In the Beginning Read Online Free Page A

for the left side of the doe’s skull.But as he leaped in the air, giving himself leverage for the blow, he knew he would not strike truly. The club slid away from the animal’s neck and, off balance, he fell.
    Falling, he saw the buck, running in the rear of the pack. Its horns, even bigger than that one which had provided his dagger, gleamed in the sunlight. He saw the flash of hooves and knew that in a moment they would trample his helpless body; but in that moment he was overleaped. His father’s voice bellowed in rage, and his father’s great club smashed in an arc through the sky and crashed down behind the buck’s left horn.
    The buck’s front legs crumpled as the hooves were almost on Dom. Its head dropped like a rock on his chest, driving breath from his body. As he struggled to free himself he saw the great brown eye of the animal close to his own, still unglazed but fixed in death.
    His father pulled the antelope’s head away and Dom got up, gasping and afraid. He had escaped death but he had not struck his beast truly—to that extent he had failed in the test. He stood before his father, expecting a blow.
    â€œThe club is too heavy for you,” his father said. “You have not strength enough to use it.”
    Dom dropped his head in acceptance, but his father turned away. He placed a foot on the body of the dead animal and gave a deep roar of triumph. The tribe gazed at him in reverence.
    Now the women skinned the dead buck and cut it up. They used daggers of antelope horn and knives made from the lower jaw of the small antelope, the rows of teeth honed to fine edges during the long days of the rainy season in the Cave. The implements were poor for such a task but they had learned their skills over many years: a girl of less than four worked beside her mother, using her own small knife.
    A ceremony followed. Dom’s mother took the liver of the antelope and offered it to his father. She cut a piece and gave it to him and he chewed it with satisfaction.
    Such was the custom: the presentation of the choicest morsel from the kill to him on whose leader­ship and wisdom and strength the safety of the tribe depended. The second piece should go to that hunter whose club had felled the beast.
    But in this kill the chief himself had struck the crucial blow—there was no one to share the glory or this succulent tidbit. The others watched as he ate, glad to see him gaining new strength from the flesh of his victim. Dom watched also, scarcely feeling hunger, though it was many hours since he had eaten and his stomach growled its need.
    His father called to him, and he went forward cowering. The blow would come after all, a punishment for his failure. But his father did not strike him; instead he called to Dom’s mother who held the liver in her hands.
    â€œGive it to him also,” he said. “My son is a hunter. He needs strength to swing his club, and will get it from this meat.”
    So his mother gave Dom a piece of the liver. The rich smell made his nostrils twitch, and saliva flowed in his mouth. Fearful that the gift might be taken back, he wasted no time but bit deeply into its softness. Blood ran down his jaws as his mother and father and all the tribe watched him eat.
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    All these things Dom remembered as he lay surrounded by the tribe in the valley, a quarter of a milefrom the scene of their victory. The lion coughed again, farther off, and he thought of it with indifference, almost with contempt. The tribe had been masters of the grassland, and were masters here.
    And he, Dom, was a hunter, with strength now to wield the club he had found in the Place of Bones. A hunter and son of the chief, and perhaps in time chief himself. Contentedly he turned over and went to sleep.

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    T HE VILLAGE CONSISTED OF A dozen huts, surrounded by a substantial thorn hedge. The space which the hedge enclosed was circular and about a hundred yards