The group scattered in all directions. But one brave old gray-beard, who had marked A-ya’s success, lingered in the path, and tried to thrust his blazing faggot into the monster’s eyes, as she had done. He was not quick enough. The monster threw up its 250 muzzle, dodging the stroke, and the next moment it had struck down its feeble adversary and crushed his head between its tremendous jaws.
In its folly, it now forgot its other enemies, and fell to wreaking its madness on the lifeless victim. But in another second or two it was fairly overwhelmed with the red brands descending upon its head. A-ya, with all the force of her strong young arms, drove her short spear half-way through its loins. Then, with one eye blinded and its long fur smouldering, its rage gave way suddenly into panic. Lifting its giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fiery assailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while the old men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rump with their live brands.
A-ya, racing like a deer and screaming with exultation, ran round the pack of old men and stabbed the frantic brute in the neck, with her spear held short in both hands. Shrinking abjectly from this attack, he swerved off toward the left. It was his left eye that was blinded, and the other was full of smoke and ashes. He missed the path, therefore, and plunged squalling over the edge of the bluff, which at this point dropped about a hundred feet, almost perpendicularly, to the beach. Rolling over and over, and bouncing out into space every time he struck the cliff face he fell to the bottom amid a shower of stones and dust, and lay there as shapeless as a fur rug dropped from an upper window.
The old men, jabbering in triumph, craned their 251 shaggy gray heads out over the brink to grin down upon him, while A-ya, with a wild light in her eyes and her strong white teeth gleaming savagely, turned back to tend the wounds of her slave, Ook-ootsk.
II
Having assured herself that the hurts of Ook-ootsk, dreadful though they were, were yet not mortal (our sires of Cave and Tree took a lot of killing!), A-ya stepped over to the further fire to see about rescuing the carcase of the slain elk before it should be quite burned up. As a matter of fact, there was little of it actually consumed by the fire, but it was amazingly shredded by the clawing of the blinded bear; and an odor of roasted venison steamed up from it, which seemed rather pleasant to A-ya’s nostrils. Under her direction, the old men hauled the body from the fire by the hind-legs, and dragged it over to the edge of the bluff before cutting it up, for convenience in getting rid of the offal. Every one followed, to secure their due share of the tit-bits, except Ook-ootsk and one old woman. This old woman sat rocking and keening beside the body of her mate whom the bear had slain; while Ook-ootsk crawled off into a neighboring hollow to look for certain healing herbs which should cleanse and astringe his wounds.
The hide of the elk was too much burnt, too ripped and torn by the claws of the bear, to be of any use except for thongs; but the old men skinned it off 252 expertly before dividing the flesh. Though their gnarled fingers were feeble, they were amazingly clever in the use of the sharp-edged flakes of stone which served them as knives. A-ya stood by them, watching closely, to see that none of the specially dainty cuts were appropriated. These delicacies were reserved for herself and her two children, and for Grôm when he should return. She had the right to them, not only because she was the mate of Grôm, but because the kill was hers.
As she stood over the carcase––the fore-part of which had been superficially barbecued in the fire––the smell of the roasted flesh began to appeal to her even more strongly than at first. As she sniffed it, curiously, it began to entice her appetite as nothing had ever tempted it before. She touched a well-browned, fatty morsel, and then put her fingers into her mouth. The flavor seemed to her as delightful as the smell. She cast about for a suitable morsel on which to experiment.
Now it chanced that the elk’s tongue, having lain in the heart of the fire, but enclosed within the half-open jaws, had been cooked to a turn. A-ya possessed herself of this ever-coveted delicacy. It looked so queer, in its cooked state, charred black along the lower edge, that she hesitated to taste it. At last, persuaded by its fragrance, she brought herself to nibble at it.
A moment more and she was devouring it with a gusto which, had manners been greatly considered in the days when the earth was young, might have seemed 253 unbecoming in the wife of a great chief. Never before had she eaten anything that seemed to her half so delicious. It was the food she had all her life been craving. Her two little boys, pulling at her, aroused her from her ecstasy. She gave them each a fragment, which they swallowed greedily, demanding more; and between the three of them the great lump of roast tongue quickly vanished.