Ogga

“ It was the evening of the day when Ogga killed the mastodon that the four medicine men of the little village—Shan, Flitout, Slin and Slaggar—squatted on the edge of the mesa, gazing with half shut, squinting eyes, into the vacancy before them. They had attained a sufficient distinction in ugliness, querulousness, abiding and carefully nurtured vindictiveness to hold without question in that aboriginal community, the preeminence their position implied. Their mutual distrust of one another had rendered more acute their craftiness of demeanor. ”

“ Ogga was indeed a wild man, a prehistoric, a creature of the plain, living next to nature, supplying his daily needs by a harsh ingenuity, wringing from obstacles a concession to his daily requests, a being utterly removed from all modern conceptions of social physics, a being on whose uplifted face no word of revelation or literature or exhortation had ever fallen, one whose instincts, the germinal moments of whose mind, with its inseparable faculties of observation and deduction, had only become active and projected under the influences of nature. ”

“ As Ogga saw Lhatto he loved her, and he loved her nobly. The whole process of approach, preparation, attack and capture was instantaneously traversed. How could it be otherwise! The physiological instant was critical and victorious. Ogga was young, the tides of blood in his veins bore with [Pg 114] them the impetuous claims of nature. ”

“ Strength came to his arms. He hurled the smarting, almost senseless Ogga this way and that; each fall of the staggering victim elicited new shouts of triumph. He waved his arms, his lips spat upon the prostrate hunter, whom at length he drew to himself, to the cliff’s edge, and he watched the bleeding body, the matted hair, the rolling eyes, the mouth discolored and thick with gore. Ogga was vanquished. Lagk possessed the earth and Lhatto! The Woman of the Ice Age was his! ”

“ He clambered carefully to the top of the mound, examined its circumference, and when apparently satisfied with his observation, placed the ivory spear at one point near the edge, and on the side above the still motionless mastodon. Then Ogga slid and tumbled down, drew his nephrite knife from his neck and crept around to the mastodon. The brute had remained in the same position, but its pain forced from it deep sighs, and it trembled. Ogga’s demeanor was inspired with daring and though his movements were governed by extreme caution, there was not implied for an instant hesitancy or fear. ”

“ The descending torrents swept through the forests, tearing gulches in the ground, ripping out boulders from their beds and racing madly through the herd of animals. Ogga, with superhuman strength, held Lhatto and himself to the trunk of a small sapling that had twined its roots about a deeply sunken stone. ”

“ Lagk had hurried up the valley where Ogga had found the sloth, and the pale topped mountains rose, as he advanced, into flinty pinnacles, gray and spectral, in the summer sun. They rose as the valley widened, their bared heads destitute of covering, sending into the broad zenith the half-visible rays of the reflected heat and light. They thrust out wide shoulders, the shadows resting in the cold remoteness of their elevations, revealing cliffs and recesses, ragged gorges and wandering seams of dislocation. ”

“ And then by the dear subtlety of all things great and good, with passion came also, with unhesitating foot, reverence and happiness and aspiration, and Love thus born made of Ogga a divine thing, and of Lhatto, yet unwaking, yet unknown, a woman drifting ashore in a little awkward boat from the irresolute sea, it made of her a wonder of life, full of affluent loveliness, full of assured excellence, full of peace, and Ogga, feeling all these things, knelt and touched the hand of the sleeping girl. ”

“ When Ogga opened the door of his tent he could look over the steep land ascending to the glacier, and not infrequently he watched the mastodon moving in small herds, or a few individuals in pairs stirring in dark patches among the low trees and bushes at the sides of rivers; could even see their white tusks reflecting the light from the curved ivory, could even hear their low trumpet calls increasing to brisk short snorts, or the wash of the pond waters as their slouching bodies entered some unfrequented pool to drink or bathe. ”

“ Long before the light of the rising sun had built a bridge of golden mosaic across [Pg 107] the East upon the flaky clouds, Ogga had left his improvised camp. The ivory tusks were secreted beneath the rock. His reindeer mantle was again clasped about his shoulders, and the nephrite blade which had hung about his neck was in one hand, the stone hammer stuck in his belt, the precious basket yet holding a remnant of its first contents under his arm, and with his other disengaged hand he had seized the spear. ”

“ The great impetus given to it in its wide leap outward, and a necessary descent in a vertical line of over some twenty feet imparted an unexpected revolution to its body. It fell upon the mastodon but was propelled over it, and a confused jumble of tail, legs, head and claws met Ogga’s view, as, in the excitement of his interest, he ran forward. The terrific elastic strength of the animal saved it from falling in the water. ”

“ I love you. The spirit [Pg 212] men shall be good to you. You will have so much to eat, to wear, and you shall do nothing. I took you because I cannot live anyway, besides. I will bring you birds and little animals, and furs and flowers. You shall be beautiful. And my people will do as you say, all of them, or I will kill them. Let it be so. Forget Ogga. Love me.”
And yet as he spoke, Ogga, growing hotter, warier, keener, surer, deadlier, followed his trail, even as the meteoric spark that crosses the black night follows its inerrant path to earth.
But Lhatto did not answer. ”

“ It was Lhatto, looking still with the tenderness of sympathy upon the sufferings of Ogga, his own eyes growing brighter in the supervening moments of restoration, who spoke, and her voice came as a whisper, the inarticulate breath of death.
“Ogga, we go to the Ice Spirit. We go together. The Fire-Spirit kills us. But there is no more hurt now. We are happy.” The voice was still. And Ogga, denied of the last lingering impulses of effort and recovery, yet by some interior remnant of volition, leaned forward upon Lhatto. ”

“ Crossing its low crest where the trains of boulders, fragments of rock, angular and scored erratics imparted an unmistakable glacial expression to the whole accumulation, Ogga found himself looking into a long depression holding now a swiftly flowing river. ”

“ Where the opening valleys of the Fair Land turned northward into the Dismal Country of heaped ridges, interminable peat hogs, low woods, and scanty or puissant streams, upon an upland sparingly covered with trees, and almost on its incline to the lowland beyond it, dwelt Ogga—the mastodon hunter. ”

“ But Ogga had no intention of recovering the cat’s skin. His way, as the waning day shot red streaks into the sky, and the northern lights, with phosphorescent palpitation, rose above Zit, lay across the plain more to the west, bringing him finally much below the lake, and the cedar wood which he had traversed in the morning. He was advancing to the shore.
As the stars lit the immensity of the black zenith, the Man had reached the shelter of a huge erratic of such proportions and posture that, tilted over on one side, it formed a sort of leanto. Here he rested, casting down the ivory tusks. ”

“ And who, born amongst men, shall not know beauty? Ogga’s eyes had only met the forest, the wild animal, the untenanted steppes, the sky, the ice, the river, but when they met the face of Lhatto, the charm of abiding there was unquestioned. ”

“ Ogga said—“It is best,” and they left the hateful spot, where the processes of death had worked so triumphantly. The fecundity of life and the powers of destruction move with even foot, and in the necessary and remorseless balance of life and death, Nature involves no blame for her equanimity, for in the eternity of her design, all incidents of joy or woe are equally invisible and unimportant.
Observations on the heartlessness of nature were certainly not made by Ogga and Lhatto, whatever indefinite mutiny the woman’s heart of the latter may have felt against it. ”

“ Lagk hastily abandoned Lhatto. He too knew the crisis was reached, and his old resentment against Ogga flamed up; expiation was at hand, or else—that silence that he had sometimes seen amongst his own people in the canyon. His mind worked quickly, and as he retreated, backing out over the level floor of rock, he bethought himself of his resources. He knew Ogga’s strength, his size and agility. He was himself strong, but he felt a safety in craft, and the implement of his cunning was the lasso, that had so often caught and tamed the wild horses. ”

“ At last, with a broken bough, he brushed the fire aside and thrust the bear strips upon the stones, almost covered with fervent cinders. Thus was it cooked, and Ogga and Lhatto, prototypes of the long retinue of woodmen who have found life and wonders and new gastronomic pleasures in the primeval forests, were again made strong and buoyant and resolute. Through the favoring fortune of birth, these two aboriginal lovers carried within their untutored natures, some of the quintessence of noble instincts, and there was between them neither violence nor shame. ”

“ Ogga was strong, strong in his youth and strong through the exercise of his toils in hunting. It was not difficult for him to send the water-rolled pebbles as far as the sloth, nor less easy to hit its broad sides. The first stone fell upon the shoulder of the creature, and scarcely had its impact been felt, and the stone itself had rolled to the ground, than another, and more effectively directed, struck its back. A third, larger, and more swiftly driven through the air, landed on one of its outstretched paws, crushing its horny hoofs. The sloth was awakened. ”

“ In the chapter on The Place the marvellous variety of natural conditions under which both Ogga and Lhatto lived—for we have seen in their various and errant life, however specialized, they were meeting all of them—were those which appealed to their wonder, their fear, their admiration, awoke in them joy and amazement and desire, fed the springs of poetic impulse, stirred the sense of worship and dependence, and propagated the thrilling currents of question and imagination. ”

“ They rose instantly, their eyes filled with that light that in the savage, as in the modern, does most certainly send its throbbing fires of passion and yearning and rapture into those strange organs from whose windows man’s soul looks out upon the world.
Lagk seemed almost unconcerned. He motioned to Ogga to follow him. The two went out through the junipers, that sprang back again, and Lhatto was left alone. Lagk led Ogga through some scattered woods and brought him out upon a higher upland sparsely clothed in grass. There the two men became engaged in earnest talk. ”

“ Ogga was skillful in fashioning, and his skill grew, and as he lived so, he came northward toward the steppe country and saw the mastodon. Then he felt a desire to possess its great white tusks, and one day he found a dead mastodon, and from its tusks he made many things, patiently working in the woods for many years. He met men who bought these things, exchanging baskets and green stone knives and even gold. And so he became a hunter and lived alone in a [Pg 119] bark tent watching the Mastodon and becoming fearless and strong and knowing. Such was Ogga’s story. ”

“ As a spider, touching each radiating line of his web, feels the telltale tremble that acquaints it with a new capture, so Lagk realized his advantage, and with all his force, holding his place as best he could, against the manifold and plunging struggles of his prey, he drew him outward, outward over the granite ledge towards the lake. Ogga, blinded by his own rage and bewilderment, helped the sinister purpose of his enemy by too much resistance. ”

“ Hunger was to be appeased, for no circumstances of sentiment or grief will ever permit us to forget that both sentiment and grief live on food and drink. The water of the river was fresh and pure, and Ogga, who yet carried his sturdy and useful spear, and wore about his neck the green stone knife, though the basket had been abandoned when they began their flight from the shore, knew he would soon secure food.
His alert eyes had already detected the trail of bear, and as they moved up the river he clung with Lhatto to the river’s bank, fearing some ambush. ”

“ She hurried up a winding way half broken through the first undergrowth [Pg 133] and finally emerging in the woodland, where its plain outlines led her on until she came to a cliff-side, part of the walls of the valley. Here an exciting combat was in progress; Ogga was holding at bay a brown bear which had retreated to a ledge which it had gained by a flight of most natural steps, and up these steps Ogga was himself slowly ascending, the bear fiercely objecting but awed by the spear which Ogga flourished in his face, and which had already once penetrated his tough sides. ”

“ The early man roves but with stealth and with slowness along rivers and coast lines. He finds his bearings by their familiar configuration, and only furtively enters the untrodden and pathless wilderness. But Ogga and Lhatto were not aimless, though in these first weeks of indulgence, and from that superior loftiness of nature which had fitted them for new tasks, they had been adventuresome. They intended to fix their destination southward on the sea coast, and had at no time, in these days of wandering, forgotten their intention. ”