There is a curious white fish, very tender and flaky, and sweet in the mouth, which gathers in schools in the big river just above where the swift current begins, and it came to me that I might go among them with tied lines and barbed hooks trailing from the boat, and so catch at least one or two of them. I wanted Thin Legs to go with me, but he declared it to be unsafe. If once the current got hold of the boat too strongly, he said, it would be carried down the river and over the falls and upon the jagged rocks where no man could live; but I only laughed at him, and said, since he feared, I would fish alone. I took my lines with me, with bait for the barbed hooks, and tied one end of the lines about my waist, letting the hooks float in the water far behind. When I heard the roar of the falls, I became afraid, and wished to turn the boat to row back with the floating hooks; but I found all at once that I had come too far. As I strove to turn, the fierce current caught the paddle, and exerted its strength against me. How could Thin Legs have chanced upon such treacherous wood? The paddle snapped short in the middle, and I was helpless with the fragment of the handle in my hand. The boat whirled round in the rushing waters. The falls roared more loudly. There were the jagged rocks below, and certain death there. I threw myself along the bottom of the tossing boat, lest it overturn even before the leap. But of what avail? There was only death below!

I closed my eyes, and, with a roaring of the waters in my ears, shot downward toward the jagged rocks, and then came nothingness.

CHAPTER VI
THE SOWERS

The hut, which was made of poles leaning against the perpendicular side of the rocky height, was cool and pleasant to lie in during the heat of the day. It was mid-afternoon, and why I should have been sleeping at such a time of day I could not understand. Through the entrance to the hut I could look across the valley, through which ran a shallow little river, and could see huts like the one I occupied ranged against the extending wall of the precipice, and people moving about. For a moment or two I was lost in mind. Surely I never had seen the valley and the huts before. I dreamed I had been somewhere else—in a boat tossing madly on a wild river. But soon my senses returned. I, Scar, the Strong, was in my own hut, and with my own people, and all was well. Where was Thin Legs? Where was our boat? How came I to be wearing a coat of deerskin, and how came I to be wearing leggings of the same skin? Always had my legs been bare. Then I laughed; for, all at once, my mind came back to me. I had only dreamed. I was in my own hut, in the village of my clan, than which there was none more prosperous. What clan had better homes or better bows and spears and axes in the hands of better hunters and fisherman living near the broad lake which lay between the rocky hills sloping downward to the plain and woods, through which a river led to the not-far-distant sea? The water of the lake was salt, for the tides came up the river to it; and there were many fish there, and shell-fish, where the wild things fed. There were no people who excelled us, and indeed we knew of no other tribes, save one living far to the south and another which it was said lived still farther to the westward. We were a satisfied people, remaining long in one place, though sometimes, in the summer, we abandoned the village to the women and children and old men, and made hunting trips to where the great ox, the urus, was more abundant than nearer us, to bring home the dried meat to make full the winter’s store. Fish from the lake we had, and dried them, and from the forest the women brought the wild plums and a sort of apple, and many berries, which also were dried, and which we ate in winter. Also the women gathered seeds and grains, which they pounded into a coarse meal, between smooth stones, and this they mixed with water into cakes, and made that which was good to eat with the meat and fish, either fresh or dried, as in the winter-time, when the game might have drifted southward, and the ice was thick upon the lakes, so that the hunting and fishing were not easy, and starvation might come had we not the dried things. We were ordinarily provident, though, for Old Bear, the head of the clan, had wisdom, and his axe was heavy. He was a huge old man, heavy of aspect, and strong, and rarely was he disobeyed.

I became more thoroughly awake, and rose from my bed of wolf-skins, and stretched out my arms, and flexed my muscles, and went out into the sunlight, and looked about me. I was hungry, and there had come to my nostrils the odour of roasting meat, as there should have been that of fish as well. I knew what I should find. There would be Limp, who lived in a nearby hut, who always rose before me, and prepared the food, as was right, for was it not I who brought in all save the fish, for the broken and shortened leg of Limp made him of little use in the hunt? He could fish well, and do many other things better than the rest of us. I have heard that it has been always the way with men, that those who were crippled have been deepest of thought and discovered most of the new things that have been good for us. The old men tell us so. And in almost every clan there are cripples; for there are dangers all about, and it is only natural that some of us should be killed or at least maimed. Why the maimed should often become the wisest, I do not know. Perhaps it is because they have more time to think, and so conceive of new things. It seems to me that must be the reason. Limp, my closest friend, was full of dreams. He should have had a wife, instead of living with me, who cared little for women; but the woman he sought he could not get. I was sorry for Limp, because of his disappointment over the woman beyond his reach, and told him so; and sorry also that I could not aid him, and so he had to endure his sorrow nearly alone, unless it may be that he had the sympathy of old Ox, and Feather, his wife, whose hut was up the ravine a little way apart from the village. It had at one side of it an open swarded space, where the two old people worked together in the sunshine, he fashioning bows and arrows, and she attending to the drying of the fruits and berries she had gathered, or grinding the seeds and nuts. Very wise was Feather in the gathering of seeds. She knew where grew the millet and the wild barley, and, old as she was, gathered more of those seeds for the winter than did any other woman of the tribe, though of nuts and fruit she did not get so much, because she was too old and weak to climb. So she sought the seeds, though the millet and barley did not grow in abundance anywhere, and to get the seeds she must often wander far and search most patiently. It was pretty to see the old man and the woman working together in the sunshine in the rock-surrounded glade, and Limp was often with them; for times would come when the whole village was abandoned,—the men upon the hunt, and the women and children gathering wood or fruits and nuts, and only these three would be left. I have said that old Feather was wise—shrewd she was, too—and it may be that it was she who, being a woman and old, must know the hearts of women, first gave to Limp the idea from which came the thing he did to help him toward Little Toes, the woman he so desired.

I have said there was no smell of fish when I awoke. Great fisherman as Limp was, we had fared without fish, and I had threatened him with my unstrung bow; but he only laughed and cared not, for he knew that I would not strike him. For days he had been absent, and I knew not where he had been; and I did not question him, for that was our way. The hut people, save in light obedience to the head of the clan, were each a law unto himself. It chanced, though, that on this day of which I tell, after I had eaten and again threatened Limp because there was no fish, I went down the river toward a forest near the lake, and, as I neared it, saw Limp walking up and down the shore, and stooping often to pick up something he had found. I ran down to where he was seeking, and caught him by the shoulders, and shook him, and then laughingly he told me what he had been doing.

Ever, Limp said, even when he tried to sleep at night, there was the vision of Little Toes before him—Little Toes, with her necklace of red berries. He had been sad day and night because neither the father nor the mother of Little Toes wanted to give her to such as he, who was lame, and could only fish, and furthermore because another man, whom they favoured, wanted her. Big Bow, the great hunter, was wooing her; and she often smiled upon him.

Big Bow had cast eyes on Little Toes, whose father and mother were old and lazy, and thought he could buy her by gifts of meat and skins, as well he might; but the goodwill of Little Toes herself must be considered, for we did not seize upon the women we bought, as was once the custom, and for Little Toes there were other suitors. Limp, it must be admitted, was not very fine to look upon. He could talk better than Big Bow, and women like one who can talk; but he could not bring many skins or much meat, though of fish he brought abundance. But people cannot live on fish alone. It seemed that Limp had little chance, and I, his friend, was sorry for him; but I had not fully considered his shrewdness and his ways.

Ever the young girls sought to bedeck themselves, that they might be fair to look upon, and sometimes they would string red berries upon grass, and hang the loop about the neck, and it was a pretty thing to see. It could last but for a little time, but, while it lasted, it was glittering; and ever Little Toes wore such a necklace and much she grieved that the beautiful thing would wither so soon into hardness and dullness, and of all this Limp knew well. So it came that he conceived a thing that was wondrous. He told me of what he had done. He was walking beside the lake one day, black of mood, thinking of Big Bow, and of how hard his chances were of getting the woman who seemed so fair to him. It was as he walked thus—as he told me—that his eyes rested, at first unseeing, on the shore’s margin, where the creek tumbled into the lake, and where there was a blaze of colouring as the sun shone on the tossed-up shells of white and of a glittering pink of which the lake had many. Somehow they made him think more than ever, if that were possible, of the red berries around the throat of Little Toes. Much he thought, he told me, until, suddenly, he knew what it was that made him see Little Toes with her necklace. The white shells were like her white skin, and the pink shells were like the berries. Then came to him a great idea. He ran up and down the shore, gathering the pink shells and the white ones, and filled his wolfskin pouch with them, and then ran to his cave, and stayed within it long. So it was that for many days I had seen so little of him, and had wondered what he might be doing thus alone.

In a hidden place among the rocks near the lake he was at work with bits of sandstone and his drill of the hardest flint, working more eagerly than ever he had worked on spear or arrow-head, and wonderful things began to show in his strong hands as he so laboured. He was most patient, as surely he had need to be. He bored each white shell and each one of the bright pink until there were many of them thus pierced, and then he rounded and polished them until they glittered wondrously when he brought them to the light. He marvelled at them himself. They were wonderful beads. He took a long tendon from the leg of a great elk which we had killed, such tendon as we used for a bowstring, and which would last a lifetime, and upon this he strung the beads, first a pink one and then a white one, and so on to the end. He knotted the ends of the tendon together, in a knot that could not be untied, and then held up before his eyes something which no one had ever seen before—the most glorious shining thing that men had ever known. It was the first necklace that would not shrink and wither. All this Limp told me, and showed me what he had made. It was marvellous. And, after this, the days passed, and he still laboured on the bauble. But no longer did I reproach him about the fish. My heart was with him, my lame companion.