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Story of Ab

<h3>A RACE WITH DREAD.</h3> Ab looked toward the forest wherein Lightfoot had fled and then looked upon that which lay at his feet. It was Oak--there were the form and features of his friend--but, somehow, it was not Oak. There was too much silence and the blood upon the leaves seemed far too bright. His rage departed, and he wanted Oak to answer and called to him, but Oak did not answer. Then came slowly to him the idea that Oak was dead and that the wild beasts would that night devour the dead man where he lay. The thought nerved him to desperate, sudden action. He leaped forward, he put his arms about the body and carried it away to a hollow in the wooded slope. He worked madly, doing some things as he had seen the cave people do at other buryings. He placed the weapons of Oak beside him. He took from his belt his own knife, because it was better than that of Oak, and laid it close to the dead man's hand, and then, first covering the body with beech leaves, he worked frantically upon the overhanging soil, prying it down with a sharp-pointed fragment of limb, and tossing in upon all as heavy stones as he could lift, until a great cairn rose above the hunter who would hunt no more. Panting with his efforts, Ab sat himself down upon a rock and looked upon the monument he had raised. Again he called to Oak, but there was still no answer. The sun had set, evening shadows thickened around him. Then there came upon the live man a feeling as dreadful as it was new, and, with a yell, which was almost a shriek, he leaped to his feet and bounded away in fearful flight. He only knew this, that there was something hurt his inside of body and soul, but not the inside of him as it had been when once he had eaten poisonous berries or when he had eaten too much of the little deer. It was something different. It was an awful oppression, which seemed to leave his body, in a manner, unfeeling but which had a great dread about it and which made him think and think of the dead man, and made him want to run away and keep running. He had always run far that day, but he was not tired now. His legs seemed to have the hard sinews of the stag in them but up toward the top of him was something for them to carry away as fast and far as possible from somewhere. He raced from the dense woodland down into the broad morass to the west--beyond which was the rock country--and into which he had rarely ventured, so treacherous its ways. What cared he now! He made great leaps and his muscles and sinews responded to the thought of him. To cross that morass safely required a touch on tussocks and an upbounding aside, a zig-zag exhibition of great strength and knowingness and recklessness. But it was unreasoning; it was the instinct begotten of long training and, now, of the absence of all nervousness. Each taut toe touched each point of bearing just as was required above the quagmire, and, all unperceiving and uncaring, he fled over dirty death as easily as he might have run upon some hardened woodland pathway. He did not think nor know nor care about what he was doing. He was only running away from the something he had never known before! Why should he be running now? He had killed things before and not cared and had forgotten. Why should he care now? But there was the something which made him run. And where was Oak? Would Oak meet him again and would they hunt together? No, Oak would not come, and he, this Ab, had made it so! He must run. No one was following him--he knew that--but he must run! The marsh was passed, night had fallen, but he ran on, pressing into the bear and tiger haunted forest beyond. Anything, anything, to make him forget the strange feeling and the thing which made him run! He plunged into a forest path, utterly reckless, wanting relief, a seeker for whatever might come. In that age and under such conditions as to locality it was inevitable that the creature, man, running through such a forest path at night, must face some fierce creature of the carnivora seeking his body for food. Ab, blinded of mood, cared not for and avoided not a fight, though it might be with the monster bear or even the great tiger. There was no reason in his madness. He was, though he knew it not, a practical suicide, yet one who would die fighting. What to him were weight and strength to-night? What to him were such encounters as might come with hungry four-footed things? It would but relieve him were some of the beasts to try to gain his life and eat his body. His being seemed valueless, and as for the wild beasts--and here came out the splendid death-facing quality of the cave man--well, it would be odd if there were not more deaths than one! But all this was vague and only a minor part of thought. Sometimes, as if to invite death, he yelled as he ran. He yelled whenever in his fleeting visions he saw Oak lying dead again. So ran the man who had killed another. There was a growl ahead of him, a sudden breaking away of the bushes, and then he was thrown back, stunned and bleeding, because a great paw had smitten him. Whatever the beast might be, it was hungry and had found what seemed easy prey. There was a difference, though, which the animal,--it was doubtless a bear--unfortunately for him, did not comprehend, between the quality of the being he proposed to eat just now and of other animals included in his ordinary menu. But the bear did not reason; he but plunged forward to crush out the remaining life of the runner his great paw had driven back and down and then to enjoy his meal. The man was little hurt. His skin coat had somewhat protected him and his sinewy body had such toughness that the hurling of it backward for a few feet was not anything involving a fatality. Very surely and suddenly had been thrust upon him now the practical lesson of being or dying, and it was good for the half-crazed runner, for it cleared his mind. But it made him no less desperate or careless. With strength almost maniacal he leaped at what he would have fled from at any other time, and, swinging his ax with the quickness of light, struck tremendously at the great lowering head. He yelled again as he felt stone cut and crash into bone, though himself swept aside once more as a great paw, sidestruck, hurled him into the bushes. He bounded to his feet and saw something huge and dark and gasping floundering in the pathway. He thought not but ran on panting. By some strange freak of forest fortune abetting might the man wandering of mind had driven his ax nearly to the haft into the skull of his huge assailant. It may be that never before had a cave man, thus armed, done so well. The slayer ran on wildly, and now weaponless. Soon to the runner the scene changed. The trees crowded each other less closely and there was less of denned pathway. There came something of an ascent and he breasted it, though less swiftly, for, despite the impelling force, nature had claims, and muscles were wearying of their work. Fewer and fewer grew the trees. He knew that he was where there was now a sweep of rocky highlands and that he was not far from the Fire Country, of which Old Mok had so often told him. He burst into the open, and as he came out under the stars, which he could see again, he heard an ominous whine, too near, and a distant howl behind him. A wolf pack wanted him. He shuddered as he ran. The life instinct was fully awakened in him now, as the dread from which he had run became more distant. Had he heard that close whine and distant howl before he fairly reached the open he would have sought a treetop for refuge. Now it was too late. He must run ahead blindly across the treeless space for such harborage as might come. Far ahead of him he could see light, the light of fire, reaching out toward him through the darkness. He was panting and wearied, but the sounds behind him were spur enough to bring the nearly dead to life. He bowed his head and ran with such effort as he had never made before in all his wild and daring existence. The wolves of the time, greater, swifter and fiercer than the gaunt gray wolves of northern latitudes and historic times, ran well, but so did contemporaneous man run well, and the chase was hard. With his life to save, Ab swept panting over the rocky ground with a swiftness begotten of the grand last effort of remaining strength, running straight toward the light, while the wolf pack, now gathered, hurled itself from the wood behind and followed swiftly and relentlessly. Ever before the man shone the light more brightly; ever behind him became more distinct the sound made by the following pack. It was a dire strait for the running man. He was no longer thinking of what he had lately done. He ran. <ANTIMG src="images/illp212_th.jpg" alt="WITH A GREAT LEAP HE WENT AT AND THROUGH THE CURLING CREST OF THE YELLOW FLAME"> The light he had seen extended as he neared it into what looked like a great fence of flame lying across his way. There were gaps in the fence where the flame, still continuous, was not so high as elsewhere. He did not hesitate. He ran straight ahead. Closer and closer behind him crowded the pursuing wolves, and straight at the flame he ran. There was one chance in many, he thought, and he took it without hesitation. Close before him now loomed the wall of flame. Close behind him slavering jaws were working in anticipation, and there was a strain for the last rush. There was no alternative. Straight at the fire wall where it was lowest rushed Ab, and with a great leap he went at and through the curling crest of the yellow flame! The man had found safety! There was a moment of heat and then he knew himself to be sprawling upon green turf. A little of the strength of desperation was still with him and he bounded to his feet and looked about. There were no wolves. Beside him was a great flat rock, and he clambered upon this, and then, over the crest of the flames could see easily enough the glaring eyes of his late pursuers. They were running up and down, raging for their prey, but kept from him beyond all peradventure by the fire they could not face. Ab started upright on the rock panting and defiant, a splendid creature erect there in the firelight. Soon there came to the man a more perfect sense of his safety. He shouted aloud to the flitting, snarling creatures, which could not harm him now; he stooped and found jagged stones, which he sent whirling among them. There was a savage satisfaction in it. Suddenly the man fell to the ground, fairly groaning with exhaustion. Nature had become indignant and the time for recuperation had been reached. The wearied runner lay breathing heavily and was soon asleep. The flames which had afforded safety gave also a grateful warmth in the chill night, and so it was that scarcely had his body touched the ground when he became oblivious to all about him, only the heaving of the broad chest showing that the man lying fairly exposed in the light was a living thing. The varying wind sometimes carried the sheet of flame to its utmost extent toward him, so that the heat must have been intense, and again would carry it in an opposite direction while the cold air swept down upon the sleeping man. Nothing disturbed him. Inured alike to heat and cold, Ab slept on, slept for hours the sleep which follows vast strain and endurance in a healthy human being. Then the form lying on the ground moved restlessly and muttered exclamations came from the lips. The man was dreaming. For as the sleeper lay there--he remembered it when he awoke and wondered over it many times in after years--Oak sprang through the flames, as he himself had done, and soon lay panting by his side. The lapping of the fire, the snapping and snarling of the wolves beyond and the familiar sound of Oak's voice all mingled confusedly in his ears, and then he and Oak raced together over the rough ground, and wrestled and fought and played as they had wrestled and fought and played together for years. And the hours passed and the wind changed and the flames almost scorched him and Ab started up, looking about him into the wild aspect of the Fire Country; for the night had passed and the sun had risen and set again since the exhausted man had fallen upon the ground and become unconscious. Ab rolled instinctively a little away from the smoky sheets of flame and, sitting up, looked for Oak. He could not see him. He ran wildly around among the rocks looking for him and despairingly called aloud his name. The moment his voice had been hoarsely lifted, "Oak!" the memory of all that had happened rushed upon him. He stood there in the red firelight a statue of despair. Oak was dead; he had killed Oak, and buried him with his own hands, and yet he had seen Oak but a minute ago! He had bounded through the flames and had wrestled and run races with Ab, and they had talked together, and yet Oak must be lying in the ground back there in the forest by the little hill. Oak was dead. How could he get out of the ground? Fear clutched at Ab's heart, his limbs trembled under him. He whimpered like a lost and friendless hound and crouched close to the hospitable fire. His brain wavered under the stress of strange new impressions. He recalled some mutterings of Old Mok about the dead, that they had been seen after it was known that they were deep in the ground, but he knew it was not good to speak or think of such things. Again Ab sprang to his feet. It would not do to shut his eyes, for then he saw plainly Oak in his shallow hole in the dark earth and the face Ab had hurried to cover first when he was burying his friend, there under the trees. And so the night wore away, sleep coming fitfully from time to time. Ab could not explore his retreat in the strange firelight nor run the risks of another night journey across the wild beasts' chosen country. He began to be hungry, with the fierce hunger of brute strength, sharpened by terrific labors, but he must wait for the morning. The night seemed endless. There was no relief from the thoughts which tortured him, but, at last, morning broke, and in action Ab found the escape he had longed for. <h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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