The Story of Ab | Page 8

a steak from the wild horse of the time was something admirable. There is a sort of maxim current in this age, in civilized rural communities, to the effect that those quadrupeds are good to eat which "chew the cud or part the hoof." The horse of to-day is a creature with but one toe to each leg--we all know that--but the horse of the cave man's time had only lately parted with the split hoof, and so was fairly edible, even according to the modern standard.
The father and mother of Ab were not more than two years past their honeymoon. They, in their way, were glad that their union had been so blest and that a lusty man-child was rolling about and crowing and cooing upon the earthen floor of the cave. They lived from hand to mouth, and from day to day, and this day had been a good one. They were there together, man, woman and child. They had warmth and food. The entrance to the cave was barred so that no monster of the period might enter. They could eat and sleep with a certainty of the perfect digestion which followed such a life as theirs and with a certainty of all peace for the moment. Even the child mumbled heartily, though not yet very strongly, at the delicious meat of the little horse, and, the meal ended, the two lay down upon a mass of leaves which made their bed, and the child lay snuggled and warm within reach of them. The aristocracy of the time had gone to sleep.
There was silence in the cave, but, outside, the world was not so still. The night was not always one of silence in the cave man's time. The hours of darkness were those when the creature which walked upon two legs was no longer gliding through the forest with ready club or spear, and when those creatures which used four legs instead of two, especially the defenseless, felt more at ease than in the daytime. The grass-eating animals emerged from the forest into the plateaus and upon the low plains along the river side and the flesh-eaters began again their hunting. It was a time of wild life, and of wild death, for out of the abundance much was taken; there were nightly tragedies, and the beasts of prey were as glutted as the urus or the elk which fed on the sweet grasses. It was but a matter of difference in diet and in the manner of doing away with one life which must be sacrificed to support another. There was liveliness at night with the queer thing, man, out of the way, and brutes and beasts of many sorts, taking their chances together, were happier with him absent. They could not understand him, and liked him not, though the great-clawed and sharp-toothed ones had a vast desire to eat him. He was a disturbing element in the community of the plain and forest.
And, while all this play of life and death went on outside, the three people, the man, woman and child, in the cave slept as soundly as sleep the drunken or the just. They were full-fed and warm and safe. No beast of a size greater than that of a lank wolf or sinewy wildcat could enter the cave through the narrow entrance between the heaped-up rocks, and of these, as of any other dangerous beast, there was none which would face what barred even the narrow passage, for it was fire. Just at the entrance the all-night fire of knots and hardest wood smoked, flamed and smoldered and flickered, and then flamed again, and held the passageway securely. No animal that ever lived, save man, has ever dared the touch of fire. It was the cave man's guardian.
CHAPTER IV.
AB AND OAK.
Such were the father and mother of Ab, and such was the boy himself. His surroundings have not been indicated with all the definiteness desirable, because of the lack of certain data, but, in a general way, the degree of his birth, the manner of his rearing and the natural aspects of his estate have been described. That the young man had a promising future could not admit of doubt. He was the first-born of an important family of a great race and his inheritance had no boundaries. Just where the possessions of the Ab family began or where they terminated no bird nor beast nor human being could tell. The estates of the family extended from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean and there were no dividing lines. Of course, something depended upon the existence or non-existence of a stronger cave family somewhere else, but that mattered not. And the babe grew into a sturdy youth, just as grow the