gry. He abused the hyena, and then went
off alone through the trees. I had no reason that I knew for wanting to
carry the puppy to the cave, except that I WANTED to; and I stayed by
my task. I made the work a great deal easier by elaborating on Lop-Ear's
idea. Not only did I tie the puppy's legs, but I thrust a stick through
his jaws and tied them together securely.

At last I got the puppy home. I imagine I had more pertinacity than the
average Folk, or else I should not have succeeded. They laughed at me
when they saw me lugging the puppy up to my high little cave, but I did
not mind. Success crowned my efforts, and there was the puppy. He was a
plaything such as none of the Folk possessed. He learned rapidly. When I
played with him and he bit me, I boxed his ears, and then he did not try
again to bite for a long time.

I was quite taken up with him. He was something new, and it was a
characteristic of the Folk to like new things. When I saw that he
refused fruits and vegetables, I caught birds for him and squirrels and
young rabbits. (We Folk were meat-eaters, as well as vegetarians, and we
were adept at catching small game.) The puppy ate the meat and thrived.
As well as I can estimate, I must have had him over a week. And
then, coming back to the cave one day with a nestful of young-hatched
pheasants, I found Lop-Ear had killed the puppy and was just beginning
to eat him. I sprang for Lop-Ear,--the cave was small,--and we went at
it tooth and nail.

And thus, in a fight, ended one of the earliest attempts to domesticate
the dog. We pulled hair out in handfuls, and scratched and bit and
gouged. Then we sulked and made up. After that we ate the puppy. Raw?
Yes. We had not yet discovered fire. Our evolution into cooking animals
lay in the tight-rolled scroll of the future.

CHAPTER IX

Red-Eye was an atavism. He was the great discordant element in our
horde. He was more primitive than any of us. He did not belong with us,
yet we were still so primitive ourselves that we were incapable of a
cooperative effort strong enough to kill him or cast him out. Rude as
was our social organization, he was, nevertheless, too rude to live in
it. He tended always to destroy the horde by his unsocial acts. He was
really a reversion to an earlier type, and his place was with the Tree
People rather than with us who were in the process of becoming men.

He was a monster of cruelty, which is saying a great deal in that day.