Because of this elongation, the heads are a couple of meters long and a bit of a problem to collect. It's like the heads of Cretaceous ceratopsians, such as Triceratops. If you're going to mount such a head in your house, be sure you have a good, big room to hang it in, or it won't leave room for anyone else.
Next morning, Jim Swayzey and I set out, leaving the crew to clean up the camp. Larry, Willow, and the Raja begged off, saying they wanted to make a cast south or downstream to see what there was there. After a couple of hours of squilching through mud and muck, we reached the borders of the swamp.
There in plain sight were half a dozen mastodon, busily scooping up the muck in which the swamp plants grew with their shovel-tusks and shoving it back with their stubby trunks to where they could swallow it.
The elder Swayzey grinned at me. "Bet I could get one from here; but maybe I oughta go a little closer, to be sure."
So he and I moved up towards the shovel-tuskers until we found a big swamp cypress that gave us cover. Jim peered around it at the mastodon, which simply went on eating like so many inanimate dredging machines.
Up came Jim's gun, and bang! down went one shovel-tusker with a splash.
The other animals raised their heads and looked round in all directions; but they did not flee. This reaction is common among prehistoric fauna. Never having been shot at, they may be startled by the report of a gun but don't connect it with danger and death. I suppose to them it's merely a kind of thunderclap.
"That was the biggest," I said. "It should give you your trophy, when we get Fuller on the job."
"Look!" said Swayzey. "They realize something's wrong with the big bull, and they're trying to get him up."
In fact, three of the herd had clustered round the fallen one. With those monstrous muzzles they were trying to heave him back on his feet; but that mastodon was dead. Jim Swayzey was too skilled a hunter to waste shots.
Then he raised his rifle and fired again. Down went one of the bull's would-be helpers. About this time, the rest of the herd began to suspect that something very wrong was happening. When Swayzey fired a third shot and killed a half-grown calf, they were sure of it and began to trail off. But Swayzey wasn't yet satisfied; he fired twice more, killing a mastodon with each shot. That left only one of the herd still on its feet. Swayzey then had to reload, and by the time he got all five cartridges into the butt of his rifle the lone survivor was out of range.
"I got em!" he roared, waving a big fist. "I got 'em!" He didn't actually pound his chest, but he looked as if he would have liked to.
"What are you going to do with all those carcasses?" I asked. "We can't possibly haul five mastodon heads back to base."
"One, the big one, will suit me," he said. "For the others, y'all can feast on mastodon steaks as long as we're here. They say an elephant's trunk is the best-eating part of him, and maybe it's the same with these critters."
"But why wipe out the whole herd?" I asked. "Not sporting."
"Hell, man, that's hunting! That's what a real man does! There ain't no thrill to compare with hearing your gun go bang and seeing a big brute like that keel over! That's livin'! I only wish it was one of them dinosaurs or mammoths. I'd be hunting them things now, only Larry thought we oughta start easier, in a less dangerous period." Swayzey shook his head. "Sometimes I think that boy ain't got no real killer instinc', like I have." He looked sharply at me. "I hope you ain't gettin' no shitty ideas from the Lamar bitch!"
"I try to avoid extremes," I said. "We'd better put Plautus to work." Inside, I began to have a certain sympathy for Willow Lamar, for all her goofiness. But it wouldn't have been good business to say so.
It took Plautus Fuller all next day to collect and prepare the head of the biggest mastodon. We didn't see anything else of interest, save little things like rabbits.
The day after, we started down the pseudo-Mississippi to our third camp. During the day we were there, Jim Swayzey shot a giraffe-camel, an animal the size and shape of a giraffe, but with what looks like the head of a camel or llama on that fantastic neck. They tell me it's an offshoot of the camel family, which went extinct without descendants.
No, Jim Swayzey didn't want the head or any other part of the animal. All he wanted was the fun of killing it, photographing it, and entering in his hunting diary. He explained:
"They used to have these here safari clubs, where hunters would get together and tell of the animals they'd killed all over the world. If you killed at least one each of, say, a hundred different kinds, they gave you a medal and called you a senior hunter or something. But there ain't no more of 'em; they gave out when the wild game did.
"Now we got time travel, some friends of mine and I are talking about starting a new safari club. So to get a head start, I want to kill as many different kinds as I can."
Next day we packed up again and started back for base camp. The Raja and I had been keeping close track of where we'd gone and how far. With modern navigating instruments, we'd become pretty bloody adept and have never been unable to find our way back to base. Some time safaris have got lost and never seen again.
I was glad to see the end of this journey approaching. Besides the hostilities among the clients, the crew were getting itchy at the way Jim Swayzey ordered them about, and particularly at his open contempt for persons of the racial backgrounds of Beauregard, Pancho, and Bruno. He didn't actually call Beauregard a "nigger," but he made it bloody plain that his mind ran along those lines.
On this trek, Jim Swayzey strode along up front. He shot a small hornless rhinoceros, genus Aphelops, an animal more like a modern tapir than what you would think of as a rhino. Again, he did not collect any part of the animal; merely took a photo and made a note on his diary pad.
When we stopped for tiffin, the sky began to cloud over. Willow said: "Boys, I've got to make a comfort stop. Where's my umbrella?"
"Huh?" said Larry Swayzey. "What do you need that for?"
She pointed up at the cloud, and just then came a rumble of thunder. So the younger Swayzey went to Beauregard, who was busy staking out the asses to graze. Soon Larry presented Willow with her umbrella.
She was gone for some time. Then, from the other side of a clump of trees, came a feminine yell of "Help!"
Larry Swayzey jumped up and grabbed his gun. The Raja and I were only seconds behind him, as were Jim Swayzey and Plautus Fuller.
Round the clump, we came on a strange sight. There were three mammals: Willow Lamar, flapping her umbrella; a small sabertooth of the period; and confronting Willow, the biggest of the bear-dogs, Dinocyon.
The sabertooth was not a sabertooth "tiger," as the big ones of the Pleistocene are often called. It was only half the size of these and were better called a sabertooth puma or leopard. It was a tawny cat with faint brown spots, like those of a leopard or jaguar but not so conspicuous. It was slinking away, turning its head to snarl at the bear-dog.
This animal was about the size of the biggest bears, say a polar or a Kodiak brown, with a head like that of a canid but twice as big. It's more lightly built than those bears, but stouter than a dog or wolf.
As we rounded the trees, the bear-dog roared like a Hon and sprang forward with its big paws up. It came down on Willow and knocked her flat. Before those huge, slavering jaws could close on some part of her, Larry Swayzey got his rifle up and cracked off a shot. It took the bear-dog amidships and knocked it sideways, so that it didn't fall on top of Willow. She made a quick roll away from it and scrambled up.