How then with his slow feet and poor weapons was the hunter to surprise the alert sentries of a pony herd, get within range before they fled like the wind, or drive a bone-tipped spear through the shaggy hair? It seems to me that man, like other hunting animals, despairing of getting meat from a pony herd on the range, would lie in ambush near the watering places, and where the ponies had to string out on a narrow trail they were caught at a disadvantage. There spear and arrow could earn abundant meat. Outside the bush, too, the valley or cañon walls had caves and defensible places where a tribe could lodge within easy reach of game, water and fuel. In the South-western desert of America I have seen hundreds of cave and cliff villages, some even occupied by surviving tribes whose methods of hunting and location and defence would correspond with those of the more {99} primitive pony hunters of prehistoric France. It seems, too, that those hairy aborigines who split pony bones for marrow may possibly have known the daintiest dish of Red Indian cookery, Crow entrail, more politely known as Absaroka Sausage. In savage tribes there is a rule that a man of the Smith sept may not marry among the Smiths, but seeks his bride among the Browns or Robinsons. But the septs are usually called after some animal, so that for Smith we may read Pony, for Brown we may read Eagle, for Robinson say Wolf. Moreover, the children play a game of two sides in which Master Wolf impersonates a wolf with cries and dances, and if the rival side laughs they pay forfeit. So Miss Pony plays at pony, and Master Eagle plays at being an Eagle. Out of this game perhaps comes a play of the grown-ups; in which I have seen a candidate for the secret society of the Healers impersonate his tribal Bear or Beaver before the Doctors of the order who admitted him to their circle. This play may be the origin of a mystic rite known as Calling the Game. For certain Doctors can wear a wolf skin, and give so beautiful an imitation of a wolf that all the deer and bison are deceived. His job is to excite their {100} curiosity so that, as he draws slowly away, the herds will follow him. The nearer animals draw back with misgiving, but those in the rear press on to get a view until, as the wolf-man gathers speed, the moving herd runs hard. It is then that they find themselves running between converging lines of stone piles, and women jump up from behind these cairns waving their robes and yelling. The herd stampedes to the edges of a sheer cliff, too late to check their pace after the leaders have seen the peril ahead. The rush of the herd drives onward into space, and hundreds, even thousands of great beasts fall headlong to lie dead or mangled in heaps on the rocks below. So the tribe assembles for great feasting, and heavy labour. [Sidenote: The trap]