e
bear]

"O mother," said Pineknot, laughing hard, "see Thorn's picture of the
bear. It shows his big body and his long head and his little ears."

"That is the very bear that made us run," said Burr, laughing.

All this time Strongarm had been making a picture of wild horses. He
now held up the picture, scratched on a piece of deer antler.

"See, this horse has his ears up," he said. "He heard me coming. Here
I am with my spear."

Burr and the boys crowded round and said, "Oh!"

While Strongarm and the boys were making pictures, the baby had been
tumbling about on the floor. She crept around or pulled herself to her
feet by holding to the rough places in the wall. After a while she
grew sleepy; then her mother took her in her arms and sang this song:

"Little child!
Little sweet one!
Little girl!
Though a baby,
Soon a-hunting after berries
Will be going.
Little girl!
Little sweet one!
Little child!"

The baby went to sleep, and Burr laid her on a bear skin on the floor.
Soon afterwards Pineknot fell asleep on another skin, and in a little
while Thorn lay beside him. Then Burr put ashes over the coals, while
Strongarm threw burning logs before the door. Soon all was quiet in
the cave. The cave folks had gone to sleep.

[Illustration: Ram horns]

CHAPTER II

THE NEEDLE, THE CLUB, AND THE BOW

Nearly every day Strongarm went out to hunt. But he did not always
bring back meat to the cave, for he could not always kill an animal.
But sometimes he brought home the meat of deer or bison, and then again
it was that of mammoth or ox.

Burr always took the meat when Strongarm brought it home, and sometimes
she cut tendons from it. A tendon is a strong white cord that fastens
a muscle to a bone. There are long tendons in the backs of big
animals. Burr cut these out sometimes and hung them in the sun to dry.
When they were dry, she broke the thin outside skin and tore the tendon
apart with her fingers. It came to pieces in many little threads.
Burr took some of the little threads and twisted them together and made
a good strong thread for sewing.

One day she sat before the door of her cave sewing together skins of
wild oxen.

[Illustration: Sewing together skins of wild oxen]

"What is the big skin for, mother?" asked Pineknot, who ran up.

"To lay on sticks above our door," said Burr. "Then, even when it
rains, we can sit outside."

"Oh, that wil