She shivered in the wind and shielded herself in the brush, and then, lying flat on the ground, buried her teeth in the duck’s breast. Swiftly she ate, making loud noises with her lips and grunting joyfully, and not until the last portion was gone did she rise and turn her face toward the Hollow. Her stomach sagged with its heavy load and she walked slowly, glutted with food. When the Cave People saw her, they cried out, “Wild Duck, Wild Duck!” They looked at her stomach, big and distended and were very miserable, for they knew after what manner she had earned her name. The fire on the rocks in the Hollow was cold and dead and Strong Arm was very angry, but Quack Quack said nothing. She heard the cry of Laughing Boy as she slipped into the Cave, and she threw herself onto the bed of dead leaves and drew him, whimpering, to her breast. II THE ORNAMENT OF BIG NOSE [Illustration] As far back as any of the Cave People could remember, their fathers had used the bones of wild beasts as weapons. I suppose they discovered long before that the marrow inside these bones was very good to eat. Then they hammered them with great stones till the bones split open and after they had eaten the marrow somebody discovered the sharp bones made very formidable weapons. No one had ever found sticks so strong and so sharp as these bone weapons. By and by all the Cave People possessed great bones, split at one end, like a sharp sword. Almost every day the youths and maidens threw bones or sticks to display their skill. And the one whose aim was true and who showed most power in his arm, strutted about and stuck out his chest, in order that all the other Cave people might know how great he was. One there was whom they called Big Nose. Now in the time of the Cave People it was a marvelous thing for a child to possess a nose that protruded. Generally cave noses were much like the noses of the Tree People, with merely two large nostrils in the center of the face, slightly extended, preceding the head in order that the owner might catch the smell of danger or of good food. But him the Cave People called Big Nose because his nose turned down instead of upward, and it extended nearly half an inch beyond his face. When he was only a slim brown youth, Big Nose became able to out-throw all the other young folks. He could fling his rough bone javelin many feet further than any of the others and with greater force. At the edge of the woods, he would hurl it far among the trees and clip off, every time, the heads of the small purple flower that grew tall and slim in the forest. Big Nose grew proud and held his head very high. And he began, after a little while, to wander farther and farther into the woods alone, for he desired greatly to meet the mountain lion or the green snake, in order that he might kill them with his weapon and become still greater in the eyes of the Cave People.