Cave Girl | Page 7

a little shriek of joy, and Waldo Emerson
Smith-Jones, his face bisected by a broad grin, turned toward her.

CHAPTER III
THE LITTLE EDEN
THE mortar ended hostilities--temporarily, at least; but the cave men
loitered about the base of the cliff during the balance of the afternoon,
occasionally shouting taunts at the two above them. These the girl
answered, evidently in kind. Sometimes she would point to Waldo and
make ferocious signs, doubtless indicative of the horrible slaughter
which awaited them at his hands if they did not go away and leave their
betters alone. When the young man realized the significance of her
pantomime he felt his heart swell with an emotion which he feared was
pride in brutal, primitive, vulgar physical prowess.
As the long day wore on Waldo became both very hungry and very
thirsty. In the valley below he could see a tiny brooklet purling, clear
and beautiful, toward the south. The sight of it drove him nearly mad,
as did also that of the fruit which he glimpsed hanging ripe for eating at
the edge of the forest.
By means of signs he asked the girl if she, too, were hungry, for he had
come to a point now where he could look at her almost without visible
signs of mortification. She nodded her head and, pointing toward the

descending sun, made it plain to him that after dark they would descend
and eat.
The cave men had not left when darkness came, and it seemed to
Waldo a very foolhardy thing to venture down while they might be
about; but the girl made it so evident that she considered him an
invincible warrior that he was torn with the conflicting emotions of
cowardice and an unaccountable desire to appear well in her eyes, that
he might by his acts justify her belief in him.
It seemed very wonderful to Waldo that any one should look upon him
in the light of a tower of strength and a haven of refuge; he was not
quite certain in his own mind but that the reputation might lead him
into most uncomfortable and embarrassing situations. Incidentally, he
wondered if the girl was a good runner; he hoped so.
It must have been quite near midnight when his companion intimated
that the time had arrived when they should fare forth and dine. Waldo
wanted her to go first, but she shrank close to him, timidly, and held
back.
There was nothing else for it, then, than to take the plunge, though had
the sun been shining it would have revealed a very pale and wide-eyed
champion, who slipped gingerly over the side of the ledge to grope
with his feet for a foothold beneath.
Half-way down the moon rose above the forest--a great, full, tropic
moon, that lighted the face of the cliff almost as brilliantly as might the
sun itself. It shone into the mouth of a cave upon the ledge that Waldo
had just reached in his descent, revealing to the horrified eyes of the
young man a great, hairy form stretched in slumber not a yard from him.
As he looked, the wicked little eyes opened and looked straight into his.
With difficulty Waldo suppressed a shriek of dismay as he turned to
plunge madly down the precipitous trail. The girl had not yet descended
from the ledge above.
She must have sensed what had happened, for as Waldo turned to fly

she gave a little cry of terror. At the same instant the cave man leaped
to his feet. But the girl's voice had touched something in the breast of
Waldo Emerson which generations of disuse had almost atrophied, and
for the first time in his life he did a brave and courageous thing.
He could easily have escaped the cave man and reached the
valley--alone; but at the first note of the young girl's cry he wheeled
and scrambled back to the ledge to face the burly, primitive man, who
could have crushed him with a single blow.
Waldo Emerson no longer trembled. His nerves and muscles were very
steady as he swung his cudgel in an arc that brought it crashing down
upon the upraised guarding arm of the cave man.
There was a snapping of bone beneath the blow, a scream of pain--the
man staggered back, the girl sprang to Waldo's side from the ledge
above, and hand in hand they turned and fled down the face of the cliff.
From a dozen cave-mouths above issued a score of cave men, but the
fleeing pair were half-way across the clearing before the slow-witted
brutes were fully aware of what had happened. By the time they had
taken up the pursuit Waldo and the girl had entered the forest.
For a few yards