In the Morning of Time Part 4

III

For three weeks Grom and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging north to avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy sh.o.r.es were trodden by monsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, no matter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be, they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerous and so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate the strange human trail.

Had Grom been alone he would soon have been worn out for want of sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed utterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. He had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this sweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.

Beyond the lake and the mora.s.ses they came to a strange, broken land, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life, but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizon ran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged against the pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murky vapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others, spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shape of a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. It filled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoid this unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grom was filled with interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside her fears and a.s.sumed a like eagerness on the subject.

In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty and spreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forest growth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled past their roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemed to offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with the delicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herself up lightly into the branches. Grom lingered a few moments below, letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls.

Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep.

While he was in this helpless position--his sleepless vigilance for the moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic, s.h.a.ggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awful swiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, from her perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grom bounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a gray bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost upon him, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. A spear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the side of the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar, the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grom swung himself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.

The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk and began to draw himself up. Grom struck at him with his club, but from his difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bear hardly seemed to notice it.

"We must lead him up, then drop down and run," said Grom. And the two mounted nimbly.

The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously beneath his weight. Then Grom and the girl slipped over into the next tree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, and apparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd, implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.

Grom looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had never known before.

"Can you run, very fast?" he demanded.

The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at having once more saved him.

"I ran from the wolves," she reminded him.

"Then we must run, perhaps very far," answered Grom, rea.s.sured, "till we find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope.

For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuing us. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climb trees."

When both bears were high in the two trees, Grom and the girl slipped down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as falling. They s.n.a.t.c.hed up Grom's two spears and A-ya's broken one, and ran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. The bears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific, ponderous gallop.

The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grom who was famous in the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pace in her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on their pursuers, Grom bade her slow down a little till they did no more than hold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran always a pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and her breath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge.

Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For he knew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his last fight over her body.

For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signs of distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from her open lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fear at his heart, Grom closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on his rigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to a spur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valley cleaving them midway.

"There will be ledges," he said, "where we can defend ourselves, and where you can rest."

Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with ma.s.sive cane and thorned creepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon a s.p.a.ce of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening of the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and bowing as if in some enchanted dance.

Grom's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second he paused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her knees gave way beneath her. As she sank, Grom's spirit rose to the emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.

"If they are G.o.ds, those bright, dancing things," said Grom, with a confidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they are devils, I will fight them."

A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, an opening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of this opening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. The runners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.

It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed her utterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fell in a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her up into his arms, but as he did so he looked back.

The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they had stopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous forms from side to side in angry irresolution.

"They fear the bright, dancing things," said Grom to himself; and added, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear."

Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, here parched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carried his burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, and laid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what the bears were going to do.

Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, the two monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought they would dare the pa.s.sage of the barrier, but he was rea.s.sured to see that the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared not come nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if the same notion had struck them both at once, they whirled about simultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, and disappeared.

Grom knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind to think that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for the present, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, was sitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turned all his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes to which they owed their escape.

With an att.i.tude of deference, yet carrying both club and spear in readiness, he slowly approached the barrier, at the point where the flames were lowest and least imposing. Their heat made him very uneasy, but under the eyes of the girl he would show no sign of fear.

At a distance of six or eight feet he stopped, studying the thin, upcurling tongues of brightness. Their heat, at this distance, was uncomfortable to his naked flesh, but as he stood there wondering and took no further hurt, his confidence grew. At length he dared to stretch out his spear-tip and touch the flames, very respectfully. The green-hide thongs which bound the flint to the wood smoked, shriveled and hissed. He withdrew the weapon in alarm, and examined the tip. It was blackened, and hot to the touch. But, seeing that the bright dancers had taken no notice, he repeated the experiment. Several times he repeated it, deeply pondering, while the girl, from her place at the edge of the gra.s.s, stared with the wide eyes of a child.

At last, though the green thongs still held, the dry wood burst into flame. Startled to find that when he drew the point back he brought a portion of the shining creature with it, Grom dashed the weapon down upon the ground. The flame, insufficiently started, flickered and died. But it left a spark, winking redly on the blackened wood.

Audacious in his consuming curiosity, Grom touched it with his finger.

It stung smartly, and Grom s.n.a.t.c.hed back his finger with an exclamation of alarm. But by that touch the spark itself was extinguished. That was an amazing thing. Sucking his finger, Grom stood gazing down at the spear-tip, which had but now been so bright, and was now so black. Plainly, it was a victory for him. He did not understand it. But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible, however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, he said proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:

"The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to be touched. If you touch them, they bite."

His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilities which he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain. Dimly, but overpoweringly, he realized that he had pa.s.sed the threshold of a new world. He picked up the spear and turned to renew his experiments.

This time he let the fire take well hold upon the spear-tip before he withdrew it. Then he held it upright, burning like a torch. As he gazed at it raptly a scream from the girl aroused him. She had sprung to her feet and stood staring behind her, not knowing which way to run because of her fear of the fire. And there, not twenty paces from her, their giant grey bulks half emerging from the thicket, stood the bears, slavering in their fury but afraid to come nearer the flame.

With a shout, Grom darted at them, and the wind of his going fanned his spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at the sight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled, then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. The flame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip.

With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in the nearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of terror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The fire was speedily whipped out by the branches, but their panic was uncontrollable; and long after they had pa.s.sed out of sight the sounds of their wild flight could be followed. Grom's heart came near bursting with exultation, but he disdained to show it. He turned to the girl, and said quietly: "They will not come back." And the girl threw herself at his feet in adoration.

And now for hours Grom sat motionless, pondering, pondering, and watching the line of flames with deep eyes. The girl did not dare to interrupt his thoughts. With the going of the sun came a chill breeze drawing down from the ridges. Grom rose, led the girl nearer the flames, and reseated himself. As the girl realized the kindly and comforting warmth her fears diminished. She laughed softly, turned her shapely body round and round in the glow, and then curled herself up like a cat at Grom's knees.

At last Grom arose once more. Picking up his remaining spear, he approached the fire with decision, and thrust the b.u.t.t, instead of the tip, into the flame. When it was well alight, he thrust it down upon a tuft of withered gra.s.s. The stuff caught at once, blazed up and died out. Then Grom rolled the burning spear-b.u.t.t on the earth till it, too, was quite extinguished. The sparks still winking in the gra.s.s he struck with his palm. They stung him, but they perished. He drew himself up to his full height, turned to the girl and stretched out his blackened hand. The girl sprang to her feet, thrilled and wondering.

"See," said Grom, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants.

The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of all things."

Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a G.o.d.

But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheek against his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, and she leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stood staring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHILDREN OF THE SHINING ONE

I

From the lip of the narrow volcanic fissure, which ran diagonally two-thirds of the way across the mouth of the valley, the line of fire waved and flickered against the gathering dark. Sometimes only a few inches high, sometimes sinking suddenly out of sight, and then again as suddenly leaping up to a height of five or six feet, the thin, gaseous flames danced elvishly. Now clear yellow, now fiery orange, now of an almost invisible violet, they shifted, and bowed their crests, and thrust out shooting tongues, till Grom, sitting on his haunches and staring with fascinated eyes, had no choice but to believe that they were live things like himself. The girl, curled up at his side like a cat, paid little attention to the marvel of the flames. Her big, dark eyes, wild and furtive under the dark, tangled ma.s.ses of her hair, kept wandering back and forth between the man's brooding face and the obscure black thickets which filled the valley behind him. The dancing flames she did not understand, but she understood the ponderous crashing, and growls, and savage cries which came from those black thickets and slopes of tumbled rocks. The man being absorbed in watching the wonders of the flames, and apparently all-forgetful of the perils prowling back there in the dark, it was plainly her duty to keep watch.

From time to time Grom would drag his eyes away from their contemplation of the flames to study intently the charred spots on his club and the burned, blackened end of his spear. He looked down at the lithe figure of the watching girl, and laid a great, hairy hand on her shoulder in a musing caress, as if appraising her, and delighting in her, and finding in her a mate altogether to his desire, although but a child to his inmost thoughts. But those sounds of menace from the darkness behind him he affected not to hear at all. He could see from the girl's eyes that the menace was not yet close at hand; and since he had learned the power of the fire, and his own mastery over that power, he felt himself suddenly little less than a G.o.d. The fire was surely something of a G.o.d; and if he had any measure of control over the fire, so as to make it serve him surely, then still more of the G.o.d was there in his own intelligence. His heart swelled with a pride such as he had never before conceived, and his brain seethed with vague but splendid possibilities. Never before had he, though at heart the bravest of his brave clan, been able to listen to the terrible voices of the cave-bear, the cave-hyena, or the saber-tooth without fear, without the knowledge that his own safety lay in flight. Now he feared them not at all.