Chapter XIV: The Feast of Mammoth's Meat

One morning after Thorn had come back to his grandfather's cave, he woke up with tears on his face.

"Last night when I was asleep," he said to himself, "my shadow self went away to the home cave. And there it saw my mother and Pineknot and the baby sitting about the fire, just as they used to sit. And they were talking about me, saying that they wanted to see me. And I want to go home to see them."

The homesick boy went into the woods for comfort; he loved to watch the wild things going about. Not far off, he saw a herd of mammoths feeding. He never tired of looking at the big hairy elephants with their turned-up tusks and long snaky trunks. They were reaching up for the tender leaves of the birch, or needles of the hemlock, and would carry the green stuff to their mouths with their trunks. Young ones with shaggy coats of woolly hair, were playing about their mothers or eating grass. Sometimes one of the big mothers would give her young one a bunch of leaves. Then she would rub it gently with her trunk, petting it.

The herd ate on toward the edge of the woods. Then, following a big mammoth, it left the forest and went toward a swamp.

Thorn slipped down from his tree and ran to another one on the edge of the woods, where he could get a better view. From here he saw the mammoths out in the swamp. Some were drinking, others were wallowing, and still others were throwing water over themselves with their trunks. After getting a thick coat of mud on their shaggy skins, the herd began to leave the swamp.

But one big mammoth did not leave with the others. He could not; he had gone far out in the swamp. His feet sank in the soft mud; and when he tried to pull them out, he found them stuck fast. Then he began to trumpet. At this the whole herd grew uneasy and turned back and walked round him, waving their trunks and trumpeting and throwing mud and water.

Thorn well knew that a mammoth stuck in the mud meant meat for the cave folks for many a day. So he lightly slid down the tree and ran to the stone yard with the news. The men there ran to the nearest caves with the word, and it was sent on from cave to cave.

The herd stayed with the mired mammoth all day. But when night fell, the other mammoths slowly left him, often turning back to touch him with their trunks and to trumpet.

A crowd of cave men had already gathered, and were waiting in the woods until the herd should leave. They now made fires around the mammoth to keep off the wolves and hyenas that had already begun to skulk about. And then they killed the mammoth with their spears.

As the sun rose next morning, Thorn and his grandfather and grandmother went over to the swamp. The cave people soon began to come in from all the caves round about in the hill country. They came in little crowds, laughing and talking very loud. They were happy, for there was plenty to eat and somebody to eat with. As they came up, they stood for a long time looking at the mammoth and talking about how big he was. And some told of other mammoths that had got stuck in swamps and of how they had found them.

Thorn sat down on the side of a hill and watched the people coming. The arms and faces of the men and women were painted in stripes of red or yellow. All the cave men that Thorn knew were there, and many that he did not know. Before long his own family came.

Soon after that the men began to cut great pieces of meat from the mammoth. They gave them to the women to roast. The women made fires and put stones in them to get hot. They dug holes in the ground and rolled into them some of the hot stones. Next they threw meat upon the hot stones and rolled more hot stones upon it. Then they covered the holes with dirt and built fires upon them. While the meat was roasting, the women went over to watch the men playing.

The men were talking together in a crowd. A man named Crowfoot stood out and shouted, "I can climb a tree faster than any man here!"

"No, no!" shouted five or six men who jumped up and ran to trees.

"Go!" called a man.

They all jumped as high as they could and then climbed very fast, hand over hand, feet and legs pushing as if a wounded bear were after them. Crowfoot reached the top first.

Everybody shouted, "Crowfoot! Crowfoot!"

Then a man with big arms stood out and said, "I am best man in throwing the spear!"

A dozen men snatched spears and ran out. Everybody stood where he could see. The men with spears stood far back from a tree. One threw. His spear struck the tree, but fell. Everybody laughed. The next man threw.

His spear missed the tree. Everybody yelled and roared. Strongarm threw. His spear struck and stood in the tree shaking.

"Strongarm!" shouted the people.

Other men threw, whose spears stood in the tree. Then those men ran and pulled out their spears and stood farther back and threw again. Each man threw many times. Strongarm's spear stood oftenest in the tree from the longest distance.

"Strongarm's eye is best!" the others shouted. "His arm is strongest!"

After that a young man cried, "I have flying feet! Who will run with me?"

"I will!"

"I will!"

And young men ran out and stood beside him, and all the people watched.

The race started. The young men ran lightly, like deer. They skimmed the ground like swallows. Some of them ran all the way side by side, and came in together sweating and panting.

The people clapped their hands and said laughing, "They are good cave men; they can both fight and run away."

By this time the meat was roasted. The women pulled it from the holes with long sticks, and the people took great pieces in their hands and ate them, and then took more.

"Mammoth meat is good and juicy," one man said.

"Yes," said another, "but not so tender as horse or reindeer meat."

After eating all they wanted, Thorn and Pineknot and old Hickory's children and some of the other children went off to play. They played being grown up; and Thorn fought with the other little hunters and caught and carried off a wife, and played living with her and their children in a cave.

The men ate for a long time, but at last they had enough. Then they began to break up the tusks of the mammoth, and they gave a piece to each man who had helped to kill the animal.

"To wear on your necklace," they said.

And they gave a piece to Thorn because he had found the mired mammoth. Strongarm looked at him proudly then, and the boy stood straight and tall and held his head high.

A man standing near him snatched for the piece of tusk, but Strongarm shouted, "Get off!" and scowled and shook his fist.

The man grew angry and raised his stone ax. Strongarm snatched his, and in a minute there was a clash of stone axes. The other men stood around and watched. They loved a good fight. Before long Strongarm's ax crashed down on the man's head, and he fell over and lay still. The others looked at him, and then went on breaking up the tusks.

After that every man grew busy, and began to cut as much meat from the big bones of the mammoth as he could carry. One bone was all cut bare. Three men standing near it whispered together. Then they lifted the bone and carried it toward a man who could not make axes and was too lazy to hunt. They set it down before him.

"This is your prize," they said, without a smile.

Everybody was looking.

The man turned red and snatched a spear. But the other men ran away and laughed. And everybody laughed.

Then the people started homeward, carrying the mammoth meat. Thorn said good-bye to his grandfather for a while and went home with his mother. Old Hickory and his family went along with Strongarm and his family, and the children ran through the bushes and scared up the wild rabbits and porcupines.

When they reached the cave, Thorn told Pineknot all over again about the mammoth. And he scratched a picture on the piece of tusk to show him. Holding up the picture he said, "This is the way the angry mammoth looked. His mouth was open, and his trunk was up. When still a long way off, the men heard him trumpeting."

Then Thorn made another picture of the mammoth. In it he showed the big body with the long hair, and the turned-up tusks, the long trunk, the small eyes, and the shaggy ears.

Thorn was very happy that evening, as he sat in his old place by the fire. Pineknot sat beside him, and Wow wow lay at his feet.