There was no objection from the parents. They knew that the boys must learn to become hunters, and if the two were not now capable of taking care of themselves in the wood, then they were but disappointing offspring. Consent secured, the boys acted entirely upon their own responsibility, and, to make their subsequent plans clearer, it may be well to explain a little more of the geography of the region. The cave of Ab was on the north side of the stream, where the rocky banks came close together with a little beach at either side, and the cave of Oak was perhaps a mile to the westward, on the same side of the stream and with very similar surroundings. On the south side of the river, opposite the high banks between the two caves, the land was a prairie valley reaching far away. On the north side as well there was at one place a little valley, but it reached back only a few hundred yards from the river and was surrounded by the forest-crowned hills. The close standing oaks and beeches afforded, in emergency, a highway among their ranches, and along this pathway the boys were comparatively safe. Either could climb a tree at any time, and of the animals that were dangerous in the treetops there were but few; in fact, there was only one of note, a tawny, cat-like creature, not numerous, and resembling the lynx of the present day. Almost in the midst of the little plain or valley, on the north side of the river, rose a clump of trees, and in this the two boys saw means afforded them for a realization of their hopes. The wild horses fed daily in the valley to the north, as in the greater one to the south of the river. But there also, in the high grass, as upon the south, sometimes lurked the great beasts of prey, and to be far away from a tree upon the plain was an unsafe thing for a cave man. From the forest edge to the clump of trees was not more than two minutes' rush for a vigorous boy and it was this fact which suggested to the youths their plan of capture of the horse. The homes of the cave men were located, when possible, where the refuge of safety overhung closely the river's bank, and where the non-climbing animals must pass along beneath them, but, even at that period of few men and abundant animal life, there had developed an acuteness among the weaker beasts, and they had learned to avoid certain paths that had proved fatal to their brethren. They were numerous in the plains and comparatively careless there, relying upon their speed to escape more dangerous wild beasts, but they passed rarely beneath the ledges, where a weighty rock dropped suddenly meant certain death. It was not a task entirely easy for the cave men to have meat with regularity, flush as was the life about them. New devices must be resorted to, and Ab and Oak were about to employ one not infrequently successful.