Chapter II: The Needle, the Club, and the Bow

Nearly every day Strongarm went out to hunt. But he did not always bring back meat to the cave, for he could not always kill an animal. But sometimes he brought home the meat of deer or bison, and then again it was that of mammoth or ox.

Burr always took the meat when Strongarm brought it home, and sometimes she cut tendons from it. A tendon is a strong white cord that fastens a muscle to a bone. There are long tendons in the backs of big animals. Burr cut these out sometimes and hung them in the sun to dry. When they were dry, she broke the thin outside skin and tore the tendon apart with her fingers. It came to pieces in many little threads. Burr took some of the little threads and twisted them together and made a good strong thread for sewing.

One day she sat before the door of her cave sewing together skins of wild oxen.

"What is the big skin for, mother?" asked Pineknot, who ran up.

"To lay on sticks above our door," said Burr. "Then, even when it rains, we can sit outside."

"Oh, that will be fine!" said the boy.

Burr went on with her sewing. She made holes along the edge of the skins with a sharp stone. Then she threaded her needle. She put it through a hole in each of the skins and pulled it tight. She worked on in this way and sewed the skins together.

"Where did you get the needle, mother?" Pineknot asked next, looking at it closely.

"I made it," said Burr. "When your father brings birds or deer from the hunt, I sometimes take a little bone from the leg of a deer or the wing of a bird. This I put in the cave to dry. When it is dry, I rub it smooth with sandstone. Then I must have a hole in one end to carry the thread. I take a sharp stone and turn it round and round on the little bone, pressing down. It is not hard work. In that way I make a smooth hole in my needle."

"But when my mother sewed," Burr went on, "she used a little bone to push the thread through the skins. One day she found a little bone with a hole in it and took it home. She put her thread through the hole, wondering how it would do, and began to sew. Soon there was a crowd of women round her, pointing and saying, 'Oh, oh!' while the little bone carried the thread."

"It must be fun to sew with a needle," said Pineknot.

Thorn was nearby making bone whistles and marrow scrapers, and soon Strongarm came up dragging a little tree. He threw down his old hunting club and said, "It is broken. I will make a new one."

With his stone ax he hacked off the top and roots of the tree; then he stripped the bark from the small end, and rubbed it with sandstone.

"It must be smooth or it will hurt my hand," he said to the boys who stood watching him.

"In the old days," he said, rubbing away, "the cave men had nothing to fight with but a club. Before they had even that," he went on, grinning, "they fought with nails and teeth, or with a stick or a stone snatched from the ground." Then laughing loud, he added, "No wonder that in the old days people lived in trees, and ran if they saw a wildcat."

"I should be sorry if you had nothing to hunt with but a club, father," said Pineknot, making a long face. "We should go hungry oftener than we do now."

After they had gone into the cave, the boys began to play with the baby. In fun they pushed her into the room behind the one they lived in. She cried out, because she was scared at the darkness.

"How loud her voice sounds in there," said Thorn.

"What is the rest of the cave like, father?" asked Pineknot. "Is it very big?"

"Yes, it goes far back into the hill," said Strongarm. "I have never been to the end of it, myself."

"Show it to us, father," said Thorn; and he ran to get a burning knot.

Strongarm took the torch and led the way into the next room. He held the torch up high. The light looked small and dim in the darkness of the big room. They went on and came to room after room and to long halls. Some places were narrow and low, so that they had to crawl on hands and knees to get through; and all the walls and floors were wet and slippery.

Everywhere in the cave the limestone showed beautiful rough layers. In all the rooms long pointed rocks hung from the roof or stood up from the floor. Water dripped from each pointed rock above, and fell on the pointed rock just beneath. In many places two pointed rocks touched each other and formed a great, rough, beautiful pillar. In some of the rooms the walls and pillars were lovely and white, glistening in the torch light.

The boys looked at all these things in wonder.

When at last they had come back to their own room, Pineknot asked, "Father, what is the water that we heard trickling in the cave?"

"It is a stream. It used to come down through that hole," said Strongarm, pointing to the smoke-hole. "But afterwards it went down another way."

He sat thinking for a while. Then he said, "When I fought with the other young hunters and carried off your mother, I wanted a cave to bring her to. I came to look at this one. Bears were living here then. But one evening while they were all away, I came in and made a fire at the door."

Strongarm laughed long and loud, and the rest laughed to hear him.

"Since then the cave has been mine," he went on. "Well, you should have seen the floor! It was covered with old bones that the bears had brought in to gnaw. I threw them all out and broke off the rocks that stood up from the floor. That gave more room. Then I brought your mother here."

"It has made us a good safe home," said Burr, nodding her head.

After a while Thorn jumped up and said, "I want some honey."

He took a burning stick from the fire and ran out. He walked through the forest and looked and listened. At last he saw bees go into a hole in a hollow tree.

"Here is my bee tree!" he cried, waving his torch.

Bees were in a crowd about the hole, crawling over each other, and going in and coming out. Thorn could hear them humming from where he stood. He swung his torch from his arm; then, hand over hand, up the tree he went.

When he came to the bees' nest, he threw his leg over a branch. He swung the smoking stick back and forth. The bees flew off humming angrily. Thorn quickly broke off the yellow honeycombs and put them into his bag. Then down the tree he slid, followed by the angry bees.

"Oh, oh, oh!" he cried, as he ran like a deer. When he went into the cave with the wild honey, the baby held out her little hands. He gave her some and said, "You are sweet. You are honey."

So the baby came to be called Honey.

At sundown, the boys went out into the woods to set the traps. A beautiful mother deer and her fawn were drinking at a brook. Crickets sang under old bark, and frogs on the edge of the pond. And birds were singing their low sweet evening songs.

The little hunters went straight on from trap to trap. But they found no fox or wolf or wildcat in any of them. They were sorry. One trap was sprung.

"Something has been here, and the meat is gone," said Pineknot. "We must set the trap again."

Thorn quickly bent down a little hickory, and tied a string to the top. Then he raised one end of a big rock and put a loop of the string around it.

Pineknot was busy setting a trigger under the rock. All this time, Thorn stood by, playing with the string, pulling it and letting it go, pulling and letting go.

"Listen," he said, "it sings like the wind." Pineknot had a stick in his hand and, for fun, set it against the string. When Thorn let the string go, the stick was shot out of Pineknot's hand, and against his bare body. He yelled, and Thorn opened his eyes in wonder.

Pineknot rubbed the place, but picked up the stick, stood aside, and set it as before. Then he said, "Do that again."

Thorn did it again, and the stick flew among the trees. Over and over again they tried it, and every time the flying string threw the stick.

"Now," said Thorn, "I shall bend a little branch as that tree was bent, and I shall tie a string to the ends."

He did so; and all the way home he kept shooting with his little bow, and wondering about it.