Part 1 (2/2)
Some perhaps flew high enough to fall into the moon itself! but one piece, about as large as a bushel basket, came zipping downward at a long angle, like a blazing ball of flame, for it had struck the air so hard a blow that the heat of it had melted the fragment. Down it came, cras.h.i.+ng through the great limbs of the trees beyond Umpl and Sptz with a huge rus.h.i.+ng roar, and when it struck the earth the ground trembled for half a mile around, especially as it glanced from a ledge after diving deep in the soil, and came leaping out of the soil again only to fall with a thud a rod or two away.
It is hard to say whether Umpl or Sptz was the more frightened. Umpl thought of nothing but dragons, and was scared white. Sptz was whiter to begin with, as she lived more in the cave underground, and now that she thought the sky was falling she could think of nothing else. But she was the first to find out that they were not dead after all. Then she gave a start, and sniffed eagerly. She smelt something.
Jumping up on the log she looked around, and--no, it couldn't be! but it was, though--fire. Real fire! Smoking away merrily among the dead leaves where a bit of molten star had been sc.r.a.ped off by a tree trunk and had fallen. Sptz flew to it like a bird. In no time, more dead leaves were heaped around the light flame; with a shout of joy Umpl rushed to a windfall and brought an armful of wood, and soon a royal fire was sending out light and heat, beautifully nickering upward among the trees. Umpl knew what to do now as well as any one. He hunted up two pitchy sticks and set them both alight. Then he held them before him, crossed like a pair of scissors, with the flame where the joint was; and in that way he kept them both alight, burning each other up, until they reached home. And then--what a royal supper they had!
I might tell you many more things about Umpl and Sptz. For instance, how they went to the place again in after days and found the piece of the fallen star, broken into several pieces. And how Sptz found that one of them was just the thing to crack nuts on, and Umpl found another was quite as good as a bone-cracker, till his father took it from him and made a head of it for his war-club, where it did great bone-cracking in another way. And I might tell how Umpl learned at last to take one sharp stone and, by pressing on it with another, break off little chips until what was left became a beautiful arrowhead, and how he made so many, and so many chips around the cave, and so many other chipmakers were doing likewise, that to-day men call the time when Umpl lived the Stone Age, for all their axes, knives, and tools seemed made of stone. Some day I may tell more. Meanwhile, now you know how the Iron Star came into this world of ours.
SPARK II.
HOW THE STAR AGAIN BEGAN TO TRAVEL.
It certainly seemed to both Umpl and Sptz that the iron ma.s.s which was once a falling star had brought good luck to them. Fire in itself was a grand thing. It was so good not to lie cold o' nights, or to be obliged to fill up the doorway with stones and pull them down in the morning. Many and many a time they went to the spot where the large piece lay and looked at it with half-frightened eyes. They could not understand it. Where did it come from? Why did it come there? When would it go away? Did a spirit throw it, or was it itself a spirit?
All these and many other odd thoughts came to them because of it; and this was one of the very best things that ever happened to either. No other Cave boy or girl in the whole valley ever took the trouble to think about anything that was not connected with dinner, or the latest style of wearing burrs in their hair; and when Umpl thought so long about it that he feared it must be a spirit, and laid his best arrowhead on it as an offering, while Sptz for the same reason brought a queer bit of bone with a feather in one end and a sc.r.a.p of rabbit fur around it, the thoughts were good for them. It did for their small brains just what a boy does for his arm when he swings a club or a dumb-bell. It made them stronger, so that they could use them for other things and use them better.
Umpl, for one thing, looked upward among the trees oftener. He saw more birds, he learned their actions better and so knew better how to have roast bird for supper. So perhaps they were right about the good luck. Besides, both of them were growing up. Sptz had learned to make acorn bread and found a hollow on the top of the Iron Star which was just the thing to grind up nuts in. Umpl was two feet taller than when the star fell, and could draw a bow and send an arrow right through a stag. And one great day he met a Cave Bear and sent his flint-headed shaft whistling with such force that it broke through the hard skull of the savage beast and dropped him in his tracks.
All his life long Umpl wore on his arm an ornament made out of the longest teeth and sharpest claws of that bear; and boys and girls looked at it and wondered if they would ever have the right to be so honored. Umpl had become a man. But he was a very young one still.
This luck did not follow every one in that long valley. There came a time when it did not rain for nearly a year. The springs stopped running. The birds flew away. The hares went, no one knew where. The stags disappeared. Food was hard to earn, and every meat-eater in the valley found it so, and many of them lived only by eating each other.
Umpl's eyes were brighter, and he was thinner than in better days; yet he still managed to find some things eatable; and he laid it all to the Star. And one day he found himself a long way from the cave and among a dozen young men as hungry as himself, and each one ready to kill the other. It was very much as though they had all met there for a picnic.
It was a part of Umpl's good fortune that he had of late been carrying with him the Star-club that his father had made. On his arm gleamed the Cave Bear's teeth, grim and white; and when the others saw that they stopped to think a moment. They feared the bear. Who dared, then, to meet the Cave Bear's slayer? And then something happened which gave them other thoughts still more unpleasant.
Straight through the glade came the rush of galloping feet, and an antlered stag swept by like a stone from a sling. So swiftly did he pa.s.s that no arrow was ready save Umpl's. His went hurtling after, straight at the back of the tossing head, and the great deer fell in a heap, stone-dead. But what had scared him?
Ah! They did not need to ask. Gaunt, grey forms were rus.h.i.+ng toward them. Green eyes were flas.h.i.+ng in the black shadows beyond. They did not need the long howl to tell them that it was the wolf-pack from beyond the mountains, starved out of its usual range.
There was but one thing to do--to take to the trees; and it was well that the trees near by were low limbed. Umpl was the last one up. But he was also the only one who had a great slice of that stag as a luncheon. The fact that he had it proved that the white-toothed bracelet told the truth in regard to his bravery.
While the wolves fought over their prey below Umpl looked at them and thought. The others looked without thinking. Presently the noise grew less, and Umpl looked about him and began to talk to the other young men. He pointed out to them that one wolf, or two, would not have dared to attack them. But as a band they had made even the bracelet- wearer flee. So with themselves. One, or even two of them could not go to another land where there was more water and game; but suppose they stopped making war on each other and went as a band across the great mountains? This country was eaten out. There were not caves enough to go round among young men who wanted caves of their own. Elsewhere things might be better. They could not be worse. And he would go with them, taking Sptz, who could cook well, and the Iron Star, which would bring them luck.
It seemed a very good idea, especially to youths who had none of their own; and they agreed to form a band and go, if Umpl first would prove the luck of the Star.
The youth nodded, and held up his club.
”This was made from it. Now see!”
Tying to it one end of the long thong he always carried, Umpl flung the iron ma.s.s down on the head of a wolf that was trying to leap up within reach. The animal fell, and his mates sprang on him, as wolves will, and ate him up. Five times Umpl did it before the rest began to take warning, and even then a pretended tumble brought them back and three more fell. The rest ran back to a wider circle, and before they got over their scare Umpl was on the ground and back again, with his bow and quiver of arrows; and that was the beginning of the end of that wolf-pack, while every youth in the trees now believed in the Star.
They found the Iron Star was heavy. It took Umpl two days to plan out a way for them to carry it, and to cut down with stone axes saplings to sling it on. But the rest looked up to him as a leader now; and when they left the valley he was their chief, with Sptz trotting on behind carrying a skin of acorn-flour, and the crossed and lighted firebrands.
It was a weary march through the mountains. For many weeks they travelled. They found more game than in the valley behind, but nowhere enough to be worth staying for, and at last one morning they found a very curious thing. Across the gorge through which they were travelling there was a barricade of trees, which had been cut down by men. But why? It could not be for war, since they were not arranged in a way suitable for that. Still, men had done it, and they looked carefully around for the cave where the men belonged. It was better to find it than to be found by its owners.
But they did not find any. Beyond the barricade was a little meadow, shoulder deep in a curious gra.s.s with bristly heads which grew very thickly. Wading through it, beyond a thicket, the sight that met them struck them dumb with surprise! Before them was a lake. Out in the lake what seemed a cl.u.s.ter of dome-shaped rocks rose from the water, and a narrow path to sh.o.r.e was made with trunks of trees tied together. Before them, in a place fenced off, were stags of a kind they never saw before, with long smooth horns and s.h.a.ggy, black hair.
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