Dreams -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Prehistoric peoples -- Fiction
Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His mother
lived in the caves, but two more children had come after him and he had
been thrust out to shift for himself. We had witnessed the performance
during the several preceding days, and it had given us no little glee.
Broken-Tooth did not want to go, and every time his mother left the
cave he sneaked back into it. When she returned and found him there her
rages were delightful. Half the horde made a practice of watching for
these moments. First, from within the cave, would come her scolding and
shrieking. Then we could hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling
of Broken-Tooth. About this time the two younger children joined in.
And finally, like the eruption of a miniature volcano, Broken-Tooth
would come flying out.
At the end of several days his leaving home was accomplished. He wailed
his grief, unheeded, from the centre of the open space, for at least
half an hour, and then came to live with Lop-Ear and me. Our cave was
small, but with squeezing there was room for three. I have no
recollection of Broken-Tooth spending more than one night with us, so
the accident must have happened right away.
It came in the middle of the day. In the morning we had eaten our fill
of the carrots, and then, made heedless by play, we had ventured on to
the big trees just beyond. I cannot understand how Lop-Ear got over his
habitual caution, but it must have been the play. We were having a
great time playing tree tag. And such tag! We leaped ten or
fifteen-foot gaps as a matter of course. And a twenty or twenty-five
foot deliberate drop clear down to the ground was nothing to us. In
fact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances we dropped. As we
grew older and heavier we found we had to be more cautious in dropping,
but at that age our bodies were all strings and springs and we could do
anything.
Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game. He was “It” less
frequently than any of us, and in the course of the game he discovered
one difficult “slip” that neither Lop-Ear nor I was able to accomplish.
To be truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.
When we were “It,” Broken-Tooth always ran out to the end of a lofty
branch in a certain tree. From the end of the branch to the ground it
must have been seventy feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall.
But about twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feet out from the
perpendicular, was the thick branch of another tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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