The woman left the beech tree and approached the man and touched his arm.
His eyes turned upon her kindly and after she had seated herself beside
him, there was laughing talk, for Lightfoot was declaring her desperate
condition of hunger and demanding that he return to the valley with her.
She examined his bow critically and had an opinion to express, for so
fine a shot as she might surely talk a little about so manful a thing as
the making of the weapon. And as the sun sank lower and the valley fell
into shadow, the two descended together, a pair who, after all, had
reason to be glad that they had lived.
And the children these two left were bold and strong and dominant by
nature, and maintained the family leadership as the village grew. With
later generations came trouble vast and dire to the people of the land,
but it was not the part of this proud and seasoned and well-weaponed
group to flee like wild beasts when came drifting to the Westward the
first feeble vanguard of the Aryan overflow. The vanguard was overthrown;
its men made serfs and its women mothers. Other cave men in other regions
might escape to the Northward as the wave increased, there to become
frost-bitten Lapps or the "Skrallings" of the Norsemen, the Eskimo of
to-day, but not so the people of the great Fire Valley or their stern and
sturdy vassals for half a hundred miles about.
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