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It was all natural and commonplace, for the time. There were other upleaping flame sheets in the surrounding region forever burning as there are in northern Asia to-day but Ab knew of these fires only from Old Mok's tales. He stood wonderstruck at what he saw about him.
The people on board of her were looking everywhere for Banker, for without him they knew not what they ought to do, but if their leader ever came up from the great depth to which he had sunk with Mok's black hands upon his throat, his comrades were not near the spot where, dead or alive, he floated to the surface.
She had never quite adapted herself to the new life in the Fire Valley, and after a time she began to grow old very fast. At last a fever attacked her and the end of her patient, busy life came. After her death One-Ear was much in Old Mok's cave, the two had so long been friends. There with them the crippled boy was often to be found. He was not always gay and joyous.
Together they fell, together they rolled in the dirty slime, together they rose as if they had been shot up by a spring, and together they went down again, rolling over each other, pulling, tearing, striking, gasping, and panting. Cheditafa had gone. The moment of Mok's appearance, he had risen and fled. There were now people in the street.
Sometimes he lay for days on his bed of leaves at home, in weakness and pain, silent and unlike himself. Then when Lightfoot's care had given him back a little strength, he would beg to be taken to Old Mok's cave.
It was when the fire blazed out at night, when all had fed, when the tired people lay about resting, but not ready yet for sleep, and the story of the day's events was given, that Old Mok's ordinarily still tongue would sometimes loosen and he would tell of what happened when he was a boy, or of the strange tales which had been told him of the time long past, the times when the Shell and Cave people were one, times when there were monstrous things abroad and life was hard to keep.
There he could sleep, he said, away from the noise and the lights of the outside world, and finally he claimed and was allowed a nest of his own in the warmest and darkest nook of Old Mok's den, where he slept every night, and sometimes a good part of the day, when one of his times of pain and weakness was upon him.
Ab struggled manfully for a portion of one of the tusks, which he wanted for Old Mok's carving, and won it at last, the elders deciding that he and Oak had fought well enough upon the cliff to entitle them to a part of the honor of the spoil, and Oak opposing nothing done by Ab, though his looks were glowering.
While everything else in the Fire Valley was growing, developing and flourishing, Little Mok's frail body had ever grown but slowly, and about the beginning of his twelfth year there appeared a change in him. He became permanently weak and grew more and more helpless day by day.
Once, when Lightfoot sat by Old Mok's fire, she told them of the time when she and Ab found themselves outside their cave, unarmed, with a bear to be eaten through before they could get into their door, and Little Mok surprised his mother and Old Mok by an outburst of laughter at the tale.
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