Our First Dog is a fictionalized account of the domestication of the wolf and its profound impact, first on a small settlement of Stone Age hunters and gatherers, and then on the course of human history. Tork the Bison Butcher, a clever observer of animals, is fascinated by the behavior of a young female wolf which has been rejected by her pack. He brings her home to his family. Initially terrified, his children and their mother are soon enchanted by the animal which they name Star and welcome into the clan, never anticipating the dramatic consequences of their action. Within a brief period, Star's sentry duties and hunting skills provide the family with unprecedented wealth and security. Her contributions alter the established primitive trading patterns in the valley, unleashing jealousy and retribution between competing settlement leaders-and within Tork's own family. Tork's philosophical ponderings on the inter-relationship of all living things prepare the reader for the inevitable clash of forces between competing settlements and reveal that early humans share with us the same aspirations and fundamental questions about life.

Our First Dog

The Wolf That Evolved into Man's Best FriendBy ROBERT COPPS

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Teresa Ching
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1052-3

Chapter One

BUTCHER AND LASHER - TWO FAMILIES

Tork the Bison Butcher had had a very pleasant morning but now things were really getting on his nerves.

He had spent a few relaxing hours looking down on his favorite glen, an upland meadow, often dotted with hares, his favorite prey. At one end, where the glen narrowed at the base of the low ridge which partially circled it, and on which he was now lying and studying the scene before him, was his favorite tree. The tree was a great oak and Butcher liked to come here of a morning and, between a couple of large exposed roots, lean against the immense bole, pick a few lice and, as he told himself, ponder things. Butcher did most of his pondering with his eyes closed, for he was always badly in need of sleep.

He would usually ponder away until the sun had found a gap in the foliage and started to warm his face when he would awake and often find that a few big hares had ventured out into the glen and begun to nibble the foliage.

But this morning, when he came over the ridge, he was irked to find a small herd of bison browsing just where he had hoped to bring down a few of those hares and, rather than going down to the tree, he had settled himself in some tall grass and watched the bison for a couple of hours. As he had done so many times in the past, Butcher tried to figure out some reliable and comparatively safe way of killing the large animals, in fact, any large animals.

Though Butcher was called the Bison Butcher, al-katta Tork, he had never actually killed a bison. His jovial family had teased him with the name after he had shown great vigor in butchering a large animal wounded by a giant bear and tracked by his uncle until it died. When the family had carried the neatly trimmed meat back to the f re, Uncle had declared it Butcher's name-day. From then on, all referred to the former boy as Tork, or Butcher, or, simply, Butch.

How he would love to kill a bison! Butcher regarded himself as a merely competent hunter. He almost always brought home some meat, but usually it was small stuff — hares, fish, snakes, birds, and so on. What a thrill it would be, some afternoon, to drag a big haunch of bison back to the fire!

As to the task at hand, finding a way to kill the animals, he first concentrated on communicating with the spirit of the bison. As Uncle had taught him, he recited the hunter's standard prayer: "Bison, show me the way to honor you in the hunt!"

This was a matter of respect, for he knew that Bison would not answer. She never did. He wanted to find a way of propitiating her, but didn't know how. Some people liked to kill to get the spirit in the mood for a little excitement and blood-letting, but Uncle always assured him that the spirits of the hunt were not keen on anything being killed unless it was going to be eaten or otherwise used; if you were going to eat it then it wasn't a sacrifice, so he preferred to look for an incantation that would please the spirit of the animal he was hunting. Uncle had shared a few good ones with young Butcher, who had always boasted to Switcher and the other boys sharing a valley for a few seasons, that Uncle's incantations usually worked; until one day Uncle, having overheard one of these childhood boasts, drew him aside, and smiling wryly, asked him, "Did you ever notice that those magic words I taught you work best when you are very careful to hide your scent, and the game is plentiful?"

"Does that mean they don't work?" Butcher asked.

"I don't know. It means they only work when you are well-prepared, anyway."

Then there was the matter, assuming the spirit of Bison cooperated in the hunt, of actually killing the large beasts. He had no weapon to make up for the bison's advantages in size and strength. He could spear a single animal, but the bison traveled in large groups, and they were not afraid to defend themselves. Even if he could spear one, avoid its counter-charge and track it until it succumbed to the wound, by that time, it might have covered such a distance that Butcher would not be able to carry much of the meat back to the fire; certainly not enough to justify the time away from the family. He might as well just kill a few hares with his throwing sticks.

Butcher ground his teeth with frustration. He was sick of hares and wanted some big red meat, rich with fat and blood, meat that a hunter needs to keep fit, to kill even more large beasts.

One night, when he was very young, he came up with a plan to surprise Uncle with a dead bison. In the morning he slipped away from the fire and tried to stampede a small herd that had been browsing in a nearby meadow for a couple of days. His plan was that the males would outrun the calves and the old and weak, and Butcher could slay one and drag it home to great acclaim. But Bison were not afraid of The People. The big bulls turned their huge heads toward the screaming, waving, skinny youth, as if wondering what the weird animal was. They continued to stare until he stopped and stood panting in front of the giant heads arrayed before him. Finally, his weapons hanging from limp arms, he turned and trudged back to the fire.

* * *

As the hot sun moved across the sky and still the bison did not leave his glen, Butcher's lice began to vex him as well. It seemed that they only bothered him when he lay down and tried to relax. Perhaps he just didn't notice their little tickles when he was striding through the forest, or hauling in a fish. Or maybe they wanted him to be still before they went to work on him, to get the maximum effect, to drive him crazy. Louse is truly a vexatious spirit, Uncle had said, one of the few pests in the bounteous world that seemed to offer no benefit to make up for the irritations she caused.

He rolled onto his back, drew in his feet and felt under his fur leggings for the little critters sticking to the skin of his legs. He peeled off each louse with considerable pleasure, ate the big sweet ones, and crushed the small, bitter ones.

As he found another little bump below his left knee, then slid a thumbnail under it and a finger on top, he thought that there was something very pleasant just in that sensation of trapping the thing. Maybe that was the purpose of Louse, to give man the pleasure of finding him in return for a little blood now and then. No, it wasn't the trapping that was so pleasant, because Butcher got the same pleasure from gently worrying and picking at old scabs, and bits of dead skin that occasionally sloughed off his body.

Lice had one other major benefit. The first time he had lain with his woman Bird— Song of the Morning Bird—they had begun by picking lice from each other's hair, and sharing the sweet ones, then moved to more secluded parts of their bodies. Finally, Bird found a rich source between Butcher's legs. He joked that he had been saving them for her, and she said, with a laugh, "Sure, you were saving them for the first girl who found them!", and she wouldn't share any of these lice with Butcher, but made a big point about how particularly delicious they were.

After a short time, as Bird moved his parts here and there in her search, Butcher grew impatient and suddenly rolled her onto her back and began a search of his own. He was pleased to find that Bird's crotch was about as rich as his own—nobody had been picking there before him—and after a while she became visibly moist and Butcher climbed upon her and she did not protest.

From that day Butcher and Bird were inseparable; that is, when Butcher was not off learning the ways of the animals from Uncle, and Bird was not studying plants for purposes of consumption and medicine, hide-curing, cooking, and all the other mysterious ways of the old women. By the time their first boy's spirit decided to join them in this world, the people had long since accepted that the two were one.

Butcher yawned. He had to figure out a way to get more sleep. On summer days, or mild fall days, such as this, it was not so bad: he could steal an hour or two from the hunt, but in the winter it was much harder to get comfortable away from the fire. And at the fire, there were just too many things to do, too many kids' questions to answer, to get any sleep during the day.

In any season, it was almost impossible for him to sleep through the night. After dark, while his little family slept peacefully, Butcher leaned back against the fir tree and kept watch. Wrapped in his black cape so that only his eyes were exposed in the shadows beneath the lowest limbs and only allowing himself brief doses of sleep, he looked, listened, and sniff ed for anything that might emerge from the darkness.

Today he quietly cursed the bison for robbing him of his brief nap by the oak tree. Little did he know that what sleep he got that day would have to last him a long time, for his life was about to get very complex.

* * *

The night before, Bird had stayed up with him for a long time. After the kids were sleeping snugly in the black capes that he had taught them to wrap themselves in, so that they looked like nothing more than shadowy lumps on the ground, she had continued to stay awake, weaving clothing for them from cedar fibers.

The capes were something he insisted be used and be used wisely. They were extra large for the user, dragging on the ground if not cinched tightly, and were worn fur side in, even if worn with other clothing, and the outside was dyed black with the finest soot. With proper ground selection the family could sleep in the middle of a dark field and be confident of being unseen by anyone unless stumbled upon in the night.

Butcher had already settled in, cudgels and thrusting spears handy in the lowest branches of the tree, wrapped his cape about him as he made his children do, and wearing the woven-bark slippers that Bird insisted the whole family wear on the fir-bough and hide sleeping platform. They were a very good idea, for the leather day-boots could be left by the fire to dry, while the feet remained snug in the soft slippers.

"Your eyes, Bird," he said. It was very dark under the fir, even when the moon illuminated the ground around the fire smoldering in its pit under a pile of wet leaves.

"I know, but this is not fine work. I can do it with my eyes closed. It's true. I'll show you tomorrow. I have to get it done before the freeze makes it hard to break down the cedar bark and I run out of supplies."

He knew that in the morning all the details would be perfect, as if she had been weaving in the noon-day light, and not in total darkness.

"Let me light a lamp for you."

"I'd rather use the pork fat for cooking. Besides, we might have some emergency and need more fat than we can scavenge."

"We should find one more boar this season."

Bird only sniff ed at this and changed the subject. "Butch, are you staying awake again?"

"I find it hard to sleep this time of year."

"Any time of year. You shouldn't be called 'Butcher', you should be called 'Watcher'."

"And you should be 'She Who Weaves by Night'."

After a while she put aside her work and, pulling the baby's basket close to her, wrapped herself in her own black cape and snuggled up to Butcher.

He leaned over and with one long arm lifted the baby, basket and all, over Bird, and set the infant between them, staring down into the tiny, laughing face.

Bird peered out under the lower limbs and into the night. "It's Switcher's moon, isn't it?"

Butcher laughed at this new appellation. "Yes, it's the moon of the first frost. He'll probably wander in any day, low on supplies, sniffing around to see if we've had a productive summer and stored up a lot of meat that we would just love to share with an unlucky relative. 'The People have to stick together, and all, and all ...' and, if nothing is offered, he'll break down and offer to trade a few pieces of ochre or beads that he had switched with someone, or taken from them, more likely, even though he looks just as well-fed as me, better in fact, with all those extra slabs around his gut. It's a wonder one of his trading pals doesn't just hit him over the head and cook him up. They must be sorely tempted by all that crisp fat they could feed their kids."

Bird was laughing, "Well, you could, too. If you think it's such a good idea."

Butcher chuckled, "That will be the frosty winter day when I crisp his ass. I know where it's been."

"Oh, I shouldn't talk about my dear sister's loving man like this," Bird laughed. "We'll have to give them something, Butch, anyway. Even if he's lying."

"I think Switcher has a lot stored at his winter fi re in that cave he talks about that no one ever sees."

"You could go there and see."

"Nah."

Switcher's cave was half way up a mountain several suns from Butcher's fire, or so Switcher said, for no one had ever seen it. No hunters went there because the high country was barren except for a few skinny goats that Switcher could never catch.

"The thing is this: Switcher spends all the hunting seasons off trading, so at the end of the season, he can righteously claim to have no meat. But what he doesn't have in meat he has in useless trade goods like ochre and gold, or tight bundles of high-quality moss, or some nice flint weapons from the south. When he gets desperate enough he emerges from the mountain with a bag of stuff that he wants to trade for dried food. It is so stupid of him, because the only meat available is very low quality and yet costs so much. If he wants to trade for food, he should be honest about it and trade earlier, like now, when The People have more meat than they know what to do with and would love to get some flashy gifts to show off."

Switcher, as a young man, knew everyone but never had any close friends, had got into the habit of wandering in a broad circuit among the small groups of The People, exchanging a few hides for beads, or beads for hides, depending on how much was offered, trading some recent gossip for a nice dinner, joining an occasional raid or hunting party, and everywhere hinting that he would not turn down an invitation to share the resources with one of the families of the lower valleys.

Although he always arrived with tragic tales of terrible luck during the hunting moons, and fierce battles and tough negotiations with the Near People, "for the benefit of us all," which invariably had required the sacrifice of some of his stores—to buy them their lives—every year he arrived looking well fed, even sleek, and unscarred.

"Wasn't he a real pest last year?" Butcher continued after pondering a little. "'I fought the bastards to keep them from coming into this lovely valley of yours. You are very lucky not to have been molested for many summers; lucky to have this valley to yourself, lucky to have friends to keep the Near People out.'"

Under his arm, Butcher felt Bird chuckling.

"How he went on," he continued. " 'Your place among The People is high. You have a large family and much to share. I tell the tales of your successes to all I meet, and they tell me stories about you that have been passed on by others. Though it has been many summers since they have seen you, I will never tell them where you are. Still, your place is high.'"

Bird took the baby from the basket and tucked her under their overlapping capes. The baby was well swaddled in the finest hare-fur, and Butcher knew that he also gave off an enormous amount of heat, so that if she managed to free herself from the swaddling, which she seemed to hate, Butcher would still keep her warm until either he or Bird noticed the little limbs flailing between them. "I know you will share something with them," Bird said, setting the fur-lined basket behind her. "It might be true that they are holding out, but I can't take a chance that my sister or her children might not make it through the winter."

"We will not have enough, I promise you," Butcher said. And to himself he added, "Unless we get lucky, we will be short by one large deer."

Butcher was glum at the thought of sharing the leather bags and baskets of dried fruit, meat, birds, fish, roots, and berries that the family had put into their storage pits for the winter. The amount of work had been tremendous for everyone in the family except the baby, who had already freed one arm and was reaching out for Bird's swollen breast. After adjusting the baby's furs, and securing them more tightly, Bird shifted to let the baby nurse.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Our First Dogby ROBERT COPPS Copyright © 2011 by Teresa Ching. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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