Chapter X: The Trapper Trapped

The best that Sure-dart and the man could do in the way of providing dinner for the company was to catch a big eel, and to knock over with a stone what they called a worm-tail. This was a stout little bird about as large as a crow, but with small wings, and a tail that looked like a single long, large feather. It had teeth, and was a flesh-eater, and was pretty tough for food, but this did not trouble the hungry guard. They ate both him and the eel with no preparation except skinning the eel, and cutting off his head, and doing about the same with the bird. As yet these people had never eaten or even seen any sort of cooked food.

The rest of the day and the following night passed, and there was no appearance of danger, and no sign whatever that the Fishers had lingered in the neighborhood. So Bull-head, following the orders of Big-axe, broke camp, and set off on the trail of the main body. It was understood that Big-axe would hasten his party along as fast as possible; but that would not mean anything like the speed of the smaller company, which would probably come up before the general party was settled in its new quarters. Bull-head knew where to find the main body, for he had once before been in these parts, and so knew the general lay of the land; and besides, Big-axe had pointed out the top of a small, oddly shaped mountain that was to serve as a guide. Big-axe meant to pitch camp on a kind of broad shelf of this mountain, where it would be rather easy to make a good defensive fight, and whence it was but a short distance down to a ravine where there was a brook.

The way soon became wilder and rougher, as they began to get among the hills and straggling woods, but they could now get some shade, and here and there a refreshing breeze found an opening and reached them. At this point they found more trees of the oak and beech kind, and fewer of the palm family, and in general the surroundings became less suggestive of the tropics. They had long ago parted with the reeds and canes, and the low, snake-rooted willows, and the only vegetation of the familiar kind that was at all common was the rush-like grass. This, which was much coarser than the grass of to-day, still covered some of the little valley-bottoms and openings among the trees, and also ran in with the few kinds of bushes that were common both among the woods and in the openings. Some of these bushes were bright with berries, but only one kind was considered eatable, and that was tart and slightly bitter. On the way to this higher region, on a dry and stony level, they saw some scrubby bushes bearing a small, unpromising green fruit, and these bushes were covered with little prickly points. The fruit was of no value, and it was to take ages to make it so; but in time this primitive prickly pear was to develop into the pear of our gardens.

Naturally, the live creatures changed with the change of surroundings. Up here were none of the kinds of fish-lizards, great turtles, or even the large dinosaurs (“three-horns” and “death-beasts”) that were so common among the marshes, and on the skirts of the surrounding hills. Instead were small quadrupeds (there were as yet no large ones in existence), such as huge conies, gigantic rats,--though these last were also found in the marsh country,--and small lizard-creatures, some of which walked on their hind legs. On the farther slopes of these hills, as Sure-dart had heard, were occasionally seen the little horse-like creatures that the Rock-people called “scamperers,” and in fact, these were now and then to be met with as far east as the borders of the marsh region, though they were nowhere numerous. Their day was later, when conditions were more favorable for them, and when they increased in numbers, and developed in size, till at last they could fairly be called horses. But that was some millions of years later. At this time they were little bigger than our foxes, and had but a small show of mane and tail, with toed feet, instead of hoofs. They had four of these toes on their front feet, and three on the hind.

Of snakes there were several kinds, some of them poisonous. There were a few varieties of birds, including the queer little fellows with teeth and long, worm-like tails, and also a bird that had a sort of hair, instead of feathers, and no wings to speak of. Here, as on the lower levels, might be looked for--particularly in the evening--the dreadful bat-creature with toothed nose, or bill, and twenty feet of spread to his skinny wings.

Neither here, nor anywhere else in the world, at that time, was a single deer, antelope, lion, tiger, elephant, or any other haired or furred animal of any size; among the trees were not to be seen darting monkeys, or the flash of bright-feathered birds; and there was not one songster to give a touch of cheerfulness to the sombre recesses of the evergreens, or the more open arches of the oaks and beeches.

There was something almost uncanny, as the Scotch would say, about this strange wilderness. It was not made less so by the fact that the woods proper were not generally very dense; for the kinds of trees now found everywhere in the temperate zone were then new on the earth, and they were particularly sparse in this higher region, so that what there was of forest was made up chiefly of groups of evergreens, yew-like conifers and intervening huge ferns, together with thorny bushes almost as large as small trees.

But neither of the boys paid very much attention to these less striking and exciting matters; they were chiefly on the lookout, particularly Hop-foot, for something new and strange among the animal inhabitants, and both boys constantly had a dart ready for any such. For a time they saw nothing in the least worth bothering with, but soon after leaving the rocks and trees behind them something did appear of a sort to make them pay eager heed.

They were near a kind of long, rather shoal cut, or narrow valley, one which opened almost or quite upon the outside plain, when something scurried out of a thicket, and went bounding down the side of the hill. A single glance showed that it was the rare little scamperer, or horse-creature.

“Oh, there is what I want!” fairly yelled Hop-foot. “Head him off, Sure-dart; run down the bank and turn him back! He can’t get across that place.”

The scamperer did seem, in fact, to be almost in a trap. At the bottom of the hill was a rocky gully with almost perpendicular sides, and this ran at right angles with the general cut of the valley, and on one side turned back and up into the hill. On the other it stopped abruptly at the end of a practically straight line. The situation will be better understood by comparing the gully to the head of an ordinary hammer, the claws-end standing for the part of the gully that turned back and up, and the pounding end for the straight part. The path that the scamperer was following went toward the gully as the handle of the hammer goes into the head.

Sure-dart glanced at Bull-head, seeking permission to go, and got a consenting nod. He was away on the instant, going down the slope with a speed that would astonish a boy of to-day. Hop-foot, rather fast on his legs, in spite of his infirmity, hopped and skipped down the other side of the slope, or toward the end of the claws of the hammer. Bull-head, for a wonder, relaxed a little of his gruff strictness, and told two of the men to join the boys. One of these men was Wing-foot, who, as it will be remembered, was the fastest runner in the tribe, and the other was not very much slower. Wing-foot followed the younger boy, and the other man (his name was Long-shanks) took the general direction of Sure-dart, but swung more to the left.

Wing-foot soon passed to the front on his line, and Sure-dart was quickly near the straight end of the gully. The scamperer kept rather hesitatingly along, seeming to falter as he saw the strange creatures after him, but at last was frightened into a spurt, and dashed down to the brink of the gully. There he stopped, seemed to gather his wits and realize what a corner he was in, and the next instant whirled to the right, and made up the slope.

“Stop him, Wing-foot,” yelled Hop-foot, as he saw the creature heading straight toward them. He spread out his own legs and arms as he spoke.

But this gave the scamperer a new fright. He stopped once more, wheeled, and then headed again for the gully.

“Don’t crowd him!” roared Long-shanks, “or he may jump, and break his neck!”

This seemed likely, and the others checked themselves, and went on more slowly.

The scamperer went this way and that, now in a terrible panic, and at last poked his head over a little break in the edge, and looked down. In a twinkling he dropped his fore-quarters over, and before the hunters could fairly make a new start he was entirely out of sight.

Hop-foot shouted with vexation and disappointment, and even the older pursuers crossly grunted. They all kept on till they were at the edge of the gully, though not now with any real hope, and successively peered over.

Wing-foot, who was the first, broke out in a barbarian cluck, but did not speak. He waited till Hop-foot had come skipping and limping up. So, too, did Sure-dart and Long-shanks, as they also outstripped the boy and looked over.

“What is it? What are you looking at? Is he killed?” puffed Hop-foot. He looked over himself before anybody could answer the questions.

There was a mere little furrow that led slopingly from the small cut in the bank down perhaps thirty feet. Here there was a shelf, and after that it was a straight drop of forty feet to the bottom of the ravine. On the shelf, which was not much more than big enough to hold him, stood the scamperer.

“Ooo-hoo!” triumphed Hop-foot, in a high cry, “that settled your game!”

“Not quite,” said Long-shanks, who, as it appeared, knew something about scamperers. “We can’t go down there without a rope,” he explained, “and when we do, it will scare him so he will jump off. I know the fellow well enough for that.”

According to this the primitive horse was subject to a desperate kind of panic, the same as the modern animal, and under that frenzy would jump unhesitatingly to his death.

“We can make a good enough rope out of some creepers,” said Hop-foot, “and as for the rest of it, why can’t somebody go around and stand just below him? He would then be as scared to jump as to stand still.”

This did seem plausible, and after a little discussion Long-shanks said that he would skirt the gully (going around, of course, by the short end), and stand below the shelf.

He did this, and very soon appeared below. Meanwhile, they had found, at the edge of a neighboring patch of semi-tropical trees, some long, tough creepers which they twisted together to make a sufficiently serviceable rope. It would easily bear the weight of two ordinary men.

“I will go down,” said Wing-foot. “I am strong and not very heavy.”

The rope was long enough to allow a surplus that could be weighted down; and as stones, big and little, were plenty, it did not take long to put a heavy check-weight on the spare end. Sure-dart and Hop-foot could then easily manage the rest of it, pulling sufficiently hard to bring Wing-foot and the scamperer to the top. The man would, of course, be able to do something for himself, as the little path that the scamperer had used would be immediately before him.

He made sure that the rope was fast under his arms, and stepped to the edge. But there he stopped. So, too, did Sure-dart and Hop-foot.

There was an excellent reason. It was a reason that suddenly made them bend over the verge, and yell like wild creatures at Long-shanks. As they yelled they pointed, motioning at something behind him. He turned, as the sense of what they meant struck him: with that he understood all.

The other side of the gully was by no means so precipitous as this; and in one place, nearly opposite, it came down in a long shoulder of rocks and loose gravel. There were some trees and thorny bushes at the head of this natural path, and pushing through the tangle was what looked at first like a double row of yellowish palm-leaf fans, all gently waving. There were at least ten or twelve of them, and they were carried at a height, for the first one, of perhaps five feet, rising to ten, and then, at about the same slope, dropping lower, till the last was hidden by the others.

Long-shanks set his lips, turned, and started at a run up the gully.

He had taken no more than three steps when the strange fans gave a quicker wave, the bushes snapped and parted, and a smallish reptile head, bill-snouted, and covered with yellow scales, broke into sight. A broad breast, and short, outward-bowed legs followed, and then came more of the fans, these now showing as great, upright plates along the creature’s curved back. But two of these plates were half torn away, blood was trickling down the creature’s shoulders, and his bill-mouth was drooping open.

This much of him was scarcely in sight when he put his fore feet down the little slope, slid forward, as some gravel gave way under him, and all in a flash lost his balance, rolling end over end down the slope.

For a moment the watchers saw a sight that seemed hardly real or of the sane world. The monster was not under twenty feet long, and was of a bulk to weigh several tons. This great shape, flashing first a white belly, like a monstrous frog, then an enormous tail, dusky green, covered with scales and banded plates, and spiked near the end, and as often as the back came fairly up flapping the great, living fans--this seemingly impossible thing lurched and floundered its tremendous way down the slope, until it brought up against the tall stump of a broken tree.

With one more lurch, seemingly little hurt, and not at all confused, the giant righted himself, and started at a lumbering waddle down what remained of the slope. Just here he caught sight of the fleeing Long-shanks. With that kind of machine-noise--mostly a hiss like escaping steam--that seemed to be the one loud note of the great lizards, the monster jerked up his huge tail, and lunged forward in pursuit.

“What is it? Can it catch him? What shall we do?”

This, with gasps, from the startled and horrified Hop-foot.

But Sure-dart and Wing-foot had already started at a run up the line of the ravine. Yet Wing-foot, mindful that this was the chief’s son, turned his head a little, and shouted, almost from the corner of his mouth:

“It’s an old bull thorn-tail, and he’s hurt and ugly.”

The boy understood now. The stegosaurus, as modern men of science have named the creature, was one of the giant dinosaurs which had at this time become rare, and which soon afterwards wholly disappeared. He was huge, and doubtless rather slow, and perhaps usually peaceable, but from his general shape, and his bulk, and his mighty tail (which he was able to use as a kind of huge spiked mace) he must have been dangerous to rouse. A large one stood some ten feet high at the top of his arched back, and was heavier than a good-sized elephant. If one of the survivors of the species, having strayed from his usual haunts near the marshes, or by the great lake itself, had been irritated by fighting with some other monster, and then had caught sight of a smaller, fleeing creature, he would be likely to start in pursuit. Perhaps the strangest thing about the monster, and a strange thing of itself, was that it had what might be called two brains. One very small brain was in the usual place in the head, and the other was on the rump, near the backbone. It would be more exact to say that this brain was a strange enlargement of the spinal cord, but with some functions that the cord does not usually have, and which, in fact, we do not fully understand. It may have helped him, as his other brain was so small, to direct the movements of his spiked tail.

Hop-foot learned this (though of course nothing of the scientific part) at a later time; just now he was thinking of the chance Long-shanks had in the race, and what could be done to help the poor hunter. He knew, of course, that he could not get back to Bull-head in time to accomplish anything, and on the whole, he felt so helpless that he merely squatted down where he was. He had not done any clear thinking, it need hardly be said, but had merely grasped vaguely at the thought that he might do something. Other than this he was staring down, his heart, as the saying is, in his mouth, at the half-naked, swift-speeding hunter, and the arched-backed, lumbering monster, its great fans waving--the two passing, almost like one of our modern moving pictures, rapidly before his eyes.

One thing was already clear: the monster, in spite of his seeming clumsiness, was managing to heave his great body along at what was perilously near a fast gait; at least, it was a gait that was bringing him every moment nearer the man.