med no less redoubtable than the
Chief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, saving
his breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command or
encouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of the
Chief, kept a zone of death before him.

But his club was much smaller than that shattering mace of porphyry
wielded by the Chief--smaller and lighter, considerably longer in the
handle and quite of another pattern. The head was of flint, a sort of
ragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the head
was like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neat
weapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it,
now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, now
suddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle to
reach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club and
spear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its being
wrenched from him in the melee, he held it secured to his wrist by a
thong of hide.

This warrior, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter and
fighter, was second only to that of the great Chief himself, had never
aroused the Chief's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had always
loyally supported the Chief's authority, instead of scheming to
undermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline.
He was not so tall as the Chief, by perhaps half a handbreadth, and
for all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of a
slimmer build; wherefore the Chief, while vastly respecting his
counsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the time
of the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave,
quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontier
defense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightly
younger than the Chief, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense,
ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless looked
older, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity of
the eyes.

In his remote cave Grom had had the companionship of his family,
consisting of his old mother, his two wives, and his four children--three
sons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expedition
that the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolated
family, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out.

Conspicuous among the fighters at Grom's back w