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.
[Illustration: Wolves]
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.
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