Dreams -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Prehistoric peoples -- Fiction
Not alone did Red-Eye murder his wives, but he also murdered for his
wives, in order to get them. When he wanted a new wife and selected the
wife of another man, he promptly killed that man. Two of these murders
I saw myself. The whole horde knew, but could do nothing. We had not
yet developed any government, to speak of, inside the horde. We had
certain customs and visited our wrath upon the unlucky ones who
violated those customs. Thus, for example, the individual who defiled a
drinking-place would be attacked by every onlooker, while one who
deliberately gave a false alarm was the recipient of much rough usage
at our hands. But Red-Eye walked rough-shod over all our customs, and
we so feared him that we were incapable of the collective action
necessary to punish him.
It was during the sixth winter in our cave that Lop-Ear and I
discovered that we were really growing up. From the first it had been a
squeeze to get in through the entrance-crevice. This had had its
advantages, however. It had prevented the larger Folk from taking our
cave away from us. And it was a most desirable cave, the highest on the
bluff, the safest, and in winter the smallest and warmest.
To show the stage of the mental development of the Folk, I may state
that it would have been a simple thing for some of them to have driven
us out and enlarged the crevice-opening. But they never thought of it.
Lop-Ear and I did not think of it either until our increasing size
compelled us to make an enlargement. This occurred when summer was well
along and we were fat with better forage. We worked at the crevice in
spells, when the fancy struck us.
At first we dug the crumbling rocks away with our fingers, until our
nails got sore, when I accidentally stumbled upon the idea of using a
piece of wood on the rock. This worked well. Also it worked woe. One
morning early, we had scratched out of the wall quite a heap of
fragments. I gave the heap a shove over the lip of the entrance. The
next moment there came up from below a howl of rage. There was no need
to look. We knew the voice only too well. The rubbish had descended
upon Red-Eye.
We crouched down in the cave in consternation. A minute later he was at
the entrance, peering in at us with his inflamed eyes and raging like a
demon. But he was too large. He could not get in to us. Suddenly he
went away. This was suspicious. By all we knew of Folk nature he should
have remained and had out his rage. I crept to the entrance and peeped
down. I could see him just beginning to mount the bluff again. In one
hand he carried a long stick. Before I could divine his plan, he was
back at the entrance and savagely jabbing the stick in at us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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