NU OF THE NIOCENE

Nu the son of Nu, his mighty muscles rolling beneath his
smooth bronzed skin, moved silently through the jungle
primeval. His handsome head with its shock of black hair,
roughly cropped between sharpened stones, was high held, the
delicate nostrils questioning each vagrant breeze for word
of Oo, hunter of men.

Now his trained senses catch the familiar odor of Ta, the
great woolly rhinoceros, directly in his path, but Nu, the
son of Nu, does not hunt Ta this day. Does not the hide of
Ta's brother already hang before the entrance of Nu's cave?
No, today Nu hunts the gigantic cat, the fierce saber-
toothed tiger, Oo, for Nat-ul, wondrous daughter of old Tha,
will mate with none but the mightiest of hunters.

Only so recently as the last darkness, as, beneath the
great, equatorial moon, the two had walked hand in hand
beside the restless sea she had made it quite plain to Nu,
the son of Nu, that not even he, son of the chief of chiefs,
could claim her unless there hung at the thong of his loin
cloth the fangs of Oo.

"Nat-ul," she had said to him, "wishes her man to be greater
than other men. She loves Nu now better than her very life,
but if Love is to walk at her side during a long life Pride
and Respect must walk with it." Her slender hand reached
up to stroke the young giant's black hair. "I am very proud
of my Nu even now," she continued, "for among all the young
men of the tribe there is no greater hunter, or no mightier
fighter than Nu, the son of Nu. Should you, single-handed,
slay Oo before a grown man's beard has darkened your cheek
there will be none greater in all the world than Nat-ul's
mate, Nu, the son of Nu."

The young man was still sensible to the sound of her soft
voice and the caress of her gentle touch upon his brow. As
these things had sent him speeding forth into the savage
jungle in search of Oo while the day was still so young that
the night-prowling beasts of prey were yet abroad, so they
urged him forward deeper and deeper into the dark and
trackless mazes of the tangled forest.

As he forged on the scent of Ta became stronger, until at
last the huge, ungainly beast loomed large before Nu's eyes.
He was standing in a little clearing, in deep, rank jungle
grasses and had he not been head on toward Nu he would not
have seen him, since even his acute hearing was far too dull
to apprehend the noiseless tread of the cave man, moving
lightly up wind.

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