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Updated: June 14, 2025
For Bawr had observed that even the saber-tooth had a certain uneasiness at the sound of many human voices together. At night and it was their rule to make camp while the sun was yet several hours high with the aid of their flint spear-heads they would laboriously cut down the saplings of the long-thorned acacia, and surround the camp with a barrier which the monsters dared not assail.
Bawr gave orders that the tribe should get together their scanty possessions of food, skins and weapons, and make a start on the morrow for their new home. The attempts of the girl, meanwhile, to explain about the fire and Grôm's miraculous subjugation of it to his will, had only spread terror in the tribe.
As day after day rolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dry as tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, began to doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There were murmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawr suppressed with small ceremony.
Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless myriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley, led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself. "Are they as many," asked Grôm, "as they who came against us in the Little Hills?" But the panting men threw up their hands. "As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings," they replied.
Grôm's second shaft had flown true; and Bawr, greatly marveling, drew up his legs to a place of safety. With the fire of that deep wound in its entrails the saber-tooth forgot all about its quarry in the tree. It had caught sight of Grôm when he uttered his yell of warning, and it knew instantly whence the strange attack had come.
In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of the plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children of the Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less than annihilation.
Without pausing in his huge stride he reached down his trunk, whipped it about the waist of Bawr, and swung him aloft, crushing in his ribs with the terrific pressure, and carried him along high in the air above the trumpeting ranks. A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya, whose bow was quick as thought, let fly an arrow before Grôm could stay her hand.
It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days, and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. By sunrise Bawr and Grôm estimated that there were rafts enough to carry the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided, however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less buoyant than they hoped.
The caves were swarming with strong children; for at the Chief's orders every warrior had taken to himself either two or three wives, so that none of the widows had been left unmated. Grôm alone remained with but one wife, although his position in the tribe, second only to that of Bawr himself, would have entitled him to as many as he might choose.
Though the great battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legs had cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves were swarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grôm, his Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure.
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