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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Oho, Hickory!" called Strongarm, "what is it?" "A lion hunt!" shouted Hickory, and shook his spear. Strongarm's bold face lighted up. "Tell about it," he said. "A lion has come among the caves by the river. He kills the people and carries off the children. The women dare not go to the river for water. The men are afraid to go alone to hunt. So they want help to kill the lion.
His wife laughed, too, as she pushed the children aside and raked out coals. These she put into a hollow branch that Strongarm handed her. "They will keep alive in there," he said, "even if it rains." Then with a good pine torch and his branch full of coals, he hurried home. When Burr came back to the cave, she, too, found the fire out.
They followed it until it was too tired to fight, and then pulled it down and killed it. They ate all the meat they wanted and went away. Then Strongarm cut meat from the bison. On his way home he saw a nest of wild puppies in a hollow tree. "Um," he grunted, "the little wild goat that the children play with is quiet and tame. If a wild puppy grew up with them, would it be tame?
"That does not matter in the least," he answered, hastily. "I must have an entirely new name." "Suppose we call him the Silver Knight," suggested Berna, as she eyed his glistening armor. "Oh, no! that is no name at all!" declared Helda. "We might better call him Baron Strongarm." "I do not like that, either," said the Lady Seseley, "for we do not know whether his arm is strong or not.
There was a deer on the floor, so she knew that Strongarm had come from the hunt. "The man has gone to old Hickory's for fire," she told her father. "Um," said Flint, "he might have rested his legs. I can get fire from stones." "From stones!" cried Burr, her face white. The old man quietly pulled two stones from his bag. One was flint, the other was quartz.
"Well, I will try," said Thorn. "When you go back to the stone yard, I will go with you." Strongarm turned round where he sat and pulled up a little hickory tree. "We will put handles on these axes," he said. He hacked off a piece of the little tree and split it half way down, and hacked off one split piece. The other split piece he bent around his ax. Then he took wet string made of skin.
He will learn to make his way." In those days Strongarm was busily digging a big hole away out in the forest. He cut the dirt up with his stone ax, and threw it out with a clam shell. He had worked now for days, and at last the hole was large enough. He laid branches over it, and over the branches he hung the leg of a wild goat. That night the wild things of the woods came out to hunt for food.
The axes were wide at the sharp end and narrow at the head, and you could see where every chip had come off. Strongarm turned his ax over and looked at it. He rubbed his fingers along the rough sharp edge. "That is a good ax," he said, and he held it up and looked it all over again.
A cave bear came by and smelled the meat. He went to get it and fell through the branches into the hole beneath. The next day when Strongarm went to the hole, he found the great cave bear in it. He killed the bear and carried the meat home to eat, and the skin to sleep on. Burr took the bear skin from him and laid it out on the ground.
He struck again and again, and the sparks came fast and caught the dry grass at his feet!" "Um," grunted Strongarm, wondering. He thought for a long time; then he looked at Flint and said, "Fire lives in wood, too! My ax handles grow warm as I rub them." The boys listened in wonder to their grandfather's strange story of the making of fire.
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