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Just at the junction of this large intestine with the small intestine, nature took it into her head to develop a second pouch, a sort of copy of the stomach. Naturally, it has developed to the largest degree and size in those animals which have lived upon the bulkiest and grassiest of foods, the so-called Herbivora, or grass-eaters.
"'Short life to him, I said. 'In three nights or four, the Grass-Eaters will be moving. "'And my people are fast in the mud, said Taku-Wakin. 'I am a mud-head myself to think a crooked rod could save them. He took it from his girdle warped by the wet and the warmth of his body.
The others, stepping warily, approached their leader. Numa selected a sleek, fat filly and his flaming eyes burned greedily as they feasted upon her, for Numa, the lion, loves scarce anything better than the meat of Pacco, perhaps because Pacco is, of all the grass-eaters, the most difficult to catch. Slowly the lion rose, and as he rose, a twig snapped beneath one of his great, padded paws.
Nothing grew then but cane and coarse grass, and the water rotting the land until there was no knowing where it was safe treading from year to year. Not that it mattered to my people. We kept to the hills where there was plenty of good browse, and left the swamp to the Grass-Eaters bunt-headed, woolly-haired eaters of grass!"
Oddly enough, among the grass-eaters, for some reason which we do not understand, it appears to occur in a sort of inverse proportion to the stomach; those which have large, sacculate, pouched stomachs, like the cow, sheep, and the ruminants generally, having smaller cæca. In other Herbivora with small stomachs, like the rabbit and the horse, it develops greater size.
But my father had worked as far as the Grass Flats and beyond them, to a place of islands. "'Squidgy Islands, I told him. 'The Grass-Eaters go there to drop their calves every season. Taku kicked me behind the ears. "'Said I not you were a beast of a bad heart! he scolded. But how should I know he would care to hear about a lot of silly Mammoths. 'Also, he said, 'you are my Medicine.
But don't forget one thing, Shorty: we are not up against a theory but a condition. The fact is these grass-eaters have all got scurvy." "Must be contagious." "No; that the doctors do know. Scurvy is not a germ disease. It can't be caught. It's generated. As near as I can get it, it's due to an impoverished condition of the blood.
You shall find me the trail of the Talking Stick, and I, Taku, son of Long-Hand, shall lead the people. "'In six moons, I told him, 'the Grass-Eaters go to the Islands to calve "'In which time, said Taku, 'the chiefs will have quarreled six times, and Opata will have eaten me. Drive them, Arrumpa, drive them! "Umph, uh-ump!" chuckled the old beast reminiscently. "We drove; we drove.
Knowing this was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hid himself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a green glade, and waited. He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from a runway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge, dun-colored bull, with horns like scimitars each as long as Grôm's arm.
He did not even see me as I slipped around the procession and left a wet trail for him to follow. "That was how we crossed to the Islands, village by village, with Taku-Wakin close on my trail, which was the trail of the Grass-Eaters. They swam the sloughs with their children on their shoulders, and made rafts of reeds to push their food bundles over.
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