Two young wolf cubs had been captured by boys of the tribe, and brought into camp, and allowed to live; and, when they became grown, were not savage, like other wolves, but remained about, and were fed, and would sometimes prove obedient to what was told them. Once or twice they had even aided in the hunt, by pulling down some wounded animal, and so had earned their feed. It seemed now that they had followed me to the hunt, though I did not want them and had driven them back, and now I rose to my feet to see what it was that had been the occasion of their clamour. They were leaping frantically about a huge aurochs bull which had wandered from the wide forest glades where the aurochs were in greatest numbers, and now was feeding quietly upon the occasional sweet grass tufts about the thickets. To the two wolf dogs he paid little attention, save once in a while to shake his thick short horns, and make a little rush at them. A great pack of wolves would be required to pull down the mighty aurochs.
I could but look idly upon the useless onslaught. Were I very close to the bull I might drive a shaft to his heart, and so get a great prize. We had done this sometimes, hiding in little trees; but I knew, were I to show myself, that the beast would take to flight, and there was no cover by means of which I might creep upon him. I shouted and waved my arms, and aurochs and wolf dogs went careering away together toward the distant forest. Soon the hares came forth from their hiding places, and I shot three of them as they came feeding close to the little height upon which I crouched. Very good eating were the hares, and they were of much value to us at times, being abundant when greater game was scarce.
As I took my way back to the huts in the gorge, the two dogs, tired of the useless and hopeless chase, came back, and followed close behind me. It was curious. Never before had any wild beast become a friend of man, all either fleeing before him or seeking to devour him. Much I wondered if any other than these would be tamed, and become, it might be, of use to us. Often had I talked of this to Old Bear, who lived in a cave near my hut in the ravine, and who was the father of Dark Eyes, she who should have one of the hares I had killed. Often had I brought game to Old Bear and his wife and Dark Eyes. She was good to look upon. Her slender arms were round, and her lips were like the red berries. Likewise she was changeful of mood, and showed her teeth sometimes, as, when other beasts come near, does the she panther lying with her cubs at the mouth of her den in the rocks. And beyond the cave of Bear was that of the family of Black Bow, with whom I sometimes hunted and with whom was little Humpback, the slave girl we captured in a battle with a tribe far to the north, whose lands we had invaded in the hunting. We lost good men in that fight, and got many hurts; but at last we drove the others back for a time, and so escaped, bringing with us the girl Humpback, whom we caught in a tree she had climbed. She was older than the children of Black Bow and Loon, his wife, and cared for them, and hunted for nuts and roots, and cooked the fish and meat, though she was but small and bent, because of the hump upon her back. Likewise she was deft with the bone needles and threads of sinews, and made the skin coats and leggins worn by those with whom she lived. Once she made a coat for me from the skins of wolves I had killed, and it was a good coat. Often I brought meat to the cave of Black Bow; for I, who lived alone, often killed more than I could eat, or sell to the old bow and arrow-maker or to the fisherman. Many were the skins in my hut of poles and thatched leaves which leaned against the rock, and soft was the bed upon which I slept. Long, sometimes, did Dark Eyes look upon me, and I did not like the other look when she saw Humpback eating of the meat I had brought to the cave of Black Bow. Why should her eyes at such times have had such a look? The eyes of Humpback never glittered in such a way, and always she smiled when others ate and patted their stomachs when they were full and sleepy. Wise and swift was Humpback, and her look was always that of the urus cow as she broods above her young calf in the bushes.
I came to the cave of Black Bow, but there was no one within, and none to be seen up or down the rocky glen in which we lived, and which led downward to the river. Between the hills was a little valley down which the creek runs, and in the rocky hill on either side were many caves, while built against the walls were huts of poles like my own. Better were the caves in winter, when the cold was bitter, but in the summer the huts were best to live in. Even in winter they were made warm with many skins hung tent-like about the fire, and none perished from the cold. It was a good place for a camping, though sometimes we might go from there, for we stayed not always in one place, as do some tribes of which I have heard, who plant seeds in the ground, and so fear less the famine; but when the game was hunted out we drifted ever to the southward, to find anew some rocky place beside the water where we might defend ourselves against all things, and have water and the fishing at hand. But here was still game. There were yet the urus and the aurochs and even the little wild horses and wild pigs and many deer and the grouse and ducks and many other birds. I—Scar, the hunter—found meat and skin and fur for my using, and sometimes sharp encounter, for, where the game is, there are the beasts which feed upon them, the great brown bear, and the smaller bear, and the wolf pack, and the leopard and panther and hyena-like thing, and the lurking, silent wolverine, were many in number and ranging far and wide. Once there were huge tigers, and monsters in the river, so the old men told from tales of their grandfathers, and from their further grandfathers away back dimly, but all those more dreadful things were gone. Yet it was by no means wise to hunt carelessly. Not a few of the tribe had gone into the woods or far out upon the plain and never came back, and once I found a gnawed, grinning head of bone which must have been the head of a man. Always upon my hunting, beside my bow, I carried my sharp spear in hand, and my stone axe in my belt, and I liked best to hunt where there were trees which I could climb. Good things are trees.
I turned to walk toward my hut, carrying the hares in my hand, when I heard a shout from the river, and there came to me Black Bow and his wife, he with his weapons, and she carrying a great fish he had speared in the shallows. We had done well. He chopped off a part of the fish, which he gave to me, and took two of the hares, and then I went to my hut, and made a fire, and cooked my meat and fish, and ate, and was most content. And, later, I went out and sat upon a rock with Black Bow, who also had eaten and was content, and we talked there long, the wolf dogs playing about us.
The wolf dogs made me think; and I said, as I had said before to Black Bow, that the dogs were useful, and that we should seek to capture more cubs in the caves, and I asked him if he did not think there were other wild things we could tame and use. But Black Bow only laughed loudly. “What think you,” he said, “of Gnawbones and the leopard?” And he laughed again.
That indeed made me at a loss to answer, for the adventure of the leopard had been a brisk one. Because of the youth Gnawbones there had been a lively half hour in the glen. He was a strange youth, living with his father and mother, old Three Toes and dark old Night, as they called her, in the cave apart from the rest of the tribe in the gorge which leads from the river caves to the forest and plain above. Unlike most of the Cave people were old Three Toes and Night, and some said that they were the children of River people, captured long ago. I do not know. I know only that they lived much on frogs and fish and clams.
But Gnawbones, the youth, was different from his father and mother. He hungered for meat, and was a lonely creature of the woods and hills. He sported little with the Cave youth below, but was ever in the beech woods of the uplands, and the wonder was that the hunting beasts there had not devoured him. But he was keen of sight and quick of ear, and could run swiftly, and climb like the monkey people who live far, very far to the south of us. And he brought alarm to the Cave people, and how it first began he told me after I had beaten him with the handle of my spear.
One day, moons before, when the sun had just begun going down the sky to let the darkness come, he was sleeping soundly in a nest he had made in a crotch of one of the great beech trees, when something, so softly purring that it awakened him but slowly, was pressed against his face. He opened his eyes, and there, snuggling close, was what, to the boy, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was tawny, with dark spots, and had shining eyes and soft paws with which it patted the youth’s face, and then sank down to stillness beside him. Much as he knew of the forest, the boy did not recognize the creature; but it was a very young one of the tree leopard, as it is called, though it cannot climb the small trees, and it was a thing which I avoided when hunting.
The foolish youth could not bear to leave the thing where he found it, and slid down the tree with it at once, none too soon, it may be, for its mother must have left it somewhere in the treetop earlier in the day, and had she come back in time there would have been an end of Gnawbones, and the she leopard would have fed well. But he got away and took to his father and mother the little thing which was so pretty and purring, and, seemingly, so gentle. They told him he might keep it—well for them was it that I, who know wild beasts, heard nothing of the matter!—and so it was kept in the cave, and fed, sometimes on flesh which Gnawbones brought, but mostly upon fish and clams and frogs, which, as I have said, were the chief food of Three Toes and his wife.