Og had learned the secret of fire. Not content with having kindled flames by accident, the hairy boy continued his experimenting with the black fire stone. True, the accidental lighting of the wood dust litter revealed the secret to him, but even after that it was some time before he really felt that he had mastered the situation to the extent where he could kindle flames whenever he chose, providing he possessed the fire stone. Again and again he scraped wood dust and tiny splinters from a piece of soft wood with his flint knife, then bent over them with two fire stones, learning the art of striking the sparks so that they would leap from the stones into the powdered wood and immediately start glowing. But finally he achieved what to him was perfection in the art of fire building and he was extremely happy.
The fire, of course, was a mystery to the tree[116] people. That was evident from the way they gathered about the entrance of the canyon and watched it curiously. Some of them even overcame their fear of the canyon and the hairy boy to the extent of coming well inside the rocky declivity and sitting there among the bowlders for long periods, just blinking solemnly at the flames and chattering softly among themselves. Chief among those who mustered courage enough to come close to the flames was old Scar Face. He finally reached the point where he would sit for hours there and stare first at the fire and then at the hairy boy with an expression of profound thought.
Indeed, so often did Scar Face and certain others gather in a circle about Og’s fire, that after a time there developed a certain intimacy between the hairy boy and the ape men. They lost their fear of this mighty one who had slain the great cave tiger and who had proved himself master of the Fire Demon, and in its place developed a wholesome respect for him and his ability. Scar Face and all of his lusty fighting men would often gather in a semi-circle at a respectful distance from Og, and watch him with a strange expression in their eyes, which Og gradually perceived was admiration, the admiration of loyal subjects to a[117] chieftain, and Og soon realized that, if he cared to, he could be the ruler of the tree people, with Scar Face and his warriors as his devoted henchmen.
But for some strange reason this did not appeal to Og. To be ruler of the tree people was not to his liking. He had watched them closely during the time he had been among them and he had found them tremendously interesting. So like the hairy men they were in many ways, and yet so different.
Og had always looked upon them as animals, but he perceived now, as a result of his intimacy with Scar Face, that they were not, yet they were not men as he knew them. They had a language that consisted of grunts and querulous chattering but it was so crude that Og could see that they had great difficulty in expressing even the simplest thought. They could think. Og realized this when he analyzed their reasons for bringing him to the canyon a prisoner. Scar Face, who represented the height of development among them, had doubtless thought out the idea of making him a sacrifice to the cave tiger. They built tree top homes for themselves especially in mating time, and though they were crude structures they[118] showed a homing instinct. And some among them, notably Scar Face and his warriors, occasionally carried weapons in the form of clubs, though they often forgot that they possessed them, as they forgot many other things.
Here Og could see was one of two distinct differences between the tree people and his own race. Most hairy men (although there were still many who were not capable) followed an idea or a task to its conclusion. If a hairy man wanted to find a smooth round stone for a new stone hammer-head, he usually set about searching for it and searched until he found it, although there were some even among his people who could be turned aside from such a quest and made to forget all about the object they had started after by a bit of bright quartz, or the discovery of a bird’s nest or something else that might amuse them.
This was the way of all the tree people. They no sooner found one thing that interested them, than they dropped it for another. Og perceived, however, that this was not entirely true of some of them, especially old Scar Face, who seemed to have more steadfastness of purpose than most of his kind.
Og marked another difference between the tree[119] people and the race of hairy men. It was a physical difference. Under his own long hair Og knew that his skin was a yellowish white. The skin under the hair of the tree people was dark; in truth it was quite black. Og, thinker though he was slowly growing to be, noted this with only passing interest, for he could not know that this was the key to the whole mystery, and this difference in skin color marked the ape men as a different race, a race that even at that early date was still thousands of years behind his own people. Nor could he understand that a million years hence, when his race should have achieved the heights of civilization, the offsprings of the tree people would still be savages.
Yet Og could see that some of them, especially their leader, were making slow progress. Their interest in his fire and all that he did was evidence of this to him. The fact that Scar Face imitated him in everything he did, to the best of his ability, also helped Og in this conclusion. The scarred one walked more upright than the rest of his kind. He carried a club for a weapon more frequently than the rest and he always watched Og’s stone hammers with interest whenever he came close to his fire. Og noted this fact and one day,[120] more out of curiosity than anything else, he gave Scar Face one of his best weapons.
Og needed no interpreter to understand from the grunts and gibberish that Scar Face was grateful. Indeed, he was so delighted that his antics were childish. He paraded before his warriors with the hammer over his shoulder, and smote trees and bushes for no other reason than just to show off his weapon, and his warriors were duly impressed.
Scar Face watched with interest, too, Og’s handling............