The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone

"Ho, there!" called Thorn.

"Ho, there!" came back from the rock.

"Come here, talking shadow."

"Shadow," was the answer.

"We want to see you," called the boys.

"See you," said the echo.

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the boys.

"Ho, ho!" laughed the talking shadow.

That evening Pineknot came running to the cave, calling, "O Thorn, I was coming along on the high rock, and I heard little cries. I crawled through the bushes and looked over and saw a nest full of young eagles. They were skinny and had no feathers on their bodies. The nest was made of sticks; and oh, it was big, and there was a lot of feathers in it!"

Pineknot stopped for breath.

"Go on, go on," said Thorn, "tell more."

"As I looked, a shadow bird went over the rock," said Pineknot; "and then down dropped the mother eagle with a snake in her claws."

"Oh," cried Thorn, "I wish I had seen it."

"The young eagles held their mouths open," Pineknot went on, "and their mother fed them with the snake, a little bit at a time. When the snake was all gone, the mother eagle waved her big wings and flew away. Then the young ones' heads fell down. They were asleep."

A day or two after that, Thorn came into the cave with an eagle's feather in his hand. And there were long red cuts and scratches on his body.

His father looked at him with a scowl.

"Men bring meat from the hunt, not feathers," he said roughly.

The boy looked pitiful; his mother felt sorry for him. She said to herself, "He has been to see the young eagles. The mother eagle saw him. He fought her alone with his little stone ax. He will be a great hunter!"

She looked at him proudly, and put cold water on the little torn body.

"Gr-r-r," growled Strongarm, scowling. "Would you make a baby of the boy? A fight is good for him. He will learn to make his way."

CHAPTER IV

HOW STRONGARM HUNTED A BEAR AND A LION

In those days Strongarm was busily digging a big hole away out in the forest. He cut the dirt up with his stone ax, and threw it out with a clam shell. He had worked now for days, and at last the hole was large enough. He laid branches over it, and over the branches he hung the leg of a wild goat.

That night the wild things of the woods came out to hunt for food. A cave bear came by and smelled the meat. He went to get it and fell through the branches into the hole beneath.

The next day when Strongarm went to the hole, he found the great cave bear in it. He killed the bear and carried the meat home to eat, and the skin to sleep on.

Burr took the bear skin from him and laid it out on the ground. She drove sticks down through the edges, all the while pulling the skin tight. Then with her stone scraper, she scraped off all the meat and fat. She left the skin stretched on the ground, and thought, "It will dry there, and another day I will scrape it again. Then it will be good and soft to sleep on."

She looked up as a man came running toward the cave.

"Oho, Hickory!" called Strongarm, "what is it?"

"A lion hunt!" shouted Hickory, and shook his spear.

Strongarm's bold face lighted up.

"Tell about it," he said.

"A lion has come among the caves by the river. He kills the people and carries off the children. The women dare not go to the river for water. The men are afraid to go alone to hunt. So they want help to kill the lion. They want all the strong men and the good hunters. They have sent for you."

Strongarm quickly took his club and spear and went off with old Hickory. The men went over two hills and across a stream, and came to Hickory's cave. There other men joined them. All the men had clubs and spears and stone axes. They went together toward the river caves. They found the lion and killed it.

Strongarm came home after some days, bringing lion's meat. Burr cooked it, and Strongarm said to the boys, "Eat, it will make you brave."

After a while Strongarm sat down and made a hole in a lion's tooth. Then he took off his necklace. It was made of shells and bears' claws and a tiger's tooth and a bit of amber. He put the lion's tooth on his necklace and held it up and looked at it and said, "Men will see that and say, 'There is a brave man. There is a good hunter. He has helped to kill a lion.'"

The boys stood by, watching. Thorn pointed to the tiger's tooth.

"How long and sharp it is! I never saw a tiger."

"You never want to see one unless you are where he cannot see you," roared Strongarm.

"Tell us about the lion hunt, father," begged Pineknot.

"We watched the lion for days," said Strongarm. "We found that he slept nearly all day in the thick reeds by the river. At sundown he went out to hunt. He hunted all night; we heard him roar at times. In the early light he went back to his bed of reeds by the river and went to sleep. We rolled a big stone from a high rock and killed him while he slept. Then we went down to where he lay. We saw that he was an old lion; he could not hunt animals enough to eat, and that is why he had begun to kill people."

CHAPTER V

THE OLD AX MAKER VISITS HIS DAUGHTER

As they were talking, a long call came from far away. They listened. The call came again, and Strongarm put his hands to his mouth and answered.

"It is old Flint, the ax maker," he said to his wife.

"Grandfather!" cried the boys, and they ran to meet him.

Soon they came back with an old man. His hair was rough and gray, but his eyes were bright under his bushy eyebrows. He wore an old brown bear skin.

"Ho, man!" called Strongarm, "come on!"

"Sit and rest, father," Burr said.

The old man sat down on the root of a tree. Burr brought him bison meat and wild honey and a horn of water.

"Eat, you are tired and hungry."

The old man ate all he wanted. Then he began to talk. He told about his wife, and the work at the stone yard and the gravel bed, and of the men who had come from far away to buy his axes.

The boys stood by and listened.

After some time Burr looked at the bag on the old man's shoulder.

"Have you a new ax in there for me?" she asked with a little laugh.

Smiles came about the old man's mouth, and he slowly pulled four beautiful chipped axes from his bag. One ax was big and heavy. That was for Strongarm. He handed it to him. Another ax was small and light. That was Burr's. She put out her hand for it. There were two little axes. These the boys snatched with shouts of joy.

The axes were wide at the sharp end and narrow at the head, and you could see where every chip had come off.

Strongarm turned his ax over and looked at it. He rubbed his fingers along the rough sharp edge.

"That is a good ax," he said, and he held it up and looked it all over again.

"Grandfather," said Thorn, pressing close to the old man's side, "when I am a man, I shall be an ax maker like you."

"Begin now," said his grandfather, with a gruff laugh. "It takes a long time to learn to make a good ax."

"Can anybody learn?" asked Pineknot.

"No," said Flint. "Some men can chip stone, and others cannot. That is why some men make axes, and other men use them."

"Well, I will try," said Thorn. "When you go back to the stone yard, I will go with you."

Strongarm turned round where he sat and pulled up a little hickory tree. "We will put handles on these axes," he said.

He hacked off a piece of the little tree and split it half way down, and hacked off one split piece. The other split piece he bent around his ax. Then he took wet string made of skin. This he put around and around the ax handle, and pulled it tight.

The boys stood by watching. "The wet string will shrink and draw up short," their father told them. "Then the ax will be very tight on the handle."

The boys now tied on their ax handles with their father's help. And Flint tied on Burr's. Then all set to work with sandstone pebbles and rubbed them smooth. Strongarm's was soon done. He threw his old ax away, stuck his new one in the string around his waist, and went off to hunt.

Burr took her digging stick from beside her door and hacked a point on it with her new ax. Then she burned the point in the fire until it was hard. She took a basket in her hand, and her baby on her back, and went out of the cave. Old Flint and the boys rolled a stone up to the door to keep out wolves and foxes. Then they all went into the woods, and Burr began looking for things to eat.

She found a root and pushed it out of the ground with her digging stick and threw it into her basket. It was the root of a wild turnip. She found other roots. They were wild carrots and celery. In the open places, tall grasses grew. They were the wild grains. These she bent over and beat with a stick until the ripe seeds fell into her basket. Under the oak trees she gathered acorns.

Little wild pigs were there eating the acorns, and the boys ran one down and brought it, squealing, to their mother. Burr laughed and said, "You are little men. You will soon hunt for yourselves."

It began to rain, and they all sat under a tree until the rain had passed.

CHAPTER VI

THE COMING OF FIRE

When Strongarm came back from the hunt, he found the cave cold and dark and wet. A stream of water was running down through the smoke-hole. It had put out the fire. The ashes, too, were wet; and there were no coals from which to start the fire again.

He looked at the black fire-place.

"Now I must walk all the way to old Hickory's for fire," he grumbled; "and it is growing dark."

Tired and hungry, he left the cave.

He had not gone far when a dead branch fell across his path. He jumped back.

"The people who live in the trees did that—some of those shadow people," he said to himself. "They tried to kill me. The man who lives in the wind is angry, too. Hear him roar!

"I do not like shadow people," he thought as he walked on. "They live in trees and wind and rivers and fire and stones and everything, but you cannot see them. They will hurt you if you make them angry. I am afraid of them. I wish I had a torch to scare them off. All the other shadow people are afraid of the fire man."

Then to keep up his heart he sang in a loud gruff voice:

"O why did the water put out the fire?
O why did the water put out the fire?"

Strongarm gave a loud call as he came up to Hickory's cave. The old man came to the door and asked what the trouble was.

"Trouble enough," growled Strongarm. "My fire is out. I came for coals."

Old Hickory gave a great roaring laugh. His wife laughed, too, as she pushed the children aside and raked out coals. These she put into a hollow branch that Strongarm handed her.

"They will keep alive in there," he said, "even if it rains."

Then with a good pine torch and his branch full of coals, he hurried home.

When Burr came back to the cave, she, too, found the fire out. There was a deer on the floor, so she knew that Strongarm had come from the hunt.

"The man has gone to old Hickory's for fire," she told her father.

"Um," said Flint, "he might have rested his legs. I can get fire from stones."

"From stones!" cried Burr, her face white.

The old man quietly pulled two stones from his bag. One was flint, the other was quartz. He took dry leaves from his bag and rubbed them very fine between his hands and laid them on a rock. Over the leaves he held the two stones and began to strike one with the other.

Burr and the boys watched with scared faces.

"The fire man—will he not be angry?" she asked.

Flint said nothing. He was striking the stones together. A spark came! then another and another! He kept on striking very fast until the sparks came like a flame and caught the dry leaves. He put on more leaves and little sticks, and soon there was a good fire blazing on the floor.

"From stones!" Burr kept thinking, as she shook her head and watched it out of the corner of her eye.

When Strongarm came with the coals, the cave was already warm and light and full of the smell of good things cooking. He looked at the fire and wondered where it had come from, but said nothing.

Near the fire his wife had a basket lined with clay. In it were the seeds of the wild grains and acorns, with hot coals. She shook the basket around and around until the seeds were roasted. Then from the ashes she pulled the roots she had put there to roast.

After Strongarm had eaten, he lay down by the fire. Nodding toward it he said, "Where did you get it?"

Flint then told him that he had brought it out of stones. Strongarm sat up and looked hard at Flint. Then Flint had to strike the stones together again, to let Strongarm see the fire come out.

"Beaver Tail, an old ax maker, showed me how to do it," said Flint. "He has worked in stone all his life. For a long time he has known that fire lives in stone. He has seen sparks fly as he chipped his axes. One day in making a spear head, he struck a quartz pebble with his flint hammer stone. A big spark came! He struck again and again, and the sparks came fast and caught the dry grass at his feet!"

"Um," grunted Strongarm, wondering. He thought for a long time; then he looked at Flint and said, "Fire lives in wood, too! My ax handles grow warm as I rub them."

The boys listened in wonder to their grandfather's strange story of the making of fire.

After a time Thorn said, "We have always had fire in the cave. All the cave folks have it. They did not bring it from stones. Where did they get it?"

"Once, in the old days," Strongarm said, and turned to the boy, "a man saw fire come out of the sky and begin to eat up the woods! He could feel the fire from where he stood. It made him warm, and he liked it. But he was afraid to take any, for he thought the fire man might be angry. But at last he did take some. He kept it, and grew to like it more and more. With it burning beside him, the night was not so dark, and he was not afraid; for the hungry wolf and tiger turned away—teeth and claws could not fight fire!

"The other men saw that it was good to have fire; so, in time, they took some of it. And ever since then every man has tried to keep his fire burning."

"It is better for us cave folks since fire came," Burr then said, nodding to the boys. "Why, before it came, there was no cooked meat, nor were there any sweet roasted seeds or roots. But the folks tore their meat from the animal where it was killed, and stood by and ate it raw.

"Nor was there a home before fire came. My grandmother told me that, long ago, in the old days, the men and women wandered from place to place with their little children. And the women hunted and fished and fought beside the men. And at night the people curled themselves round as the wild dogs do, and slept on the ground; and the rain wet them, and the cold winds made them shiver.

"But after fire came, all this was changed. For the fire would go out unless there was some one to keep it. So a man told his wife that she might stay and keep the fire, and said that he would hunt for both.

"The woman then took a place that she liked, near a stream, and built a shelter of branches and made her fire there and kept it. And the man brought meat to her, and she cooked it. And before very long all the people were living in that way. And so ever since that time, the man has been the hunter, and the woman has kept the fire and brought water from the stream and gathered seeds of the ripe grasses."

"And always since then, too, the family place has been about the fire. We sit beside it and warm ourselves and work and talk and rest; and that is home."

"True, true," grunted old Flint; and Strongarm nodded his head.

CHAPTER VII

THE CAVE TIGER

One morning not long after the lion hunt, Thorn and his grandfather started off to the stone yard. They soon came to the deep forest where they could not see far ahead of them, because the beeches and oaks and chestnuts grew close together, and under the branches there was a thick tangle of low bushes.

Old Flint watched carefully as he led the way through the woods. He listened to every sound, and looked often behind him. Farther along, the ground was more open; and from a hill they looked far away over wide level land. Herds of horses and bison were grazing there, and packs of wolves skulked through the edge of the forest. They waited to spring upon the animals that should stray from the herds.

Passing on, old Flint came upon the body of a rhinoceros partly eaten, and he stopped and looked anxiously around.

"This is the work of a tiger," he said; "and he cannot be far off, for the meat is fresh."

Flint peered through the bushes; but the tiger was not in sight, so he quickly cut meat from the rhinoceros and walked on slowly.

"The tiger may be somewhere near, sleeping. Keep a sharp look-out, boy; he is yellow with dark stripes, just the color of the dry grass, and you can walk almost onto him before you see him. No animal can hide better than he, and none can walk the forest paths with less noise from his padded feet."

They had not gone much farther when old Flint stopped and, catching his breath; stared into the shadows of a tree. Clutching Thorn's shoulder, he pointed to the spot without saying a word. There on a limb, asleep, beautiful in his tawny skin and easy grace, lay the great animal. Thorn looked while his heart beat fast. Never before had he seen anything that so held his eye. He would have liked to stay and watch him—to see him walk, to see his great claws and teeth, and his wild eyes. But Flint hurried him off, and without a sound they left the place. Not till he had put miles between himself and the tiger did Flint shake off a feeling of terror, and speak in answer to Thorn's question:

"How does the tiger get things to eat?"

"He steals to the river bank where the shade is deepest," said the old man, recalling many a sight of the crouching beast. "There, on some over-hanging limb or rock, he waits for deer or horse or any other animal to come to drink. Then from his hiding place, with an angry snarl, he springs upon the back of his prey."

"Oh, many a time I have seen him," continued old Flint, thinking of past years; "for when I was a boy, my father's cave was in a high cliff, close to the river. A little way below, there was a place where the animals came to drink. And often I have felt the hair rise on my head as I heard the cry of some wounded animal, and saw it rush away with a yellow patch clinging to its neck."

"I have a tiger's jaw which I found once long ago. You may see it some time. Then you will know why the tiger can kill the rhinoceros, whose thick skin no other animal's teeth can pierce. In the tiger's upper jaw, there are two teeth that are long and sharp and thin. The tiger thrusts these into the neck of the rhinoceros, and he sinks to the ground, and the tiger feeds upon him."

"You say the tiger springs upon the back of the rhinoceros. Well, what would happen if he should miss, and not land on the back?" asked Thorn.

"In that case he would likely have short time to live," said Flint. "For the rhinoceros is a furious beast when angry. If he gets his terrible two-horned snout under the body of his enemy and gives an upward fling of his powerful neck, the end is near. So fierce is the rhinoceros when angry, that even the mammoth is afraid of him and keeps out of his way."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAKING OF STONE WEAPONS

Thorn and his grandfather walked for a long time, but at last Flint pointed to a cave in the side of the hill and said, "We rest there."

As they came up, Thorn saw his grandmother sitting in the sun at her door. Flint said to her, "Here is Thorn, your grandson."

"The little man!" she said, and laid her rough hand on his shoulder gently.

Then she quickly cut off big pieces of the rhinoceros meat and ran a long stick through them, and placed the stick over the burning fire. While the meat was cooking, Flint was telling about Burr and her little family; and of Strongarm's surprise at the making of fire; and of the lion hunt; and of the sleeping tiger they had seen on the way home.

After the hungry man and boy had eaten great pieces of the roasted meat, they went to the stone yard. There Thorn heard the sound of stone hammers and saw a big rocky place in the hillside. Three men sat on the ground at work. Other men sat about talking. Pointing to these, Flint said, "They are waiting to buy axes."

There were piles of bowlders on the ground, and little piles of stone chips around each ax maker.

Flint went up to one of them and said, "Redtop, my boy wants to make axes. Show him how."

Redtop grinned at Thorn, and threw him a smooth oval bowlder.

"That is your hammer stone," he said. "Now take a stone about the size you want your ax, and chip it this way."

Redtop sat on the ground. He held a flint bowlder and began chipping it with his hammer stone. Every time he struck the bowlder, a chip flew off. He kept on striking, first on one side and then on the other. Thorn watched with shining eyes. Redtop worked fast and easily, and after some time held up a beautiful ax. It was broad at the sharp end and narrow at the head. Thorn saw the little places all over it where the chips had come off.

He looked at it and laughed, and then sat down and tried to do what Redtop had done. He struck with his hammer stone, but the bowlder did not chip. He worked on and on, for a very, very long time. Still the bowlder would not chip, and his arm was ready to drop off.

At last Redtop said, "Enough for to-day! You will do."

Thorn threw down his stones with a shout and ran to his grandfather.

Old Flint sat at work under a big beech tree. At his side there was a little pile of bowlders, and about him there were chips of flint.

"Well," he said, as he looked up at the boy, "how is stone work?"

"It is not so easy as it looks, and it makes my arm hurt," said the boy soberly; "but Redtop said that I would do."

"Um," grunted the old man with an unsmiling face, the while laughing to himself.

He worked on. After a time he said, "The little thing you shoot with, your bow—did you bring it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well, I will make a little stone head for the stick."

"Good, grandfather!" said Thorn, clapping his hands.

Flint took a pebble from the pile and struck it with his hammer stone. It did not chip in the right way, so he threw it on the chip pile. He struck another. That was too soft; he threw that away. He tried many pebbles before he found a good one.

"This will do," he said at last. "The chip leaves a slight rounding hollow like the inside of my hand."

Then he began to work. He held the pebble in his left hand and struck it a sharp blow with another pebble. He went on striking, round and round the pebble, taking off a flake or a big chip at every blow. At last the part of the pebble left was too small to work with any more. It was the core; he threw it away.

"We chip axes by striking," he then said to the young ax maker. "That way of chipping is good enough for axes; they are heavy and have, besides, the weight of the arm to carry the blow. With spear heads it is different; a spear is thrown, and the head should be sharp. I can get a smaller chip, and so a sharper edge, by pressing than by striking; so I chip my spear heads by pressure."

He laid a little piece of deer skin in his left hand. On this he laid one of the flakes he had just broken from the pebble, and held it fast with his fingers. Then he took a piece of deer antler.

"This antler," he said, "is soft enough to spring a little when I press it against the pebble. Yet it is hard enough to bring off a chip."

He began pressing with the antler along the edge of the flake. He pressed very hard; and every time he pressed, a little chip flew off. He worked very fast.

"I must not let a hump come in the middle," he said; "for then I should have a turtle back. Look on that chip pile; you will see many turtle backs that I have thrown away."

The old man was making the point now, and he began to sing:

"I give you the eye of the eagle,
        To find the rabbit's heart!
I give you the eye of the eagle,
        To find the rabbit's heart!"

As Thorn listened, and caught the meaning of the song, his eyes grew bright and he held his head high.

"Grandfather hopes that I will hunt with the little bow and spear!" he said to himself.

He was very glad. He began to dance and clap his hands in time with the old man's song. Then he caught the words and began to sing with his grandfather:

"I give you the eye of the eagle,
        To find the rabbit's heart!
I give you the eye of the eagle,
        To find the rabbit's heart!"

Before long the little spear head was done. It was thin and sharp and beautiful. Thorn tied it to the little straight stick, and he had an arrow for his bow!

Flint worked on.

"We make all of our axes and spear heads and knives and scrapers of flint," he said after a while. "It chips more easily than any other stone."

After some time Flint and the boy left the stone yard.

CHAPTER IX

AT THE GRAVEL PIT

As they walked along, the old man pointed to a place in the hillside and said, "That is the gravel bed. From it we dig all the stone for our axes and spear heads."

Thorn looked and saw a big hollow in a gravel hill. The hill was made of sand and clay and pebbles and bowlders. The rain had washed some of the sand and clay away, and the stones had fallen down and now lay in piles on the ground.

"Men come from far away for our stone," the old man went on. "It is good stone for axes. They bring us shells and amber and meat and skins for our stone. Some of them take the stone to their homes and make their own axes; others buy our axes."

At the gravel bed, men were at work. One man had a big digging stick. He put it under a rock and pushed it out of the ground. Another man had the shoulder bone of a bear. He pushed it under some pebbles and lifted them and threw them upon an ox skin on the ground. Then he gathered up the corners of the skin, took it on his back, and carried it down to the stone yard.

As Thorn watched the men getting out stone for their axes and spear heads, he said to his grandfather, "Who made the axes for the cave men before you made them?"

"Oh, ever since the old days," said Flint, "there has been an ax maker. Some men can chip stone well and easily. Others can never learn to do it in their whole lives. So the men who can chip stone do it; and they are the ax makers. The other men use the axes, and they are the hunters.

"My grandfather told me," said Flint, as he walked slowly down the hill, "that in the old days the cave men did not have stone axes and spears. They hunted with sticks; they threw a stick like your mother's digging stick; and they struck with a stick like your father's hunting club. And they used the sharp stones they chipped only for knives and scrapers. But one day, a man thought about tying a sharp stone to a stick! There, you see, was the first spear!"

"That was a great day for the cave men!" Flint went on, while his grim face lighted up. "For with a stone weapon they could hunt the swift wild animals, and so get more food."

Then he stamped his foot and said, "And they could kill enemies better!" And he clenched his fist, while his face grew hard.

The next day, men from the stone yard went out to make a fish trap. They drove sticks across the river bed where the water was low. Then from stick to stick they tied string made of skin. Rushes grew by the river. They took these and wove them in and out of the strings until the trap reached clear across the river. The water could go through the rushes, but the fish could not; and the men speared them or caught them with their hands.

CHAPTER X

A SUMMER CAMP

Berries were ripe now, and Flint and the other cave people around him left their caves and went to live near the berry fields. The men went out to hunt early next morning, and the women and children went to pick berries.

There were plenty of wild huckleberries and little yellow plums. The women and children ate and ate the sweet fruit, and then filled bags and baskets to carry home.

As they left the berry fields, the children pulled down the wild grape vines and bit into the little grapes. But they made faces and cried, "Oh, how sour! After awhile they will turn purple; then they will be sweeter."

And there were trees full of little green apples. The children tasted some of them, but threw them away. "Too sour!" they cried.

When day came to an end, the men gathered sticks and lighted the night fires. Then they threw themselves on skins, and all talked together. They called to each other from fire to fire, and told long stories till far into the night. At last, in the middle of a story, they dropped off to sleep.

Half asleep on his reindeer skin beside his grandfather, Thorn saw the old yellow moon go down. Around him he heard the noises of the great forest. Katydids and locusts and tree toads were singing, and from far away came the long howls of wolves. From a branch overhead a great snowy owl kept calling to his mate. That was the last the boy knew till the sun lighted up the tree tops.

The next evening it rained. The women quickly bent little trees over and tied their tops together and threw skins over them. Then they sat on the ground under the shelters and laughed and talked and watched the rain. Some of the women made baskets.

One woman had an elm branch. She broke off the rough outside bark to get the soft inside bark. This she pulled off in strips and twisted together into long strings. Then she broke little branches from the tree bending over her, and tied them together at one end. With two pieces of string, she wove under and over a stick and crossed the strings. In this way she wove around and around the basket to the top, and tied a stick for a handle.

"I will place leaves in it, and then it will hold berries," she said.

One woman was making a bag of a bit of skin. She made holes near the edge of the skin and put a string through them and pulled them together. Another woman made a basket of birch bark in the same way.

One day when the berries were about gone, Thorn saw a great herd of reindeer going by.

"Oh, look at all the reindeer, grandfather!" he cried. "Where are they going?"

"When summer comes," said Flint, "they go to a colder country; and when summer ends, they come back to the cave country."

There were many reindeer in the herd, and their antlers looked like a forest of trees without leaves. A big bear with hungry eyes was following the herd.

That evening a young hunter made a picture of a beautiful reindeer with his head among the grasses. Another hunter made a picture of two deer that he had killed, and two live deer. Still another man made a handle for a knife. He carved it from bone. It was like a deer springing. The antlers were laid back on the neck, and the front legs were turned under the body; the hind legs lay along the handle.

"Good!" said the other men as they looked at it.