But this evening, with the grisly proximity of the deserted pueblo and its unburied dead, with the certainty that his valley was shared by a night-prowling wild beast, he found that his usual serenity had left him and instead there was a nervousness and a disinclination for sleep--a tendency, even, to stop in the midst of some trivial action and watch and listen. And, that evening, Sid discovered also the presence of an Elder Brother within him,--that cowardly, brutish, superstitious and terror-ridden cave man that psychologists tell us occupies the left lobe of the brain. This part of ourselves is only held in subjection by the superior soul of man,--the result of ages of intellectual training and advancement,--that controls the right lobe of his brain and dominates the whole man. But this pre-Adamite self, this abject creature,--whose mildest manifestation is that peculiar fit of shyness known as “stage fright”--lurks always within each one of us, ready to drive into blind, unreasoning terror, the mad fury of murder, or the brutish outbursts of passion, the best of men, once he gains the ascendancy. He whispered now to Sid, counseling he knew not what madness, ghost-terrors, fetishes, superstitious fear of the dead. For a time Sid held him in check, occupied with the practical business of making a bivouac,--a sort of bear’s den of spruce browse slanting over a horizontal pole beside his fire. After that came the preparation of a meal of bacon, coffee and pinole. But as night fell and it grew pitch black within the canyon, the whimpers of the terrified cave man within him grew louder and more insistent, urging him to fly, he knew not where,--to yell aloud for succor,--to build a huge fire for its imaginary protection--all the promptings of the arrant coward. Sid fought him off, partly amused over the childish suggestions that swirled through his brain, partly sympathetic over the lives of real terror that the actual cave man must have lived, and whose indelible recollections they have transmitted down to us, deep buried in the very core of our beings. But still there were things that helped the cave man. A wind was stirring, and it mourned and moaned through the empty windows in the deserted pueblo above him, shrieked and gibbered through the faggots on its rafters. It was disquieting to listen to--so low as to be almost inaudible, yet always there! Then there was an owl, not your lusty great barred owl, with his rousing _Hoo-hoo!--Wahoo-hoo!--Hoo-hoo-wah!_--Sid had always loved that bird--but another one, a ghost of an owl, whose call, floating through the forest like the wail of a lost soul, can only be approximated by the ghastly voice-tones of a lunatic. This cry was hair-raising to listen to, as Sid squatted beside his flickering camp fire. He got to jumping every time that grisly bird uttered his call,--and, as for the cave man within him, he was more than ready to take Sid shrieking out with him into the night!