CHAPTER IV
THE CLANSMEN
It was dark, absolutely dark, and I could hear no sound. I could not remember who I was nor where I was, and there came upon me something like a feeling of alarm, though I felt that to be afraid of anything was most unlike me. Furthermore, I was in pain; there was a hurt in my breast and, instinctively, I clutched at the place with my hand. Ah! I knew what it must be—a protruding arrow-head—and I strove to get such a hold upon it that I could pull it forth in the hope that so relief would come, but I could not get my grasp upon the thing. What had become of it? My mind wandered in a search for all about me and an understanding of it. I had a dreamy vision in my mind of some rocky gorge, of enemies coming up from a sloping river bank, of a desperate struggle there, and of my own part therein, which seemed to end with a murderous bowshot from behind, driving a shaft through my body; but what had happened afterward? Where had they carried me and how could I be living after such fearful hurt? I fumbled still at my breast seeking the arrow-head, and found at last what I had mistaken for it. It was but a jagged piece of flint which had slipped in between my flesh and the rough skin coat I wore and which, as I had borne upon it, turning in my sleep, had pricked me sharply and awakened me. There was no arrow-head nor trace of wound. I could not understand it, but I no longer feared; I only realized that I was cold. I felt about me in the darkness and my hands fell upon what I recognized as the skins of animals, and I drew them together and over me from head to foot and was warm and slept again. When I awoke the darkness was not so dense; light came in through an opening not far away and I could distinguish objects about me.
I lay upon the floor in a sort of niche in a cave. Weapons, as I judged them to be, leaned against the wall opposite, and away beyond them, close to the wall, lay a gray heap over which I puzzled. I studied it at first dreamily and then curiously, as the light grew stronger from the narrow arched entrance, then started half upright, for the gray thing seemed alive. It heaved uneasily and I forgot my own perplexity as to who I was or where I was in watching the mysterious thing. All at once the mystery was solved. The mass separated, part of it upheaved, and then I understood. There had been a man sleeping there, like me, beneath a heap of wolf skins. As he arose he turned his face toward me and called out hoarsely but cheerily enough: “Oo-ee! Scar!”
“Oo-ee,” I answered back instinctively. I knew that his call was but to learn if I were awake and I knew, too, that I was his friend and comrade. I became instantly another being from the one lying dazed and dreaming the moment before. The thought of all that dim vision of some fight at a ford and my own awful hurt there, passed as the smoke goes when the wind sweeps over a fire, and swift, keen memory of all that related to my present relations and surroundings returned to me at once. Why, there we were in our cave, Six Toes and I, and it was morning. I called out to him:
“I am hungry, Six Toes; let us eat.”
He grinned, went over to the back of the cave, drew forth strips of dried meat from a store heaped up there, and I, getting to my feet at the same time, took from the weapons by the wall our two stone axes. We sat down together, hacked away fragments of the cold, hard meat, and ate as ravenously as two wild animals.
It was all simple enough. Why had I so awakened still dreaming of a river and a fight in a region warm and pleasant? Certainly in such a country I had never lived, though dreams of it had come to me before and I was in no such country now. Here was I with Six Toes, at murderous odds with others of our kind and with a prospect ahead of us as dangerous as uncertain. Not that it worried us much. We were only less reckless of what was to come than the prowling creatures of the swift, ever-fearing grass-eaters of the plains.
Six Toes was tall and strong, and so, indeed, was I, though not so great of bulk as he. He was a huge man, though springy as the reindeer, and the crush of his hairy arms was something to be feared in any grapple. We were garbed nearly alike, each in a single garment made of skin reaching from neck to knee, with holes for the arms and belted at the waist with a thong of rawhide. The garment of Six Toes was of a single bearskin; mine of wolfskin well stitched together with long sinews. In each of our belts whenever we left the cave was a stone axe, and each bore as well his bow and arrows, and sometimes his flint-headed spear. In a skin pouch hanging from the belt in front we carried the smaller things—the stone, skinning and cutting knife, and, it might be, dried meat. Our arrows we carried in skin quivers slung across our backs. We had no other clothing or weapons or gear of any kind, but our axes and our arrow-heads and knives were sharp and polished and our bows were strong. The Cave men everywhere had learned many things.
We two were not in a good way, even as ways went with the Cave men in that rough land and time. We were outlaws—I, Scar, and Six Toes, a greater personage than I, and all because of the deadly enmity between my companion and the head man of our clan. We had been driven from the great galleried cave in the cliff beside the river a mile above us where all had sought refuge together for the harsh winter, and, thus forced to fare alone, had, after some perilous wandering, found shelter in this smaller and less pleasant and safe abode. We were cold, but in this respect not so greatly worse off than the body of the clan who, through rare misfortune, were, temporarily, nearly as unfortunate as we. The winter was upon us. Long ago, so the legend of the story-telling old men ran, our people had drifted to the south, where was a warmer clime, but something had driven them northward again and they had long lived a roving, sturdy, and fierce community in a country of rock and plain, fruitful in season, it is true, and with good hunting, peopled as it was by many grass-eating brutes and furred beasts of prey, and warm as well, but hard to bear in winter because of the breath of northern glaciers.
Now, the clan had been for a time in a strait such as was never known before. Venturing, because of an unaccountable influx of the deer and the little wild horses, into a ruder country than our ordinary haunts, we had lost our fire. There were no fire mountains here, and, despite the finding of the big cave, living had become uncomfortable. We had not yet learned the art of making fire ourselves, and, when the clan moved as a body, carried it always with us, moving slowly and making fires ahead on our way as far as the runners could go with brands. Now, it had, for once, been neglected by the keepers in the cave and become lost, and we must half freeze and live on roots and nuts and dried meat until we should visit some distant clan, or the fire from the sky, as it sometimes did, should smite some towering dead tree and make it burn for us. But no such good fortune had come, and those of our own kind of whom we knew were far removed from us, and sometimes hostile. We must endure until the warm time came again.