“There is none like Feather,” he said to me. “Her neck wrinkles are fairer than the beads of the girls.”
And all the tribe wondered and admired, and much desired such store of seed as was in the hut of old Ox and Feather. And others would do as she had done; and that year they garnered many seeds, and stored them, and when the spring came again they cleared a field on the plain close to the hillside and near the village, and made a high fence of brush about it to keep out the wild beasts at night, and there planted the seed. The grain grew and ripened, and the children guarded the field to keep away the flocks of hungry birds; and with the autumn came such store of seeds as the tribe never had owned before. The winter might be cold, and the snow lie deep, and the hunting be bad, but there would in time be no starving in the huts, for with each year the field was made larger, and the crop the greater. But old Feather joined not with the others. She but worked in her own little field, and pondered much and planted carefully.
And old Ox became very feeble and died, and we carried him into the hills, and heaped many stones upon him, that the prowling beasts might not reach him, and promised Feather that some day we would lay her beside him, for so she asked us. Feather then lived alone beside her little field; but an abundance she had brought to her of fish and game, because of what she had done for all of us, and because she had such an abundance of good grain to furnish for the seeding.
There was a great marsh perhaps two leagues away from where we lived, beside the river which ran beside the cliffs, and this opened on a great creek which ran into our river after it had reached the plain. In the midst of the marsh was an island with not many trees but much shrubbery upon it, and all sorts of plants and grasses. Once old Feather had gone to the island in the later autumn, when the marsh was frozen over, for it was dangerous and avoided by all at other times, and there had found, not only much millet and barley, but another seed which grew a little like the barley, but with shorter husks and prickles to it, and another kind of seed. She had gathered but little of this seed; but it had proved most toothsome and best of all seeds to eat. The wheat, she called it. Much she longed for this seed, that she might plant it in her field, and raise plants of this kind, but she was too old and tired for such a journey now, and so I, who cared for the old couple who had done so much for the clan, made promise that some day I would get it for her. And this word I did not forget.
There came a day, when it was early autumn still, that I had great good fortune in the hunt soon after the sun had risen. There was a fog upon the plain where the deer and the urus and other wild things of the grass eaters fed, and no wind to carry my scent; and before daylight I crept far out on the wild meadow, for well I knew the way, even in darkness, and hid myself in a little clump of bushes near the forest. I carried my strongest bow and the sharpest and best of my flint arrows. So I lay hidden and silent, and soon I could hear, very close beside me, the sound of moving, feeding things. And slowly, very slowly, the fog thinned, and more light came.
Not ten yards from me—so close that it seemed impossible he could not have felt me near, nor caught my scent, broad side toward me—fed a great stag leading his does. Already, before the fog lessened, I had prepared myself—one knee on the ground, and arrow notched for whatever hap might come with the light. Never was afforded fairer mark so close. I held my aim upon where the heart of the stag should be, and drew with all my strength until the great bow groaned, and the head of the arrow was beside my hand, and then I released it—I, the strongest of bowmen. With the loud twang there came a great snorting, and the does were gone. Not so the huge stag. He leaped far aloft, and gave a mighty bleat, and rolled to earth, thrashing about in his death agony. I had driven the arrow through his heart, and so mightily that the arrow-head stuck out on the farther side!
I ran to the village, and called aloud to the men, and we brought the stag slung beneath a great pole borne on the shoulders of half a dozen of us at either end. A great feast of venison had the whole clan that morning. Much I ate, and then I slept a little; but the sun was not yet at its highest when I awoke refreshed and strong, and full of vauntingness. I said to myself, “I will do yet another thing this day. I will go to the great marsh, and get for old Feather the strange new seed she wants.” So I said to old Feather, and I spoke vauntingly:
“Already to-day have I killed a great stag, and we have much meat. More yet will I do before the darkness comes. I will go to the island in the marsh and gather for you as nearly a bagful as I can of the new kind of seeds that you need, and will bring the bag to you, that you may keep the seeds for the spring planting.”
And I threw out my breast.
But Feather cried out that I should not go. Very treacherous was the marsh, she said, and its sand and its black slime had sucked down to death many beasts which ventured into it. I must wait until the winter came, and the marsh was frozen, so that a man might walk upon it safely. True, there might not be any of the seeds left, for the birds would have taken most of them, but with the few she had she could raise a little crop, and the next year there would be an abundance for the planting. But I only laughed at her. I, Scar, was vain, and thought it an easy thing for me to do.