In the Morning of Time Part 8

Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent eyes, the great beasts realized that, for the present at least, the tree man-creatures were quite out of reach. Lashing their tufted tails in disappointment, they turned aside to sniff, in surly scorn, at the dead, mountainous hulk of the rhinoceros, which lay with one ponderous foot stuck up in the air as if in clumsy protest at Fate. Comprehending readily the manner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, and fell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which the megatherium had torn in two. They had the air of intending to stay some time, so Grom presently turned his attention to his rescued rival.

Mawg was sitting on the next branch, a good spear's length distant, and glowering at A-ya's lithe shapeliness with eyes of savage greed.

Grom knit his brows, and significantly pa.s.sed an arm about the girl's shoulders. Mawg shifted his attention to him.

"What do you want of me?" he demanded, in a thick, guttural voice.

"I thought you ran as if you did not want the lions to eat you,"

answered Grom.

Mawg stared with a stupid brutality and incomprehension; and the eyes of the two men, meeting fairly, seemed to lock in a duel of personalities.

They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically, superb specimens of their race--the highest then evolved upon the youthful earth--the elder man, in his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes, displayed all the promise of the future; while the youth, low skulled and with his dull but pugnacious eyes set under enormous bony brows, suggested the mere brute from which the race had mounted. His hair was shorter and coa.r.s.er than Grom's, and foully matted; and his neck was set very far forward between his powerful but lumpy shoulders. The color of his coa.r.s.e and furrowed skin was so dark as to make the weathered tan of Grom and A-ya look white by contrast.

In no way lacking courage, but failing in will and steadiness, in a dozen seconds Mawg involuntarily shifted his gaze, and looked down at the lions.

"What do you want of me?" he demanded again, as if he had had no answer before.

"The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take you back to the tribe!" replied Grom with authority.

Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great yellow dog-teeth in a snarling laugh of incredulity.

"You want to kill me!" said he, nodding his head.

Grom stared at him for a moment or two with a look of fatigued contempt, then tore off a substantial strip of dried flesh from the bundle hanging on the branch, and tossed it to him. The fellow s.n.a.t.c.hed it, and hid it behind him, being too hungry to refuse it, but too savage to eat it under his captor's eye. Grom smiled slowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand of A-ya's hair which had fallen over his arm. But to this caress the girl paid no attention. She was puzzled and outraged at Grom's action in protecting his rival. Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily under each cheek-bone.

Suddenly from down the trail came a noise of cracking gra.s.s-stems. The two lions got up from their meal, and turned their heads inquiringly toward the sound. The next moment they went stalking off the opposite way with an air of haughty indignation, ignoring all the bodies of the slain pig-tapirs. When they had rounded the first turn in the trail they leaped into the gra.s.s, and went bounding off in a straight line toward a large patch of wood some miles distant. The wounded megatherium was returning.

Perhaps stung into restlessness by the anguish of that rending thrust, the monster came dragging herself back toward the tree, crawling on the sides of her feet. Arriving at the scene of battle, she sniffed once more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Then turning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began to tear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. While thus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caught sight of the three figures looking down upon her.

On the instant her rage was diverted to them. Braying like a steam siren, she came under the tree, reared herself against it, flung her giant arms about it, and strove to pull it down. The tree rocked as if struck by a tornado; and Mawg, who had been too slow to notice what was about to happen, gave a yell of horror as he barely saved himself from falling. The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing look which so enraged her that she raised her spear as if to transfix him.

But there was too much happening below for her attention to remain on Mawg. Finding the tree quite too st.u.r.dy to be pulled down off-hand, the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inches through, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery.

Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once more pumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching to the next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking another great strip from the main trunk. Grom saw that her purpose obviously was to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at her intended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too much for him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, he slipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster's sight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran out along it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed upon the two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam the creek, thrust his way through the gra.s.s-stems, darted back to s.n.a.t.c.h up his club, shook it at Grom, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.

Neither Grom nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. The monster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk was almost split in half by its loss. Grom saw that unless he could stop this process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would be overthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the next great bough. Spear in hand, Grom slipped down to meet her, and halted on a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively, stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendous muscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down her insignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch of succeeding. Grom just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful red tongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The next moment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grom drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. The weapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flint lodged in the vertebrae of the monster's neck. Then the shaft was wrenched violently from his hand; and the monster, blowing blood and foam from mouth and nostrils, fell with a crash among the litter of great branches which she had pulled down.

Grom drew a deep breath of relief, and commended the girl for her timely and effective stroke at that terrible tongue. Then he set himself coolly to the task of completing their shelter for the night.

As he wove leafy branches into the floor of the platform to make it soft, she contemplated his work with satisfaction. Presently he remarked:

"I'm glad we are rid of that Mawg."

"You should have killed him!" said the girl curtly.

"But why?" demanded Grom, in some surprise. In his eyes the fellow was a valuable piece of property belonging to the tribe, a fighting a.s.set.

"He wants _me_!" answered the girl, meeting his eyes resentfully.

Grom let his eyes roam all over her--face, hair and form--and such a look of pa.s.sionate admiration glowed in their steady depths that her anger faded, her own eyes dropped, and her breast gave a happy, incomprehensible flutter. She had never seen such a look in any man's face before, or even dreamed of such a look as possible.

"Of course, he wants you," said Grom, wondering, as he spoke, at the ring of his own voice. "You are the fairest thing, and the most desirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must want you. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shall tear you from me."

And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for having neglected to kill Mawg.

That night sleep was impossible for them, though their lofty shelter was comfortable and secure. A vast orange moon, near the full, illuminated the s.p.a.cious landscape; and beneath the tree came all the giant night-prowlers, gathering to the unparallelled banquet which the day had spread for them. Only the two black lions, perhaps already glutted, did not come. Wolves, a small pack of self-disciplined wild dogs, a troop of hyenas, and several enormous leopards, howled, snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely scattered carcases, each group watching its neighbors with suspicion and deadly animosity.

A gigantic red bear came lumbering up, and all the lesser prowlers scattered discreetly but resentfully before him. He strode straight to the chief place, under the rent, dishevelled tree, and fell to tearing at the mountainous corpse of the megatherium. He was undisturbed till two saber-tooths arrived, their tawny coats spectral in the moonlight, their foot-long tusks giving their broad masks a dreadful grin.

Before one saber-tooth the bear would have stood his ground scornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly, and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of the rhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split and battered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came, and then another bear.

There were swift, sudden battles, as swiftly dropped because neither combatant wished to fight to a finish when there was feasting so abundant for all. And once a leopard, dodging the paw of a saber-tooth, sprang into the tree, only to fall back howling from the spears thrust at him through the floor of Grom's platform.

Just before dawn the girl slept, while Grom kept watch beside her lest another leopard should fancy to explore their refuge. An hour later, when the first pallor was spreading, she awoke with a cry of fear, and clung to Grom's arm, shuddering strongly.

"But--what is it?" he asked, in a tender voice, stroking her heavy mane.

"I was afraid!" she answered, like a child.

"What were you afraid of?" asked Grom.

"I was afraid of Mawg. I _am_ afraid of him!" she answered, sitting up and shaking the hair from her eyes, and staring out fearfully over the gray transparent plains.

"Why should you fear Mawg?" demanded Grom proudly. "Am not I your man?

And am not I always with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could not take you from me."

"I know," answered the girl, "that he and such as he would be as straws in my lord's hands. But--even Grom must sometimes sleep!"

Grom laughed gently at her forebodings.

"He must sleep now, indeed, for we have a long and perilous journey before us," said he. Laying his great s.h.a.ggy head in her lap, and stretching his limbs as far as the tiny platform would allow he was asleep in two seconds. The girl, stooping forward till her rich hair shadowed the rugged, sleeping face, with its calm brows, pondered deeply over his inexplicable forbearance toward his rival. Her instincts all a.s.sured her that it was dangerous; but something else within her, something which she strove in vain to grasp, suggested to her that in some way it was n.o.ble, and made her glad of it. Then, all at once, the first of the sunrise, flooding into the tree-top, bathed her face with a rosy glow, and wonderfully transfigured it.

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE OF THE BRANDS

I

Now for two years had the remnants of the tribe been settled in the Valley of Fire. They had prospered exceedingly. The caves were swarming with strong children; for at the Chief's orders every warrior had taken to himself either two or three wives, so that none of the widows had been left unmated. Grom alone remained with but one wife, although his position in the tribe, second only to that of Bawr himself, would have ent.i.tled him to as many as he might choose.

Singularly happy with the girl A-ya, Grom had been unwilling to receive other women into their little grotto, which branched off from the high arched entrance of the main cave. He might, however, have yielded, from policy and for the sake of the tribe, to pressure from the Chief, but for a look of startled anguish which he had seen leap into A-ya's eyes when he mentioned the matter to her. This had surprised him at the moment, but it had also thrilled him curiously.

And as the girl made no objection to a step so absolutely in accordance with the tribal customs, Grom thought about it a good deal.

A few days later he excused himself to the Chief, saying that other women in his cave would be a nuisance, and would interfere with those studies of the Shining One which had proved so beneficial to the tribe. Bawr had accepted the excuse, though somewhat perplexed by it, and had accommodatingly taken the extra wives himself--a solution which had seemed to meet with the unqualified approval of A-ya.

The first winter in the Valley of Fire had been a wonderful one to the tribe, thanks to the fierce but beneficent element ever shining, dancing and whispering in its mysterious tongue before the cave doors.

Bleak winds and driving, icy rains out of the north had no longer any power to distress them.