"Would a brother take a brother's wife?" Deer-Runner demanded.

"Yes, if he had gone to live in another tree by himself."

"But we do not do such things now," Afraid-of-the-Dark objected.

"It is because I have taught your fathers better." Long-Beard
thrust his hairy paw into the bear meat and drew out a handful of
suet, which he sucked with a meditative air. Again he wiped his
hands on his naked sides and went on. "What I am telling you
happened in the long ago, before we knew any better."

"You must have been fools not to know better," was Deer-Runner's
comment, Yellow-Head grunting approval.

"So we were, but we became bigger fools, as you shall see. Still,
we did learn better, and this was the way of it. We Fish-Eaters
had not learned to add our strength until our strength was the
strength of all of us. But the Meat-Eaters, who lived across the
divide in the Big Valley, stood together, hunted together, fished
together, and fought together. One day they came into our valley.
Each family of us got into its own cave and tree. There were only
ten Meat-Eaters, but they fought together, and we fought, each
family by itself."

Long-Beard counted long and perplexedly on his fingers.

"There were sixty men of us," was what he managed to say with
fingers and lips combined. "And we were very strong, only we did