"It may be there is something to your plaything," he said to the young man. "We will make a better one. But your shaft is good for nothing. We will make a straighter and stronger one and upon the end of it will put a little spearhead, and then we can tell how deeply it will go into the wood. We will work."
For days the two labored earnestly together, and when they came again into the open they bore a stronger bow, one tapered at the end opposite the natural tapering of the branch, so that it was far more flexible and symmetrical than the one they had tried before. They had abundance of ash and yew and these remained the good bow wood of all the time of archery. And the shaft was straight and bore a miniature spearhead at its end. The thought of notching the shaft to fit the string came naturally and inevitably. The bow had its first arrow.
An old man is not so easily affected as a young one, nor so hopeful, but when the second test was done the veteran Mok was the wilder and more delighted of the two who shot at the tree in the forest glade. He saw it all! No longer could the spear be counted as the thing with which to do most grievous hurt at a safe distance from whatever might be dangerous. With the better bow and straighter shaft the marksmanship improved; even for these two callow archers it was not difficult to hit at a distance of a double spear's cast the bole of the huge tree, two yards in width at least. And the arrow whistled as if it were a living thing, a hawk seeking its prey, and the flint head was buried so deeply in the wood that both Mok and Ab knew that they had found something better than any weapon the cave men had ever known!
There followed many days more of the eager working of the old man and the young one in the cave, and there was much testing of the new device, and finally, one morning, Ab issued forth armed with his ax and knife, but without his spear. He bore, instead, a bow which was the best and strongest the two had yet learned to fashion, and a sheaf of arrows slung behind his back in a quiver made of a hollow section of a mammoth's leg bone which had long been kicked about the cave. The two workers had drilled holes in the bone and passed thongs through and made a wooden bottom to the thing and now it had found its purpose. The bow was rude, as were the arrows, and the archer was not yet a certain marksman, though he had practiced diligently, but the bow was stiff, at least, and the arrows had keen heads of flint and the arms of the hunter were strong as was the bow.
There was a weary and fruitless search for game, but late in the afternoon the youth came upon a slight, sheer descent, along the foot of which ran a shallow but broad creek, beyond which was a little grass-grown valley, where were feeding a fine herd of the little deer. They were feeding in the direction of the creek and the wind blew from them to the hunter, so that no rumor of their danger was carried to them on the breeze. Ab concealed himself among the bushes on the little height and awaited what might happen. The herd fed slowly toward him.
As the deer neared the creek they grouped themselves together about where were the greenest and richest feeding-places, and when they reached the very border of the stream they were gathered in a bunch of half a hundred, close together. They were just beyond a spear's cast from the watcher, but this was a test, not of the spear, but of the bow, and the most inexperienced of archers, shooting from where Ab was hidden, must strike some one of the beasts in that broad herd. Ab sprang to his feet and drew his arrow to the head. The deer gathered for a second in affright, crowding each other before the wild bursting away together, and then the bow-string twanged, and the arrow sang hungrily, and there was the swift thud of hundreds of light feet, and the little glade was almost silent. It was not quite silent, for, floundering in its death struggles, was a single deer, through which had passed an arrow so fiercely driven that its flint head projected from the side opposite that which it had entered.
Half wild with triumph was the youth who bore home the arrow-stricken quarry, and not much more elated was he than the old man, who heard the story of the hunt, and who recognized, at once far more clearly than the younger one, the quality of the new weapon which had been discovered; the thing destined to become the greatest implement both of chase and warfare for thousands of years to come, and which was to be gradually improved, even by these two, until it became more to them than they could yet understand.
But the lips of each of the two makers of the bow were sealed for the time. Ab and Old Mok cherished together their mighty secret.