Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/16

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flat and stolid. They rarely smiled, for there was little to smile about.

The three women in the party worked feverishly on skin garments which they were sewing, while two of the men fashioned spears and bound stone heads to them. The third man tended the campfire and watched some fish which were broiling in the coals. The fire was close to the mouth of a cave. Inside a dozen dark children were sleeping peacefully.

On the very outskirts of the firelight, or rather on the rim of the outer darkness, skulked a gray dog-like figure watching the man creatures beside the campfire.

To the nostrils of this wild beast came the odor of the broiling fish and it made saliva drip from his hungry jaws. Yet he knew that the meat in the coals was not for him. He had no part in this campfire scene, still he watched night after night. Or if he did not watch from the perimeter of the darkness, he sat on his tail at the top of a nearby hill and howled dismally at the moon. But