Cave dwellers -- Juvenile literature; Prehistoric peoples -- Juvenile literature
And when Strong Arm was wounded so that blood dripped red from a hole in
his breast the Cave People flung themselves into the brush and made
their way on their bellies as silent as snakes, far out beyond the old
hollow. With much caution they gathered together about some grey stone
boulders that banked the wild berry thicket.
Then it was that some one silently gathered twigs and leaves and dead
branches for the making of a fire. And a youth struck a spark from his
flint stones and by the light of the flames the Cave People saw and were
astonished that it was One Ear who had come back to his own people.
No one of the older members of the tribe had forgotten One Ear nor how
he had lost one of his ears when he was only a small boy not many moons
from his mother’s breast. It was this way:
One Ear had wandered from the caves and beyond the space where it was
safe for the children of the tribe to go alone. No one marked his
ramblings and he chattered and scampered about, plucking the red
blossoms of the eegari and chasing birds from their nests in happy
content. But he had not gone far when he heard the grunt of the wild and
hairy hog which was thrusting her short tusk into the soil for tender
roots. A litter of small black pigs followed close to their mother’s
side and set up a mighty squealing when they beheld in One Ear a
possible enemy.
Immediately the old sow turned upon One Ear and bit at his feet and
snapped at his legs and tripped him. Then she flew upon him with the
wild fury of the forest mother who believes her young to be endangered.
One Ear raised his own voice in yells of terror and threw up his arms
and rolled into the bushes and sent his small brown feet kicking with
mighty show into the face of the foe.
And the uproar increased while the blood poured from the side of the
boy’s head whence the wild sow had torn his small ear in her attack.
Soon the mother of One Ear and other members of the tribe of Cave People
appeared with their long bone weapons in their hands and killed the hog
and carried back as many of the young pigs as had not scampered away in
the conflict. And there was much feasting in the Hollow that day and a
great noise from the wails of One Ear, whose wounds were many times
licked and plastered and caressed by his distracted mother.
And so the boy came to be called One Ear. It was impossible to forget
one so distinctly different from other members of the tribe of Cave
People and so, when One Ear was later captured by the Arrow Folk during
a raid made on the people of the Hollow, One Ear was long mourned and
thought of by the tribe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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