Cave dwellers -- Juvenile literature; Prehistoric peoples -- Juvenile literature
Big Foot boasted with a loud voice and bullied the children and spoke
soft words to the women, while he glared at the young men and urged them
into the forest to hunt for food. Always he kept his poisoned darts at
his side and he managed to secure for himself the tenderest portion of
the young goats which the people had discovered leaping and running wild
amid the sharp slopes and crags of the mountains.
So the tribe grew weary of his sorry ruling and there was much fighting
and discord, which laid them open to the attacks of their many enemies.
Without doubt Big Foot was possessed of much cunning, for while other
men of the tribe were as strong of limb and as fleet of foot, Big Foot
was more powerful than they. Longer was his arm because he had learned
first how to make and to wield his great bow and arrows almost as well
as young One Ear, who had escaped from the Arrow Throwers and returned
to his own people, the Cave Dwellers, bringing knowledge of the weapons
of these strange enemies.
The Cave Dwellers had paused in their journeyings and battlings
northward, on the banks of the lake that shone like white fire When the
sun beat down upon its rolling surface. The way was new to them and
unknown dangers threatened everywhere and they had utmost need to walk
warily, lest a new tribe descend upon them with some new weapon of
destruction and turn them back into the dangers they had outstripped.
Instead of holding the people together with wise words and instead of
preparing to search out the lands to prepare for the strange evils that
lie in wait for primitive man whenever he travels beyond the ways of his
experience, Big Foot caused nothing but conflict. It was only his
superior skill in the use of the flint-tipped arrows, which the Cave
People were acquiring very rapidly, that prevented him from being slain
by the members of the tribe.
Then it was that One Ear dreamed a dream. He thought that his spirit had
journeyed far into the spirit world where it encountered the spirit of
Strong Arm. And Strong Arm had spoken with One Ear, sending words of
wisdom to the people of the tribe. He had called Big Foot the enemy of
the Cave People. And when he wakened in the morning, One Ear remembered
his dream. So he gathered all the people together and told them these
things. And no man or woman among them knew that he spoke only of a
dream. They believed that the spirit of Strong Arm still lived and that
the things in One Ear’s dream had actually occurred.
So the Cave People chattered together and gesticulated and stole the
fresh meat Big Foot had hidden in his cave and menaced him from cover by
shaking their clubs and growling like angry dogs. Big Foot fled to his
branch hut, where he glared at the members of the tribe and waved his
long arrows.
The Cave People had long respected the words of Strong Arm and when they
heard what he had spoken to One Ear in a dream, they hated Big Foot more
fiercely than ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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