The Logan Republican. [volume] (Logan, Utah) 1902-1924, 1916-04-18
PAGE SEVEN

ion, while he scolded and chartered
| vainly at me. | could not understand.
i kept very alert but could see no
! danger | calculated always the dis
lance between myself and the nearest
tree and knew that to that haven of
refuge | could outfoot the Tawny One
or old Saber Tooth did one or the 9TH
er suddenly appear.
! One late afternoon In the village
great uproar arose. The horde was
animated with single emotion, that
of fear. The bluff side swarmed with
the folk, all gazing and pointing into
the northeast. | did not know what
| IL was, but | scrambled all the way
up to the safety of my own high little
| cave before ever | turned around to
| sec.
And then across the river. away into
the northeast, l saw for the first time
the mystery of smoke 1t was the
| biggest animal | had ever seen.
thought II was monster snake, up
ended, rearing its head high above the
trees and swaying back and forth.
And yet somehow | seemed to gather
from the conduct of the folk that the
smoke itself was not the danger.
They appeared to fear 1t as the token
of something else. What this some
| thing else was | was unable to guess
| Nor could they tell me. Yet | was
soon 10 know, and | was to know Il
as thing more terrible than the
| Tawny One, than old Sabcr Tooth
| than the snakes themselves, than
which 1t seemed there could be no
things more terrible.
Broken Tooth was another young
stcr who lived by himself. His moth
err lived In the caves, but two more
| children had come after him and he
had been thrust out to shift for him
self. We had witnessed the perform
ance during the several preceding days,
and 1t had given us no little glee. Bro
| ken Tooth did not want to 20, and
| every time his mother left the cave he
sncaked back into II. When she re-
turned and found him there her RACES
We're delightful. Half the horde made
a practice OF watching for these mo-
ments. First, from within the cave.
would come her scolding and shrek
ing. Then we could hear sounds OF
the thrashing and the yelling OF Bro
ken Tooth About this time the two
younger children Joined In. And final
| ly, like the eruption OF miniature
volcano, Broken Tooth would come fly
ing out.
| At the end of several days his leav-
ing home was accomplished. He wall
ed his grief UNDECIDED from the center
of the open space for mt least half an
hour, and then came to live with Lop
Ear and me. Our cave was small but
with squeezing there was room for
three. l have no recollection OF Broken
Tooth spending more than one night
with us, 80 the accident must have
happened right away.
1t came I'm the middle OF the day. In
the morning we had eaten our I'LL of
the carrots and then, made needless by
play, we had ventured on to the big
trees just beyond | cannot under
stand how Lop Ear got over his ha-
bitual caution, but 1t must have been
the play. We were having great
time playing tree tag. And such tag!
We leaped ten or fifteen foot gaps as
| hulteT VI NouIst. AHu u twenty VI
twenty-five foot deliberate drop clear
down to the ground was nothing to us.
In fact, am almost afraid TO say the
great distances we dropped. AS we
grew older and heavier we found we
had to be more cautious I'm dropping,
but ut that age our bodies were all
strings and springs, and we could do
anything.
Broken Tooth displayed remarkable
agility I'm the game. He was sit less
frequently than any of us, and I'm the
course of the game he discovered one
difficult slip" that neither Lop Ear
nor ! was able to accomplish. To be
truthful, we were afraid to attempt II.
When we were at" Broken Tooth
always ran out to the end of lofty
branch In certain tree. From the end
II the branch to the ground II must
have been seventy feet and nothing in
tervened to break Il fall. But about
twenty feet lower down and fully IF
teen feet out from the perpendicular
was the thick branch OF another tree.
As we ran out the limb Broken
Tooth. facing us. would begin tceter-
ing. This naturally impcdcd our prog
ross but there was more in the tcctcr-
ing than that. He teetered with his
back to the jump he was to make. Just
as we nearly reached him he would let
her go. The teetering branch was like
n springboard. Ii threw him far out,
backward, as he fell. And as he fell
he turned around sidewlse In the air
so as to face the other branch into
which he was falling, This branch
bent far down under the impact and
sometimes there was an ominous
cracking, but it never broke, and out
of the leaves was always to be seen
the face Of Broken Tooth, grinning tri-
umphantly up at us,
was ut" the last time Broken
Tooth tried this. He had gained the
end of the branch and begun his tee
tcring ana | was creeping out after