It may be that Hawk-Eye was a little pleased at their courage in following them. Anyway, he said: "Well, you can climb like squirrels.
We shall not be gone many days. Come along." Firetop sprang up and whooped for joy. Firefly turned a somersault. Hawk-Eye and Limberleg laughed. They couldn"t help it. You see, even in those early times parents were fond of their children, although they didn"t know any better punishment for them than spankings. There are some parents like that yet.
"Now, what shall we have to eat?" said Firefly, when everybody was happy again.
"We"ll have to find something," said Hawk-Eye to Limberleg. "You take the children down into the meadow. I see carrots growing down there.
I"ll hunt in the woods. Listen for my call, and when you hear it, come to that big oak tree as fast as you can."
Limberleg and the Twins started at once down the bluff toward the river.
The bushes grew thick along the slope, and as they scrambled through them they made a crashing noise. Firetop was ahead, then came Firefly, and last of all Limberleg.
Suddenly there was a loud whirring sound, and out of the bushes in front of them flew a great wood grouse!
Instantly Firetop braced himself and flung his spear, and before Limberleg or Firefly could catch up with him, he was far beyond them down the slope, struggling with the wounded bird. When they reached him, he had killed it. Limberleg was delighted. She patted Firetop and called him a great hunter, and said she was glad he had come with them after all.
Maybe you think Firetop wasn"t a proud boy then! He waggled his red head and swaggered up the slope toward the big oak tree with the huge bird on his shoulder. Limberleg and Firefly stayed behind to hunt in the bushes for the grouse"s nest. Firefly found it, and there were seven eggs in it! Then Limberleg patted Firefly. "Your father and I will not need to get any food for you," she said. "Maybe you will hunt for us." They went up the slope after Firetop, carrying the eggs.
When they reached the big oak tree on the bluff, Limberleg took the feathers off the grouse and cut it into chunks with her flint knife.
They had no fire, so they ate it raw. They ate five of the eggs and left two for Hawk-Eye. They saved the legs of the grouse for him, too.
They waited and waited, but still Hawk-Eye did not come. They began to get a little frightened, he was gone so long. At last there was a call, "Hoo, hoo, hoooooo," like the hooting of an owl, and he appeared crashing through the bushes. He had a rabbit hanging from his shoulder.
Then Firefly played a trick on him.
"We aren"t hungry," she said. Hawk-Eye was astonished.
"I thought you were starved by the way you acted," he said.
"We aren"t any of us hungry now," said Firetop.
"Did you fill yourselves with carrots?" asked Hawk-Eye.
"Oh, no. We had fresh meat," said Firetop, with his nose in the air.
"Fresh meat?" cried Hawk-Eye.
"What did you kill?" he said to Limberleg.
"Nothing," said Limberleg.
"But I did," shouted Firetop.
He told all about killing the grouse. You should have seen Hawk-Eye then! He was just as pleased as our fathers are when we get A in arithmetic!
"I guess you can take care of yourselves," he said, when he had heard the story. "You don"t need me." Then he laughed and made his face look scared. "Will you let me go with you to the land where the sun rises?"
he said. "I am very small, but I can climb trees! I am afraid to go alone. I need you to kill bison and mammoths for me to eat!"
Firetop, Firefly, and Limberleg laughed at this until they nearly choked. Then Firetop wagged his head at his father.
"You shouldn"t have followed me," he said. "I shall have to spank you.
But you are too small to send alone to the cave, so I"ll have to let you come with me."
The Cave Twins--by Lucy Fitch Perkins
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE JOURNEY.
One.
All the rest of the day they followed the river, looking for a place where it was shallow enough for them to cross without serious danger of drowning. They did not know how to swim. For their supper they had only the rabbit. They ate it sitting on the bluff, with their backs to each other so they could watch in every direction for signs of danger.
When the shadow of the bluff grew long across the meadows, Limberleg said:--
"Darkness will soon be upon us. Where are we going to sleep?"
"We won"t sleep in a cave anyway," said Hawk-Eye, "even if we could find one. We might find the cave bear at home in it. In that case, we should probably spend the night in his stomach, and I am sure that would be too crowded to be comfortable."
"We can"t spend the night on the ground surely," said Limberleg. "Or we might wake up in the stomach of old Sabre-tooth instead." This was just their way of joking, because I never heard of any one waking up after being swallowed, except Jonah and Little Red Riding Hood"s grandmother.
And of course, this story happened long before either Jonah or Red Riding Hood or her grandmother did.
Hawk-Eye took out his flint knife. I almost said he took it out of his pocket, because it seems queer to think of a man without pockets. Of course, he didn"t really have any, though. The flint knife was fastened to his belt by a thong.
"Go and find all the grape-vines you can," he said. Limberleg and the Twins flew back into the forest to search for vines. There were plenty of them, and they pulled up a great heap of long, tough stems, and brought them back to Hawk-Eye. Hawk-Eye had another bunch which he had cut. On the bluff overlooking the valley there was a great oak tree with giant branches spreading in every direction.
"We"ll sleep here," said Hawk-Eye. "Nothing can harm us unless a wildcat or some such climbing creature should visit us, and I think I could make him wish he hadn"t come. I shall have my spear beside me and shall sleep on the lower limbs."
"Shall we roost like the birds?" asked Firefly anxiously.
Limberleg laughed, and took a leap into the air, and caught one of the branches. She swung herself into the tree and ran along the branch to the great thick trunk.
"Hand up the vines," she called down, "and I will show you how we will roost." Hawk-Eye tossed them up to her. She climbed higher in the tree and found a place where two limbs came together like those shown in the picture: She wove the vines back and forth over the two branches until she had made a rough net-work like a very coa.r.s.e hammock.
"Now, up you come," she called to Firefly, "and I will put you to bed."
Firefly climbed the tree. This was the way she went upstairs to bed.
Limberleg took off the wolf-skin which was still tied over her shoulders, and spread it over the vine hammock. Then Firefly crawled into her bed. Her mother took the leather thong which had been around the wolf-skin and tied her securely to one of the limbs with it. That was her way of tucking her in so that she would not fall out of bed.
She didn"t hear her say her prayers, because in those days they didn"t know there was anything to pray to, unless it was to giants, or the spirits of water or of fire, or of thunder and lightning. They prayed to them sometimes when they were frightened. I don"t believe she kissed her good night, either. There was not much kissing in those days.
When Firefly was safely stowed away, Limberleg climbed farther up the tree to find a place for Firetop. But he had already found one for himself and was beginning to make his bed. When he was swung from his branches like a big coc.o.o.n, Hawk-Eye and Limberleg made themselves as comfortable as they could on the lower limbs of the tree. The western sky was all aflame with yellow and red, as they settled themselves for the night, and the birds sang them to sleep.
Two.
When Firetop opened his eyes the next morning, he couldn"t think where he was. He tried to flop over, as he could so easily do when sleeping on his wolf-skins in the cave. But he found himself securely tied. He lifted his head and looked out. The sun was just rising over the blue hills across the river. He looked down through the tree-branches to see his father and mother.
They were not there! For a moment he thought perhaps he had dreamed it all. "I often go to all sorts of strange places when I am asleep," he said to himself. "Pretty soon I"ll wake up in the cave." He waited to wake up, but he didn"t wake up. He kept right on being out of doors and up a tree, and his parents kept on being gone. Then he remembered all about everything.