The deadly enmity between Six Toes and the chief among the Cave men was all because of Laugh, the shrewd and swift and always merry daughter of old Hairy, desired by the huge leader, Wolf, and desired also by Six Toes, my friend, he who had found me a child abandoned by some wandering tribe and who had reared me as his younger brother, teaching me all his craft of field and fight, and making of me one not lightly to be encountered. With him and beside him in all stress I would always be. So it had come that we were one in our watchful exile. There had been harsh action in the great cave. Wolf and Six Toes had each asked old Hairy for his daughter, and the old man, fearing Wolf the more, had rather favoured him, while the girl as far as she might dare, inclined to the other man. The time had come in the history of the Cave men when a woman could scarcely be taken by force and, next to Wolf, Six Toes was the most important man among us. Then came the craft which was our undoing. Wolf and his immediate and obedient following accused us of a great crime--forever I was counted one with Six Toes--of having stolen and hidden in the wood for our own use a store of weapon heads, than which there was no more valued possession in the community. Of the rarest flint, polished and keen, were these arrow-heads and spear-heads, fashioned with infinite care and toil by the men too old for hunting, and counted, rightly, among our best possessions, for arrows were often lost in the hunt or carried away by wounded beasts. To steal of these reserves, as they were to be dealt out fairly from the common store at need, was death. Boldly had Wolf made the accusation against us--though, as the end proved, he had hidden the arrows himself--and had so inflamed all the men that we escaped the stern penalty only by sudden flight. As crafty as he was fierce and vicious was the big Wolf. We had found the little cave in which we were now concealed, and in a way intrenched, for none could force the narrow entrance; had found good hunting, and so, gloomily but healthily enough, we abode together, planning, it seemed vainly, some scheme of retribution. We chafed and raged, thus helpless, like the great wild elk with antlers caught in the thicket, or the huge bear sometimes imprisoned in a pitfall of the rocks. The life we led was trying; in some unguarded moment we might be stolen upon and slain by Wolf and his followers, and, besides, our little cave was colder than the other. The life was hardly endurable. Some change must come; upon that we were resolved alike and bitterly. And, when the change came, it came swiftly--in a single hour--with the holding of a new power in our hands, something never known before and bringing great happenings with it. It was a simple thing, but wonderful and most mysterious.