menu_book Chapter 2

CHAPTER IV There is one puzzling thing about these prehistoric memories of mine. It is the vagueness of the time element. I do not always know the order of events, or can I tell between some events whether one, two, or four or five years have elapsed.

I can only roughly tell the passage of time by judging the changes in the appearance of pursuits of my fellows. Also I can apply the logic of events to the various happenings. For instance, there is no doubt whatever that my mother and I were treed by the wild pigs and fled and fell in the days before I made the acquaintance of Lapir, who became what

I may call my boyhood chum, and it is just as conclusive that between these two periods I must have left my mother. I have no memory of my father than the one I have given. Never in the years that followed did he reappear, and from my knowledge of the times the only explanation possible lies in that he perished shortly after the adventure with the wild

pigs. That it must have been an untimely end there is no discussion. He was in full vigor and only sudden and violent death could have taken him off. But I know not the manner of his going, whether he was drowned in the river or was swallowed by a snake or went into the stomach of old sabertooth the tiger is beyond my knowledge.

For know that I remember only the things I saw myself with my own eyes in those prehistoric days. If my mother knew my father's end she never told me. For that matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary adequate to convey such information. Perhaps all told the folk in that day had a vocabulary of thirty or forty sounds.

I call them sounds rather than words because sounds they were primarily. They had no fixed values to be altered by adjectives and adverbs. These latter were tools of speech not yet invented. Instead of qualifying nouns and verbs by the use of adjectives and adverbs we qualified sounds by intonation, by changes in quantity and pitch, by retarding and by accelerating.

The length of time employed in the utterance of a particular sound shaded its meaning. We had no conjugation. One judged the tense by the context. We talked only concrete things because we thought only concrete things. Also we depended largely on pattern-mine.

The simplest abstraction was practically beyond our thinking. And when one did happen to think one he was hard put to communicate it to his fellows. There were no sounds for it. He was pressing beyond the limits of his vocabulary. If he invented sounds for it his fellows did not understand the sounds.

Then it was that he fell back on pattern-mine, illustrating the thought wherever possible, and at the same time repeating the new sound over and over again. Thus language grew. By the few sounds we possessed we were unable to think a short distance beyond those sounds. Then came the need for new sounds wherewith to express the new thought.

Sometimes, however, we thought too long a distance in advance of our sounds and managed to achieve abstractions, dim ones I grant, which we failed utterly to make known to other folk. After all, language did not grow fast in that day. Oh, believe me, we were amazingly simple.

But we did know a lot that is not known to-day. We could twitch our ears, prick them up, and flatten them down at will. And we could scratch between our shoulders with ease. We could throw stones with our feet. I have done it many a time.

And for that matter I could keep my knees straight, bend forward from the hips, and touch not the tips of my fingers but the points of my elbows to the ground. And as for bird-nesting, well, I only wish the twentieth-century boy could see us. But we made no collections of eggs. We ate them.

I remember, but I outrun my story. First let me tell you of Lapierre and of our friendship. Very early in life I separated from my mother. Possibly this was because after the death of my father she took to herself a second husband.

I have few recollections of him and they are not of the best. He was a light fellow. There was no solidity to him. He was too voluble. His infernal chattering worries me even now as I think of it.

His mind was too inconsequential to permit him to possess purpose. Monkeys in their cages always remind me of him. He was monkeyish. That is the best description I can give of him. He hated me from the first, and I quickly learned to be afraid of him and his malicious

pranks. Whenever he came in sight I crept close to my mother and clung to her. But I was growing older all the time, and it was inevitable that I should from time to time stray from her and stray farther and farther. And these were the opportunities that the chatterer waited for.

I may as well explain that we bore no names in those days, were not known by any name. For the sake of convenience I have myself given names to the various folk I was more closely in contact with, and the chatterer is the most fitting description I can find for that precious stepfather of mine. As for me, I have named myself Big Tooth.

My eye-teeth were pronouncedly large. But to return to the chatterer, he persistently terrorized me. He was always pinching me and cuffing me, and on occasion he was not above biting me. But my mother interfered, and the way she made his fur fly was a joy to see. But the result of all this was a beautiful and unending family quarrel in which I was

the bone of contention. No, my home life was not happy. I smiled to myself as I write the phrase, Home Life, Home. I had no home in the modern sense of the term. My home was an association, not a habitation.

I lived in my mother's care, not in a house. And my mother lived anywhere, so long as when night came she was above the ground. My mother was old-fashioned. She still clung to her trees. It is true the more progressive members of our horde lived in the caves above the river.

But my mother was suspicious and unprogressive. The trees were good enough for her. Of course we had one particular tree in which we usually roosted, though we often roosted in other trees when nightfall caught us. In a convenient fort was a sort of rude platform of twigs and branches and creeping things.

It was more like a huge bird's nest than anything else, though it was a thousand times cruder in the weaving than any bird nest. But it had one feature that I had never seen attached to any bird's nest, namely a roof. Oh, not a roof such as modern man makes, nor a roof such as is made by the lowest Aborigines of today.

The tree was infinitely more clumsy than the clumsiest handiwork of man as we know him. It was put together in a casual helder-skelder sort of way. Above the fork of the tree whereon we rested was a pile of dead branches and brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridge-poles. These were merely stout sticks an inch or so in diameter.

On them rested the brush and branches. The tree seemed to have been tossed on almost aimlessly. There was no attempt at thatching. And I must confess that the roof leaked miserably in a heavy rain. But, but, the chatterer!

He made home life a burden for both my mother and me, and by home life I mean not the leaky nest in the tree, but the group life of the three of us. He was most malicious in his persecution of me. He had one purpose to which he held steadfastly for longer than five minutes. Also as time went by my mother was less eager in her defensive need.

I think one of the continuous rows raised by the chatterer that I must have become a nuisance to her. At any rate the situation went from bad to worse so rapidly that I should soon of my own volition have left home. But the satisfaction of performing so independent an act was denied me.

Before I was ready to go I was thrown out, and I mean this literally. The opportunity came to the chatterer one day when I was alone in a nest. My mother and the chatterer had gone away together toward the blueberry swamp. He must have planned the whole thing, for I heard him returning alone through the forest, roaring with self-induced rage as he came.

Like all the men of our Ford, when they were angry or were trying to make themselves angry, he stopped now and again to hammer on his chest with his fists. I realized the helplessness of my situation and crouched trembling in the nest. The chatterer came directly to the tree, I remember it was an oak tree, and began to climb up, and he never ceased for a moment from his infernal rowl.

As I have said our language was extremely meager, and he must have strained it by the variety of ways in which he formed me of his undying hatred of me and of his intention there and then to have it out with me. As he climbed to the fork I fled out to the greatest horizontal limb. He followed me and out I went farther and farther.

At last I was out amongst the small twigs and leaves. The chatterer was ever a coward, and greater always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution. He was afraid to follow me out amongst the leaves and twigs. For that matter his greater weight would have crashed him through the foliage before he

could have got to me, but it was not necessary for him to reach me and well he knew at the scoundrel. With a malevolent expression on his face, his beady eyes gleaning with cruel intelligence, he began teetering. Teetering and with me out on the very edge of the bow, clutching at the twigs that broke

continually with my weight. Twenty feet beneath me was the earth. Wildly and more wildly he teetered, grinning at me his gloating hatred. Then came the end. All four holes broke at the same time, and I fell back downward looking up at him, my

hands and feet still clutching the broken twigs. Luckily there were no wild pigs underneath me, and my fall was broken by the tough and springy bushes. Usually my falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shock being sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in an instant, and hurl me wide awake into my little bed where perchance I

lie sweating and trembling and hear the cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall. But this dream of my leaving home I have had many times and never yet have I been awakened by it. Always do I crash shrieking down through the brush and fetch up with the bump of the ground. Scratched and bruised and whimpering I lay where I had fallen.

Peering up through the bushes I could see the chatterer. He had set up a demoniacal chat of joy and was keeping time to it with his teetering. I quickly hushed my whimpering. I was no longer in the safety of the trees, and I knew the danger I ran of bringing upon myself the hunting animals by too audible an expression of my grief.

I remember as my sobs died down that I became interested in watching the strange light effects produced by partially opening and closing my tear-wet eyelids. Then I began to investigate and found that I was not so very badly damaged by my fall. I had lost some hair and hide here and there. The sharp and jagged end of a broken branch had thrust fully an inch into my forearm,

and my right hip which had borne the brunt of my contact with the ground was aching intolerably. But these, after all, were only petty hurts. No bones were broken, and in those days the flesh of man had finer healing qualities than it has today. It was a severe fall, for I limped with my injured hip for fully a week afterward.

Next as I lay in the bushes there came upon me a feeling of desolation, a consciousness that I was homeless. I made up my mind never to return to my mother and the chatterer. I would go far away through the terrible forest and find some tree for myself in which to roost.

As for food I knew where to find it. For the last year at least I had not been beholden to my mother for food. All she had furnished me was protection and guidance. I crawled softly out through the bushes. Once I looked back and saw the chatterer still chanting and teetering.

It was not a pleasant sight. I knew pretty well how to be cautious, and I was exceedingly careful on this my first journey in the world. I gave no thought as to where I was going. I had but one purpose, and that was to go away beyond the reach of the chatterer.

I climbed into the trees and wandered on amongst them for hours, passing from tree to tree and never touching the ground. But I did not go in any particular direction, nor did I travel steadily. It was my nature as it was the nature of all my folk to be inconsequential. Besides, I was a mere child, and I stopped a great deal to play by the way.

The events that befell me on my leaving home are very vague in my mind. My dreams do not cover them. Much has my other self forgotten, and particularly at this very period. Nor have I been able to frame up the various dreams so as to bridge the gap between my leaving the home tree and my arrival at the caves.

I remember that several times I came to open spaces. These I crossed in great trepidation, descending to the ground and running at the top of my speed. I remember that there were days of rain and days of sunshine, so that I must have wandered alone for quite a time.

I especially dream of my misery in the rain and of my sufferings from hunger and how I appeased it. One very strong impression is of hunting little lizards on the rocky top of an open knoll. They ran under the rocks and most of them escaped, but occasionally I turned over a stone and caught one.

I was frightened away from this knoll by snakes. But they did not pursue me. They were merely basking on flat rocks in the sun. But such was my inherited fear of them that I fled as fast as if they had been after me. Then I gnawed bitter bark from young trees.

I remember vaguely the eating of many green nuts with soft shells and milky kernels, and I remember most distinctly suffering from a stomach ache. It may have been caused by the green nuts, or maybe by the lizards, I do not know. But I do know that I was fortunate in not being devoured during the several hours I was knotted up on the ground with the collet.

End of chapter 4 Chapter 5 My vision of the scene came abruptly as I emerged from the forest. I found myself on the edge of a large clear space. On one side of this space rose up high bluffs.

On the other side was the river. The earth bank ran steeply down to the water. But here and there and several places where at some time slides of earth had occurred there were runways. These were the drinking places of the folk that lived in the caves.

And this was the main abiding place of the folk that I had chanced upon. This was, I may say by stretching the word, the village. My mother and the chatterer and I and a few other simple bodies were what might be termed suburban residents. We were part of the horde, though we lived a distance away from it.

It was only a short distance, though it had taken me one of my wandering all of a week to arrive. Had I come directly I could have covered the trip in an hour. But to return. From the edge of the forest I saw the caves in the bluff, the open space, and the runways

to the drinking places. And in the open space I saw many of the folk. I had been straying alone and a child for a week. During that time I had seen not one of my kind. I had lived in terror and desolation.

And now at the sight of my kind I was overcome with gladness and I ran wildly toward them. Then it was that a strange thing happened. Some one of the folk saw me and uttered a warning cry. On the instant crying out with fear and panic the folk fled away. Leaping and scrambling over the rocks they plunged into the mouths of the caves and disappeared.

All but one, a little baby that had been dropped in the excitement close to the base of the bluff. He was wailing dolefully. His mother dashed out. He sprang to meet her and held on tightly as she scrambled back into the cave.

I was all alone. The populous open space had of a sudden become deserted. I sat down forlornly and whimpered. I could not understand. Why had the folk run away from me?

In later time, when I came to know their ways, I was to learn. When they saw me dashing out of the forest at top speed, they concluded that I was being pursued by some hunting animal. By my unceremonious approach I had stampeded them. As I sat and watched the cave-mouse I became aware that the folk were watching me.

Soon they were thrusting their heads out. A little later they were calling back and forth to one another. In a hurry and confusion it had happened that all had not gained their own caves. Some of the young ones had sought refuge in other caves. The mothers did not call for them by name, because that was an invention we had not yet

made. All were nameless. The mothers uttered querulous, anxious cries, which were recognized by the young ones. Thus had my mother been there calling to me, I should have recognized her voice among the voices of a thousand mothers, and in the same way would she have recognized mine amongst

a thousand. This calling back and forth continued for some time, but they were too cautious to come out of their caves and descend to the ground. Finally one did come. He was destined to play a large part in my life, and for that matter he already played

a large part in the lives of all the members of the Horde. He it was whom I shall call Red Eye in the pages of this history, so called because of his inflamed eyes, the lids being always red, and by their peculiar effect they produced seeming to advertise the terrible savagery of him. The color of his soul was red.

He was a monster in all ways. Physically he was a giant. He must have weighed one hundred and seventy pounds. He was the largest one of our kind I ever saw. Nor did I ever see one of the fire people so large as he, nor one of the tree people.

Sometimes when in the newspapers I happen upon descriptions of our modern bruisers and prize fighters I wonder what chance the best of them would have had against him. I am afraid not much of a chance. With one grip of his iron fingers in a pull he could have plucked a muscle, say a biceps, by the roots clear out of their bodies.

A backhanded loose blow of his fist could have smashed their skulls like eggshells. With a sweep of his wicked feet or hind hands he could have disemboweled them. A twist could have broken their necks, and I know that with the single crunch of his jaws he could have pierced at the same moment the great vein of the throat in front and a spinal marrow at the back.

He could spring twenty feet horizontally from a sitting position. He was abominably hairy. It was a matter of pride with us to be not very hairy. But he was covered with hair all over, on the inside of the arms as well as the outside, and even the ears themselves.

The only places on him where the hair did not grow were the soles of his hands and feet and beneath his eyes. He was frightfully ugly, his ferocious grinning mouth and huge down-hanging under-lip being but in harmony with his terrible eyes. This was Red Eye.

And right gingerly he crept out of his cave and descended to the ground. He was walking me, he proceeded to reconnoitre her. He bent forward from the hips as he walked, and so far forward did he bend and so long were his arms that with every step he touched the knuckles of his hands to the ground on either side of him.

He was awkward in the semi-erect position of walking that he assumed, and he really touched his knuckles to the ground in order to balance himself. But, oh, I tell you, he could run on all fours. This was something at which we were particularly awkward. Furthermore it was a rare individual among us who balanced himself with his knuckles

when walking. Such an individual was an atavism, and Red Eye was an even greater atavism. That is what he was, an atavism. We were in the process of changing our tree-life to life on the ground. For many generations we had been going through this change, and our bodies and carriage had

likewise changed. But Red Eye had reverted to the more primitive tree-dwelling type. Perforce because he was born in our horde he stayed with us, but in actuality he was an atavism and his place was elsewhere. Very circumspect and very alert he moved here and there about the open space peering through

the vistas among the trees and trying to catch a glimpse of the hunting animal that all suspected had pursued me. And while he did this, taking no notice of me, the folk crowded at the cave-mouse and watched. At last he evidently decided that there was no danger lurking about.

He was returning from the head of the last runway from where he had taken a peep down at the drinking-place. His course brought him near, but still he did not notice me. He proceeded casually on his way until abreast of me, and then without warning and with incredible swiftness he smote me above it on the head.

I was knocked backward fully a dozen feet before I fetched up against the ground, and I remember half-stunned even as the blow was struck, hearing the wild uproar of plucking and shrieking laughter that arose from the caves. It was a great joke, at least in that day, and right-heartedly the folk appreciated it. Thus was I received into the horde.

That night I paid no further attention to me, and I was at liberty to whimper and sob to my heart's content. Several of the women gathered curiously about me, and I recognized them. I had encountered them the preceding year when my mother had taken me to the Hazelnut Canyons, but they quickly left me alone, being replaced by a dozen curious and teasing youngsters.

They formed a circle around me, pointing their fingers, making faces, and poking and pinching me. I was frightened, and for a time I endured them. Then anger got the best of me, and I sprang tooth and nail upon the most audacious one of them, none other than Lapierre himself.

I have so named him because he could trick up only one of his ears. The other ear always hung limp and without movement. Some accident had injured the muscles and deprived him of the use of it. He closed with me, and we went at it for all the world like a couple of small boys fighting. We scratched and bit, pulled hair, clinched, and threw each other down.

I remember I succeeded in getting on him what in my college days I'd learned was called a half-Nelson. This hold gave me the decided advantage, but I did not enjoy it long. He twisted up one leg and with the foot or hind-hand made so savage an onslaught upon my abdomen as to threaten to disembowel me.

I had to release him in order to save myself, and then we went at it again. Lapierre was a year older than I, but I was several times angrier than he, and in the end he took to his heels. I chased him across the open and down the runway to the water, but he was better acquainted with the locality and ran along the edge of the water and up another runway.

He cut diagonally across the open space and dashed into a wide-mouthed cave. Before I knew it I had plunged after him into the darkness. The next moment I was badly frightened. I had never been in a cave before. I began to whimper and cry out.

Lapierre chattered mockingly at me, and, springing upon me unseen, tumbled me over. He did not risk a second encounter, however, and took himself off. I was between him and the entrance, and he did not pass me, yet he seemed to have gone away. I listened but could get no clue as to where he was.

This puzzled me, and when I regained the outside I sat down to watch. He never came out of the entrance, of that I was certain, yet at the end of several minutes he chuckled at my elbow. Again I ran after him, and again he ran into the cave, but this time I stopped at the mouth. I dropped back a short distance and watched.

He did not come out, yet as before he chuckled at my elbow and was chased by me a third time into the cave. This performance was repeated several times. Then I followed him into the cave where I searched vainly for him. I was curious.

I could not understand how he eluded me. Always he went into the cave, never did he come out of it, yet always did he arrive there at my elbow and mock me. Thus did our fight transform itself into a game of hide-and-seek. All afternoon, with occasional intervals, we kept it up, and a playful friendly spirit

arose between us. Again he did not run away from me, and we sat together with our arms around each other. A little later he disclosed the mystery of the wide-mouthed cave, holding me by the hand he led me inside. It was connected by a narrow crevice with another cave, and it was through this that

we regained the open air. We were now good friends. When the other young ones gathered around to tease, he joined with me in attacking them, and so viciously did we behave that before long I was let alone. Lopir made me acquainted with the village.

There was little that he could tell me of conditions and customs, he had not the necessary vocabulary, but by observing his actions I learned much, and also he showed me places and things. He took me up the open space between the caves in the river and into the forest beyond, where in a grassy place among the trees we made a meal of stringy rooted carrots.

After that we had a good drink at the river and started up the runway to the caves. It was in the runway that we came upon Red Eye again. The first I knew Lopir had shrunk away to one side and was crouching low against the bank. Naturally and involuntarily I imitated him.

Then it was that I looked to see the cause of his fear. It was Red Eye swaggering down the center of the runway and scowling fiercely with his inflamed eyes. I noticed that all the youngsters shrank away from him as we had done, while the grown-ups regarded him with wary eyes when he drew near and stepped aside to give him the center of

the path. As twilight came on the open space was deserted. The folk were seeking the safety of the caves. Lopir led the way to bed. High up the bluff we climbed, higher than all the other caves, to a tiny crevice that

could not be seen from the ground. Into this Lopir squeezed. I followed with difficulty, so narrow as the entrance, and found myself in a small rock chamber. It was very low, not more than a couple of feet in height, and possibly three feet by

four in width and length. Here cuddled together in each other's arms we slept out the night. Tom Weiss, Tom's Audio Books.com