The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone | Page 7

days, bringing lion's meat. Burr
cooked it, and Strongarm said to the boys, "Eat, it will make you
brave."
After a while Strongarm sat down and made a hole in a lion's tooth.
Then he took off his necklace. It was made of shells and bears' claws
and a tiger's tooth and a bit of amber. He put the lion's tooth on his
necklace and held it up and looked at it and said, "Men will see that and
say, 'There is a brave man. There is a good hunter. He has helped to kill
a lion.'"
[Illustration: Tiger's tooth and bear's claw]
The boys stood by, watching. Thorn pointed to the tiger's tooth.
"How long and sharp it is! I never saw a tiger."
"You never want to see one unless you are where he cannot see you,"
roared Strongarm.
"Tell us about the lion hunt, father," begged Pineknot.
[Illustration: Lion]
"We watched the lion for days," said Strongarm. "We found that he
slept nearly all day in the thick reeds by the river. At sundown he went
out to hunt. He hunted all night; we heard him roar at times. In the
early light he went back to his bed of reeds by the river and went to
sleep. We rolled a big stone from a high rock and killed him while he
slept. Then we went down to where he lay. We saw that he was an old
lion; he could not hunt animals enough to eat, and that is why he had
begun to kill people."
[Illustration: Lion's tooth]
CHAPTER V
THE OLD AX MAKER VISITS HIS DAUGHTER

As they were talking, a long call came from far away. They listened.
The call came again, and Strongarm put his hands to his mouth and
answered.
"It is old Flint, the ax maker," he said to his wife.
"Grandfather!" cried the boys, and they ran to meet him.
Soon they came back with an old man. His hair was rough and gray,
but his eyes were bright under his bushy eyebrows. He wore an old
brown bear skin.
"Ho, man!" called Strongarm, "come on!"
"Sit and rest, father," Burr said.
The old man sat down on the root of a tree. Burr brought him bison
meat and wild honey and a horn of water.
"Eat, you are tired and hungry."
The old man ate all he wanted. Then he began to talk. He told about his
wife, and the work at the stone yard and the gravel bed, and of the men
who had come from far away to buy his axes.
The boys stood by and listened.
After some time Burr looked at the bag on the old man's shoulder.
"Have you a new ax in there for me?" she asked with a little laugh.
Smiles came about the old man's mouth, and he slowly pulled four
beautiful chipped axes from his bag. One ax was big and heavy. That
was for Strongarm. He handed it to him. Another ax was small and
light. That was Burr's. She put out her hand for it. There were two little
axes. These the boys snatched with shouts of joy.
The axes were wide at the sharp end and narrow at the head, and you
could see where every chip had come off.

Strongarm turned his ax over and looked at it. He rubbed his fingers
along the rough sharp edge.
[Illustration: Stone tools]
"That is a good ax," he said, and he held it up and looked it all over
again.
"Grandfather," said Thorn, pressing close to the old man's side, "when I
am a man, I shall be an ax maker like you."
"Begin now," said his grandfather, with a gruff laugh. "It takes a long
time to learn to make a good ax."
"Can anybody learn?" asked Pineknot.
"No," said Flint. "Some men can chip stone, and others cannot. That is
why some men make axes, and other men use them."
"Well, I will try," said Thorn. "When you go back to the stone yard, I
will go with you."
Strongarm turned round where he sat and pulled up a little hickory tree.
"We will put handles on these axes," he said.
He hacked off a piece of the little tree and split it half way down, and
hacked off one split piece. The other split piece he bent around his ax.
Then he took wet string made of skin. This he put around and around
the ax handle, and pulled it tight.
[Illustration: Stone axe]
The boys stood by watching. "The wet string will shrink and draw up
short," their father told them. "Then the ax will be very tight on the
handle."
The boys now tied on their ax handles with their father's help. And
Flint