they were resuming the ascent after him.
On the narrow ledge above them the young man stood, chattering and grinning like a madman. His pitiful cries were not punctuated with the hollow coughing which his violent exercise had induced.
Tears rolled down his begrimed face, leaving crooked, muddy streaks in their wake. His knees smote together so violently that he could barely stand, and it was into the face of this apparition of cowardice that the first of the cave men looked as he scrambled above the ledge on which Waldo stood.
And then, of a sudden, there rose within the breast of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones a spark that generations of overrefinement and emasculating culture had all but extinguished—the instinct of self-preservation by force. Heretofore it had been purely by flight. With the frenzy of the fear of death upon him, he raised his cudgel, and, swinging it high above his head, brought it down full upon the unprotected skull of his enemy.
Another took the fallen man’s place—he, too, went down with a broken head. Waldo was fighting now like a cornered rat, and through it all he chattered and gibbered; but he no longer wept.
At first he was horrified at the bloody havoc he wrought with his crude weapon. His nature revolted at the sight of blood, and when he saw it mixed with matted hair along the side of his cudgel, and realized that it was human hair and human blood, and that he, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, had struck the blows that had plastered it there so thickly in all its hideousness, a wave of nausea swept over him, so that he almost toppled from his dizzy perch.
For a few minutes there was a lull in hostilities while the cave men congregated below, shaking their fists at Waldo and crying out threats and challenges. The young man stood looking down upon them, scarcely able to realize that alone he had met savage men in physical encounter and defeated them.
He was shocked and horrified; not, odd to say, because of the thing he had done, but rather because of a strange and unaccountable glow of pride in his brutal supremacy over brutes.
What would his mother have thought could she have seen her precious boy now?
Suddenly Waldo became conscious from the corner of his eye that something was creeping upon him from behind out of the dark cave before which he had fought. Simultaneously with the realization of it he swung his cudgel in a wicked blow at this new enemy as he turned to meet it.
The creature dodged back, and the blow that would have crushed its skull grazed a hairbreadth from its face.
Waldo struck no second blow, and the cold sweat sprang to his forehead when he realized how nearly he had come to murdering a young girl. She crouched now in the mouth of the cave, eying him fearfully. Waldo removed his tattered cap, bowing low.
“I crave your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea that there was a lady here. I am very glad that I did not injure you.” There must have been something either in his tone or manner that reassured her, for she smiled and came out upon the ledge beside him.
As she did so a scarlet flush mantled Waldo’s face and neck and ears—he could feel them burning. With a nervous cough he turned and became intently occupied with the distant scenery.
Presently he cast a surreptitious glance behind him.
Shocking! She was still there. Again he coughed nervously.
“Excuse me,” he said. “But—er—ah—you—I am a total stranger, you know; hadn’t you better go back in, and—er—get your clothes?” She made no reply, and so he forced himself to turn toward her once more. She was smiling at him.
Waldo had never been so horribly embarrassed in all his life before—it was a distinct shock to him to realize that the girl was not embarrassed at all.
He spoke to her a second time, and at last she answered; but in a tongue which he did not understand. It bore not the slightest resemblance to any language, modern or dead, with which he was familiar, and Waldo was more or less master of them all—especially the dead ones.
He tried not to look at her after that, for he realized that he must appear very ridiculous.
But now his attention was required by more pressing affairs—the cave men were returning to the attack. They carried stones this time, and, while some of them threw the missiles at Waldo, the others attempted to rush his position. It was then that the girl hurried back into the cave, only to reappear a moment later carrying some stone utensils in her arms.
There was a huge mortar in which she had collected a pestle and several smaller pieces of stone. She pushed them along the ledge to Waldo.
At first he did not grasp the meaning of her act; but presently she pretended to pick up an imaginary missile and hurl it down upon the creatures below—then she pointed to the things she had brought and to Waldo.
He understood. So she was upon his side. He did not understand why, but he was glad.
Following her suggestion, he gathered up a couple of the smaller objects and hurled them down upon the men beneath.
But on and on they came—Waldo was not a very good shot. The girl was busy now gathering such of the cave men’s missiles as fell upon the ledge. These she placed in a pile beside Waldo.
Occasionally the young man would strike an enemy by accident, and then she would give a little scream of pleasure—clapping her hands and jumping up and down.
It was not long before Waldo was surprised to find that this applause fell sweetly upon his ears. It was then that he began to take better aim.
In the midst of it there flashed suddenly upon him a picture of his devoted mother and the select coterie of intellectual young people with which she had always surrounded him.
Waldo felt a new pang of horror as he tried to realize with what emotions they would look upon him now as he stood upon the face of a towering cliff beside an almost naked girl hurling rocks down upon the heads of hairy men who hopped about, screaming with rage, below him.
It was awful! A great billow of mortification rolled over him.
He turned to cast a look of disapprobation at the shameless young woman behind him—she should not think that he countenanced such coarse and vulgar proceedings. Their eyes met—in hers he saw the sparkle of excitement and the joy of life and such a look of comradeship as he never before had seen in the eyes of another mortal.
Then she pointed excitedly over the edge of the ledge.
Waldo looked. A great brute of a cave man had crawled, unseen, almost to their refuge.
He was but five feet below them, and at the moment that he looked up Waldo dropped a fifty-pound stone mortar full upon his upturned face.
The young woman emitted a little shriek of joy, and Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, his face bisected by a broad grin, turned toward her.
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