The Story of Ab A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man by Waterloo, Stanley, 1846-1913

The woman made a dive into the little hollow and picked the babe from its nest of leaves and tossed him up lightly, and at once his crying ceased, and his little brown arms went around her neck, and he cooed and prattled in very much the same fashion as does a babe of the present time. He was content, all in a moment, yet some noise must have aroused him, for, as it chanced, there was great need that this particular babe at this particular moment should have awakened and cried aloud for his mother. This was made evident immediately. As the woman tossed him aloft in her arms and cuddled him again there came a sound to her ears which made her leap like some wilder creature of the forest up to a little vantage ground. She turned her head, and then--you should have seen the woman!

Very nearly above them swung down one of the branches of a great beech tree. The mother threw the child into the hollow of her left arm, and leaped upward a yard to catch the branch with her right hand. So she hung dangling. Then, instantly, holding him firmly by one arm in her left hand, she lowered the child between her legs and clasped them about him closely. And then, had it been your fortune to be born in those times, you might have seen good climbing. With both her strong arms free, this vigorous matron ran up the stout beech limb which depended downward from the great bole of the tree until she was twenty feet above the ground, and then, lifting herself into a comfortable place, in a moment was sitting there at ease, her legs and one arm coiled about the big branch and a smaller upstanding one, while the other arm held the brown babe close to her bosom.

This charming lady of the period had reached her perch in the beech tree top none too soon. Even as she swung herself into place upon the huge bough, there came rushing across the space beneath, snarling, smelling and seeking, a brute as foul and dangerous as could be imagined for mother and son upon the ground. It was of a dirty dun color, mottled and striped with a lighter but still dingy hue. It had a black, hoggish nose, but there were fangs in its great jaws. It resembled a huge wolf, save as to its massiveness and club countenance, It was one of the monster hyenas of the time, a beast which must have been as dangerous to the men then living as any animal except the cave tiger and the cave bear. Its degenerate posterity, as they shuffle uneasily back and forth when caged to-day, are perhaps not less foul of aspect, but are relatively pygmies. Doubtless the brute had scented the sleeping babe, and, snarling aloud in its search, had waked it, inducing the cry which proved the child's salvation.