by Jack London
CHAPTER XV
Lop-Ear got married. It was the second winter after ouradventure-journey, and it was most unexpected. He gave me no warning.The first I knew was one twilight when I climbed the cliff to our cave.I squeezed into the entrance and there I stopped. There was no room forme. Lop-Ear and his mate were in possession, and she was none other thanmy sister, the daughter of my step-father, the Chatterer.
I tried to force my way in. There was space only for two, and that spacewas already occupied. Also, they had me at a disadvantage, and, whatof the scratching and hair-pulling I received, I was glad to retreat. Islept that night, and for many nights, in the connecting passage of thedouble-cave. From my experience it seemed reasonably safe. As the twoFolk had dodged old Saber-Tooth, and as I had dodged Red-Eye, so itseemed to me that I could dodge the hunting animals by going back andforth between the two caves.
I had forgotten the wild dogs. They were small enough to go through anypassage that I could squeeze through. One night they nosed me out. Hadthey entered both caves at the same time they would have got me. Asit was, followed by some of them through the passage, I dashed out themouth of the other cave. Outside were the rest of the wild dogs. Theysprang for me as I sprang for the cliff-wall and began to climb. Oneof them, a lean and hungry brute, caught me in mid-leap. His teeth sankinto my thigh-muscles, and he nearly dragged me back. He held on, but Imade no effort to dislodge him, devoting my whole effort to climbing outof reach of the rest of the brutes.
Not until I was safe from them did I turn my attention to that liveagony on my thigh. And then, a dozen feet above the snapping pack thatleaped and scrambled against the wall and fell back, I got the dog bythe throat and slowly throttled him. I was a long time doing it. Heclawed and ripped my hair and hide with his hind-paws, and ever hejerked and lunged with his weight to drag me from the wall.
At last his teeth opened and released my torn flesh. I carried his bodyup the cliff with me, and perched out the night in the entrance of myold cave, wherein were Lop-Ear and my sister. But first I had to endurea storm of abuse from the aroused horde for being the cause of thedisturbance. I had my revenge. From time to time, as the noise ofthe pack below eased down, I dropped a rock and started it up again.Whereupon, from all around, the abuse of the exasperated Folk beganafresh. In the morning I shared the dog with Lop-Ear and his wife,and for several days the three of us were neither vegetarians norfruitarians.
Lop-Ear's marriage was not a happy one, and the consolation about it isthat it did not last very long. Neither he nor I was happy during thatperiod. I was lonely. I suffered the inconvenience of being cast out ofmy safe little cave, and somehow I did not make it up with any other ofthe young males. I suppose my long-continued chumming with Lop-Ear hadbecome a habit.
I might have married, it is true; and most likely I should have marriedhad it not been for the dearth of females in the horde. This dearth,it is fair to assume, was caused by the exorbitance of Red-Eye, and itillustrates the menace he was to the existence of the horde. Then therewas the Swift One, whom I had not forgotten.
At any rate, during the period of Lop-Ear's marriage I knocked aboutfrom pillar to post, in danger every night that I slept, and nevercomfortable. One of the Folk died, and his widow was taken into the caveof another one of the Folk. I took possession of the abandoned cave, butit was wide-mouthed, and after Red-Eye nearly trapped me in it one day,I returned to sleeping in the passage of the double-cave. During thesummer, however, I used to stay away from the caves for weeks, sleepingin a tree-shelter I made near the mouth of the slough.
I have said that Lop-Ear was not happy. My sister was the daughter ofthe Chatterer, and she made Lop-Ear's life miserable for him. In noother cave was there so much squabbling and bickering. If Red-Eye wasa Bluebeard, Lop-Ear was hen-pecked; and I imagine that Red-Eye was tooshrewd ever to covet Lop-Ear's wife.
Fortunately for Lop-Ear, she died. An unusual thing happenedthat summer. Late, almost at the end of it, a second crop of thestringy-rooted carrots sprang up. These unexpected second-crop rootswere young and juicy and tender, and for some time the carrot-patch wasthe favorite feeding-place of the horde. One morning, early, severalscore of us were there making our breakfast. On one side of me was theHairless One. Beyond him were his father and son, old Marrow-Bone andLong-Lip. On the other side of me were my sister and Lop-Ear, she beingnext to me.
There was no warning. On the sudden, both the Hairless One and my sistersprang and screamed. At the same instant I heard the thud of the arrowsthat transfixed them. The next instant they were down on the ground,floundering and gasping, and the rest of us were stampeding for thetrees. An arrow drove past me and entered the ground, its featheredshaft vibrating and oscillating from the impact of its arrested flight.I remember clearly how I swerved as I ran, to go past it, and that Igave it a needlessly wide berth. I must have shied at it as a horseshies at an object it fears.
Lop-Ear took a smashing fall as he ran beside me. An arrow had driventhrough the calf of his leg and tripped him. He tried to run, but wastripped and thrown by it a second time. He sat up, crouching, tremblingwith fear, and called to me pleadingly. I dashed back. He showed me thearrow. I caught hold of it to pull it out, but the consequent hurt madehim seize my hand and stop me. A flying arrow passed between us. Anotherstruck a rock, splintered, and fell to the ground. This was too much. Ipulled, suddenly, with all my might. Lop-Ear screamed as the arrowcame out, and struck at me angrily. But the next moment we were in fullflight again.
I looked back. Old Marrow-Bone, deserted and far behind, was totteringsilently along in his handicapped race with death. Sometimes he almostfell, and once he did fall; but no more arrows were coming. He scrambledweakly to his feet. Age burdened him heavily, but he did not want todie. The three Fire-Men, who were now running forward from their forestambush, could easily have got him, but they did not try. Perhaps he wastoo old and tough. But they did want the Hairless One and my sister,for as I looked back from the trees I could see the Fire-Men beating intheir heads with rocks. One of the Fire-Men was the wizened old hunterwho limped.
We went on through the trees toward the caves--an excited and disorderlymob that drove before it to their holes all the small life of theforest, and that set the blue-jays screaming impudently. Now thatthere was no immediate danger, Long-Lip waited for his grand-father,Marrow-Bone; and with the gap of a generation between them, the oldfellow and the youth brought up our rear.
And so it was that Lop-Ear became a bachelor once more. That nightI slept with him in the old cave, and our old life of chumming beganagain. The loss of his mate seemed to cause him no grief. At least heshowed no signs of it, nor of need for her. It was the wound in his legthat seemed to bother him, and it was all of a week before he got backagain to his old spryness.
Marrow-Bone was the only old member in the horde. Sometimes, on lookingback upon him, when the vision of him is most clear, I note a strikingresemblance between him and the father of my father's gardener. Thegardener's father was very old, very wrinkled and withered; and for allthe world, when he peered through his tiny, bleary eyes and mumbledwith his toothless gums, he looked and acted like old Marrow-Bone. Thisresemblance, as a child, used to frighten me. I always ran when I sawthe old man tottering along on his two canes. Old Marrow-Bone even hada bit of sparse and straggly white beard that seemed identical with thewhiskers of the old man.
As I have said, Marrow-Bone was the only old member of the horde. Hewas an exception. The Folk never lived to old age. Middle age was fairlyrare. Death by violence was the common way of death. They died as myfather had died, as Broken-Tooth had died, as my sister and the HairlessOne had just died--abruptly and brutally, in the full possession oftheir faculties, in the full swing and rush of life. Natural death? Todie violently was the natural way of dying in those days.
No one died of old age among the Folk. I never knew of a case. EvenMarrow-Bone did not die that way, and he was the only one in mygeneration who had the chance. A bad rippling, any s
erious accidentalor temporary impairment of the faculties, meant swift death. As a rule,these deaths were not witnessed.
Members of the horde simply dropped out of sight. They left the cavesin the morning, and they never came back. They disappeared--into theravenous maws of the hunting creatures.
This inroad of the Fire People on the carrot-patch was the beginning ofthe end, though we did not know it. The hunters of the Fire People beganto appear more frequently as the time went by. They came in twos andthrees, creeping silently through the forest, with their flying arrowsable to annihilate distance and bring down prey from the top of theloftiest tree without themselves climbing into it. The bow and arrowwas like an enormous extension of their leaping and striking muscles,so that, virtually, they could leap and kill at a hundred feet and more.This made them far more terrible than Saber-Tooth himself. And then theywere very wise. They had speech that enabled them more effectively toreason, and in addition they understood cooperation.
We Folk came to be very circumspect when we were in the forest. We weremore alert and vigilant and timid. No longer were the trees a protectionto be relied upon. No longer could we perch on a branch and laughdown at our carnivorous enemies on the ground. The Fire People werecarnivorous, with claws and fangs a hundred feet long, the most terribleof all the hunting animals that ranged the primeval world.
One morning, before the Folk had dispersed to the forest, there was apanic among the water-carriers and those who had gone down to the riverto drink. The whole horde fled to the caves. It was our habit, at suchtimes, to flee first and investigate afterward. We waited in the mouthsof our caves and watched. After some time a Fire-Man stepped cautiouslyinto the open space. It was the little wizened old hunter. He stood fora long time and watched us, looking our caves and the cliff-wall up anddown. He descended one of the run-ways to a drinking-place, returninga few minutes later by another run-way. Again he stood and watched uscarefully, for a long time. Then he turned on his heel and limpedinto the forest, leaving us calling querulously and plaintively to oneanother from the cave-mouths.