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Updated: May 17, 2025
It took Umpl two days to plan out a way for them to carry it, and to cut down with stone axes saplings to sling it on. But the rest looked up to him as a leader now; and when they left the valley he was their chief, with Sptz trotting on behind carrying a skin of acorn-flour, and the crossed and lighted firebrands. It was a weary march through the mountains. For many weeks they travelled.
Umpl thought of nothing but dragons, and was scared white. Sptz was whiter to begin with, as she lived more in the cave underground, and now that she thought the sky was falling she could think of nothing else. But she was the first to find out that they were not dead after all. Then she gave a start, and sniffed eagerly. She smelt something.
A great part of his time also was spent in breaking bones and stones into small pieces for his father to work up into arrowheads. Umpl hated that. He would not have minded doing the fine work about it, but just to crack bones all his spare time was not joyful; and, now that there was no fire to pull wood for, he had just so much more spare time for bone-cracking.
So perhaps they were right about the good luck. Besides, both of them were growing up. Sptz had learned to make acorn bread and found a hollow on the top of the Iron Star which was just the thing to grind up nuts in. Umpl was two feet taller than when the star fell, and could draw a bow and send an arrow right through a stag.
His name was Ulf, the son of Urgan, who was the son of Umpleton, who, as you will remember, was the grandson of Umpl. It was thus a very long time after Umpl's day; and yet, here is a very curious thing: Umpl had blue eyes and black eyebrows and hair; so had Ulf! Umpl had a nose with a little rise in the bridge of it, like a curve; so had Ulf!
Some day I may tell more. Meanwhile, now you know how the Iron Star came into this world of ours. It certainly seemed to both Umpl and Sptz that the iron mass which was once a falling star had brought good luck to them. Fire in itself was a grand thing. It was so good not to lie cold o' nights, or to be obliged to fill up the doorway with stones and pull them down in the morning.
One afternoon both Umpl and Sptz went out together. It was not very late, and on so clear a day one could see a long way through the glades among the tree trunks, which was something to be considered. Once when it was not so clear they had spent a long time on the outer branches of a tree waiting for a Cave Bear to get hungry enough to give them up and hunt for another dinner.
Not being able to speak their language I do not know what their names may have meant; but they had names, one sounding like a grunt, the other a hiss. Better call them Umpl and Sptz, which is as near as I can come to it.
But she worked very hard at her deerskins, and always had one in hand, pricking little holes in it in odd and fashionable patterns, into which she could rub berry stain. Sometimes she ornamented them with pictures of animals, queerly drawn, which were thought very fine. But here Umpl could beat her.
Umpl's ears had been of a longer, narrower pattern than those of his mates; Ulf had the same style of narrow ear on each side of his head; and just as Umpl thought, and dreamed a little, and planned, and looked far ahead to what he might do as the leader of a band of warriors if he could bring them to reason, instead of shooting them all with his bow and arrows when the wolves had them treed, so now in their games Ulf was the one who did the planning.
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