

A man with a great fell of hair, with a club and with a skin filled with stones for throwing, came from the deep wood into the straggling growth at the base of the tiers of rock. Hunter on his own account, and fierce from lack of luck, he had pushed from his own lair farther in this direction than he had ever done before. Such was the adversity of the times that all hunters, human or brute, must widen their hunting-grounds. This hunter had widened his. He was, moreover, a strong hunter and quick of eye. And yet so bad were the times that he often went hungry—as now.

Clear of the great wood, he came before the line of cliffs that he had not seen before. Hereabouts was strange to him. He stood still, and his gaze swept the rocks. Presently it fell upon the two human children at the top of the runway. He stared, resting on his club. Then, from the wood ahead, some sound that he knew how to interpret caught his ear. He bent his head aside. The sound came again. His eye saw the light disturbance of the undergrowth. Doe and fawn, he caught their movement, doe and fawn passing that way. Instantly, he was hunter of flesh, hunter upon their trail. As he had come, so he vanished. The children saw only the stony way and the wood again. A panic took them; they turned, and, crying out, rushed past the stone and the twisted tree, back into the cave.

The light lowered still. Out of the wood to the base of the cliffs and then to the stony runway came another hunter. This one, too, had had scant luck—roving all day, and now with naught to show but nuts and roots and of these none too many. She carried them slung in a skin. She had a club and a snare of green withes. She wore upon her body, for warmth and for protection against the thorns and briars of the world, the pelt of some forest beast. She was largely made and strong, and down her back fell a mass of darkly red and tangled hair. She climbed the runway. The children, cowering beside the fire, saw her at the cave mouth, and set up a yelping welcome.

Seated upon the cavern floor, she took up and suckled the littlest one. Such scarcity was there that she herself was hungry, and there was not much milk. The littlest one fretted yet when she pushed it away. She broke the nuts she had brought between two stones. The roots she pounded and shredded. She and her young had supper. No one had food enough to satisfy. They ate greedily what there was, to the last kernel and shred. Language was a scanty thing. Uncombined guttural or high-pitched sounds answered well enough for three fourths of communication. But they had a certain number of words of action, relation, and naming. Mother and children talked together after a fashion. The children talked of food, more food. She answered sharply, then gave the youngest her breast again, then sat with her chin upon her knees, staring into the flame. The younger children slept at last, lying upon and under the skins in the corner of the cave. The eldest stayed for a time by the fire and the brooding form of the mother. The eldest looked at the flame and the shadows that chased one another around the cave, and at the black cave mouth. She was not going to tell the lawgiver about the other hunter, for that would be to say that she had gone out of the cave, beyond the hiding rock and tree. Avoid your penalties—outwit your karma—was a policy attempted as early and earlier than that. The lawgiver herself often attempted it, as had done the mother and lawgiver before her.

The provider lifted her head from her knees, banked the ashes over the red embers, and gave utterance to a row of half-articulate sounds that meant, “Dead tired.—Hunting all day without luck.—Hard world.—Go to sleep!” So saying, she got to her feet and, moving to the cave mouth, looked out into the darkness. Hard-to-get-food meant all kinds of added insecurities. She went in front of the tree and stone and looked down the runway and to either hand along the base of the cliff. Not one of her senses took alarm. It was a quiet night, without sight or sound or scent or forward-reaching touch of any hurtful approach. Returning to the cave, she moved past the red eye of the fire to the heap of skins. The girl was already there. Mother and children lay wreathed together under the pelts. At hand rested the club and a pile of stones, and lightwood waited by the covered embers.

The still night went by. Howsoever heavy the provider’s sleep, the first light wakened her, when, cool and grey, it came creeping into the cavern. The elder children she shook awake. The littlest one waked of its own accord and began a wailing crying. She suckled it, and it stilled itself for a time. The girl and boy scraped away the ashes and put fresh sticks upon the fire. But there was no breakfast for them nor for the provider. The latter took her long, heavy, and knotted club, took the skin shaped to hold matters or food or missiles, and the flint flake chipped to the semblance of a knife blade. She threatened the children with beatings if they left the cave, and then left it herself and passed down the runway of stones into the forest where even the trees looked hungry.

All day long the children waited, now so pinched with hunger that it was a pity to see their faces. They did not play much to-day; they quarrelled and wept, and lay by the smouldering fire, their elfish faces hidden upon their thin arms. Once the boy and girl went out of the cave mouth and peered cautiously around the edge of the great stone. They saw nothing, neither the provider coming back, nor the hunter of yesterday, nor any moving thing but the tree-tops shaken by the wind, and some round white clouds adrift in the sky, and an eagle soaring above the cliff-tops, looking, too, for food.

Came a splendour of sunset, beating against the tiers of rock, making them red and purple. The provider emerged from the wood, and over her shoulder hung spoil and food—hung a game bird of the largest kind, a wattled, bronze-feathered colossus among birds! The dark red mass of her hair mingled with its plumage. Triumph breathed around her; she set her foot lightly on lichen and stone.

She had tied leaves and moss so that blood might not fall from the borne victim. When she came to the runway, when she was about to mount the stony slope, she noticed red drops. Leaves and moss had slipped. Furrows came into her brow. She drew her prey before her and adjusted that covering. The light was withdrawing. Though she turned and looked at her backward-stretching path, she could not tell in the dimness of the world if there were other drops of blood, if there were downy feathers. Dusk was growing—she was savage from famine—home was up there and her hungry brood. She hoped for the best, hoped that there were about no prowlers of dangerous size, and set her foot upon the incline that led to her door. The children, looking out, saw her coming....