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Updated: September 29, 2025
"What do you suppose was chasing it, Ook-ootsk?" she queried; and whipped about, without waiting for his answer, to stare anxiously at the green shoulder of the hillside. "Black lion, maybe," said Ook-ootsk, in his harsh, clucking voice, dropping his spear and club beside him and setting a long arrow to the string of his massive bow.
The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood. But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flood divided upon the massive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon a black rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surging pell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker and lighter were savagely torn and trampled underfoot.
In that pause, however, though it was but for a second or two, the second bear had forged ahead of its companion. It was greeted instantly by an arrow from the massive bow of Ook-ootsk, aimed with cool deliberation.
We will go back to the Caves, and after three sleeps for good counsel, we will return with fire and find the destroying Thing." On their return to the Caves, Grôm gave the strange woman and her baby to his faithful slave Ook-ootsk, who accepted the gift with enthusiasm because, being a Bow-leg, he had not been allowed to take any of the Cave Women to wife.
Knowing a few words of the Bow-legs' tongue, which he had learned from his lame slave Ook-ootsk, he addressed the crouching woman, telling her not to fear. The tongue was unintelligible to her, but the tones of his voice seemed to reassure her.
And those of the tribe who had been hoping to do honor to the Shining One, as well as to the spirits of their slain kinsmen back in the barrow on the windy hills, by a great and bloody sacrifice, began to realize with discontent that their hopes were like enough to be disappointed. The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk a clicking guttural which none but A-ya was able to master.
Depending now upon his ears, the monster blundered straight forward in the direction of the shouting voices. He had quite forgotten Ook-ootsk. He raged to come at this last intolerable foe, who had scorched the light from his eyes. He made for her voice straight enough; but it chanced that exactly in his path lay the second fire that into which the body of the elk had fallen.
The girl A-ya, absorbed in her special occupation of fashioning bows and arrows for the tribe, had remained, with a half-score of old men and women and Grôm's giant slave, the lame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk, to guard the little children and the tribal fires.
The old men, jabbering in triumph, craned their shaggy gray heads out over the brink to grin down upon him, while A-ya, with a wild light in her eyes and her strong white teeth gleaming savagely, turned back to tend the wounds of her slave, Ook-ootsk.
A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grôm down into the thick of the reeking battle, when a scream from the cave-mouth made her whip round. She was just in time to see Ook-ootsk hurl his spear at the tall figure of Mawg, leaping down upon him from the broken slope on the left. A half score of the Bow-legs were following hard upon Mawg's heels.
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