She was, in a sense that the Men found hard to understand, Tree’s alone. Even when she screamed with joy in their arms, they knew they had forced only her yielding, and not her love. Only the arms of Tree, and his touch, had been strong enough to force that. Each night, after the ecstasy they had induced in her, she would creep to the side of Tree, whose cave she kept, whose skins she cleaned, at whose side she slept. And once, a week ago, Tree had not permitted Knife to use her. She had been frightened. They had almost fought. There was bad blood between the two men. She had wanted to give her body to Knife, that Tree not be endangered, but Tree, violently, had struck her and thrown her to one side of the cave. She had crouched there, terrified her mouth bleeding. Knife had drawn a stone knife. “Go!” had said Spear to Knife. Knife, angrily, had turned away. Flower had to run to him, to console him. Over his shoulder, angrily, she had looked back. “It is not the way of the Men,” said Spear to Tree, “to keep a woman to oneself.” “I do not want Knife to use her,” said Tree. “Strip,” had said Spear to frightened Turtle. She did so, immediately. “Watch,” had said Spear to Tree. Angrily Tree sat down, cross-legged. Then Spear had taken Turtle, and slowly, making her yield to him, whimpering, trying to restrain herself. At last she had writhed under him, bucking, crying out in misery. Spear remained a time with her, and then, not looking at Tree, he left her. Tears in her eyes Turtle lay on her side and held out her hand to Tree. He rose to his feet, turned away and left her. She wept. The next day Tree said to her. “Go to Knife. Strip yourself and lift your body to him.” “Yes, Tree,” had said Turtle, in the language of the Men, which she had, in the last months, learned to speak. She went to Knife and did as she was told. Mollified, Knife used her, swiftly, casually. Holding her clothing Turtle then returned to Tree. “I have done what you told me,” she said. Then she wept. “You area woman,” he said to her. “You are a woman of the Men. You belong to all of the Men. Do you understand that?” “Yes, Tree,” she had said.
“But most,” said Tree, grinning, “you belong to me!”
“Yes, Tree,” said Turtle, and ran to him. And he used her better than Spear, or Knife, or any of the others, better than they might have dreamed of using a woman.
When she lay in his arms, afterwards, she spoke to him in English, as it pleased her, though he did not know the tongue. “In my heart,” she whispered to him, “it is yours only whose slave I am, my master. I am your helpless, adoring slave. Do with me what you will. I love you, my master. I love you.”
Knife, satisfied, seldom used her thereafter, and when he did so, it was only as he might have used Antelope, or Cloud, or any of the other slaves.
Old Woman smiled to herself. “It is well the way of the Men has been kept,” she said. And then she remembered Drawer. Spear had killed him, when he had gone blind. Old Woman hated Spear, but she knew, as Knife did not, and many of the others did not, that he was a great and wise leader. There were few groups who had a man so great as huge, swift, ugly Spear to lead them.
Turtle, under the load of wood, trudged through the snow toward the shelters.
She was happy. This morning the hunters had taken meat. Tonight she would be well fed, and, after the dancing and singing, she would pay for her meat, lovingly, in Tree’s arms. How far away seemed her old world, with its pollutions, its hatreds, its madnesses. How simple and deep and beautiful, and now, clear and cold, seemed this fresh, virginal world in which she, a burden-bearing slave, returned to the shelters of her masters. The snow clung to the branches, and, in the distance, rearing up at the edge of the forest, she saw the cliffs. How marvelous they seemed, with their numerous, deep, caves.
Too, some of the caves held marvels.
Once, Old Woman, when the men were away hunting, had taken her, with a torch, deep into one of the caves. Women were forbidden to go into this cave but Old Woman did not care, and Hamilton bad followed her. In the light of the torches, Hamilton, in awe, had seen, drawn on the walls and ceiling, some places which must have been reached by a now-discarded scaffolding, paintings in reds and yellows, and browns, and blacks, of huge and beautiful animals. There were bison there, and running antelope, and the aurochs, and even the mighty mammoth. They were done with an expression, and a zest, and beauty and freedom, and joy, that was almost incomprehensible to her. Here and there, too, almost in caricature, compared to the animals, were sticklike figures of men, with bows and spears. Hamilton saw that all of the animals, within their bodies, projecting from them, bore the weapons of men. She supposed that hunting magic had been done here, sympathetic magic, but, too, with it, exceeding it, was the celebration of the vigor, the strength and beauty of the beasts which the Men loved and hunted. Hamilton had stood there, in the half darkness, suddenly seeing these shapes and colors spring into existence, under Old Woman’s lifted torch. It was almost as if they were alive, moving on the walls.
“Drawer made these,” said Old Woman, simply.
“How did you dare to come to this place?” asked Hamilton.
Old Woman smiled. “Drawer brought me,” she said. “He showed me.”
“Where is Drawer?” had asked Hamilton.
“Spear killed him,” said Old Woman. “He went blind. Spear killed him.”
Hamilton was silent.
“He was old,” said Old Woman. “He was not good for much.”
“But you cared for him,” said Hamilton. “You liked Drawer?”
“Yes,” said Old Woman. “I liked Drawer.”
Hamilton lifted her head, and looked about herself, at the paintings.
Animals had made tools, and manlike things, before men, had made tools. Tools needed not be a sign of man. But where there was art then, incontrovertibly, stood man. It is not in the making of tools, but in the invention of beauty, in the gratuitous invention of art, that we have unmistakable evidence of the first presence of man. In the creation of beauty something which might before not have been human became human, and unmistakably so.
“They are beautiful,” said Hamilton.
“Drawer made them,” said Old Woman. “We must go now.”
“What are these?” asked Hamilton. She indicated a number of hands, some outlined in color, some printed in color.
“I do not know,” said Old Woman. “It is a secret of the Men.”
Hamilton wondered about them, but did not ask further, for Old Woman apparently did not know.
“Look,” said Old Woman. She picked up a fiat, rounded stone from the floor of the cave.
Hamilton looked at it, carefully. It seemed at first, to her, only a maze of lines, unintelligible scratches. Then, suddenly, she saw, among the lines, a flowing, hulking torso of a bison. Following another set of lines, superimposed, she traced out a gazellelike creature, swift, horned; then she found the lineaments of the forequarters, head and paws of a cave lion; there were two other drawings as well; one of a deer and, to her delight, shaggy and tusked, that of a hairy mammoth.,