A tiny rill of cold water trickled down on one side of the outer door of their cave. With this their thirst was slaked, and they ate and ate. The shadows lengthened and Ab replenished again and again the fire. From the semicircle of forest all about came the sound of footsteps rustling in the leaves. But the two people inside the fire fence, hungry no longer, were content. Ab talked to his wife:
"The fire will keep the man-eating things away," he said. "I ran not long ago with things behind me, and I would have been eaten had I not come upon a ring of fire like the one we have made. I leaped it and the eaters could not reach me. But, for the fire I leaped there was no wood. It came out of a crack in the ground. Some day we will go there and I will show you that thing which is so strange."
The woman listened, delighted, but, at last, there was a nodding of the head. She lay back upon the grass a sleepy being. Ab looked at her and thought deeply. Where was safety? As they were, one of them must be awake all the time to keep the fire replenished. Until he could enter the cave again he must be weaponless. Only the fire could protect the two. They had heat and food and nothing to fear for the moment, but they must fairly eat their way into a safety which would be permanent!
He kept the fire alight far into the darkness, and then, piling the fuel high all along the line of defense, he aroused the sleeping woman and told her she must keep the flames bright while he slept in his turn. She was just the wife for such an emergency as this, and rose uncomplainingly to do her part of the guarding work. From the forest all about came snarling sounds or threatening growls, and eyes blazed in the somber depths beneath the trees. There were hungry things out there and they wanted to eat a man and woman, but fire they feared. The woman was not afraid.
After hours had passed the man awoke and took the woman's place and she slept in his stead. Morning came and the sounds from the forest died away partly, but the man and woman knew of the fierce creatures still lurking there. They knew what was before them. They must delve and eat their way into the cave as soon as possible.
Ab scraped at the bear's huge body with his inefficient bit of flint and dug away food in abundance, which he heaped up in a little red mound inside the fire, but the bear was a monstrous beast and it was a long way from tail to head. The days of the honeymoon passed with a degree of travail, for there was no moment when one of the two must not be awake feeding the guarding fire or digging at the bear. They ate still heartily on the second day but it is simple, truthful history to admit that on the sixth day bear's meat palled somewhat on the happy couple. To have eaten thirty quails in thirty days or, at a pinch, thirty quails in two days would have been nothing to either of them, but bear's meat eaten as part of what might be called a tunneling exploit ceased, finally, to possess an attractive flavor. There was a degree of shade cast by all these obtrusive circumstances across this honeymoon, but there came a day and hour when the bear was largely eaten, and fairly dug away as to much of the rest of him, and then, quite suddenly, his head and fore-quarters toppled forward into the cave, leaving the passage free, and when Ab and Lightfoot followed, one shouting and the other laughing, one coming again to his fortress and his weapons and his power, and the other to her hearth and duties.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
THE FIRE COUNTRY AGAIN.
The sun rose brightly the next morning and when Ab, armed and watchful, rolled the big stone away and passed the smoldering fire and issued from the cave into the open, the scene he looked upon was fair in every way. Of what had been left of the great bear not a trace remained. Even the bones had been dragged into the forest by the ravening creatures who had fed there during the night. There were birds singing and there were no enemies in sight. Ab called to Lightfoot and the two went forth together, loving and brave, but no longer careless in that too interesting region.
And so began the home life of these two people. It was, in its way and relatively, as sweet and delicious as the first home life of any loving and appreciating man and woman of to-day. The two were very close, as the conditions under which they lived demanded. They were the only human beings within a radius of miles. The family of the cave man of the time was serenely independent, each having its own territory, and depending upon itself for its existence. And the two troubled themselves about nothing. Who better than they could daily win the means of animal subsistence?