The wonder stick

by Stanton A. Coblentz

"Ru, what evil spirit has entered you?" she cried, in alarm.

But her words seemed only to provide the spur he required. With an inchoate growl, he strode suddenly forward; and his club, clenched more tightly than ever, was uplifted as if to strike.

Yonyo screamed, and darted away. Too often had she seen women struck—too often not to believe Ru in earnest. Without even a backward glance to see if she were pursued, she raced all the way back to her tribespeople.

With a black scowl, Ru stood staring after her. He did not know whether he would actually have hit her; he only knew that a blow would have been small repayment for all she had made him suffer. And, strange to say, a feeling of self-satisfaction, almost of exultation, came over him as he watched her flee; he felt strong with a strength he had never known before; he was almost ready to swagger with triumph, for now at last he, the Sparrow-Hearted, was acting as a man should act!

It did not even occur to him to wonder whether, by his wrath, he might not have alienated Yonyo altogether. At the moment, he did not care. Moreover, had he not often watched beaten women come cringing back to their men?

But before the issue between him and the Smiling-Eyed could be decided, he was confronted with a second result of Kimo's unhappy experiment.

On the evening of the following day, Ru was surprised to find himself again the center of attraction before the tribal camp-fire. It was a time of general complaining and gloom, for another hunt had just been held in order to replenish the tribe's dwindling larder; and the hunters had suffered more heavily than the hunted, for while one small deer had been brought down, two of the men had succumbed before the charge of an infuriated woolly rhinoceros.

Among the women there were lamentations, and among the children cries of hunger, as the tribe engaged in its meager repast of roots and berries seasoned with just a sprinkling of meat. The only exception occurred in the case of Grumgra, who feasted abundantly on the day's catch of venison.

But Grumgra's right to a major part of the supplies was taken as a part of the necessary order of things, and occasioned no comment; and it had nothing to do with the cries of discontent that shrilled from all sides, "What are we to do? What is to become of us, what is to become of us?" mourned some of the more dismal-minded folk; and many were the complaints that they had left the safety of their cave behind them, and many the prayers to the fire-god, the wind-god, and the gods of the woods and waters.

Seldom had Ru seen his people in so despondent a mood. Here, sprawled in the long grass before the fire, a three-year-old was wailing, or a scrawny infant screaming for food its mother could not give it; yonder an old man mumbled and muttered about the plenty he had known in the old days; a little farther on, a haggard group sat chattering, with occasional groans and sighs audible to the entire assemblage; and now and then, from any corner of the encampment, there would come a series of growls and frightful snarls, when some man would snatch at a bone being chewed by his neighbor, and the two would fight like famished dogs. But no one paid any heed to such scuffles, nor to the lamentations of his neighbors; and the firelight, leaping and wavering like some menacing giant, illuminated only sullen apelike faces, and heavy brows contorted in dreary scowls, and lips that grumbled, and eyes that spoke in silent complaint.