Adventure Magazine Cover — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Fight for the Cave while as tall as their hosts, were absurdly thin and of hungry aspect. Inside the cave fresh logs had been fed the blaze on the hearth by the enormously fat women. The two leaders entered; their tribesmen followed; last of all came the strangers’ women, these as lank as their men. Ufa the Great and Lean Ak took their places nearest the fire, and squatted on their heels, while the six daughters of Ufu brought them substantial morsels of food. The six daughters gazed in astonishment and admiration upon the stranger. Lean Ak was thin, as his name betokened; his broad countenance bore a severe and heroic cast, and was painted carefully and beauti- fully with vermilion stripes, very different from the curved jowls and gaudy facial decoration that marked Ufu the Great as a man of comfort. And as the six young women bearing gifts stood revealed by the firelight, their reindeer-skin-garbed figures displaying the usual obesity of cave women, Lean Ak’s earnest eyes encompassed them, and grew fixed and somber. And abiding desire took hold of him. The six daughters of Ufu the Great had come before the lank chieftain in one of the deep hours of his life, when ardor filled the man and new forces were throbbing in him. For a number of years game had been extremely scarce over a wide region. Hunt- ers went about counting their bones. They were reduced to the chase of small rodents, to the digging of roots and the picking of sparse fruits—humiliating for men who had, themselves and their fathers before them, baited the mammoth, the aurochs, the bison, the woolly rhinoceros. Lean Ak, despairing finally of the bounty of his native valley, had led his small tribe from the cave that had been their home for generations, and sought a game-filled land. They had wandered for many sea- sons, seasons as -hungry as those from which they had fled—for nowhere did they find the hunter’s Elysium. But they did, one early morning, come upon a feast for a day. They sighted two stags engaged in a rut- ting-season fight. The cow grazing near by fled as she scented the hunters, who had fallen to stalking the game; but the maddened bucks continued lunging at each other. 137 Then one of the animals went to its knees, wounded by its adversary’s antler. The victor stood in triumph for a moment— for a moment too long.. A score of hard- driven arrows -half-buried themselves in its side. The -beast darted away, but weakened rapidly, so that the pursuing hunters came up and dispatched their prey with spear and stone hatchet. The other stag, though wounded, had fought off the men who attacked it and had es- caped. : The one carcass, though, afforded a feast. Great slices of flesh were grilled over a fire, and Lean Ak and his people gorged themselves on roast stag-meat until the torpidity of overeating had stretched them on the ground in a heavy stupor. It was hours later that they were found by the several tribesmen of Ufu the Great. ; Lean Ak had no wife. In happier days he had had several spouses; but they had died of the hardships of the famine years, and he had made -no effort to replace them; hunger is a jealous god and toler- ates few ideas in the human head save how to secure food. But now he was full of the strong, racy flesh of the stag, was intoxicated with the juices of animal food, and warmed by the heat of the crackling fire. He breathed deep with a long unfamiliar feeling of power; his vitals were hot; his brain was consumed with restlessness as he looked upon the six daughters of Ufu the Great. A vision came. The chief of the vagrant hunters saw himself, with the six daughters as his wives, domiciled in a snug cave, on the plains around which roamed herds and herds of noble game. And they would have sons, a score of them.. And he would teach his sons how to hunt. And he would be happy. He remained dreaming while Ufu the Great munched his food and found no need of words. Then Lean Ak _ propounded a question that sent a thrill through the bodies of the six daughters who had seated themselves near the two leaders. Was the great magician willing to sell his daugh- ters? “How much?” grunted the fat chief in reply. Here was a difficulty. Lean Ak, leader of a poor hunting-tribe, owned no wealth of weapons and implements of flint and of COmICOOOkKS (C@