He
would return to the regions beyond the head of the lagoon, where he
would find scattered members of his kindred. He would find another
mate; and in a dim, groping way he harbored a desire for new
offspring, for sons, in particular, who should be inquiring and full
of resource, like himself. At the edge of the wood he turned, and gave
one more long, musing look at the invincible black herds whom he had
used. The idea of sons came back upon him insistently. A faint sense
of the immeasurable vastness of what was to be done swept over his
soul. But he was not daunted. He would at least do something. And he
would teach his children, till they should learn, perhaps, by taking
thought, even to overcome the ferocity of the saber-tooth and foil the
malice of the great red bear.

CHAPTER III

THE FINDING OF FIRE

I

The people of the Little Hills were in extremity. Trouble after
trouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, till
now there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice that
number of women able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked as
if but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them must
wipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it,
would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of years
to repair. For the People of the Little Hills had climbed higher from
the pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at that
time struggling into being on the youthful Earth.

First and not least formidable to the tribe had been an incursion from
the east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still more
plainly beasts. Had the tribe of the Little Hills but known it, these
Ape-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness of
their skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skulls
and the heavy forward thrust of their lower jaws.

Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say just where, came
a scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers and
a few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not only
slaughtered wholesale the game on which the Hillmen most depended,
but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. As
they raged against each other no less desperately than against
their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt.
The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning
of pitfall and ambuscade, a