The Story of Ab | Page 8

how well they were being roasted. A sturdy twig, two yards in
length and sharpened at the end, was utilized by the man in cooking the
strips of meat cut from the haunch of the wild horse and very savory
were the odors that filled the cave. There was the faint perfume of the
crackling nuts and there was the fragrant beneficence of the broiling
meat. There are no definite records upon the subject; the chef of to-day
can give you no information on the point, but there is reason to believe
that 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