Part 6

Wulli was familiar with the habits of cave-beasts. They traveled all night, and their resting was done in the daytime. He, too, traveled all that night, but instead of following the trail he branched off in a wide detour at his utmost speed. This forced night march had as its object a return to the former relative positions of the Cave Beasts and himself. It was important that they be put back where they belonged, assuming that they belonged anywhere. To accomplish this, Wulli must overtake and pass them before daybreak, for he knew that at the first sign of light the Cave Beasts would slow up. They would skulk and crawl because of their aversion to being seen, thereby enabling the Rhinoceros to find and assume his rightful position in the line. It now remained for him to make good use of the wee small hours and circumvent his enemies without their knowing it. He proceeded to act accordingly.

The sky was becoming streaked with gray when Wulli arrived at the edge of a large grove. He judged that he must be considerably in advance of the Cave Beasts by this time, although his detour was not yet completed, and he must cover considerable ground before he could feel positive of having secured a safe lead. He plunged into and through the woods as fast as his legs would carry him. Several hours later he emerged upon the right bank of a river. Good; so far his plans had carried perfectly. The next thing was to pick up the Mammoth’s trail. This, too, was finally accomplished after a long search up the river bank. The scent of his friend was mingled with that of the odoriferous Hyena Man and Kutnar. He hunted everywhere for news of the Cave Beasts, but found none. Evidently they had not yet arrived. He had about made up his mind to enter the river when he smelled something that made him shiver. It was the odor of blood. A careful search led him to a clump of brush several rods from the bank. This place bore the scent of two men—Gonch and Kutnar. The blood was that of the boy. An ax lay near by. It was a mere stone tied to a stick, but the handle had a familiar smell.

Wulli groaned and almost collapsed. The boy had been hurt, perhaps killed. It was too dreadful to think of. His heart pounded like a hammer within his chest as he nosed about, following the Muskman’s tracks. They led to the river. All trace of Kutnar had disappeared. Wulli bit his lips and looked about him despairingly. What did it all mean?

Then came the sound of snapping wood as of branches pushed aside or trodden underfoot. The Cave Beasts had arrived! Wulli hurried to the river, plunged in and swam to the left bank. Here he stood wrist-deep in the water and waited.

A huge head thrust itself from among the trees, and then Grun Waugh’s huge form debouched majestically upon the distant right bank. Scrag and Crocut were close behind him.

“Two lions and a hyena,” thought Wulli. “Quite a number for me to manage.” Scrag was but an inexperienced cub and not much of a fighter, but he might be counted on to do something in a pinch. The Hyena was an unknown quantity. He appeared larger and different from the ordinary brand—a formidable adversary if he but knew and would use his powers. He might do so, seeing that his side was three against one. Grun Waugh was a host in himself. The trio were now entering the water. It was in Wulli’s mind to turn tail and flee in the hope of overtaking the Mammoth. With the latter’s assistance, Wulli felt no doubts as to the result if Grun Waugh chose to force an engagement. However, the Mammoth might be far away; then the Rhinoceros would be overtaken and compelled to fight the Cave Beasts all by himself. It would be on ground not of his own choosing, he remembered. The idea did not please him at all. He decided to stay where he was. He stood motionless in the shoals, watching the flotilla of heads bearing down upon him.

When no more than a stone’s throw separated the opposing forces, Grun Waugh suddenly uttered a surprised roar and backed water. The Rhinoceros blocked his way. He had taken for granted that Wulli was in full flight, but now he realized his mistake and at a most embarrassing moment. He dared not venture farther, for there was something suspicious in Wulli’s calm and receptive attitude. Grun Waugh knew him of old and therefore considered prudence the better part of valor. He deflected his course slightly downstream. By this act of courtesy he would avoid a collision with the Rhinoceros. Not to be outdone, the latter shifted his position to correspond. The Cave Lion found his enemy waiting to meet him, head-on as before. He growled with vexation, then turned and swam upstream. This was hard, battling against the swift current. Wulli kept pace with him. It required little exertion on his part, walking as he did on the river bottom. Grun Waugh snarled with rage. The Rhinoceros was determined to give him a warm welcome.

While their lord was vainly maneuvering for a landing, Scrag and Crocut conducted themselves in a most unbusiness-like manner. According to recognized naval rules, one or both of them should have outflanked the Rhinoceros while the latter faced Grun Waugh. In that case Wulli would have found himself in a most embarrassing position—attacked on several sides at once. However, Scrag and Crocut simplified matters by trailing after their leader. It being Grun Waugh’s fight and his part to do the dangerous work, the other two let it go at that. It did not occur to any of the three that this, their habitual practice, might be departed from in the present instance. The two lesser animals followed their leader, and whenever the latter tried to land he found the Rhinoceros ready and waiting for him.

Grun Waugh felt terribly incensed. With all his courage, he dared not advance and impale himself upon that terrible nose-horn. He reviled Wulli under his breath for his obstinacy, but that did him no good. Then he tried threats, roaring loudly and showing his cruel teeth. He was fearful to look upon, but the Rhinoceros failed to appreciate this. Having determined that he was pursuing the best possible course, he refused to budge from it. Not for an instant would he permit the Cave Lion to enter shallow water and rest himself.

“Go away,” roared Grun Waugh. “We will not hurt you this time, provided you stand aside and let us pass.”

“Pass where?” asked Wulli in his blandest manner. “Your home is behind you. You are going the wrong way.”

“And you will not stand aside?”

“Not if I can help it,” replied the Rhinoceros. “You do not belong here. Go home and take your hyenas back with you.”

Scrag nearly had a fit as he heard himself thus insulted. To be classed as a hyena was more than he could bear.

“Pig!” he wauled, forgetting his paddling. His head sank; the waters closed over it. When it reappeared, Scrag was blinded and half-choked, also the starch was taken out of him entirely. He was cold and tired and made up his mind then and there that he could be of more service to the world as a live lion than mere fish-food. He faced about, wheezing and panting, and sailed away on his return trip.

Crocut saw the young lion scudding past him. He was suddenly reminded that his wind and strength were ebbing fast. Just about enough fuel left in his bunkers to carry him back where he came from, so he, too, swung around and steered a straight course homeward.

Thus was the Cave Beast squadron shorn of much of its seeming strength. The battle was not yet over, however, for Grun Waugh still persisted in his efforts to effect a landing. But Wulli held the bridgehead, and the Cave Lion, try as he would, could accomplish nothing. Finally, he, too, gave up, tired and discouraged and steamed away, leaving the Rhinoceros in full possession of the field.

Wulli remained at his post for some time to make sure. When convinced that there was nothing more to be feared from the Cave Beasts, he again went about his business. For some time he trudged back and forth in an agony of indecision, but there seemed only one way to go—after the Mammoth whose comfort he yearned for and sorely needed. So he made that his choice, following untiringly over hill and valley, through glades and across swiftly flowing streams.

His woolly coat was torn and shabby and nearly every ounce of his superfluous flesh had been consumed, when at last he came to great mountains, so lofty their peaks seemed to touch the sky. He groaned dismally. Cliffs and high places were the last things on earth any rhinoceros would care to meet. Wulli would have given half of his life just then if the Mammoth and Pic had suddenly appeared before him, homeward bound. He hated mountains. They made him dizzy and weak at his knees and elbows. He gazed despairingly at the towering crests. The trail of his crony the Mammoth led to them, clear and unmistakable. There was no help for it. Wulli set his jaws tightly together, and with many misgivings for his future, plunged blindly and boldly upward among the peaks and crags.

XV

The left bank of the Midouze River was for Pic the parting of the ways between himself and his son. All trace of the latter had vanished absolutely and completely. He tried every known art of woodcraft but without success. Search the river bank as he would, he could find no sign of the missing boy. “The traitor has made use of the water to play me a trick,” he thought, but just what the trick was, he could not determine. “He has fled to his country in the southland,” he told the Mammoth. “If we continue in the same direction as we have been going, we will again find this Gonch following the straight path.”

There was nothing left to do but pursue this plan. Thus far, the Muskman’s flight had been on a straight line to the southwest. It was reasonable to presume that in time he would so continue. He had doubled or side-stepped to avoid his pursuers, but he must get back to the line in the end.

Heretofore the Mammoth’s nose or trunk-tip had guided the way, but now that the trail was lost, the responsibility for taking the right course devolved on Pic. It was a case of direction, and so he made use of his knowledge of the sun’s position at rising and setting, also other signs that good woodsmen knew for determining where they wished to go.

“I will find this man, even if I have to go to the earth’s end to do it,” he vowed, and the way he scowled boded ill for the Muskman. He guided the Mammoth through the Midouze region across another river, the Adour, to a low wet region where traveling was most difficult. It was a veritable network of brooks and rivulets with ponds, sloughs and soft spots scattered promiscuously between. From black muck and mud, the soil gradually changed to marl, then sand and clay as the land surface inclined upward. This latter was seamed everywhere with tiny streams, through which flowed the drainage from a more elevated region. The two travelers were now ascending the slopes, leading to a mountain range which barred their way, extending in a long line from east to west.

At sight of the mountains, Pic said to Mammoth: “The rough country lies before us. Among the rocks and cliffs we will find where men live.”

But when he drew nearer to them, he was much taken aback and his views underwent a decided change. The vastness of what he saw was appalling. The steep slopes rose to tremendous heights; so high that many of the peaks were lost to sight far above the clouds. The spaces or valleys between them were filled with masses of snow and ice, from which torrents of water gushed forth and down the mountain sides, bringing great quantities of sand and clay with them. At times, great chunks of rock or ice detached themselves from high places and came crashing down. The ground trembled beneath their impact as though shaken by an earthquake.

To Pic, the sight and sound of all this was beyond his power of understanding. He had lived his life in the lowlands and knew little of mountains. It was not cold—where he and the Mammoth stood. Winter might be near at hand, but the sun shone brightly and he could feel its warm rays. And yet, there was ice, high above his head, and ice meant cold, a discomfort he was unprepared for. In his hurried departure from the Vézère Valley he had not thought to bring a hide with him as protection from the cold. There appeared to be need of such protection if he scaled those mountains. They were not homes of men. The southland must lie beyond, and to reach it he must cross the mountain barrier.

A stupendous undertaking; Pic could appreciate the difficulty of such a task, or rather he could appreciate only a fraction of the difficulty. “Do men climb over such things or do they go around them?” he asked himself. “Go around them,” something within him answered. He gazed to the east; mountains in a never-ending chain as far as the eye could reach. Westward it was the same, except that they seemed to taper off like the tail of a gigantic beast. There was no guiding angel to watch over him and say, “Turn west and skirt the mountain barrier; then all will be well.” The Mammoth could not help him and Pic saw no way but to choose the straightest, although most difficult, course. He gave a command and Hairi marched straight ahead—to the mountains towering above him.

Up, up and never down. At times the Mammoth assumed an almost erect position, so steep was the climb. Pic had to hold on tightly to avoid sliding backward and off the beast’s tail. When night came he was only too glad to stop and rest, snuggled up close to his big friend to keep himself warm. No use of wishing that he had a bison robe to wrap around and protect his body. When day came and the journey was resumed, he dismounted and proceeded on foot, hoping that the exercise would drive off the chill which made him shiver from head to foot. Both he and the Mammoth made frequent stops, for the higher they climbed, the more quickly they tired. The long and arduous ascent had by this time brought them into a rarefied atmosphere—thin air—which imposed a severe test upon their hearts and lungs.

Trees, bushes and other vegetation gave way to evergreens as they mounted to the region of perpetual snow, and finally these were left behind them. Snow, ice and low rugged crests alone remained.

One line of these crests, projecting from the hard-packed snow, extended for a great distance across our travelers’ line of march. A second similar rock backbone lay in the dim distance, running parallel with the first. Man and elephant were crossing the intervening space, when suddenly the Mammoth uttered a loud bellow and stopped short, his feet bunched beneath him like four wooden posts. “The ground! It shakes!” he squealed, much alarmed.

Pic halted, bent low and held his ear to the ground. The latter did tremble; he felt it. He also heard a muffled rumbling roar that seemed to originate in the bowels of the earth. He shivered, but this may have been due as much to the cold he felt as to fear of the unknown. He could offer no explanation of the mystery. The Mammoth was far more frightened than he was, so he coaxed and teased the great beast, telling him there was nothing to fear and that he must move on.

Hairi yielded after much persuasion, although he now proceeded half-heartedly and timidly, for the trembling ground inspired him with great dread. He was soon treated to another unpleasant surprise. The space between the two lines of crests was a waste of hard-packed snow which became broken up into hummocks and ice-blocks as the two advanced. Again Hairi stopped and stood shaking like a leaf as he caught sight of a long deep rent in the snow-plain. It emitted a deep, booming roar—a thousand Cave Lion voices rolled into one.

This was too much for the Mammoth’s overbalanced nerves. He stopped and refused to budge. He would stand there until he starved and the hyenas could come and polish his bones, but he would never go near that hole which growled so strangely. Pic advanced to the rent in the snow-plain. It widened and deepened as he approached. He saw a gleam of ice beneath the snow—no rock, nothing but ice. The roaring grew louder. Pic kept on, although almost overwhelmed by the timidity that even brave men feel when confronted by dangers they do not understand. A few more steps and he stood upon the brink of the rent. He sank to his knees, dizzy and scared almost out of his wits. Down, down, down descended the cold ice-walls to some unknown depth beyond the range of human vision, where the roar of rushing water echoed and re-echoed until it boomed like thunder.

Pic began to comprehend. The snow-plain was an ice-field of tremendous depth; the rent was a crack in the ice; and the booming noise came from the water which flowed through the bottom of the crack. These things could be seen by any one who dared stand on the brink of the rent and look at them, but although Pic had a clear head when moving about cliffs and high places, the vast depth and cold emptiness made him so giddy he could scarcely stand.

The ice-rent or crevasse was thousands of feet deep, an indication of the ice-field’s depth. The two lines of crests were in reality the tops of lofty mountain chains, their intervening space filled almost to the top with slowly moving ice; a glacier with a torrent of water flowing through its base.

Pic returned to the Mammoth and explained matters as best he could. There was a deep crack in the ice and the water running through it made much disturbance and noise. He would not ask his friend to jump over the crack; it was too wide for that; nor would he ask him to go near it. All that Hairi need do was to follow. Pic would lead him around it and to a place of safety.

The Mammoth appeared much relieved and consented to move on. Pic led him on a line parallel to the crevasse until the latter ended in a pile of shattered ice-blocks. Here the glacier’s surface was much broken and the two friends were obliged to watch their steps carefully on the slippery ice to avoid bad tumbles. In one place the surface inclined to form a chute or narrow slide, and Hairi in particular had a slow, hard time of it reaching the bottom. He and Pic were so busy finding their way around the end of the crevasse that they had neither eyes nor ears for that which followed in their wake. It was a shaggy-haired animal with nose held closely to the ground and following the same route over which Pic and the Mammoth had just traveled. Where the path turned at right angles, the newcomer looked up and saw the crevasse yawning in front of him. The sight threw him into a panic. Away he tore like mad along the ice-cliff squealing, “Oowee, oowee!” at the top of his lungs. Once he slipped and fell terribly near the dreadful gulf. He rose trembling with fear. His vocal cords became paralyzed and he could not utter a sound. He staggered toward the ice-hummocks near the end of the crevasse, foam-flecked and steaming with the dew of death. The ground suddenly fell away in front of him and he began to slide. Too late; he uttered a last despairing squeak, then resigned himself to the inevitable, and with eyes tightly shut, went skidding rapidly on his downward flight to the unknown horrors awaiting him.

XVI

Pic and the Mammoth had passed around the crevasse and were putting it behind them as fast as they could when several shrill squeals rang out and startled them nearly out of their wits. Both stopped and looked back up the incline they had just descended. The sounds seemed to have come from the ice-blocks and hummocks at the top. Hairi’s mouth was wide open; his eyes were nearly popping from his head. Man and elephant stood rigid, listening, but all was now quiet. The squeals were not repeated.

“That voice,” said the Mammoth in an awed whisper. “How strange. It seems as though I had heard it before.” The two friends were still staring up the slide, when suddenly, without a sign of warning, a shaggy beast hove in sight at the top and shot down like a toboggan. It stood upright with feet spread far out. Had the creature’s legs been longer so as to elevate its center of gravity, it must have toppled over and tumbled ingloriously to the bottom. However, its legs were like four stout pegs. This made the weight hang low and the downward glide was completed right side up. As the newcomer coasted along the level, its speed slackened and gradually it came to a stop. This happened to be right in front of the two friends. Here it stood, motionless, with eyes shut tight.

“Wulli! My own Wulli! Where did you come from?” bellowed the astonished Mammoth, staring as in a dream at his partner, whose dramatic arrival had occurred so suddenly and unexpectedly.

The Woolly Rhinoceros did not respond. He had made up his mind that he was falling into that dreadful hole and would be dead when he struck the bottom. He seemed to be sliding dreamily through space, falling more slowly every moment instead of faster as he should have done. The end was surprisingly calm and peaceful, for he reached eternity without a jar. Then sounded sweet music—the voice of the one he loved best. His was a happy journey to the golden gates, too unreal to believe. He opened one eye. There stood Pic and the Mammoth in the flesh. He began to feel grave doubts. “Am I dead?” he inquired feebly. “If so, cover me with stones and do not let the hyenas eat me.”

He spoke in the hushed voice of a departed spirit; that made it funny. Pic forgot his surprise and laughed loudly. “What makes you think you are dead?” he asked, and laughed again.

“I fell in that awful hole,” simpered Wulli, still unconvinced. “Every bone in my body is broken, and yet, strange to say, I feel quite comfortable.”

“Why not?” Pic demanded. “You only slid down that hill and you are not hurt a bit. What brought you here?”

“Brought me?” Wulli shed his angel wings and opened his other eye. “I don’t know,” he replied. “My legs, I guess.”

“He must have followed us,” said the Mammoth, his surprise fast changing to joy as he realized that he was really looking upon the Woolly Rhinoceros. “It is wonderful that we three can be together again.”

“Four of us would be better,” Pic muttered sadly. On being thus reminded of Kutnar, Wulli assumed an air of the deepest gloom. He told of his affair with the Cave Beasts and how he had come upon the trail of the Hyena Man and the smell of blood.

“Whose blood?” groaned Pic. His face had become deadly pale.

“Kutnar’s,” Wulli replied. “Several drops were on the ground. A stone-stick lay near them.”

Pic’s knees trembled. He spread out his hands as though to save himself from falling. “Dead? I can’t believe it,” he said in a dazed sort of way. “Why should Gonch kill the boy? And yet—Agh, I am so afraid. We were closing in upon them and the miscreant may have murdered him to save himself. You saw nobody?”

“No,” answered Wulli.

“And there was not much blood?”

“Very little; almost none.”

“Strange,” muttered Pic. “The boy may be yet alive. Then there is the ax; that puzzles me. Why did not the traitor take it with him?” Thus he aroused hope in his own breast, but this soon changed to depression. The next moment he raged and cursed Gonch for killing his boy and finally gave himself up to the deepest despair. The two animals watched these changing moods, with much concern. “I do not believe that the boy is dead,” said Hairi trying to comfort him.

“Nor I,” added Wulli.

“Nor I.” This third voice was a mere squeak and it seemed to come from the ground.

“Who said that?” Pic looked up at his friends, then at the ice about him.