Adventure Magazine Cover — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

CAVE MAN by Bill Adams HUNGER for the taste of mastodon, To smite a rival down, cold, dead, today. I would that I were naked, free to run, Untrammeled, down long valleys far away. I’d like to feel the Springs I used to know, To gnaw old bones beneath my cave’s low arch. Ah, but it makes me tremble everso When winds whirl, crying o’er the fields of March. I used to match my speed against the horse Running, fear-crazed, from my thirst for blood; Ofttimes I swam some swollen watercourse, With leaves of April bursting into bud. There was a woman, naked as the day, Her hair was long, she moved with unlearned grace; I crowned her once, with white flowers of the May, Seeing a something flower-like in her face. We were hard sinewed, hairy on the breast, Our nostrils quivered, and our eyes were keen; Knowing which of the wild brutes tasted best, Killing our choice, we licked their sweet bones clean. The river, racing, Winter-wild, bank-high, Without our cave-mouth, trees and beasts in fright, At the dark storm wind moaning from the sky, We stood, unfearing, in the gold moonlight. Standing above the stream, my gleaming skin Caught the full moon ray. I was master then. Diving the angry current deep within, Rising, I heard my woman’s laugh again. We rolled and tumbled on the river-bank, Chasing each other through the waving sedge: Thirsty, we lay us down, and deeply drank, And pushed each other from the river’s edge. Take you your cities, and your harvest’s gold, Take all the things that give you joy today— Give me the nights I used to know of old, When I first rose, stark naked, from the clay. Teeth for the killing! Hands to strangle slow! Eyes for the gloom where my young children play— And that wild woman, crooning to and fro, The mother of you all who breathe today. 80 COMmMiCooolkks. Com