Cave Girl | Page 3

his hand's reach; but that he could knock the delicacies down
with a broken branch seemed indeed a mighty discovery--a valuable
addition to the sum total of human knowledge. Aristotle himself had
never reasoned more logically.
Waldo had taken the first step in his life toward independent mental
action--heretofore his ideas, his thoughts, his acts, even, had been
borrowed from the musty writing of the ancients, or directed by the
immaculate mind of his superior mother. And he clung to his discovery
as a child clings to a new toy. When he emerged from the forest he
brought his stick with him.
He determined to continue the pursuit of the creature that had eluded
him the night before. It would, indeed, be curious to look upon a thing
that feared him. In all his life he had never imagined it possible that any
creature could flee from him in fear. A little glow suffused the young
man as the idea timorously sought to take root.
Could it be that there was a trace of swagger in that long, bony figure
as Waldo directed his steps toward the cliff? Perish the thought! Pride
in vulgar physical prowess! A long line of Smith-Joneses would have
risen in their graves and rent their shrouds at the veriest hint of such an
idea.
For a long time Waldo walked back and forth along the foot of the cliff,
searching for the avenue of escape used by the fugitive of yesternight.
A dozen times he passed a well-defined trail that led, winding, up the
cliff's face; but Waldo knew nothing of trails--he was looking for a
flight of steps or a doorway.
Finding neither, he stumbled by accident into the trail; and, although
the evident signs that marked it as such revealed nothing to him, yet he
followed it upward for the simple reason that it was the only place upon
the cliff side where he could find a foothold. Some distance up he came
to a narrow cleft in the cliff into which the trail led. Rocks dislodged
from above had fallen into it, and, becoming wedged a few feet from
the bottom, left only a small cavelike hole, into which Waldo peered.

There was nothing visible, but the interior was dark and forbidding.
Waldo felt cold and clammy. He began to tremble. Then he turned and
looked back toward the forest. The thought of another night spent
within sight of that dismal place almost overcame him. No! A thousand
times no! Any fate were better than that, and so after several futile
efforts he forced his unwilling body through the small aperture.
He found himself on a path between two rocky walls--a path that rose
before him at a steep angle. At intervals the blue sky was visible above
through openings that had not been filled with debris.
To another it would have been apparent that the cleft had been kept
open by human beings--that it was a thoroughfare which was used, if
not frequently, at least sufficiently often to warrant considerable labor
having been expended upon it to keep it free from the debris which
must be constantly falling from above.
Where the path led, or what he expected to find at the other end, Waldo
had not the remotest idea. He was not an imaginative youth. But he
kept on up the ascent in the hope that at the end he would find the
creature which had escaped him the night before. As it had fled for a
brief instant across the clearing beneath the moon's soft rays, Waldo
had thought that it bore a remarkable resemblance to a human figure;
but of that he could not be positive.
At last his path broke suddenly into the sunlight. The walls on either
side were but little higher than his head, and a moment later he
emerged from the cleft onto a broad and beautiful plateau. Before him
stretched a wide, grassy plain, and beyond towered a range of mighty
hills. Between them and him lay a belt of forest.
A new emotion welled in the breast of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones. It
was akin to that which Balboa may have felt when he gazed for the first
time upon the mighty Pacific from the Sierra de Quarequa. For the
moment, as he contemplated this new and beautiful scene of rolling
meadowland, distant forest, and serrated hilltops, he almost forgot to be
afraid. And on the impulse of the instant he set out across the tableland
to explore the unknown which lay beyond the forest.

Well it was for Waldo Emerson's peace of mind that no faint
conception of what lay there entered his unimaginative mind. To him a
land without civilization--without cities and towns peopled by humans
with manners and customs similar to those