Led by Grumgra, who wielded his club imperiously, the people straggled in single file on a little trail made long before by huntsmen along the cañon of the Harr-Sizz River. Like their leader, all the men carried clubs, though Grumgra's was by far the largest; and not a few of the women likewise bore clubs, and moreover swung them in a manner that indicated some proficiency in the art of self-defense. But the women, for the most part, were impeded by the weight of the heavy tools and provisions, which the men had thrust upon them following the descent of the precipice; and these were slung in great masses about their shoulders, exaggerating their natural stoop and making their gait slow and laborious. Only a few of the younger women—such as Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed and Lum the Twittering Bird—were exempted from such duties; and this was because, not being subject as yet to any man, they were not compelled to share any man's exertions.
But in spite of the burdens that weighed them down, most of the people were in a merry mood. Some, in voices deep-toned and rude and yet with the trace of a pleasing rhythm, improvised snatches of song, which their comrades caught up in a riotous chorus; others would go meandering carelessly away from the trail to examine any curious insect, rock, or weed; and a few of the younger tribesmen engaged in uproarious games of hide-and-seek, and even in good-natured but quite energetic scuffles and wrestling bouts.
Meanwhile several men designated by Grumgra went scouting ahead of the party, to both sides of it, and behind it, to discover if there was any sign of dangerous beasts. With a keenness of eyesight rivaled only by the savages of a later day, they would scan the river bank and the underbrush for the footprints of wolf and bear; and with a keenness of scent that their successors might have marveled at and admired, they would occasionally put their nostrils close to earth and sniff appraisingly. Only once—when the alert senses of Mumlo the Trail-Finder told of the recent passage of the woolly rhinoceros—was a word of alarm flashed to the tribe; but the beasts had evidently gone their way in peace, and before many minutes the people had entirely forgotten the danger.
The migration
Mile on mile they plodded, on and on with scarcely a stop, in and out and in and out along the bank of the deviously winding Harr-Sizz River. In places the cliffs shot perpendicularly above them to an unscalable height; in places the hills rolled toward them in a long graceful grade, dark-green with an impenetrable growth of pine or spruce; in places they lost sight of the river and the river bluffs in forcing their way through thorny thickets of the wild rose, or in hewing a path through an enveloping wilderness of creepers and vines. Now and then, through some cleft in the hills, they would catch glimpses of far-flung and majestic panoramas, with chiseled snow-peaks jutting in the distance; and once, when an entire mountain stood unbared at the far end of a long, deep-cloven ravine, they could see that the ranges were more than half cloaked in glittering bands of white.
Yet such spectacles had small effect on the minds of the migrants. All their lives they had known these scenes—and they thought no more about them than about the blue of the skies or the white of foaming waters. Only one of their number—Ru the Sparrow-Hearted—peered at those snowy summits with contemplative eyes; and into the mind of Ru came strange and perplexing thoughts. He wondered whether the spirits worshiped by his tribe were big enough to rule this world of wind and cloud and crag; somehow, in those gigantic slopes and forest-draped solitudes, he felt vaguely the workings of forces vaster than he, and recognized hazily the presence of a Mystery he could never explain, a Glory of which he was part and which enveloped him.
For many minutes he had been walking soberly by himself, not taking notice of his tribesmen that trailed ahead of him and behind, not taking notice even of his own club that dragged in the dust, nor of the gap in his rabbit-skin pouch, through which from time to time some implement would drop noiselessly to the soft grass and be lost. He had forgotten for the time about the migration, forgotten that he was following a perilous trail; into his mind had come faint glimmerings of enigmas that would still be vexing his kind a hundred thousand years to come....