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.