Stories of the Cave People

by Mary Marcy

The season of plenty was come. And the Cave People loved and laughed and feasted and were content. Few dangers menaced during those days and the members of the tribe forgot fears and drowsed in peace.

But the children of the Cave People grew strong, lifting their heads. The fierce rays of the sun were unable to subdue them. Laughing Boy, grown tall and straight, was weaned at last. Always he laughed, showing his large white teeth, like a dark dog snapping at a bone. And he danced and ran about, spilling the strong life that surged up within him and would not be stilled.

With his young friend, The Fish, whom the Cave People had given his name because of his early skill in swimming, Laughing Boy learned many things. Their joy and juvenility seemed exhaustless, and their romps and chatterings ended only with the days.

Not many years before, the fathers and mothers of the Cave People had come down out of the trees to dwell. The Tree Dwellers found shelter in the natural caves that lined the river bank. In time they learned to walk erect, on two legs. The Cave Dwellers resembled them very closely. The arms of the Cave People had grown shorter as they ceased to swing themselves constantly, from tree to tree. The thumb of the foot disappeared and they now possessed a great toe in its place. Still the feet of the Cave Dwellers retained the power of prehension. They were able to hold—to cling awkwardly with them.

In the children this power was very marked. On the skirts of the forest they loved to clamber up the slim trees, poise on the swaying boughs and swing themselves from branch to branch, like young monkeys. This gave them strength of limb and quickness of vision. Soon they learned to choose those branches strong enough to bear their weight, as they flung themselves through great gaps of space to seize the boughs of a neighboring tree.

But the fear of the green snakes, that wound about and hid themselves among the leaves, kept them near the Hollow. Only on rare occasions did they penetrate deep into the forest.

Among many of the savages living to-day great skill and agility prevails. We are told of tribes whose members are able, by a partial circling of the trunks, with their arms, and by the clinging and pressing of flexible toes, to mount trees in a sort of walk.

Jack London writes that this is a common practice of the natives of the South Sea Islands. And we are assured by several young friends that the art has not wholly disappeared among our own boys.

Many were the feats accomplished among the swaying branches of the trees by Laughing Boy, and his friend, The Fish, in their frolics many years ago. Their feet were never still. Their jabberings flowed without end. Tireless as the birds they were and gay as youth itself.

One day, as they played, Laughing Boy found a flat, curved piece of wood. It was as long as the arm of a man and had been split from a tree during a storm. Laughing Boy hurled the stick far into the air at his friend, The Fish. But The Fish threw himself from the bank, into the river, to avoid it. And he screamed with joy as he disappeared beneath the waters. Then a very strange thing happened. For the flat stick swished through the air, like a great bird, far over the river. Then it turned about and whirled slowly back again, where it fell at the feet of Laughing Boy. At once the hair of his head rose with fear, and he ran to his mother uttering shrill squeals of alarm. Quack Quack awoke from her sleep and snatched up a bone weapon, for she thought one of the forest enemies had attacked Laughing Boy.