ust so much meat, cornered but
inaccessible. This sight of him started us to laughing. We laughed
derisively and uproariously, all of us. Now animals do not like mockery.
To be laughed at makes them angry. And in such fashion our laughter
affected Saber-Tooth. He turned with a roar and charged the bluff again.
This was what we wanted. The fight had become a game, and we took huge
delight in pelting him.

But this attack did not last long. He quickly recovered his common
sense, and besides, our missiles were shrewd to hurt. Vividly do I
recollect the vision of one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut by
one of the stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retain the picture
of him as he stood on the edge of the forest whither he had finally
retreated. He was looking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clear
of the very roots of his huge fangs, his hair bristling and his tail
lashing. He gave one last snarl and slid from view among the trees.

And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed out of our holes,
examining the marks his claws had made on the crumbling rock of the
bluff, all of us talking at once. One of the two Folk who had been
caught in the double cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.
They had come out proudly from their refuge, and we surrounded them in
an admiring crowd. Then the young fellow's mother broke through and fell
upon him in a tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, and
shrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman, very hairy, and
the thrashing she gave him was a delight to the horde. We roared with
laughter, holding on to one another or rolling on the ground in our
glee.

In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the Folk were always
great laughers. We had the sense of humor. Our merriment was Gargantuan.
It was never restrained. There was nothing half way about it. When
a thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation of it, and the
simplest, crudest things were funny to us. Oh, we were great laughers, I
can tell you.

The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we treated all animals
that invaded the village. We kept our run-ways and drinking-places to
ourselves by making life miserable for the animals that trespassed or
strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest hunting animals
we so bedevilled that they learned to leave our places alone. We were
not fighters like them; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was because
of o