Dave threw himself down on the branches, not wanting to look toward the ground far below.
The forest was almost completely dark now. Ral was nearly invisible. And as he lay there, Dave began to be aware of the noises that came out of the blackness. There were snortings and gnashings of teeth, and he was very glad to be up in the tree.
“What’s going on, Ral? How did you get away?”
Ral’s voice came cautiously. “Little female—Abbie. She cut me loose.”
“Why? Why did she do that?”
Ral’s answer was long in coming. “She say you never find my people.”
“Well, she was right about that. I’d probably have been eaten by a dinosaur if you hadn’t found me.”
“She say my people kill you.” He hesitated. “My father, hard man. Small female, she say I talk him for you. Ask for Eena go home.”
Dave was stunned. I should have thought of that. Aloud he said, “Are you going to do it, Ral?”
But Ral did not answer. Apparently he had gone to sleep.
Dave slept by only fits and starts. He was afraid of falling, and, judging by the thrashing sounds below, there was nothing pleasant down there for him.
At first light Ral shook him awake.
The boys scrambled down the tree and soon were again threading their way through the jungle. Once they passed by a brontosaurus, bigger than a building. Ral paid no attention to him. “He eat trees,” he said.
To Dave the trek seemed to take forever. They navigated several trails before finally coming to a series of stone ridges lifting out of the jungle.
Ral pointed. “My people.”
Dave swallowed hard and was very glad that Ral was with him. He followed closely, and soon the pair stepped into a clearing and were surrounded by the tribe of Chief Mord.
Mord himself came forward, towering over his men. He greeted his son, who was almost as tall. “Good! You back!”
“Yes,” Ral said. He motioned to Dave. “He talk.”
Mord stared at Dave suspiciously and stood waiting for him to speak.
“Where is Eena?” Dave asked first.
“Here I am! Here!”
Then Dave saw her. She was sitting with two women, apparently her guards. “Are you all right, Eena?” he called.
“Yes. All right.” Otherwise she remained silent, but there was gladness in her expression.
Dave turned to Mord. “Chief Mord, we come in peace.”
Mord scratched his head. “Peace? What peace?”
“It means no fight,” Dave answered. “No war. No kill.”
A murmur went around the tribesmen, and Mord grinned suddenly. “We kill enemy. You enemy.”
“No!” Ral spoke up quickly. “He not Clag’s people. See, he different.”
Mord seemed to understand that Dave came from a different race, but he was still suspicious. However, he listened as Dave haltingly explained that he had come to exchange Ral for Eena.
“So, you see, you have your son back, and now we ask you to give Clag’s daughter back.”
But Mord was shrewd. “No! I have son. We have new woman. We keep.”
“But that’s not fair!” Dave cried.
Mord stared. “What fair?”
“It means … well … doing what’s right.”
“What right?”
Dave saw that the conversation was going nowhere. He turned helplessly to the young man beside him. “Ral, you tell him.”
Ral faced his father. “They let me go. We let her go.”
Mord gazed at his son, seemingly trying to understand, but all this was so foreign to him that he could not. Finally, after extended talk that went around in a circle, Ral sighed and turned back to Dave. “It take—time. We wait. We see.”
Dave saw that argument was useless. “All right, that’s fine. Am I a prisoner?”
“What that?” Ral asked.
“I can’t go back?”
“No. You stay.”
Ral then went over to Eena and freed her but said to her also, “You stay.”
Finally he looked at his father. “We talk.”
Later that night as the tribespeople sat around the fire, Dave drifted over and seated himself close to Eena. “Your father’s worried about you.”
“Why your people let Ral go? He enemy of my father.”
“You know Abbie? Ral says she cut him loose.”
“Why?”
“They want to trade Ral for you.”
Eena shook her head. “Now they have both. They no let me go.”
“Maybe they will,” Dave said encouragingly. “Mord’s got his son back, and Ral is going to ask him to let you go.”
Hope flared in the girl’s eyes, and she said, “Good.”
The two sat near the fire for a long time, and more than once Ral came by. He would sit with them silently, and Dave would explain what he and the Sleepers were trying to do.
He explained about Goél and how Goél called for kindness to others. “There’s a better way than fighting, Ral,” he said. “Goél says the best way is to treat other people just as we want them to treat us.” He concluded by saying, “Your people and Eena’s people—killing is not the way to go. There are even things they could do together that they can’t do alone.”
“What?” demanded Ral.
For the moment Dave was blank. “Well, I don’t know right now, but some things. The more people you both have, the better.”
Ral leaned back and stared at them. “You tell me how. I tell my father. But he hard man.”
13
It’s Hard to Be Friends
Somehow Dave had thought he would be welcomed by Chief Mord. After all, he had brought Ral home. It was the way he would have expected civilized people to behave. But he had miscalculated badly.
The chieftain was a fierce man, accustomed to a dog-eat-dog struggle for life. Necessity had made him suspicious, and though Ral begged him to free both Eena and Dave, he refused.
“I’m afraid it’s hopeless,” Dave said to her one night after nearly everyone else had gone to sleep.
The two of them were sitting as usual near the small fire. The hunters had bad luck that day, and they were hungry—as was the rest of the tribe. Dave’s stomach growled, and he slapped it. “Shut up!” he said crossly. “What do you expect me to do?”
Eena giggled, and Dave was surprised. Why, she’s just like any other teenage girl, he thought with a flash of amusement. No, not quite. She’s really different from Sarah or Abigail.
The fire burned low, and Dave added a few sticks. The flame leaped up, casting fantastic shadows on the cave wall. All around them, the tribespeople were lying wrapped in furs. The sound of snoring rent the air, and from time to time a nightmare made someone cry out sharply.
Dave looked across the fire toward Eena who was staring into it. “We’ve got to get away,” he said. “We’ve been here a week, and, if anything, Mord’s more determined to keep us than ever.”
Eena looked up. “They watch,” she whispered. “All the time, they watch.” She nodded toward the guard standing at the mouth of the cave.
Dave looked at the tall warrior. “I’ve been watching him every night. He stays awake for a few hours, but then he always goes to sleep. Maybe he’ll go to sleep tonight too.”
Eena glanced around fearfully at the huge man, who was known to clutch his battle-ax even in his sleep. “He kill us if we try run away.”
“He’ll have to catch us first,” Dave said grimly. “Now, you get some sleep, and I’ll watch. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours. Then we’ll wait for that guard to fall asleep.”
The night wore on, and the fire sank down until it was only a tiny blaze that Dave kept feeding with small sticks. He grew sleepy, but he knew that tonight might be their last chance. Hours passed, and he could hardly keep his eyes open.
Then Eena awakened and looked toward the guard, then toward Dave. “You sleep,” she whispered. “I watch.”
“All rig
ht,” Dave grunted. He threw himself down and fell asleep at once. It seemed, however, that he had barely closed his eyes when he felt Eena’s touch on his arm.
“Dave, he asleep!”
The guard was seated and nodding with his hands on his knees. He rested his forehead against them.
Dave put a finger to his lips and got to his feet. He thought, I sure do hope he doesn’t wake up! He was wearing a pair of soft leather shoes. He could walk quietly. Eena had nothing at all on her feet. He saw that everyone else was still sleeping. He motioned to Eena with his head and started tiptoeing toward the cave entrance.
The closer he got, the more unlikely it seemed that they could walk right by the guard without awakening him. He slowed until he was barely moving, putting each foot down softly. When they were only a few feet away, the man coughed suddenly and stirred, rubbing his eyes.
Dave froze. He could hear the soft crackling of the blaze and the guard clearing his throat. If he looks up, Dave thought, we’re goners!
But the warrior shoved his back against the wall, put his head down again, and soon began to snore.
Dave tiptoed past him, Eena close behind. Then they were outside, and Dave looked up. Fortunately there was a bright, full moon and a sky full of glittering stars. The whole landscape was bathed in soft silver light. Again he motioned, and the two made their way silently down the path to the trees.
Dave released a sigh of relief. “Come on, Eena. As soon as they find out we’re gone, they’ll be after us.”
Eena nodded. “You know way?”
“Not too well. I know we keep going due east until we hit the river. Then we follow it north. When we get to the bluffs, we turn, and then we’ll be there. Now let’s go.”
Dave never forgot their flight. He went at a steady trot, and Eena was right behind him. An hour later he was breathing heavily and turned to see that she was not breathing hard at all.
He tried to conceal his weariness, but she said, “You tired. We rest.”
“We can’t,” he argued.
But she insisted. They sat down on a log, and he was glad for the relief.
“You think they catch?” she asked anxiously.
“No, I don’t think so. I believe you’ll be home safe with your tribe and your father soon.”
Eena sat silently then. The soft silver moonlight washed over her attractive face. After a while she said, “They no bad people.”
Dave looked at her with surprise. “They’ll kill us if they catch us!”
“They afraid,” she said. “We afraid. But they no bad people.”
Dave thought about that insight, but there was little time for thinking. After fifteen minutes he arose and said, “We’ve got to keep going, Eena.”
They kept up the pace all night, and when morning broke they came to the river.
“We’re all right now, I think.” Dave sighed again with relief. “Let’s try to get to the cave before the sun gets high. We might run into a t-rex. I’d hate to get eaten by one of those things just when we got away.”
They followed the river, crossed over at a ford, and when the sun was a quarter of the way up in the sky they arrived at the base of The People’s caves.
The first to see them was Wash. He was watching Reb plow with the ox, Stonewall, and he let out a shrill yelp. “Look! There they come! It’s Dave and Eena!”
His yell must have roused the camp. As the pair walked in, it seemed they were surrounded by everyone in the tribe. Dave’s face flushed with pleasure as his friends beat him on the shoulders, praising him for bringing Eena home.
But it was Chief Clag who was most pleased. Beaming, he took his daughter by the arm and shook her fondly. “You back!”
“Yes. Dave—he bring back.”
“Good. Dave, good.” Clag gave the witch doctor a harsh look, and the man slunk away without a single word about Greska. “We celebrate. We have feast.” He suddenly clapped a hand on Dave’s back that nearly collapsed him.
Dave coughed and then said, “Well, I’m glad I was able to do something, Chief.”
Later they did have a time of feasting, for the hunting that day had been good. Dave was asked to tell the story of how he overcame all the tribesmen of Mord.
“How many you kill?” Clag demanded.
“Well . . as a matter of fact, none,” Dave said.
Disappointment washed across the Chief’s face. “How many you kill?” he repeated.
“None, Chief. We ran away when the guard went to sleep.”
Lom laughed aloud. “A woman do that much,” he said. But he closed his mouth when Clag gave him a stern word.
After the feast was over, the Seven Sleepers gathered together, and Josh said, “Now, tell it like it really was, Dave. How’d you do it?”
Dave shrugged. “Nothing heroic about it. We tried to talk Chief Mord into letting us go, but he was suspicious like all these savages are. He would have kept us there forever. So when the guard went to sleep, we just ran away.”
“I got an idea we’re gonna be visited,” Reb said. “Mord won’t like it, your getting away with Eena like that. Probably figured she was his property.”
A murmur of assent went around.
Sarah said, “We’ve got to teach these people how to trust each other—to treat each other the way they want to be treated.”
Dave said abruptly, “Well, that’s what I thought, but it’s impossible, Sarah. They’re just too backward. The best we can do is help them learn how to plow a little. Maybe plant some grain.” He shrugged. “Maybe in a few years they’ll learn how to stop killing each other.”
“That’s why Goél sent us,” Josh said. “To teach these people how to trust him and one another and do what’s right.”
Wash looked at him strangely. “Yeah, but these people are different. They don’t trust very easy. Back in Oldworld, I remember growing up—white people and black people didn’t always get along.” He looked over at Reb and grinned, his white teeth flashing. “Now, me and Reb, we get along fine, but it was hard to learn, wasn’t it, Reb?”
“Sure was.” Reb nodded. “These people are more suspicious than I ever thought anybody could be. They just don’t like anybody that’s not part of them. And they never even think about treating other folks the way they’d like to be treated. You may be right, Dave.”
Dave arose the next morning with a new determination. He went to see Beno.
“The people need something to protect themselves from the wild animals. You start making arrowheads. I’ll get everybody else to make bows. If we get enough arrows, we could put down a pretty good-sized dinosaur—maybe even a young T-rex.”
“The big killer with jaws? That be something. Yes, I work.”
For the next two weeks the Sleepers were kept busy, and so were any of the tribesmen that had a gift for shaping bows or whittling arrows. Soon they had a plentiful supply, and Dave trained many of the warriors to do an adequate job of shooting. All day long one could hear their cries as they practiced and either hit or missed.
One day Eena stopped by and watched Beno make arrowheads. He appeared surprised. Usually she watched the warriors practice shooting. She sat down across from him and watched as he continued to pound off splinters of flint.
“I no see how you do that, Beno.” She herself had tried many times to make an arrowhead, but she had never succeeded. She smiled. “Without you, they no have arrows.”
Beno flushed.
She knew he was not accustomed to being praised. Certainly not by her. She also knew he had admired her from afar. And now he was looking again at her hair, her eyes, her long, straight limbs.
He mumbled, “I no hunt.”
Eena had been brought up to revere hunters above all, but somehow she had gained a little wisdom in these past few weeks. She put a hand on Beno’s shoulder and smiled. “You very good man, Beno. Very smart. You make anything.” She thought a moment and said, “You most important man in tribe—except my father.”
Beno stared at her unbelievingly. He ducked his head, so embarrassed was he.
Eena laughed at him. “You make me more necklace sometime?” She touched the bone necklace around her neck that Beno had carved painstakingly. It was the only jewelry in the tribe, and she was very proud of it.
Beno smiled. “I make more. It look good on you.”
She stared at him. He was a nice-looking young man, she thought. Not as strong, of course, as the other young men, but he had attractive brown hair and brown eyes and—except that one leg was a little smaller than the other—was rather handsome, she suddenly decided.
“You come,” she said. “I show you field. Maybe you make better way to grind grain so we make bread.”
All day the Seven Sleepers had worked hard making arrow shafts and awkwardly scraping bows with the stones Beno had formed.
That night Dave said, “I can’t see that we’re doing much good in this place. I don’t know what else Goél could expect of us.”
The others were tired also and almost as discouraged as he was.
Sarah said, “Maybe it’s time to go back. Maybe we’ve done what we came to do.”
Dave looked up. “I think that’s right. We’d better think about leaving pretty soon.”
For the next four days all the Sleepers talked about leaving. Things seemed to be at a standstill. Then one morning, after they had washed in the creek and were sitting around talking, Dave said, “We’ll give it another week. Then we’ll go back.”
Josh bit his lip. “I hate to get beaten like this. Seems like we just haven’t helped these people much.”
“Maybe we’ve helped them more than you think,” Jake said. “We taught them how to plow, and Reb taught them how to domesticate animals. They can have their own livestock now. And they can bake bread.”
“I know,” Josh said doubtfully, “but—”
He never finished his sentence for there was a loud cry and a figure emerged from the woods.
“That looks like Ral!” Dave exclaimed. He waited until the man got nearer. “It is Ral! Let’s see what’s up!”
Caves That Time Forgot Page 10