It was one night, after looking at a new rope Humpback had finished, that Black Bow, handling it idly, stuck one end of the rope through a loop he had made at the other and sat holding the end in his hand, while the opening in the rope coil lay on the floor. He chanced to rise just as little Crop Ear, running across the cave floor, stepped into it. The rope came up suddenly, and closed about Crop Ear beneath her arms. She was a prisoner! She had stepped into the first noose, and it had risen and tightened about her! There were yells and laughter in the cave, and others were caught as they walked across the floor, or were lassoed with the loop thrown over their heads, and there was much sport there. And the next day, as we sat upon our little rock together, as was our custom after the hunting or the fishing, Black Bow told me of the noose, and later we talked again of the taming, and then the thought of the two things came together! If the noose at the end of a rope could entrap and hold a child or a man, why could it not as well tighten upon and hold, alive and unharmed, any of the wild creatures, and why could we not thus capture them, and tame them? We reasoned long, and finally came upon a great resolve. We would lay the noose, and hide ourselves, and capture a wild doe, and, it might be, tame her, as the wild dogs had been tamed; for we did not reason at that time that it is only the young of the wild things that can be tamed. There was a path through the brushwood leading from the forest to the plain, along which many of the deer, and often other creatures, were accustomed to pass to their feeding grounds, and there, we said, we would first place the gripping noose thing, and lie in wait together. So, for days, Humpback worked upon the plaiting of a rope at least seven times the length of a man, and very strong, with a loop for the noose made at one end, and with it Black Bow and I went forth together, to what happening we could not guess. It was late in the afternoon, and already the dusk was coming when we laid the noose in the pathway, and crouched hidden behind the little bushes near, with the other end of the rope wound about both our bodies, that we might pull together, and so be more certain of our capture. We did not have long to wait. There came a thudding, there was a rough brushing aside of the bushes along the pathway, and a great hoof was planted in the noose. Black Bow and I threw ourselves backward with all our force, and drew the strong rope taut.