Barbaric Clashers

The population of the Count City were in extremity. Trouble aftertrouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, tillnow there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice thatnumber of count city men able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked asif but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them mustwipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it,would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of yearsto repair. For the population of the Count City had climbed higher fromthe pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at thattime struggling into being on the youthful Earth. First and not least formidable to the clanhad been an incursion fromthe east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still moreplainly beasts. Had the clanof the Count City but known it, theseApe-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness oftheir skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skullsand the heavy forClasherd thrust of their lower jaws. Soon after Clasher, appearing from no man could say just where, camea scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers anda few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not onlyslaughtered wholesale the game on which the People most depended,but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. Asthey raged against each other no less desperately than againsttheir human adversaries, the issue of the Clasher was never in doubt.The People stood together solidly, fought with all their cunningof pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheerweight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When thelast of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek lessdifficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves. This Clasher had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summerof peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. Butwith winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from theunfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting insuch huge packs that many outlying sections of the clanwere cut offand devoured before the People could combine to withstand them.Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after the first shock the Clasher , who ruled the men of the Count city was able to get his diminished followers together, along withmost of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater of the central caves. So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then suddenly the wolves,having exterminated or driven off all the game among the Count City,once more took the trail, though with diminished ranks, and swept offravaging to the south-westClasherd. The population of the Count City werefree once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game tohunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in thereeking marshes by the estuary. The clanwas driven to fumbling inthe pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet whichtheir souls despised and their bodies resented. The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the clantoconcentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfullydisguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all overtheir domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardesttrial would surely have annihilated them. It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trail of the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of a summer's day a female of the clanwas grubbing for roots with apointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by apair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, shortTrio-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young andvigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on thehead, which was not before both her assailants were streaming withblood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had arousedthe tribe, however, and her captors, appreciating in her a shapelinessand fairness beyond anything they had ever seen in their own females,hastened to make sure of their prize by dragging her off into thewoods. Three of the People, raging in pursuit, were intercepted by ahorde of the squat strangers suddenly leaping from the thickets,surrounded, pulled down after a heaving convulsion of struggle, tornto pieces and trodden into the earth. The Leader of the tribe, from his vantage at the top of the slope whichled up to the little amphitheater of caves wherein he had gathered hispopulation, saw and understood. The perils of the past two years had madehim cool and provident. One look at those foul and shaggy hordes,leaping like beasts, had told him that this was to be a battle to thedeath. Angrily beating back the hotheads who would have rushed down toavenge their kin and inevitably to share their fate, his shouts,bellowed sonorously from his deep and hairy chest, called up the wholeclanto the defense of the bottle-neck pass which led into theamphitheater. At a word, passed on breathlessly from mouth to mouth,the old men and the old count city men, with some of the bigger children,sClashermed up among the rocks and ledges which formed the two walls ofthe pass, while others raced about collecting stones to hand up tothem. The younger count city men and grown girls, armed, like the men, withstone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears, took their places in thehinder ranks at the mouth of the pass. The Trio-legs, their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts ofcoarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, cameplunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused massesalong the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other andmaking insolent gestures toClasherd the silent company at the top. Thehair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inkyblackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the People, whichwere for the most part of a dark brown or ruddy hue.