But the craze was on me, and, the next morning, I ran up and down the valley and howled aloud and screamed and yelped that I, I alone, would kill the monster in the plain. The others heard my ravings and came out, but they only grinned and chuckled, though all followed me as I turned and ran southward and toward the wood-path which led through the forest to where was the little plain—and death. I did not linger, and my following tribe ran close behind me until I reached the very edge of the dangerous ground, when, as monkeys climb, they swarmed into the treetops while I slipped forward among the bushes, a crazed and yet contained thing, half demented, strong and unconsciously, blindly, seeking what seemed suicide, but—with the Axe.
I crept into a little pathway and saw nothing, and so slipped along unhindered until I reached the rock. I climbed it, tremblingly, for another mood had come upon me now. I was afraid. I threw myself down upon the stone and shook all over as the leaves shake in the aspen tree which the wind owns. So in awful terror I tossed about for a time until, in my very desperation, the rage came back again and I cared for nothing in all the world, for the blue sky or the people in the treetops or myself or death or mangling. I leaped to my feet and danced up and down and whooped and swung my arms. Then, in a near thicket, there was a rustle, and “woof,” and the huge cave bear rushed forth and gazed about.
Slowly at first, looking up toward me, the monster came shuffling and shambling into the open. He saw me plainly now, and there was another great “woof,” a growl, and he lurched forward with astounding swiftness. And then just when the dread was most appalling, the awful sickness, which had come again, left me, and I became cold of blood and insanely crafty and blood-hungry. Then I, the Axeman, dropped to the ground, not a score of yards before the approaching beast!
The monster uprose, for a moment, apparently astonished, then plunged forward with a growling roar as I dashed in flight between the gaping jaws of the split rock.
Not twenty yards through the rock did the fissure run, but I was near that fearful paw-stroke when I leaped through the further narrow opening and fell panting to the ground. And even as I sprawled, the great body hurled and wedged itself into the tapering space, and the “swish” of the paw passed close beside my head. I lay just out of reach. I could see the red jaws and grinding teeth and wicked, glaring eyes and hear the rush of the foul breath above me.
Straining outward with his one free arm the brute struck savagely, and his great strokes fairly whistled through the air as they swept within a hand’s breadth of me. For a moment I was faint again with the sickening fear, and then once more the change came. I leaped to my feet and yelled. There, pushing, gnashing his teeth and striking, clawing blows in vain, was the monster who had been our dread. I became a sudden demon. I roared as roars the tiger. I danced about closely as the beast strained out with lowered head, and then I leaped in as the paw went by and whirled my axe aloft and struck. What a blow was that! When had even the strong arm of the Cave man delivered stroke as mighty as that which sent my axe clean to the haft into the bone and brain of that huge head? Clean to the haft the blade was driven, and there it stayed as I leaped backward wrenching in vain at the tough handle. I shrank aside to avoid another stroke, but that was needless. There was a roar, a wild, helpless clawing, and then the huge head in which the axe was buried sagged downward and the monstrous thing was dead! I, single-handed, had slain the great cave bear! Never before in all the happenings of time had so great a thing been done!
The shuddering, breathless people in the treetops were the insane ones now. Their frenzied shoutings filled the wood at first, and soon they were around me, but wondering and awestricken and silent again. Their demeanour toward me was such as they had never shown before. I was greater than they. The huge body of the bear was hauled out and the skin taken, toilsomely, and ever after I slept upon it in my cave.
The world had changed for me. I was another being and I could not help it. I had been called “Scar” because of the great scar upon my face straight up and down from eye to jaw, but they changed my name and called me “Bear,” and like a bear I must have grown somewhat as time passed. The news of the great slaying went about among the creatures of our kind as far as our world extended and I became an awesome man apart. Even Woof, my comrade, seemed half afraid of me and, at last, following the mating instinct, took a mate and went away from me to live in a cave far up the gorge. I had it in my mind to take a mate myself, and resolved upon an almost burly woman of the Cave people I had met afar, who feared nothing and who hunted, sometimes alone, as did the men. I went to get her, but she had disappeared. She had hunted once too often recklessly. I might have taken another, but, I know not why, the mood to do so never came again. I still joined with the others in the chase and my axe stroke was the heaviest, and none surpassed me whenever there was danger to be met.
And the seasons and the years passed, and all men had the stone axes, and we fed well, and children were born, and the people of the long gorge grew in number. Then came a pall. The world was going wrong.
Creeping as creeps the snake in the grass and bushes, down where the rocks shelve off into the lowlands, had come, with the swiftly passing seasons, a dreadful something. The sun, the big blazing thing up in the sky, seemed growing old and helpless and did not warm us as he had before. And down the sides of the mountain came crawling those wide blue-white cloaks of ice, never stopping, always crawling.