CHAPTER XVI
THE FLIGHT OF THE TRIBE
Panting he bade She Wolf and Dawn leave the cave and run till they could run no further, and he dashed from cave to cave and called upon his people to run for their lives.
And the people looking to the southward beheld the black smoke and heard the roaring of the fire, and snatching up whatever was dear to them, turned and fled howling into the North.
There was no cave to which Sunrise did not run and when he had visited the last cave of all, he struck out in a great circle, until he crossed the trail of She Wolf and Dawn and then he followed, running at full speed, crouching, and frenzied both with wonder and with fear.
He overtook slower runners, men overladen, women with children, little children—and his heart became sick and heavy as he ran, for he knew that in that hunt many must be overtaken. And he knew that the fault was his.
For the slow there was no mercy. The oldest, the youngest and the dearest possessions were abandoned to the rapid fire. With despair, dormant instinct came to life. For men sought safety in the tops of trees, and fell presently to the ground charred and shrivelled.
No Foot, trailing his crushed foot after him was one of the first to start into the North, but he went at a snail’s pace, and was soon distanced by the others.
The old man’s arms were full of unfinished bows, and his good tools and his precious flints. He walked along, limping at the very tail of the procession, and gradually dropping further and further behind.
And after a little as he was stumping along and dragging his crushed foot after him, the fire caught up with him and threw him on his face, and passed on.
So many thousands of years after No Foot died, that we may not even guess at their number, men digging for a railroad came upon a skeleton lying face down upon a pile of half finished flints.
The left foot of the skeleton was curiously twisted and deformed; but presently, on being exposed to the air, the bones turned to powder and nothing remained but the flints. At first the men thought that they had opened a prehistoric grave; but considering that the skeleton was lying face downward, in a sprawling attitude, and that the flints upon which it lay, were but half finished and were charred by fire, something like the truth dawned upon the workmen, and they wondered over their cans of noonday food what manner of man the lame flint maker had been and what life had been like in the old days.
But we know that the lame flint maker was old No Foot, and that first, last and always he was a good workman.
