In the Morning of Time

The sweat ran down into their eyes, and swarms of tiny insects, breeding in the giant stems, choked their throats and nostrils; but they wrestled their way onward blindly, foot by foot. Behind them, out in the trail, came a ponderous crash, and, then an appalling explosion of squeals, screams, grunts and roars. The next instant the rigid stems gave way suddenly before them, and they fell forward, with a startled cry from the girl, into a deep and sunless water.

They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon as she could catch breath the girl laughed, whereupon the grimness of Grôm’s face relaxed. The water was a deep creek, perfectly overshadowed and hidden by the rank growth along its banks. But just opposite was the tree whose refuge they had been trying to gain. They swam across in half-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ashore, and shook themselves like a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effort among the grass-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kept tenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But–their fire was out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire lurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless.

For a moment or two Grôm looked into the girl’s eyes steadily, conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance of their loss. The girl responded, after a second’s dismay, with a look of trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grôm’s heart. He smiled proudly, and shook his club as if to reassure himself. Then, climbing hurriedly into the tree, they stared back over the plumed tops of the grasses.

The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot in the grass which they had just escaped from was a shambles. The foremost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of the rhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his double horn, and hurled to either side as if by some titanic plough. A couple more had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayed by the irresistible pressure of the surging, squealing mass.

There he had stood fast, like a jagged promontory in the surges, tossing his mighty head and thrusting hideously, while the rest of the herd passed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down the canes and pouring around on either side. Of those that passed over him about one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, and went staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden out by their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitives came the cause of their panic–two immense black lions, who had apparently been playing with their prey like cats.

When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood among his victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, they stopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match for him. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew the almost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, his imperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engage themselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat.

With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to set the very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off in enormous bounds through the grass, circling about as if to intercept, in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. At the sight Grôm frowned anxiously, thinking how helpless he and the girl would be against such foes, now that they no longer had the Shining One to protect them.

Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past the tree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, where doubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. But they had yet another adversary to reckon with.

Just past the tree, at a thicket of immense scarlet poinsettias, the trail curved sharply. From behind the poinsettias arose a gigantic shape unlike anything that Grôm had ever dreamed of. And he knew that the maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous footprints was before him.

With a trumpeting bray of indignation the monster sat upright on hind-quarters far more ponderous than those of a mammoth. Its tail, as thick at the base as the body of a bear, helped to support it, while its clumsy frame towered to a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Its hind legs were very short, thick like tree-trunks, grotesquely bowed; and its thighs like buttresses. Its fore legs were more arms than legs, of startling length and massive strength, draped in long, stiff hair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws for fingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazing coarseness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top and prolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look of being deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, or lower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue, some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave a hurried look at something crouching behind its mighty thighs.

“Its baby!” muttered the girl, with a little indrawn breath of sympathy.

Then the strange being sat up again to meet and ward off the rush of the maddened pig-tapirs.

For a moment it beat off the assault, seizing the frantic beasts and hurling them this way and that as if they had been so many rabbits. Then it was completely surrounded by the reeking squealing bleeding horde, which paid no more personal attention to it than if it had been a mass of rock. They rolled over the little one, unheeding, and trod it flat. Its death cry split the air; and at that sound the mother seemed to sink down into her haunches. In her agony of rage and grief she literally tore some of her assailants in halves, throwing the awful fragments impatiently from her in order to lose no time in seizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; and presently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashing into the water. The monster looked around for more victims–and was just in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging down upon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed back to slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any other time he would have given such an antagonist as the colossal megatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses. His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood which dripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn was plunged into the monster’s paunch; but at the same time one of those gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering the vertebræ through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He collapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed him aside.

It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a few moments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking the trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her wound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside the trail, but effectively screened from it.

From their place in the tree Grôm and the girl had followed breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grôm spoke:

“This is a country of very great beasts,” he remarked, with the air of one announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever to dissent from this statement, he presently went on to his conclusion, leaving her to infer his minor premise.

“We must go back and recover the Shining One. It is not well for us to go on without him.”

“Yes,” agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and passionate trust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over the tops of the towering grasses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She feared no beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lower branches of the trees. “Yes!” she repeated. “Let us go back for the Shining One, lest he be angry at us for having put him in the water.”

“But for yet a day more we will stay here in this tree, and rest and sleep in safety,” continued Grôm, “that we may travel the more swiftly, till we get beyond the grasses.”

Then, climbing higher into the tree, he proceeded to build a platform and roof of interlaced branches for their temporary home. In this task the girl did not help him, because of the great muscular strength which it required. She lay in a crotch, her hairy but long and shapely legs coiled under her like a leopard’s, now gazing at her man with ardent eyes, now staring out apprehensively across the sun-drenched, perilous landscape.

Suddenly she gave a cry of amazement, and pointed excitedly down the trail. Beyond the water wherein the pig-tapirs had found refuge, beyond the lurking-place of the wounded megatherium, came three men, running desperately. Shading his eyes, Grôm made out that they were nearly exhausted. They were clearly men of the type of his own tribe, light-skinned and well shaped; and the leader, who carried a long club, was a man of stature equal to his own. Grôm’s sympathies went out to them, and his impulse was to hasten to their assistance. Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlong flight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two which had been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier. They were coming on at such a pace that Grôm feared the weary fugitives would be overtaken before they could reach the tree of refuge. Instinctively he started to climb down. But, his eyes falling upon the girl, he remembered that he had no right to enter upon a venture so utterly hopeless while he had her to take care of. His eager clutch upon his spear relaxed.

“They are spent. They’ll never get here!” he muttered anxiously.

“No!” said A-ya, with blank unconcern. “The lions will get them. It’s Mawg, and his two cousins.”

Grôm growled an exclamation of astonishment. The girl’s eyes–or her intuitions–were keener than his. But he saw at a second glance that she was right.

At this moment Mawg, running a few paces in advance by reason of his superior speed and stamina, passed the spot where the wounded megatherium lay hidden. The monster lifted her dreadful head. The next second the other two arrived, running elbow to elbow, with drooped shoulders of exhaustion. Through the screen of canes a gigantic hand shot out above their heads and came down upon them, crushing the two together. They had not time for outcry; but it was clear that some sound caught the leader’s ears, for he glanced back over his shoulder. He was near enough now for the keen-eyed watchers in the tree to see his face change with horror. He ran on without a pause, but now with fresh speed, as if the sight had shocked him into new vigor. Seeing that there was, after all, a good prospect of his reaching the tree in time, Grôm swung down to be ready to help him up. As he did so he saw the two lions approach the hiding-place of the monster.

The vast, clawed hand still lay there on the two crushed bodies in the middle of the trail. The lions saw it, and they checked themselves at a safe distance. They knew that just behind the grass-screen lurked another such shaggy and monstrous member, waiting to rend them as they would rend an antelope. They shrank, and drew back, snarling angrily. It is possible they feared lest the screen on either side of the trail might conceal more than one of the monsters; for they sprang far aside as if to make a wide circuit of the perilous spot.

“There’s plenty of time!” muttered Grôm, and dropped upon his feet in the middle of the trail. The girl came in mad haste after him, but at his sharp command “Stay there!” she contented herself with slipping out upon the lowest branch, just over his head, and holding her spear ready.

“Kill him!” she cried. But Grôm seemed not to hear.

Staggering, and half blind with exhaustion Mawg was within twenty paces before he noticed who was confronting him. Then his dull eyes blazed. With a snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Grôm’s face, missing him only by a hand’s-breadth. But the effort, and the disappointment at finding himself thus balked, as he imagined, on the very threshold of escape, seemed to finish him. He stumbled on with groping hands outstretched, and fell just at Grôm’s feet.

Grôm hesitated, wondering how he could get this inert weight up into the tree. The girl did not understand his hesitation.

“Kill him!” she hissed, leaning down eagerly from her branch overhead.

“No, he’s a great warrior, and the tribe needs him,” answered Grôm, stooping to shake the prostrate form.

Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Grôm shook him again.

“Up into the tree, quick!” he ordered in a loud, sharp voice. “The lions are coming.”

Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a look of bewilderment changing swiftly into hate.

“Up!” shouted Grôm again. “The tree. They’re coming!”

At this the fellow growled, but sprang up as if he had been jabbed with a spear, and clambered into the tree as nimbly as a monkey. Grôm followed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyes watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Grôm’s side; and all three swung upwards into the higher branches as the two lions arrived beneath.

Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent eyes, the great beasts realized that, for the present at least, the tree man-creatures were quite out of reach. Lashing their tufted tails in disappointment, they turned aside to sniff, in surly scorn, at the dead, mountainous hulk of the rhinoceros, which lay with one ponderous foot stuck up in the air as if in clumsy protest at Fate. Comprehending readily the manner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, and fell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which the megatherium had torn in two. They had the air of intending to stay some time, so Grôm presently turned his attention to his rescued rival.

Mawg was sitting on the next branch, a good spear’s length distant, and glowering at A-ya’s lithe shapeliness with eyes of savage greed. Grôm knit his brows, and significantly passed an arm about the girl’s shoulders. Mawg shifted his attention to him.

“What do you want of me?” he demanded, in a thick, guttural voice.

“I thought you ran as if you did not want the lions to eat you,” answered Grôm.

Mawg stared with a stupid brutality and incomprehension; and the eyes of the two men, meeting fairly, seemed to lock in a duel of personalities.

They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically, superb specimens of their race–the highest then evolved upon the youthful earth–the elder man, in his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes, displayed all the promise of the future; while the youth, low skulled and with his dull but pugnacious eyes set under enormous bony brows, suggested the mere brute from which the race had mounted. His hair was shorter and coarser than Grôm’s, and foully matted; and his neck was set very far forward between his powerful but lumpy shoulders. The color of his coarse and furrowed skin was so dark as to make the weathered tan of Grôm and A-ya look white by contrast.

In no way lacking courage, but failing in will and steadiness, in a dozen seconds Mawg involuntarily shifted his gaze, and looked down at the lions.

“What do you want of me?” he demanded again, as if he had had no answer before.

“The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take you back to the tribe!” replied Grôm with authority.

Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great yellow dog-teeth in a snarling laugh of incredulity.

“You want to kill me!” said he, nodding his head.

Grôm stared at him for a moment or two with a look of fatigued contempt, then tore off a substantial strip of dried flesh from the bundle hanging on the branch, and tossed it to him. The fellow snatched it, and hid it behind him, being too hungry to refuse it, but too savage to eat it under his captor’s eye. Grôm smiled slowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand of A-ya’s hair which had fallen over his arm. But to this caress the girl paid no attention. She was puzzled and outraged at Grôm’s action in protecting his rival. Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily under each cheek-bone.

Suddenly from down the trail came a noise of cracking grass-stems. The two lions got up from their meal, and turned their heads inquiringly toward the sound. The next moment they went stalking off the opposite way with an air of haughty indignation, ignoring all the bodies of the slain pig-tapirs. When they had rounded the first turn in the trail they leaped into the grass, and went bounding off in a straight line toward a large patch of wood some miles distant. The wounded megatherium was returning.

Perhaps stung into restlessness by the anguish of that rending thrust, the monster came dragging herself back toward the tree, crawling on the sides of her feet. Arriving at the scene of battle, she sniffed once more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Then turning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began to tear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. While thus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caught sight of the three figures looking down upon her.

On the instant her rage was diverted to them. Braying like a steam siren, she came under the tree, reared herself against it, flung her giant arms about it, and strove to pull it down. The tree rocked as if struck by a tornado; and Mawg, who had been too slow to notice what was about to happen, gave a yell of horror as he barely saved himself from falling. The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing look which so enraged her that she raised her spear as if to transfix him.

But there was too much happening below for her attention to remain on Mawg. Finding the tree quite too sturdy to be pulled down off-hand, the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inches through, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery. Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once more pumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching to the next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking another great strip from the main trunk. Grôm saw that her purpose obviously was to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at her intended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too much for him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, he slipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster’s sight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran out along it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed upon the two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam the creek, thrust his way through the grass-stems, darted back to snatch up his club, shook it at Grôm, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.

Neither Grôm nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. The monster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk was almost split in half by its loss. Grôm saw that unless he could stop this process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would be overthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the next great bough. Spear in hand, Grôm slipped down to meet her, and halted on a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively, stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendous muscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down her insignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch of succeeding. Grôm just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya’s spear slashed the dreadful red tongue as it reached flickering after her lord’s ankles. The next moment, seeing the monster’s throat upstretched and unguarded, Grôm drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. The weapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flint lodged in the vertebræ of the monster’s neck. Then the shaft was wrenched violently from his hand; and the monster, blowing blood and foam from mouth and nostrils, fell with a crash among the litter of great branches which she had pulled down.

Grôm drew a deep breath of relief, and commended the girl for her timely and effective stroke at that terrible tongue. Then he set himself coolly to the task of completing their shelter for the night. As he wove leafy branches into the floor of the platform to make it soft, she contemplated his work with satisfaction. Presently he remarked:

“I’m glad we are rid of that Mawg.”

“You should have killed him!” said the girl curtly.

“But why?” demanded Grôm, in some surprise. In his eyes the fellow was a valuable piece of property belonging to the tribe, a fighting asset.

“He wants me!” answered the girl, meeting his eyes resentfully.

Grôm let his eyes roam all over her–face, hair and form–and such a look of passionate admiration glowed in their steady depths that her anger faded, her own eyes dropped, and her breast gave a happy, incomprehensible flutter. She had never seen such a look in any man’s face before, or even dreamed of such a look as possible.

“Of course, he wants you,” said Grôm, wondering, as he spoke, at the ring of his own voice. “You are the fairest thing, and the most desirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must want you. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shall tear you from me.”

And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for having neglected to kill Mawg.

That night sleep was impossible for them, though their lofty shelter was comfortable and secure. A vast orange moon, near the full, illuminated the spacious landscape; and beneath the tree came all the giant night-prowlers, gathering to the unparallelled banquet which the day had spread for them. Only the two black lions, perhaps already glutted, did not come. Wolves, a small pack of self-disciplined wild dogs, a troop of hyenas, and several enormous leopards, howled, snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely scattered carcases, each group watching its neighbors with suspicion and deadly animosity.

A gigantic red bear came lumbering up, and all the lesser prowlers scattered discreetly but resentfully before him. He strode straight to the chief place, under the rent, dishevelled tree, and fell to tearing at the mountainous corpse of the megatherium. He was undisturbed till two saber-tooths arrived, their tawny coats spectral in the moonlight, their foot-long tusks giving their broad masks a dreadful grin.

Before one saber-tooth the bear would have stood his ground scornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly, and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of the rhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split and battered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came, and then another bear.

There were swift, sudden battles, as swiftly dropped because neither combatant wished to fight to a finish when there was feasting so abundant for all. And once a leopard, dodging the paw of a saber-tooth, sprang into the tree, only to fall back howling from the spears thrust at him through the floor of Grôm’s platform.

Just before dawn the girl slept, while Grôm kept watch beside her lest another leopard should fancy to explore their refuge. An hour later, when the first pallor was spreading, she awoke with a cry of fear, and clung to Grôm’s arm, shuddering strongly.

“But–what is it?” he asked, in a tender voice, stroking her heavy mane.

“I was afraid!” she answered, like a child.

“What were you afraid of?” asked Grôm.

“I was afraid of Mawg. I am afraid of him!” she answered, sitting up and shaking the hair from her eyes, and staring out fearfully over the gray transparent plains.

“Why should you fear Mawg?” demanded Grôm proudly. “Am not I your man? And am not I always with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could not take you from me.”

“I know,” answered the girl, “that he and such as he would be as straws in my lord’s hands. But–even Grôm must sometimes sleep!”