by John Norman
By nightfall the men had returned with four sacks of salt.
The group had camped in the open that night, and, in the morning, had continued the trek, to the flint lode.
The next evening, at dusk, they had come to the flint cliffs.
Although Hamilton did not understand it, there was much anger, much fury, among the men. Clearly the flint cliffs had been worked in their absence.
Furthermore, to their outrage, in a deposit of clay thrust between two stones, was drawn a sign, the meaning of which was clear to the Men. It was the sign of the Weasel People. And it meant that they claimed the flint as their own.
Spear scratched away the sign of the Weasel People and, in its place, with his knife, cut the sign of the Men. It was an angled line, surmounted by a straight line. At the tip of the straight line, to the left, was a point. It was a representation, crude, of an arm hurling a spear.
That night guards were set.
For four days the Men worked the flint. Skins were sewn into long bags, five feet in length, a foot wide. The men, with green sticks, and picks of antler horn, and rocks, cracked and pried the flint from the cliff. When a piece of suitable weight and size was obtained, it was put into a bag. Little of the flint was shaped at the lode. The amount of flint taken was a function of the number and strength of the females, who would carry it.
At the lode Brenda Hamilton had not been fastened to Ugly Girl, but had been free, though she was set much work. She carried water in skins to the men, and carried flint down to the sacks, and gathered wood for the night fires. She was also taught to dig roots and gather fruit and vegetables. There was no hunting done at the lode, for the men were concerned with the flint. Dried meat was eaten, together with vegetables and fruits. Hamilton also noted that certain insects, and grubs, were eaten. She would not eat such. She was not given meat, but she fed well enough, on roots and fruits, and vegetables, of the sort which she was instructed to gather. The children also joined in such work. Hamilton was, to some extent, pleased, because she now realized how much more free with food was the land than she had realized. There were many things to eat which she had not understood heretofore as being edible. She realized she might have starved in the midst of plenty. Among other things she learned were edible was the inner bark of the white birch tree, and pine nuts and rose hips. During the first two days at the lode Hamilton had tried to remain in the vicinity of the hunter who had taken her slave, bringing him water, gathering his flint, but he had paid her little attention, and, some four times, with the stroke of a switch, wielded by either the dark-haired girl or the shorter blond girl, she had been driven from his vicinity. "I do not care," she had said to herself. "He is nothing to me." But she hated the dark-haired girl and the shorter, blond girl.
They did not want her near the hunter. They would beat her when she lingered near him.
The switch stung her and made her angry. She fled from it. It hurt her.
After four days at the lode the flint sacks were filled with what rock "a human female could carry.
The sacks were then lifted by the beasts of burden, the females. They were slung about the neck, the weight falling to each side.
Even Short Leg carried flint. So, too, did the older children, though in lesser amounts. Of the women, only Old Woman did not carry flint. "I am too old to carry flint," she said. The bags given to Hamilton and to Ugly Girl were especially heavy, for they were slave. Hamilton could scarely believe that she was expected to carry it. Fox, with his switch, gestured that she lift it. She, now thonged again by the neck to Ugly Girl, struggled to lift the sack. Suddenly stung by Fox's switch, she stood erect, feeling its weight. She almost fell. Fox's switch tapped her in the small of the back, indicating that she should stand straight. She then felt the switch tap her under the chin, twice, indicating that she should hold up her head. She stood, a beautiful, erect slave girl, under her burden. Spear cried out, from the head of the column. The Men, carrying their weapons lightly, preceded the column. The switch struck twice, along the column. Fox strode on one side, Wolf on the other. The women, struggling under the weight of the stone, stumbling, followed the men. With them, leashed by the throat behind Ugly Girl, went Brenda Hamilton. She, too, like the others, though a woman of our time, though the holder of an advanced degree from a prestigious institution of higher learning, barefoot, sweating, carried flint.
On the morning of the, third day of the trek, unexpectedly, the beast had struck. Hamilton did not even see it, though she did hear the screams of the woman being dragged by the shoulder through the brush.
Spear had not permitted the men to follow. It was his belief the female would be dead before she could be reached. Further, it was dangerous, with the primitive weapons at the disposal of the men, to cope with such a beast. To attack it as one might a cave bear would be to invite the loss of three or four men, or perhaps more. Such an animal, stone-tipped spears hanging from its haunches, bleeding, maddened by the bruising of rocks, could, frenzied, attacking, with the blows of its paws and the lockings of its great jaws, destroy an entire hunting party. Such a beast must be met with guile.
That afternoon the beast had struck again, this time seizing a child in its jaws and padding away, white-muzzled, into the brush. The child had been taken not more than twenty yards from Hamilton. Its back had been broken in the first bite. Its eyes open it had dangled in the jaws, lost in shock. It would not live more than a few moments. Hamilton had screamed and tried to flee. Ugly Girl, jerked about by the leash, had held her, not letting her run. Hamilton, wildly, sank to her knees, and held Ugly Girl. They clung together. The women began to weep and cry out. One woman, the mother, tried to run into the brush after the animal but Spear followed her and, striking her again and again, tried to beat her unconscious. To Hamilton's amazement he, with his strength, could not do so, but, at last, dazed, and in shock, the woman sunk to the ground and Spear carried her back to the old woman and to the heavy-breasted woman. Another child, too, ran to her and she took it in her arms, holding it closely, weeping, rocking back and forth, trying to sing to it.
That night many fires had been set about the group and the women, Ugly Girl and Hamilton, too, and the children, were put in the center of the group. The men crouched about the outside of the circle, where they might reach brands from the fire.
Wolves circled the group late, in the darkness, but they were merely curious.
The beast did not return. Somewhere, gorged, it slept. It might not wish to feed for another two or three days. It might wish to feed again by tomorrow nightfall. The men did not know its hunger.
The next morning, the tenth after Hamilton's arrival in the Men's camp, in a suitable place, the pit was dug. It was some sixteen feet deep, some five feet wide, some ten feet long. While the women dug and carried away dirt, the men constructed the runway. It was done with naturalness, with branches and sticks and thorn brush. It was widest at the point at which the beast would find it most convenient to enter, narrowest before the pit. It would be difficult to approach, except from one direction. Spear and Stone, in the bottom of the pit, when it was ready, at roughly six-inch intervals, set many sharpened stakes. The intervals were narrow for the beast, though large, was lithe, sinuous. If it were not impaled it would have little difficulty climbing from the pit. Furthermore, if it survived, it would be doubly dangerous, for it would now be wary of its approach and its footing. It would have profited, unfortunately for the Men, from a lesson that would not need to be repeated, a lesson which the men, in effect, had the opportunity to administer only once. When the stakes had been placed, Spear and Stone, on ropes, scrambled from the pit. Then the light network of branches was placed over the pit, and covered with other branches, and grass and broad leaves.
Behind the pit, leading to it, a path, approximately a foot wide, had been left in the thorn brush.
Brenda Hamilton wondered with what the pit would be baited.
She felt the hand of Stone on her arm.
"No!" she cried.
She saw Spear held Ugly Girl, who was whimpering, her simple, vacant eyes filled with terror.
The rawhide thong which linked the two slaves by the throat was removed.
For an instant Hamilton was elated. They would use Ugly Girl, not her!
But Spear gestured that she, too, should edge between the narrow walls of thorn brush leading to the back of the pit.
"No!" she cried.
She fell to her knees.
"Use her! Not me!" cried Hamilton. "I'm human! I'm like you! Use her! Not me! Not me!"
But Stone, rawhide strips in his teeth, pulled her up by the arm and, painfully, thrust her through the narrow opening in the brush.
At the back edge of the pit Brenda Hamilton and Ugly Girl were forced to kneel. There they were tied back to back, their arms about one another, the wrists of each, behind them, tied about the belly of the other. Then their ankles were tied together, right ankle to left, left to right. They knelt then at the back edge of the pit; they could not rise to their feet.
Through the opening in the brush Hamilton saw the women. Several of them were smiling, in particular the dark-haired girl, and the shorter, blond girl. She saw, too, her hunter. He was looking at her, impassively. She moaned. She struggled in the bonds, perfectly secured. Then she saw, thorn bush by thorn bush, the narrow opening, from the edge of the pit backwards, being filled with brush, walling them in. There was a ledge about a yard wide between the wall of thorn brush and the edge of the pit. It was here that the bait would wait, kneeling.
"Come back!" cried Hamilton. "Come back!"
But the Men had gone.
The eyes of the animal, ovoid, gleaming, came a foot closer.
Brenda Hamilton threw her head back and screamed, struggling in the rawhide thongs.
It was some ten yards away.
It paused, testing the wind, lifting its head. Then it entered, back low, head down, between the walls of brush at the open end of the funnel.
Ugly Girl was, head turned to one side, watching it.
The beast, low, dark, tail moving back and forth, was suspicious.
Now Brenda Hamilton was too terrified even to scream. It seemed she could not move her body. Her world seemed limited by the dark walls of brush, the shape, the gleaming eyes.
Then the beast, low, tail switching, ears back, crept a foot closer, then stopped.
Then Ugly Girl began to whimper, but it was not a fear whimper, it was a tiny noise.
Brenda Hamilton did not know the noise but it was the rooting noise of the small-tusked bush pig.
The beast, an old one, may not have caught such a swift, erratically running, delicately fleshed animal in more than a year.
The leap of the beast begins with a short run, but the leap is timed, always, to fall just short of the game, and it is on the bound, following the leap, when earth is again struck, and the great coiled springs of the back legs unleash themselves at point-blank range, that the game is seized. Just as the bullet has its greatest speed and power at muzzle velocity, so, too, the strike of the beast is most terrible at the instant that it has just left the earth. Accordingly, it strikes the prey, when possible, on the upbound. It takes its run, leaps, hits the earth a yard before the prey, and then, with its full ferocity and strength, on the upbound, strikes it, biting and tearing. The weight of the beast was some six hundred pounds, its length was some ten feet. Its strike, if made immediately from the ground, could knock a water buffalo, rolling, from its feet. It could break the back of a small horse laterally, snapping the spine. The pit the Men had dug was ten feet in length. It was thus almost certain that the termination of the approach leap, the striking of the earth immediately prior to the killing bound, would be at the pit's edge.
Ugly Girl continued to make the small noises of the bush pig.
Then, suddenly, she stopped. To Hamilton's amazement then, after an instant's silence, Ugly Girl uttered a tiny, inhuman squeal of fear. It was the warning signal of the bush pig. It is a genetically linked terror signal which also, genetically, releases the fear and flight response in other pigs.
In the old brain of the beast this was a sound it well remembered.
It preceded momentarily the almost instantaneous, terrified scattering of the pigs.
Suddenly, without an instant's hesitation, the dark, low shape, swift and terrible, sprang up, bounding forward. At the edge of the pit it sprang into the air.
Hamilton and Ugly Girl threw themselves back against the brush.
There was a sudden snapping of light branches, and a scream of rage.
For a wild instant Hamilton saw the copperlike eyes blazing not more than a foot from her body, and one paw, extended over the edge of the pit, and then the beast, twisting, fell sideways, down, away from her, disappearing in the darkness. There was a horrid scream of pain and rage, and she heard stakes snapping and the ripping of the body of the animal. Then she heard movement in the pit and more cries of rage and pain. The animal, she knew, with a sinking feeling, was among the stakes, injured, terrible, maddened with pain.
She heard it scratching at the sides of the pit. She could not see its head.
Then she heard it leap up, and saw the head for an instant, wild, frothing, bloody, and then it fell back. Again it screamed with pain.
Then again it leaped, and she saw its head, huge, broad, and the teeth, fangs white in the night. The head was more than a foot wide. Two mighty paws, claws extended, caught to the earth not more than five inches from their bodies, and the animal tried to scramble up, back feet digging at the side of the pit, snarling, roaring. Hamilton saw that it was now blind in one eye. There was blood, black against the side of its head, on the left side of its head. The left ear was torn.
The animal, partly out of the pit, regarded them.
It held, precariously, to the side of the pit. Then, suddenly it pitched backward into the darkness.
Its six hundred pounds fell from some sixteen feet backward onto the stakes.
Hamilton heard a sudden whimpering. Hamilton did not know the sound. It came from the pit. It was that of a cub crying for its mother.
Then there was silence. The pit was dark, and very quiet. Hamilton, tied against Ugly Girl, lost consciousness. Ugly Girl, bracing her body, held Hamilton and herself upright. Ugly Girl began to make a low, crooning noise with her mouth, a repetition of some four or five notes. She repeated this over and over, happily, to herself. It was the Ugly People's way of singing. She, and the human slave girl, were alive.
17
Brenda Hamilton laughed.
She had made good her escape.
Yesterday night she had fled from the group. The group had come, in the late afternoon, to a group of high, almost sheer cliffs. In them, here and there, high, some of them more than two hundred feet from the ground, there was a set of openings, leading to deep caves.
These were the shelters.
They were the home of the Men, and of their properties, their skins, their flints, and their women and children.
The cliffs, with their height, and the dark openings, had frightened Hamilton.
She was afraid to be owned in them.
Camp had been made at the foot of the cliffs, for the men must investigate the caves again, many with torches, to make certain that the cave bear had not, in their absence, claimed them as his own.
The group was in good spirits. The cave lion had been killed, and such beasts, preying on humans, were extremely rare. Many hides and much meat had been taken at the game camp, and the men had found salt; and much flint had been carried to the foot of the cliffs.
Brenda Hamilton, naked, thonged to Ugly Girl by the throat, her body aching from the weight of the flint sack, had, with the other women, thrown down the flint, and knelt with them, at the base of the cliffs, exhausted. No longer were she and the others hurried forward by the switches of Fox and Wolf. Her body had been struck many times. The other women, except Ugly Girl, were happy; they were hom
e; Brenda Hamilton, her body aching from the weight of the stone, and stinging from the blows of switches which had encouraged her to carry it more swiftly, looked up at the cliffs; she was afraid; they were very high, and the dark openings frightened her; some of them were more than two hundred feet high in the cliff. Ugly Girl did not seem happy or unhappy; she seemed only stupid, docile, vacant; she would do whatever her masters told her; Brenda Hamilton would not; she was determined to escape. She no longer wished to carry flint as a slave; she did not wish, again, to be used as a piece of meat, living meat, to bait a trap. Many of the women had smiled, when she had been tied with Ugly Girl, particularly the dark-haired girl, and the shorter, blond one. And the hunter had looked upon her, when her eyes had pleaded with him, impassively. She would flee.
Her opportunity had come much earlier than she had hoped. The men had gone up the cliffs, to investigate the caves. The women and children, thus, had been left below.
Before the men had left, dried meat had been distributed. Brenda and Ugly Girl had had four cubes apiece. It had been held in the palm of the hand of Runner. They had taken it, as kneeling women often did, in their teeth, directly from his hand.
At the flint lode, in gathering fruit, and roots and vegetables, and watching what was eaten, Brenda Hamilton had learned much.
She was confident she could now, in one way or another, survive.
She must make her way to the south before the onset of winter.
When it grew dark, and the others were asleep, the men, not wishing to descend the cliff at night, in the uncertain light of torches, camped in one of the shelters, Brenda Hamilton, carefully, silently, began to chew on the rawhide thong that tethered her to the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed, inhuman Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl approached her, whimpering, and tried to push her hand from the thong, but Hamilton, frenzied, furious, struck her back. "Stay away!" she hissed. Whimpering, Ugly Girl withdrew to the end of her tether. In time, biting and pulling and scratching with her fingers, she managed to part the thong. "What fools they are not to have bound me hand and foot," she laughed to herself.