club when
angry, and after her fourteenth year rarely assaulted her at all. So far
as She Fox was concerned, this kindness largely resulted from
discretion, the daughter having in the last encounter so belabored the
mother that she was laid up for a week. The father abstained chiefly
because the daughter had become useful. Red Lips was now eighteen.

Fangs was a cave-dweller. His home was sumptuously furnished. The floor
of the cave was strewn with dry grass, something that in most other
caves was lacking. Fangs was a prominent citizen. He was one of the
strongest men in the valley. He had killed Red Beard, another prominent
citizen, in a little dispute over priority of right to possession of a
dead mastodon discovered in a swamp, and had for years been the terror
of every cave man in the region who possessed anything worth taking.

On this particular morning, which would have been Christmas morning had
it not come too early in the world's history, Fangs left the cave after
eating the whole of a water-fowl he had killed with a stone the night
before and some half dozen field mice which his wife had brought in. She
Fox and Red Lips had for breakfast only the bones of the duck and some
roots dug in the forest. Fangs carried with him a huge club, and in a
rough pouch made of the skin of some small wild animal a collection of
stones of convenient size for throwing. This was before man had invented
the bow or even the crude stone ax. He came back in a surly mood because
he had found nothing and killed nothing, but he brought a companion with
him. This companion, whom he had met in the woods, was known as Wolf,
because his countenance reminded one of a wolf. He could hardly be
called a gentleman, even as times and terms went then. He was evidently
not of an old family, for he possessed something more than a rudimentary
tail, and, had his face looked less like that of a wolf, it would have
been that of a baboon. He was hairy, and his speech of rough gutturals
was imperfect. He could pronounce but few words. He was, however, very
strong, and Fangs rather liked him.

What Fangs did when he came in was to propose a matrimonial alliance.
That is, he grasped his daughter by the arm and led her up to Wolf, and
then pointing to an abandoned cave in the hillside not far distant,
pushed them toward it. They did not have marriage ceremonies 200,000
B.C. Wolf, who had evidently been informed of Fangs's desire and who was
himself in fa