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safe. He had been afraid of it; all the People, all the
Fuzzies he must remember that were, but when one
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knew about it, it was good. It frightened all the big
animals away. It made warmth when one was cold. It
made meat many-many times better.
But best of all, it made light in the dark. Look, here
were Other She and Carries-Bright-Things and Fruit-
finder, beside the fire, twisting longleaf-tree roots to
make ... to make rope that was a Big One word. The
People, Fuzzies, had no word for it because they had
never known of it. It was long after dark. Without fire
they would all have been asleep long ago. And Stone-
breaker was working too, making the chopping-stones
to put on sticks. It was strange that nobody had thought
of doing that before, or of putting pointed stones on
longer sticks to stab with. That made killing hatta-zosa
goofers much easier; Stabber and Lame One had
killed four today, after sun-highest time, noon, and it
would have taken the whole band to kill that many with
stones and clubs. Big Ones' Friend was sitting with
Stonebreaker now, fitting one of the cutting-stones onto
a stick.
This was the fourth night since they had come to this
place. They had slept around a fire at the place where
they had first met Big Ones' Friend. The next morning
Big Ones' Friend had given them the Wonderful Food
of the Big Ones, all he had, a little for each of them. He
had told them that at Wonderful Place the Big Ones
gave it all the time to all Fuzzies, as much as they
wanted. After that, all of them-had wanted to go to
Wonderful Place and make friends with the Big Ones,
even Big She. They had wanted to start at once, but Big
Ones' Friend had said that they should build a floating-
thing, a raft, and go down the river and over to the
other side. He had said that all the time and work they
put into this would be saved, that it would be far-far to
go up to where this river was little enough to cross with-
out a raft.
Big Ones' Friend had made a little show-like out of
sticks to show the big raft he meant that they should
make. He said the Big Ones often did this, first making
something little before making it big to use. Then they
had come to this place, and he had said it was a good
place to make the raft. So they had made camp, and he
had showed them how to make this shelter, and had
made a place for their fire, and dug a long hole for the
barba-koo fire. Then they had begun digging roots and
making rope, and Big Ones' Friend had built fires at the
roots of the trees he had wanted for the raft, and burned
them till they fell. They cut off the branches with the
chopping-stones axes he and Stonebreaker made out
of hard-stone they had found up the little stream, but
the trees themselves were too big to cut in that way, so
Big Ones' Friend made fires to burn them into logs. This
was dangerous; even Big Ones' Friend was afraid about
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this. These fires might get loose and burn everything.
That was why he and Big Ones' Friend would sit up and
watch while the others slept, and then they would wake
Stabber and Big She and Lame One, who were sleeping
now, and after a while they would wake Fruitfinder and
Other She and Carries-Bright-Things, and they would
watch till daylight.
After a while, Fruitfinder and Carries-Bright-Things
and Other She finished the rope they were making and
coiled it, and then came into the shelter and lay down to
sleep. Stonebreaker worked on at the axehead, and Big
Ones' Friend finished putting the one Stonebreaker had
made onto a stick. He took it over to the woodpile and
tried it while Stonebreaker watched. They both laughed
at how good it was. Then he and Stonebreaker came
over under the shelter.
"Show shining-stone," Stonebreaker begged.
Big Ones' Friend took it out of his shoulder bag and
rubbed it for a while between his hands. Then the three
of them leaned together, out of the light of the fire, to
look at it. None of them had ever seen a thing like that,
but Big Ones' Friend said they were known among Big
Ones, and one of his friends, Pappy Vie, dug many of
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167
them out of rock. He had found this one while he was
breaking a piece of hard black rock he had found up the
little stream. It was inside the rock, a stone the shape of
a zarabunny's kidney. It looked just like any other stone
until it was rubbed; then it shone like a hot coal in the
fire. But it was not hot. This was a not-understand
thing; even Big Ones' Friend did not know how it could
be.
"Pappy Jack used to dig for these stones," Big Ones'
Friend said. "Then all the other Big Ones found out
about the Fuzzies, and they said Pappy Jack should do
nothing but take care of the Fuzzies and teach them."
"Tell more about Pappy Jack. Is he Wise One for all
the Big Ones?"
"No. That is Pappy Ben," Big Ones' Friend said.
"He is Wise One for Gov'men'. And Pappy Vie is Wise
One for Comp'ny; that is another Big One thing, like
Gov'men'. Pappy Jack is Wise One for all Fuzzies. All
Big Ones listen to Pappy Jack about Fuzzies."
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He talked for a long while about Pappy Jack and
about Pappy Vie and Pappy Ben and Pappy Gerd and
Mummy Woof and Pappy George and the blue-clothes
Big Ones, and about Wonderful Place and Big House
Place. It was all wonderful, but hard to understand.
There were not enough Fuzzy words to tell about every-
thing, which was why Big Ones' Friend said they must
all learn as many Big One words as they could. They
must also learn to make talk from the back of the
mouth, so that the Big Ones could hear them. They were
practicing that now.
After a while, Stonebreaker became sleepy and lay
down. Big Ones' Friend got out his pipe and tobacco
and they smoked, taking puffs in turn. One of the night-
time sky-lights moons was the Big Ones' word came
up. The Big Ones had names for both of them. This one
was called Zerk-Zees. The other, which was not in the
sky now, was called Dry-As. The Big Ones knew all
about them; they were very big and very far away, and
they went to them in flying things. Big Ones' Friend said
he had been on Zerk-Zees, which looked so small, him-
self. This was hard to believe, but Big Ones' Friend said
so.
"You really say for so? You not just make not-so
talk?"
Big Ones' Friend was surprised that he should ask a
thing like that. "Nobody make not-so talk," he said.
"/ make not-so talk once." Wise One glad that he
could tell something Big Ones' Friend did not know
about. "Once I say to others that I see hesh-nazza,
damnthing, and was no damnthing."
Then he told how he had wanted to go to find the Big
One Place, and the others had wanted to stay where they
were.
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