San Antonio Daily Light

THE LIGHT'S DAILY STORY

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Copyrighted, 1902, by

This is the story of the first artist who achieved distinction in the world. It is true that other artists of more or less genius had preceded him, but none had attained to more than local fame.

The first of all, as everyone knows, was Little Mok, son of the great Ab, who invented the bow and established a tribe in the wonderful Fire Valley, but in the time of Reindeer the subject, or one of the subjects, of this tale, the natural gas which fed the flames of the Fire Valley had been exhausted for centuries and the cave men had drifted southward in gradual retreat before the glacial wave creeping ever downward from the frozen north. The cave men were scattered about in small tribes throughout the region now known as France and Germany.

The particular group to which the artist, Reindeer, belonged, having found a home in the region known today as the valley of the Dordogne, where it occupied a number of caves, the greatest of which uncovered in modern times is known as La Madeleine. Strange things have been discovered in that cave, relics of the men who lived more than twenty thousand years ago.

Reindeer was a descendant in the thirteenth generation from Ab and Lightfoot, the father and mother of Little Mok, and his artistic gift may have been remotely inherited. There is no telling about that. He was an oddity in more ways than one. There was not a young man in all the tribe for whom he was a match in a grapple, nor one among them either, whom he feared beyond the range of axe stroke, for he was fleet as the wild deer, from which he name had come. He was not a coward, but nature had made him as slender as he was swift. He was slight as a young fir tree, but was a hearty youth, and tireless as the wolves which hunted down even the big urus and the little wild horses, when the snow fell deep in winter.

It may have been his name which first suggested to Reindeer the idle whim, but one day scratching idly with a chipped flint upon a piece of mammoth bone, he thought to make the marks like unto a reindeer, and succeeded beyond all expectation. That fired him. He had, unknown to him before, that gift which only artists possess, of seeing real things in the mind's eye, and then delineating them. Vastly encouraged, he essayed more and the picture he scratched upon tusk and bone became a marvel to the tribe. He needed no longer hunt. He could idle as he pleased and make pictures, and, for his productions, the cave people were but too eager to bring him soft grasses for his couch and wood for his fire and flesh and fruit and nuts for food. Very prosperous became the affairs of Reindeer.

But there came a long and dreary winter, the grazing wild beasts and birds fled southward, the wolves became more daring and the tribe was near starvation. Necessities, the barest, must be struggled for, and Reindeer was driven to the hunt again, where, fleet of foot as he was, he had scant fortune in the snowy wastes. One day he slipped and broke his leg, and crawled back hungry, to his cave, where he must live as prisoner for weeks, if indeed, he lived at all! Fire he had and warmth, but it seemed that he must starve. Then, next day, came a change of tribal fortune. Ill-fed and weak as the men had become, they contrived to surround a wandering mammoth and drive it into a natural pit, where it was slain. There was meat enough for the tribe for weeks to come and spring was near at hand. Fasting gave way to feasting.

The belle of the tribe was Ah, so named by her mother because of her pretty gurgle when a babe. She was a young lady of undoubted charm: singularly straight and lithe, and fair of face, as faces went then. She had also a will of her own a quality looked upon with disfavor by Wolf, the head of the tribe and not a prepossessing person. He was of middle age, swart of face, thick-lipped and yellow toothed with fierce eyes set close together, a projecting under jaw and a bull like neck set deep in brawn between heavy shoulders. He was the longest-armed, as he was the hairiest and strongest man in all the tribe. He resembled somewhat a huge gorilla, and his deep voice was a bellow. His place was maintained by sheer brute force, supplemented by a readiness to slay on slight occasion. He had, as it sort of henchman and immediate follower, a squat but powerful creature bearing the name of Flatface, almost as uncouth in appearance as his master, but a famous trailer and hunter. Nothing escaped his keen eyes in the forest and when his bow string twanged it usually meant death. Master and man made a fearsome couple.

Gorse, the sturdy father of Ah, though hardly a friend of Wolf, was a friend of Reindeer, and it was he who sent his daughter every day to Reindeer's cave with mammoth flesh and water, carried in a sun-dried gourd. So it was that the young people were brought in closer contact than ever before, and so it was that the inevitable came and they fell in love. They would marry. But there was an obstacle in the way. Wolf wanted Ah himself.

Wolf was certainly a black and looming cloud on the horizon of the lovers, but, like lovers they were unthinking. In Reindeer's infatuation he grew reckless to the point of tempting fate. He drilled a hole through the end of his bit of mammoth ivory with the mammoth graven upon it, and attaching it to a necklace of shells strung on sinews, he hung the magnificent bauble about the neck of Ah. All the tribe knew well what that meant. They shook their heads and muttered sadly when the so wonderfully decorated maiden walked abroad.

"Wolf will kill Reindeer!" was all they said.

And the tribe judged shrewdly. When knowledge of the gift came to Wolf, who recognized its import well, the grip upon his huge stone axe was like to splinter the tough wood. "I will kill Reindeer when he leaves the cave!" he roared.

But Reindeer learned of this, and, with arrow often notched on string, guarded well the cave's narrow entrance until his injured leg was almost well. He could hobble about now, and despite the vigilance of Wolf and Flatface, there came a morning when Ah could not be found and the cave of Reindeer was vacant. The lovers had escaped!

What happened when Wolf called Flatface to him and while they prepared for the hunt—for they knew that it would be a long one—may be briefly told. The tribe kept apart, for they were afraid. Only Hairlip, Wolf's half-whiskered and venomous old mother, hanger-on and feeder-on of the cave occupied by him and Flatface, dare creep near him, to fairly shriek:

"Chase them! Catch them! Kill Reindeer and bring Ah back to the cave! You shall do what you please with Ah! And so shall I!"

The fierce animal grinned, but made no answer. He but lowered his head like the charging aurochs and started off, the squat Flatface following like a hound. The chase was begun, one to reach far over field and fell of that strange period.

Far distant now were the fleeing couple, living upon the wild creatures as they went and hurrying ever. They hoped to join a distant tribe, but feared to be overtaken, and their sleep was but fitful with each night, for they understood as well as if they had seen their departure that they were pursued by the two most to be dreaded trailers of the region. As far the pursuers themselves, they were coming, swift and knowing and blood-thirsty as any pair of unleashed blood-hounds of today. They were like blood-hounds too, in a way, though Flatface from the hound point of view, was the better of the two.

The cave men could find a trace of anything that had passed where no blood-hound of today could discern a sign. Furthermore, the cave man's scent was as keen, almost as was his eyesight. So they followed, never mistaking the traces of the halting Reindeer, until there came, in the afternoon of the third day, an hour when Flatface scanned the tracks more closely and knelt down and smelled, and chuckled out the words,

"We are near them!"

Wolf laughed. They were on a crest overlooking a deep ravine, beyond which a promontory extended in a triangle toward a distant valley. This promontory was heavily wooded, save that along its crest ran a rocky way, bare of herbage and terminating only at the precipice, where was a sheer descent into the valley an hundred feet below. At the verge, the opening was not more than fifteen feet in width. It opened out there a little, and by creeping around the two fringing masses of rock which uprose on either side, one could turn from destruction by the width of perhaps a yard.

Now came the swift events! Reindeer and Ah had become too careless and the keen eye of Flatface detected their form outlined against the sky upon the promontory's crest, as they neared its distant limit. Almost at the same moment the pursuers were recognized by the pursued. The situation became in an instant most perilous for the hunted. Down the ravine plunged Wolf and Flatface and began climbing the promontory's side. There was no way of escape for the lovers. At the promontory's verge they were practically imprisoned and would soon be at the mercy of the two avengers, though still distant from them by several hundred yards.

What chance for the lovers! But practice makes perfect, and activism is a wonderful thing. In immediate and awful peril, the mind of the cave man doubtless acted with infinitely more swiftness than does the mind of man today. Reindeer was keenest of thought of all his tribe. An inspiration—life preserving—came to him in a moment.

"Cut bushes," he cried. "Cut, and do as I do!" and he drew his stone axe, rushed into the thicket and sheared down a tender sapling at the height of seven or eight feet and stuck it into the shallow earth across the opening of the precipice. The swift Ah seized her own smaller weapon and did as she was told. Soon there was a little fringe of apparent green bushes extending across the termination of this grassy roadway leading to certain death, concealing what there was beyond.

"Come with me!" called Reindeer, and, grasping Ah by the arm, he ran upward the strange sloping way; as if to meet and battle unequally with his pursuers.

The girl, loving, desperate, even ferocious, ran beside him blindly. Halfway up the glade, Reindeer stopped and stood gazing up the slope. A moment later, there burst into the opening, still hundreds of yards distant, the triumphant bloodthirsty Wolf and Flatface. Then, seizing Ah by the wrist Reindeer turned and fled toward the precipice, pretending to hobble as he ran. With wild yells the pursuers followed after. Stumbling, halting, incoherently to Ah, Reindeer seemed to run not half as well as usual. Close upon them came the pursuers. Then, suddenly making a desperate spurt, Reindeer reached the false growth of tall shrubs upon the precipice's very edge, and parting them with lightning swiftness, stepped suddenly aside the little ledge extending into the slight covert in the rocks. With wild whoops of triumph, the pursuers followed on, and, startlingly enough, behind them echoed the roar of some wild animal attracted by the cries. Close together, through the same slight opening in the shrubs leaped Wolf and Flatface. Many feet they leaped—but there was only a yard of distance between that false green shrubbery and the verge of that awful precipice! As they disappeared, something huge and snarling shot after them, uncontrollably.

Reindeer drew Ah from the little hollow in which they had hidden themselves and leaned over and pointed down far below. There were some accidental fallen heaps of rocks there. Upon those heaps lay two queer looking objects, and, near them, something larger, all very still.

"We will live here, Ah, until my leg gets well again, and then we will go back to the tribe," said Reindeer.