Short Fiction

By Robert E. Howard.

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Spear and Fang

A Tale of the Cavemen

A‑æa crouched close to the cave mouth, watching Ga‑nor with wondering eyes. Ga‑nor’s occupation interested her, as well as Ga‑nor himself. As for Ga‑nor, he was too occupied with his work to notice her. A torch stuck in a niche in the cave wall dimly illuminated the roomy cavern, and by its light Ga‑nor was laboriously tracing figures on the wall. With a piece of flint he scratched the outline and then with a twig dipped in ocher paint completed the figure. The result was crude, but gave evidence of real artistic genius, struggling for expression.

It was a mammoth that he sought to depict, and little A‑æa’s eyes widened with wonder and admiration. Wonderful! What though the beast lacked a leg and had no tail? It was tribesmen, just struggling out of utter barbarism, who were the critics, and to them Ga‑nor was a past master.

However, it was not to watch the reproduction of a mammoth that A‑æa hid among the scanty bushes by Ga‑nor’s cave. The admiration for the painting was as nothing beside the look of positive adoration with which she favored the artist. Indeed, Ga‑nor was not unpleasing to the eye. Tall he was, towering well over six feet, leanly built, with mighty shoulders and narrow hips, the build of a fighting man. Both his hands and his feet were long and slim; and his features, thrown into bold profile by the flickering torchlight, were intelligent, with a high, broad forehead, topped by a mane of sandy hair.

A‑æa herself was very easy to look upon. Her hair, as well as her eyes, was black and fell about her slim shoulders in a rippling wave. No ocher tattooing tinted her cheek, for she was still unmated.

Both the girl and the youth were perfect specimens of the great Cro-Magnon race which came from no man knows where and announced and enforced their supremacy over beast and beast-man.

A‑æa glanced about nervously. All ideas to the contrary, customs and taboos are much more narrow and vigorously enforced among savage peoples.

The more primitive a race, the more intolerant their customs. Vice and licentiousness may be the rule, but the appearance of vice is shunned and contemned. So if A‑æa had been discovered, hiding near the cave of an unattached young man, denunciation as a shameless woman would have been her lot, and doubtless a public whipping.

To be proper, A‑æa should have played the modest, demure maiden, perhaps skilfully arousing the young artist’s interest without seeming to do so. Then, if the youth was pleased, would have followed public wooing by means of crude love-songs and music from reed pipes. Then barter with her parents and then—marriage. Or no wooing at all, if the lover was wealthy.

But little A‑æa was herself a mark of progress. Covert glances had failed to attract the attention of the young man who seemed engrossed with his artistry, so she had taken to the unconventional way of spying upon him, in hopes of finding some way to win him.

Ga‑nor turned from his completed work, stretched and glanced toward the cave mouth. Like a frightened rabbit, little A‑æa ducked and darted away.

When Ga‑nor emerged from the cave, he was puzzled by the sight of a small, slender footprint in the soft loam outside the cave.

A‑æa walked primly toward her own cave, which was, with most of the others, at some distance from Ga‑nor’s cave. As she did so, she noticed a group of warriors talking excitedly in front of the chief’s cave.

A mere girl might not intrude upon the councils of men, but such was A‑æa’s curiosity, that she dared a scolding by slipping nearer. She heard the words “footprint” and “gur-na” (man-ape).

The footprints of a gur-na had been found in the forest, not far from the caves.

“Gur-na” was a word of hatred and horror to the people of the caves, for the creatures whom the tribesmen called “gur-na,” or man-apes, were the hairy monsters of another age, the brutish men of the Neandertal. More feared than mammoth or tiger, they had ruled the forests until the Cro-Magnon men had come and waged savage warfare against them. Of mighty power and little mind, savage, bestial and cannibalistic, they inspired the tribesmen with loathing and horror—a horror transmitted through the ages in tales of ogres and goblins, of werewolves and beast-men.

They were fewer and more cunning, then. No longer they rushed roaring to battle, but cunning and frightful, they slunk about the forests, the terror of all beasts, brooding in their brutish minds with hatred for the men who had driven them from the best hunting grounds.

And ever the Cro-Magnon men trailed them down and slaughtered them, until sullenly they had withdrawn far into the deep forests. But the fear of them remained with the tribesmen, and no woman went into the jungle alone.

Sometimes children went, and sometimes they returned not; and searchers found but signs of a ghastly feast, with tracks that were not the tracks of beasts, nor yet the tracks of men.

And so a hunting party would go forth and hunt the monster down. Sometimes it gave battle and was slain, and sometimes it fled before them and escaped into the depths of the forest, where they dared not follow. Once a hunting party, reckless with the chase, had pursued a fleeing gur-na into the deep forest and there, in a deep ravine, where overhanging limbs shut out the sunlight, numbers of the Neandertalers had come upon them.