Part 15 (1/2)
_How Sharptooth Made a Basket_
Before the Tree-dwellers had fire they did not need baskets.
For a long time afterwards they did not make them.
They ate fruits from the trees and cracked the nuts where they found them.
Each night they came home one by one.
Sharptooth still had charge of the fire.
She ate wild roots that grew near.
She cracked nuts that she found in the trees close by.
She ate berries in a neighboring patch.
But she never went far away, and she never stayed away long.
The blueberries were now ripe, so she went to the patch.
How she wished she might stay a long time!
But as soon as she had eaten a few, she hurried home to the fire.
As she scrambled over the fallen trees, she broke off a handful of bushes.
They were loaded with ripe blueberries.
She carried them home to the children.
She told the women and children about the patch.
They all wanted to go.
So they piled broken branches upon the fire.
Then Sharptooth told one of the women to stay at home and take charge of the fire.
The women left their babies and little children in charge of this woman, too.
How disappointed the little children were!
They watched the women and older children until they had pa.s.sed out of sight among the trees.
Sharptooth led the way to the patch.
In a few moments they found it.
It was almost blue with berries.
The children ate as fast as they picked.
The women ate, too, for a while.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The bottom of the basket_]
But they remembered their little ones at home.
So they picked heaping handfuls of berries.
They wanted to carry more berries, so hunted for something to hold them.
One woman had a rabbit skin.
The other women helped her fill it with berries.
Another woman made a basket of oak leaves.
They filled that with berries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”_She bent the rushes and tied the ends together_”]
Sharptooth gathered some rushes from a marshy place and tried still another way.
She sat down upon the gra.s.s and began to weave.
The bottom of the basket was soon made.