The wonder stick

by Stanton A. Coblentz

With spylike caution, he stole over to the prostrate figure, and prodded it with the tip of an arrow. Still Grumgra did not stir. Nor did he make response when Wuff, waxing bold again, came sniffing near with low, contented growls. A slow stream of blood was trickling from beneath his outstretched body—but there was no sign of life.

"He is dead!" Yonyo repeated after Ru, in incredulous tones. And, like one walking in a dream, she slipped across the cave to the smitten chieftain, stood hesitating an instant, then reached down her hand, and timidly touched the shaggy form.

As she did so, a piercing scream burst from her lips. "He is dead, dead!" she cried, as though the knowledge had now come to her for the first time. "Grumgra is dead! The Growling Wolf is dead!"

Then something like an hysterical sobbing racked her frame. "The Growling Wolf is dead, is dead!" she kept repeating, in tones of passionate relief, as if only repetition could lend truth to the incredible words. "Ru has killed the Growling Wolf!"

And, like one in need of every assurance her senses could give her, she reached down once more to touch the lifeless shape. Newly convinced, she seemed filled with a sudden fresh energy. Before Ru could stop her or even understand what she was about, she had gone dashing around the turn in the gallery and through the dark passageway toward the cave entrance.

"My people! My people!" her maddened voice shrilled. "Ru has killed Grumgra! Ru has killed Grumgra!" And again and again her words rang out, fainter and fainter as she recklessly retreated; again and again, and fainter and fainter still, until the cries came back thin and eery amid a chorus of echoes: "Ru has killed Grumgra! He has killed the Growling Wolf, has killed the Growling Wolf!"

After the sound of her calling had died away, Ru stood regarding the corpse of his foe with the startled air of one who has just seen a tree blasted by lightning. "I do not know how I did it. I do not know how," he kept muttering to himself. Reaching down and prodding the body of the fallen leader, he mumbled over and over again: "He is dead! He is dead! He will never strike me now! He will never take Yonyo!"

Then, as by degrees his bewilderment cleared away, there rose in his heart a great joy, a pride in what he had done, mingled with a contempt for the stricken man.

"Grumgra, you were not so strong, after all!" he murmured. "You were not so strong, O Growling Wolf!"

To lend his words emphasis, he picked up Grumgra's club, and violently pounded the unresponsive mass of flesh and bones that had been the chieftain.