And Ab saw the reason of all this and the hungry, imprisoned men were given the alternative of death or obedient companionship. They did not hesitate long. The warmth of the valley and its other advantages were what they had come for and they had no narrow views outside the food and fuel question. The valley was good. They accepted Ab's authority and came out and fed and, with their wives and children, who were sent for, became of the valley people.
This place of refuge and home and fortress was acquiring an importance.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
OUR VERY GREAT GRANDFATHER.
And the years passed. One still afternoon in autumn a gray, hairy man, a man approaching old age, but without weakness of arm or stiffness of joint, as yet, sat on the height overlooking the village. He looked in tranquil comfort, now down into the little valley, and now across it into the wood beyond, where the sun was approaching the treetops. He had come to the hill with the mere instinct of the old hunter seeking to be completely out of doors, but he had brought work with him and was engaged, when not looking thoughtfully far away, in finishing a huge bow, the spring of which he occasionally tested. Every motion showed the retained possession of tremendous strength as well as the knowledge of its use to most advantage. A very hale old man was Ab, the great hunter and head of the people of the Fire Valley.
A few yards away from Ab, leaning against the trunk of a beech, stood Lightfoot, her quick glance roving from place to place and as keen, seemingly, as ever. These two were still most content when together, and it was well for each that they had in the same degree withstood what the years bring. The woman had, perhaps, changed less than the man. Her hair was still dark and her step had not grown heavy. She had changed in face and expression rather than in form. There had grown in her eyes and about her mouth the indefinable lines and tokens, pathetic and sweet, of care, of sorrow, of suffering and of quiet gladness, in short, of motherhood.
As twilight came on the woods rang with the shouts and laughter of a party of young men who were coming home from some forest trip. Ab, looking down the valley, over the flashing flame, into the forest hills, in whose deep shade lay Little Mok, old Hilltop and Ab's mother, could see the lusty youths in the village, running, leaping, wrestling and throwing spears, axes and stones in competition. A strange oppression came upon him and he thought of Oak lying in the ground alone on the hillside, miles away. Ab felt, even now, the strong, helpful arm of his friend around him, just as it was in the evening journey from the Feast of the Mammoth homeward, when he had been rescued from almost certain death by Oak. A lump rose in the throat of the man of many battles and many trials. He shook himself, as if to shake off the memory that plagued him. Oak came not often to trouble Ab's peace now, and when he came it was always at night. Morning never found him near the Fire Village.
The young hunters, rioting like the young men in the valley, were passing now. Ab looked upon them thoughtfully. He felt dimly a desire to speak to them, to tell them something about the hurts they might avoid, and how hard it was to have a great, heavy load on one's chest at times--all one's life--but the cave man was, as to the emotions, inarticulate. Ab could no more have spoken his half defined feelings than the tree could cry out at the blow of the ax.
The woman left the beech tree and approached the man and touched his arm. His eyes turned upon her kindly and after she had seated herself beside him, there was laughing talk, for Lightfoot was declaring her desperate condition of hunger and demanding that he return to the valley with her. She examined his bow critically and had an opinion to express, for so fine a shot as she might surely talk a little about so manful a thing as the making of the weapon. And as the sun sank lower and the valley fell into shadow, the two descended together, a pair who, after all, had reason to be glad that they had lived.
And the children these two left were bold and strong and dominant by nature, and maintained the family leadership as the village grew. With later generations came trouble vast and dire to the people of the land, but it was not the part of this proud and seasoned and well-weaponed group to flee like wild beasts when came drifting to the Westward the first feeble vanguard of the Aryan overflow. The vanguard was overthrown; its men made serfs and its women mothers. Other cave men in other regions might escape to the Northward as the wave increased, there to become frost-bitten Lapps or the "Skrallings" of the Norsemen, the Eskimo of to-day, but not so the people of the great Fire Valley or their stern and sturdy vassals for half a hundred miles about. No child's play was it for those of another and still rude civilization to meet them in their fastnesses, and the end of the struggle--for this region at least--was, not a conquest, but a blending, a blending good for each of the two forces.