The youth’s heavy features worked angrily for a moment as he sought words for a further attack. Then his face smoothed into a grin as he remembered that from so perilous a venture it was most unlikely his rival would ever return. He gave a crafty side-glance at the girl, and sat down again, while she turned her back upon him. At a sign from the Chief the 56 council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, into their caves.
As the first pink light crept up the sky, Grôm set forth on his mysterious venture. It was just such a venture as his sanguine and inquiring spirit, avid of the unknown, had always dreamed of. But never before had he had such an object before him as seemed to justify the long risk. There was all a boy’s eagerness in his deep eyes, under their shaggy brows, as he slipped noiselessly out of the bottle-neck, picked his way lightly over the well-gnawed bones of the slain invaders, turned his back on the sunrise, and took his course up the edge of the stream. The weapons he carried were his war-club, two light, flint-headed hunting-spears and a flint knife hung from his wolf-skin girdle.
All that day, till mid-afternoon, he journeyed swiftly, straight ahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch and to avoid dark coverts whence tiger or leopard might spring upon him. He was in a region which he had often hunted over, and where he felt at home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and when he wished to rest he climbed into a tree for security.
Several times during the day he had had a sensation of being followed; and, turning quickly, he had run back, in the hope of detecting his pursuer. But when he found no one, he concluded that it was merely one of the ghosts the tribe so feared, but 57 whom he himself rather held in contempt as futile.
Long before noon he had forsaken the brook, because its course had ceased to lead him westward. In the afternoon he reached a river which marked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swift water, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded it with some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution, oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yet was in no way greatly changed.
As the sun got low, Grôm cast about for a safe tree in whose top to pass the perilous hours of dark. As he stared around him a cry of fear came from the bunch of woods which he had just quitted. The voice was a woman’s. He ran back. The next second the trees parted, and a girl came rushing towards him, her dark hair streaming behind her. Close after her came three huge cave-wolves.
Grôm shouted, and hurled a spear. It struck one of the wolves full in the chest, splitting the heart. At this the other two halted irresolutely. But as Grôm’s tall figure came bounding down upon them, their indecision vanished. They wheeled about, and ran off into the thickets. The girl came forward timorously, and knelt at Grôm’s feet.
At first with wonder and some annoyance, the warrior looked down upon her. Then recognition came into his eyes. He saw the tip of a deep wound on her shoulder, and knew that it ran, livid and angry, half-way down her bosom. It was the young girl 58 A-ya. His eyes softened, for he had heard how it was she who had saved him in the battle, fighting so furiously over him when he was down––she in whose blood he had found his shoulders bathed. Yet up to that time he had never noticed her, his mind being full of other matters than women. Now he looked at her and wondered. He was sorely afraid of being hampered in his great enterprise, but he asked her gently why she had followed him.
“I was afraid for you,” she answered, without looking up. “You go to such great dangers. I could not stay with the tribe, and wait.”