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.
[Illustration: Mammoth trapped in swamp]
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.
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