THE KING OF THE TRIPLE HORN
It was a little later in the Morning of Time--later by perhaps some
two or three hundred thousand years. Monstrous mammals now held sway
over the fresh, green round of the young earth, so exuberant in her
youthful vigor that she could not refrain from flooding the Poles
themselves with a tropical luxuriance of flower and tree. The
supremacy of the Giant Reptiles had passed.
A few representatives of their most colossal and highly-specialized
forms still survived, still terrible and supreme in those vast,
steaming, cane-clothed savannahs which most closely repeated the
conditions of an earlier age. But Nature, pleased with her experiments
in the more promising mammalian type, had turned her back upon them
after her fashion, and was coldly letting them die out. Her failures,
however splendid, have always found small mercy at her hands.
But it was little like a failure he looked, the giant who now heaved
his terrible, three-horned front from the lilied surface of the lagoon
wherein he had been wallowing, and came ponderously ploughing his way
ashore. As he emerged upon dry ground, he halted--with the tip of his
massive, lizard-like tail still in the water--and shook a shower from
the hollows of his vast and strangely armored head.
His eyes, coldly furious, and set in a pair of goggle-like projections
of horn, peered this way and that, as if suspecting the neighborhood
of a foe. His gigantic snout--horned, cased in horn, and hooked like
the beak of a parrot--he lifted high, sniffing the heavy air. Then, as
if to end his doubts by either drawing or daunting off the unknown
enemy, he opened his grotesquely awful mouth and roared. The huge
sound that exploded from his throat was something between the bellow
of an alligator and the coughing roar of a tiger, but of infinitely
vaster volume.
The next moment, as if in deliberate reply to the challenge, an
immense black beast stepped from behind a thicket of pea-green bamboo,
and stood scrutinizing him with wicked little pig-like eyes.
It was the old order confronted by the new, the latest most terrible
and perhaps most efficient of the titanic but vanishing race of the
Dinosaurs, face to face with one of those monstrous mammalian forms
upon which Nature was now trying her experiments.
And the place of this meeting was not unfitted to such a portentous
encounter. The further shore of the lagoon was partly a swamp of
rankest growth, partly a stretch of savannah clothed with rich
cane-brake and flowering grasses that towered fifteen or twenty feet
into the air. But the hither shore was of a hard soil mixed with sand,
carpeted with a short, golden-green herbage, and studded with clumps
of bamboo, jobo, mango and mahogany, with here and there a thicket of
canary-flowered acacia, bristling with the most formidable of thorns.
They were not altogether ill-matched, these two colossal protagonists
of the Saurian and the Mammal. The advantage of bulk lay altogether
with the Dinosaur, the three-horned King of all the Lizard kind. His
armament, too, whether for offense or for defense, was distinctly the
more formidable. Fully twenty feet in length, and perhaps eight feet
high at the crest of the massively-rounded back, he was of ponderous
breadth, and moved ponderously on legs like columns.
His splotched brown and yellow hide was studded along the neck and
shoulders with pointed knobs of horn. His enormous, fleshy tail, some
seven feet long and nearly two feet thick at the base, tapered very
gradually to a thick tip, and dragged on the ground behind him. But
the most amazing thing about this King of the Lizards was his
monstrous and awe-inspiring head.
Wedge-shaped from the tip of its cruel parrot-beak to its spreading,
five-foot-wide base, its total length was well over seven feet. Its
three horns, one on the snout and two standing out straight forward
from the forehead just above the eyes, were immensely thick at the
base and fined down smoothly to points of terrible keenness. The one
on the snout was something over a foot in length, while the brow pair
were nearly three feet long.
Almost from the roots of these two terrific weapons protruded the huge
horn goggles which served as sockets for the great, cold, implacable
lizard-eyes. Behind the horns, outspreading like a vast ruff from
three to four feet wide upwards and laterally, slanted a smooth,
polished shield of massive shell like the carapace of a giant turtle,
protecting the neck and shoulders from any imaginable attack.
The antagonist who had come in answer to the giant's challenge was
less extravagant in appearance and more compact in form. He was not
much over a dozen feet in length, but this length owed nothing to the
tail, which was a mere wriggling pendant. He was, perhaps, seven feet
high, very sturdy in build, but not mountainous like his terrible
challenger. His legs and feet were something like those of an
elephant, and he looked capable of a deadly alertness in action. But,
as in the case of the King Dinosaur, it was his head that gave him his
chief distinction. Long, massive and blunt-nosed, it was armed not
only with six horns, set in pairs, but also with a pair of deadly,
downward-pointing tusks--like those of a walrus, but much shorter,
sharper and more effective.
Of the six horns, the first pair, set on the tip of the broad snout,
were mere bony points, of no use as weapons, and employed by their
owner for rooting in the turf after the fashion of a tuber-hunting
pig. The second pair, set about the middle of the long face, just over
the eyes, were about eighteen inches in length, and redoubtable enough
to make other weapons seem superfluous.
The third pair, however, were equally formidable, and set far back at
the very base of the skull, like those of an antelope. The eyes, as
has been already stated, were small, deep-set and vindictive. The
sullen black of his coloring added to the portentousness of his swift
appearance around the clump of pea-green bamboo.
For several minutes the two monsters stood eyeing each other, while
the rage of an instinctive hatred mounted slowly in their sluggish
brains. To the King Dinosaur, this stranger was a trespasser on his
domain, where no other creatures, unless of his own kind, had ever
before had the presumption to confront him. The suddenness of the
black apparition, also, exasperated him; and he loathed at once the
sickly sour smell, so unlike the pungent muskiness of his own kindred,
which now for the first time met his sensitive nostrils.
The Dinoceras, on his part, was in a chronic state of rage. He was a
solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the
comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his
bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived
in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious
restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard to it.
He had never, of course, conceived of so terrible an adversary as this
splotched brown and yellow monster before him. But he was in no mood
to calculate odds. For all his blind rage, however, he was a crafty
fighter, always. Seeing that the challenger made no move, he gave
voice to a huge, squealing grunt, like the noise of a herd of raging
pigs. Then he dug his armed snout into the turf and hurled a shower of
sod into the air.
In the eyes of the King Dinosaur this was apparently an intolerable
insult. With a roar he came lumbering forward, at a slow, rolling run
which seemed to jar the earth. Grunting again, and moving at thrice
his speed, the black beast rushed to meet him, head down, like a
charging bison.
They met under the spreading branches of an immense hoya-tree. But
they did not meet fairly, head to head, as the Dinosaur intended. Had
they done so the battle would have been decided then and there, for
the black beast's horns and unprotected front were no match for the
impenetrable armor and leveled lances of the King's colossal head. But
they did not meet fairly. The black stranger was much too crafty for
that. At the last moment he swerved nimbly aside, wheeled with an
agility that was marvelous for a creature of his bulk, and thrust at
the shoulders of the colossus with a fierce, rooting movement like the
stroke of the wild boar.
But he struck the rim of that impenetrable defense, the spreading ruff
of horn. And he might as well have struck a mountain-side. That
enormous bulk, firm-based on the wide-set columns which formed its
legs, merely staggered an instant, coughed from the jarring of the
blow, and swung about to present his terrific horns against another
such attack. The black stranger, meanwhile, as if disappointed at the
meager result of his tactics, had drawn back out of reach. He stood
rooting the turf and squealing defiance, in the hope of luring the
giant into a second charge.
The stupendous duel had two interested spectators. On the top of the
next tree sat an extraordinary-looking bird, about the size of a
pheasant, colored blue and rose like a macaw. Its tail was like a
lizard's, long and fully-vertebrated, with a pair of flat feathers
standing out opposite each other at right angles from each joint, for
all the world like an immense acacia-frond done in red. At the tips of
its wing-elbows it carried clutching, hand-like claws, resembling
those of the flying reptiles; and its straight, strong beak was armed
with pointed teeth. It kept opening and shutting its beak excitedly
and uttering sharp cries, as if calling everyone to come and see the
fight.
The other spectator was not excited at all. He was a large, ape-like
man--one would have said, rather, a manlike ape, had it not been for
the look in his eyes.
This enigmatic figure sat on a branch immediately over the combatants,
and held on with one powerful, hairy hand to the branch just above
him. He was covered with thick, brown hair, like fur, from head to
foot, but that on his head was true hair, long and waving. His
shoulders were massive, his chest of great depth, his arms so long
that if he had been standing erect they would have hung to his knees,
his legs short, massive and much bowed. His hands were furred to the
second joint of the fingers, but they were the hands of a man, not
those of an ape, for the huge thumb was opposed to the fingers instead
of being set parallel with them like another finger. His head was low
in the arch of the skull, low and narrow in the forehead, with a small
facial angle and hardly any bridge to the broad, flat, wide-nostriled
nose; and the jaws were heavy and thrust forward brutishly. But the
eyes, under the roof of the heavy, bony brows, held an expression
profoundly unlike the cold, mechanical stare of the giant Dinosaur or
the twinkling, vindictive glare of the black stranger. They gazed down
at the battle with a sort of superiority, considerate, a little
scornful, in spite of the obvious fact that either of the two, as far
as mere physical bulk and prowess were concerned, could have
obliterated him by simply setting foot upon him. In his free hand he
grasped a branch of acacia set with immense thorns, the needle-like
points of which he touched contemplatively from time to time, as if
pondering what use he could put them to. He had no marked prejudice,
for the moment, in favor of either side in the battle below him. Both
monsters were his foes, and the ideal result, in his eyes, would have
been for the two to destroy each other. But if he had any preference,
it was for the black mammalian beast, the lizard monster appearing to
him the more alien, the more incomprehensible and the more impregnable
to any strategy that he might devise.
For perhaps a couple of minutes, now, the King kept his place,
wheeling ponderously to face his agile opponent, who circled about him
at a distance of ten to twelve yards, seeking an opportunity to get in
a rush upon his open flank. This wheeling and circling made the cool
watcher in the tree impatient. Wrenching off a heavy branch, he hurled
it down with all his force upon the King's face. To the King this
seemed but another insult from his black antagonist, and his rage
exploded once more. With a roar he wallowed forward, thinking to pin
the elusive foe to earth and tread the life out of him.
This gave the black beast his opportunity. Doubling nimbly like a wild
boar, he dashed in and caught his colossal opponent fairly on the
side, midway between the shoulder and the haunch. The impact shocked
the breath from the monster's lungs, with a huge, explosive cough, and
brought him to a bewildered standstill, though it could not throw him
from his feet. But the armored hide proved too tough for the black
beast's horns to penetrate. Perceiving this on the instant, the latter
reared, and brought down the two awful daggers of his tusks upon the
monster's ribs. They penetrated, but they failed to rip as far and as
conclusively as their owner intended. And while he struggled to free
himself for another attack, the monster recovered from his daze.
Now the stranger had taken count only of those weapons which the King
Dinosaur bore on his terrible front; and these for the moment were out
of reach. But he had forgotten the massive and tremendous tail.
Suddenly it lashed out, nearly half a ton in weight, and with the
force of a pile-driver. It struck the black beast on the legs, and
swept them clean from under him.
Before he could pick himself up the Dinosaur had swung about and
buried all three horns, to the sockets, in his throat and chest. His
life went out in one ear-splitting squeal of rage and anguish. The red
blood streaming from horns and ruff, the monster wrenched himself
free, and then moved irresistibly over his victim, like a rolling
mountain.
When satisfied that his triumph was complete, the King drew back a
pace or two, and examined the mangled heap with his cold, unchanging
stare. Then he sniffed at it contemptuously, and prodded it with his
nose-horn, and tore it with his extravagant parrot-beak. But, being a
feeder on herbage only, he had not thought of tasting the red flesh.
The smell of it was abominable to him; and presently he moved closer
under the trees to wipe his beak, as a bird might, on a clump of
coarse grasses.
As he did so, the lowering of his head threw his horny ruff far
forward, exposing the folds of naked hide on the back of his neck. The
silent man-creature on the branch above was quick to note the
opportunity. He was displeased at the monster's triumph. He was also
interested to see if he had any power to hurt so colossal and well
protected a foe. Swinging down by his legs and one hand, he thrust the
thorned branch of acacia deep in under the ruff. The monster, jerking
his head up sharply at this unexpected assault, drove the long thorns
well home.
In an instant he was beside himself with rage and pain. Roaring till
the blue-and-crimson bird on the tree-top flew off in a panic, he
shook his head desperately, and then almost tried to stand upon it. He
started to roll over on his back, hoping thus to dislodge the galling
thing beneath the carapace, but thought better of it at the first
added pressure. His contortions were so vehement that the man
discreetly drew himself up to a higher branch, a slow grin widening
his heavy mouth, as he marked his power to inflict injury on even such
an adversary as the King Dinosaur. The experiment had been successful
beyond his utmost anticipations. Like Nature herself, he was
continually experimenting, but by no means always with satisfactory
results.
Suddenly the monster made off, with head held as low as possible, for
the edge of the lagoon. Ploughing his way in with a huge splashing, he
disappeared beneath the water. A minute later he returned to the
surface and swam rapidly towards the jungle on the opposite shore,
probably intending to find some projecting stump of a dead limb on
which he could scratch the torment from under his ruff. At the edge of
the jungle he was joined by another monster, like himself, but
smaller--probably one of his mates--and together they disappeared,
with heavy crashings, in the rank tangle of the swamp-growths.
The man-creature descended from his refuge, carrying in one hand a
heavy fragment of branch, which he held awkwardly, as if not
over-familiar with the idea of an artificial weapon. He seemed to be
groping his way towards some use of it, either as a club or as a
stabbing instrument. During the fight, while he was experimenting with
the thorn branch, he had evidently had this weapon lodged in some safe
crotch. And now he kept handling it with a curious interest.
Standing erect, he might easily have been mistaken for a slightly
built and shapelier variety of the gorilla but for the true man-hands
and the steady, contemplative, foreseeing look in the eyes. He came
and examined the mangled bulk of the Dinoceras, scrutinized the horns
and tusks minutely, and strove with all his force to wrench one of the
latter from its socket, as if hoping to make some use of it. Then,
fastidiously selecting a shred of the victim's torn flesh, he sniffed
and nibbled at it, and then threw it aside. He could eat and enjoy
flesh-food at a pinch. But just now fruit was abundant; and fruit,
with eggs and honey, formed the diet he preferred. As he stood
pondering the lifeless mass before him, a shrill call came to his
ears, and, turning sharply, he saw his mate, with her baby in the
crook of her hairy arm, standing at the foot of a tree, and signaling
him to come to her. As soon as she saw that he understood, and was
coming, she swung herself lightly up into the branches. He ran to the
tree, climbed after her, and followed her to the very top, where she
awaited him. The tree was taller than any of its neighbors, and
commanded a clear view of the meadow-lands that lay a half mile back
from the lagoon. His mate was pointing eagerly to these meadows. He
saw that they were dotted and spotted with groups of great black,
horned and tusked beasts like the one whose destruction he had just
witnessed. These were the migrant herds of the Dinoceras, just arrived
at their new pasturage. The man eyed them with discontent. He had seen
a specimen of their temper; and he congratulated himself that he and
his mate knew how to live in trees.
The man-creature himself was a new-comer to the shores of the great
lagoon. The place suited him admirably by reason of the abundance of
its fruits. Along the banks of the lagoon were innumerable little
groves of plantain, the rich sustaining fruit of which was of all
foods his favorite. And he had found no trace whatever of his most
dangerous enemies, the gigantic and implacable black lion of the
caves, the red bear and the saber-tooth.
Such an irresistible giant as the King of the Triple Horn he might
wonder at, and hate, but he thought he had little cause to fear him.
It is easy enough, if one is prudent, to avoid a mountain.
Having found the place good, and resolved to stay, the man had built a
refuge for himself and his family in this tall watch-tower of a tree.
With interwoven branches he had made a rude but substantial platform,
and carpeted it to something like softness with smaller branches and
twigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof that
was anything but waterproof, and a few bushy branches served for
walls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. He
loved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downy
brown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaur
and Dinoceras with his naked hands.
For some days nothing more was seen of the two Dinosaurs, the King
being probably occupied, in the depths of the jungle, with the nursing
of his wrath and his hurts. The herds of the Dinoceras, meanwhile,
kept to their meadows, having better drinking-water in a slow stream
which traversed the pastures than in the brackish tide of the lagoon.
Then came a morning when the brown mother, babe on arm, was gathering
plantains not far from the waterside, while the man chanced to be away
exploring the limits of his new domain. The woman looked up suddenly;
and there, almost upon her, was the giant horror of the Dinosaur, his
cold, expressionless eyes gaping at her immovably from their goggling
sockets. She turned to flee; and there was the monster's mate, not
quite so huge, but equally appalling. Behind her was an impenetrable
wall of thorn-acacia. There was only one refuge--a tree, all too
small, but lofty enough to take her beyond the reach of those
horrifying horned and immobile masks. Up the little tree she went,
nimbly as a monkey, and crouched shivering in a crotch. The slender
trunk swayed beneath her weight. She clutched the brown baby to her
heart, and sent shriek after shriek through the glades.
A mile away the man heard it. He gave one deep-chested shout in
answer, and then came running in silence, saving his breath.
But it was a mile he had to come. The female Dinosaur, the more
instantly malignant of the two, hurled herself upon the trunk of the
tree. It swayed horribly, but did not yield at once. Thereupon the two
began to root beneath it with their horns, having often used this
method to obtain fruits which were above their reach. The tree leaned
far over. The giant straddled it as a moose straddles a poplar
sapling, and bore it down irresistibly. Its top touched earth.
The brown mother sprang forth with a tremendous leap, clearing the
horns with a twist which nearly broke her back. She thought herself
free. And then a gigantic tail struck her and felled her senseless. A
second more, and the female Dinosaur's great foot crushed her and the
wailing babe out of existence together.
The swift end of the tragedy the man had seen as he came racing down a
stretch of open glade. He did not need to look at the awful thing
beneath the monster's foot to know that all was over. Beyond one
hoarse groan he uttered not a sound. But blindly--for he had never yet
practised such an art--he hurled his ragged club at the nearest
monster. It rebounded like a baby's rattle from the vast horn-armored
head. But a lucky chance had guided it. One of its sharp, splintered
knots struck fairly in the Dinosaur's eye, and smashed it in the
socket. She roared with agony; and the two, side by side, came lunging
towards him.
The man ran back slowly. His despairing grief had changed suddenly
into a cold hate and a resolve for vengeance. It was so easy for him
to outstrip these lumbering monsters who were spouting their fetid,
musky breath close upon his heels. He stumbled carefully at every
other step. He let them feel that at the next stride they would
transfix him. He led them on, the earth shaking beneath their tread,
till another fifty feet would have brought them out upon the skirts of
the meadow. But at this point, wearied by such an unwonted burst of
effort, the King halted sulkily. He had not had an eye put out. He
wanted to give it up. But his mate came right on, thirsting for her
revenge.
The man was not content with her pursuit alone. Spurting ahead, he
gathered up two handfuls of sand and gravel, whirled about, and drove
them with all his strength into the King's cold eyes. It worked.
Smarting and half blinded, the monster forgot his weariness, and came
charging along furiously in the trail of his mate.
They were stupid, these Lizard Kings, with more brains in their pelvic
arches than in their giant skulls. Because the puny man-creature went
stumbling almost within reach of their beaks, they imagined they were
going to catch him. That he would go dodging around thickets which
they crashed over blindly, and would then return to present himself
again deliberately before them, did not strike them as at all
suspicious. Their dull but relentless hate once thoroughly aroused, as
long as he was in sight and they could move the mighty columns of
their legs, they would pursue him.
Through the last heavy fringe of bush and leafage they pursued him,
and with a great crashing of branches came out upon the open,
short-grass meadow. Still the man-creature stumbled on, straight out
into the open, and still they followed, raging silently.
The black herds of the Dinoceras stopped feeding all at once, and
raised their vicious heads and stared.
There were countless cows in the herd, horned like the bulls, but
smaller, and without the rending tusks. The cows, at this season, all
had young. After one long, comprehending stare at the two gigantic
mottled shapes bearing down upon them, the herd put itself in motion.
The man-creature they hardly noticed, he seemed so insignificant.
With eyes that took in everything, coolly and sagaciously, the man
observed that the motion of the herd was an ordered one. The black
beasts were deftly sorting themselves out to meet the danger. The
bulls came thrusting themselves to the front--a terrific array which
might have struck panic to the hearts of even the colossal Dinosaurs
had they not been too stupid with rage for any new impression to
pierce their brains. The cows, meanwhile, pushing their calves into a
huddled mass behind them, formed themselves into a second array, a
reserve of less mass and strength than the ranks of the bulls, but of
an invincible mother-fury.
The man, with a wise fearlessness, ran on straight through the
gathering line of bulls, the nearest of whom thrust at him carelessly
and then paid him no more heed. Behind their ranks, hidden now from
the sight of his pursuers, he swerved, avoiding the line of cows, ran
sharply to the right, and came back around the end of the line to see
what was going to happen. For all his grief, his heart was thumping
almost to suffocation as his titanic vengeance moved to its end.
When the two raging Dinosaurs lost sight of their prey they stopped
short, stupidly bewildered. Then they noticed the array of black
beasts charging upon them. This, in their mad mood, afforded a new
object to their rage. They plunged wallowing forward to meet the new
foe. And at that moment the man, appearing round the wing of the black
ranks, halted abruptly, and laughed.
It was a strange, disconcerting sound, that laughter, and the nearest
Dinoceras, disturbed by it, edged away and crowded against his
neighbor's flank in an inexplicable apprehension.
The next moment the stupendous opposing forces met with a shock that,
to the man's overstrung senses, seemed to make the very daylight reel.
There was no space for evasion or manoeuver. The two ponderous bulks
went straight through the ranks of the black bulls, ripping them with
beak and horn from shoulder to rump, treading them down like corn, and
trampling them under foot as they rolled on. The bulls on either side
charged on their flanks, rearing, grunting, squealing insanely and
ripping with the massive daggers of their tusks. But as this terrific
assault came from both sides at once, the two monsters were in reality
supported by it, so that they were not swept off their feet. Almost
without a check, as it seemed, they ploughed straight on, lashing with
their mighty tails, and leaving a trail of disabled victims behind
them, and so wore their way right up to the line of the cows.
But here they were stopped. The calves were behind that line.
The black mothers simply heaped themselves upon those impaling horns
and armored fronts, bearing them down, smothering, engulfing them in
an avalanche of screaming and monstrous bulks. The bulls, meanwhile,
were rending, tearing, stabbing, on flank and rear. The two Dinosaurs
disappeared from view. The dreadful mountain of writhing, gigantic
shapes heaved convulsively for some minutes. Then the great columns
that were the Dinosaurs' legs seemed to crumble beneath the weight.
The awful, battling heap sagged, fell apart, and let in the glare of
the sunlight upon what had been the two colossal monarchs of the early
world. The dreadful, unrecognizable things still moved, still heaved
and twisted ponderously among the bodies of their slain, but it was
mere aimless paroxysm, the blind life struggling to resist its final
expulsion and dissipation. The wounded Dinoceras drew away, to die or
recover as curious Nature might decree. The surviving cows returned to
assure themselves that their young had come to no hurt. And the great
black bulls who had escaped serious injury in the struggle stood about
in a ring, thrusting and ripping at the unresponsive mountains of
flesh. As they satisfied themselves, one after another, that the
victory was complete, and that there was nothing more to battle
against, they fell to devouring their prey. Ordinarily feeders on
herbage and roots, they were like pigs and rats and men, more or less
without prejudice in their diet, and they seemed to think that
dinosaur went very well with grass.
At a distance of not more than fifty paces from these destroying
hosts, the man-creature stood carelessly, and stared and considered.
He had no fear of them. He knew he could avoid them with ease. So
insignificant that in their excitement they hardly noticed him, so
small that in bulk he was no greater than the least of their calves,
he nevertheless despised the gigantic beasts and felt himself their
lord. He had played with the two monarchs of all the early world, led
them into his trap, and taken such dreadful vengeance upon them that
his grief was almost assuaged by the fullness of it. The black herds
of the Dinoceras he had used as the tools of his vengeance. No doubt,
if necessary, he could use them again in some such fashion.
He turned his back upon them, knowing that his fine ear would inform
him at once if any should take it into their heads to pursue him, and
stalked away with deliberation towards the wooded ground. But he
avoided his tree. He would never more go near that empty home. He
would return to the regions beyond the head of the lagoon, where he
would find scattered members of his kindred. He would find another
mate; and in a dim, groping way he harbored a desire for new
offspring, for sons, in particular, who should be inquiring and full
of resource, like himself. At the edge of the wood he turned, and gave
one more long, musing look at the invincible black herds whom he had
used. The idea of sons came back upon him insistently. A faint sense
of the immeasurable vastness of what was to be done swept over his
soul. But he was not daunted. He would at least do something. And he
would teach his children, till they should learn, perhaps, by taking
thought, even to overcome the ferocity of the saber-tooth and foil the
malice of the great red bear.