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Updated: June 14, 2025


Then he turned upon Grôm with burning eyes. "You found the Fire for our people. You saved our people from the hordes of the Bow-legs. You have saved my life now, slaying the monster from very far off with these little sticks which you have made. It is you who should be Chief, not I." Grôm laughed and shook his head. "Bawr is the better man of us two," said he positively, "and he is a better chief.

Grôm leapt to his feet with a wild yell of warning, at the same time letting fly an arrow. In his haste the shaft went wide. Bawr, looking over his shoulder, saw the giant beast almost upon him. With a tremendous bound he gained the foot of a tree. Dropping his club and spear, he sprang desperately, caught a branch, and swung himself upward.

As Grôm's mate, and his confidential associate in all his greatest ventures, A-ya's prestige in the tribe had come to be only less than that of Bawr and Grôm themselves. On the open, grassy level before the cave mouth, the two great fires burned steadily in the sun.

"If they are driven over us," muttered Bawr, "they will grind us and our fires into the dust." "It must be men," mused Grôm aloud, "men far mightier than ourselves and so countless that the hordes of the Tree Men would seem a handful in comparison. Only men, or gods, and in swarms like locusts, could so drive all these mighty beasts before them as a child drives rabbits."

It was not only for defense, therefore, but for wholesale attack the attack of six score upon as many thousand that Bawr planned his strategy and Grôm wove unheard-of devices. Of the two great caves occupied by the tribe one was now abandoned, as not lending itself easily to defense.

"I have found a place where the tribe may hold themselves secure against all enemies. And I have come back, as was agreed, to lead the tribe thither before our enemies destroy us. I have done great deeds. I have not spared myself. I have come quickly. I have deserved well of the people. Why has Bawr the Chief no welcome for me?"

The men of the tribe, including the chiefs themselves, Bawr and Grôm, together with most of the women and the half-grown children, had gone off down the shore to a shallow inlet five or six miles distant to gather shell-fish great luscious mussels and peculiarly plump and savory whelks.

But you have brought her back. I see not what more your accusers have against you." Grôm turned, and, with a quick, decisive motion, drew A-ya to his side. "Bawr the Chief knows that I am his servant, and a true man!" said he sternly. "I did not steal the girl. She followed me, and I had no thought of it."

At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave were stationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen these women because each of them had one or more young children in the cave behind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that path alive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her place was at the service of the fires.

Bawr, the Chief, and Grôm, his right hand and his counselor, stood upon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared down anxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyes to discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets and cane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of a cattle-farm.

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