Gribardsun considered and then said, 'We should push on, I believe. Why waste the day?'
The body of Thrimk was wrapped in a great bearskin and six men were delegated to watch the body and to cut up the two behemoths. Leaving these behind weakened the party, but the hyenas, wolves, lions, and bears had to be kept away.
The party set out again toward the edge of the plain where a herd of mammoths was eating. The great beasts did not pay them any attention until the hunters were within fifty yards. They were downwind, and the mammoths, like the elephants of Gribardsun's time, were weak-eyed. But when they detected the mass of humans, they began moving away. Several big bulls, however, threatened them with short charges and much trumpeting and tearing up of small trees.
The very long and fantastically curved tusks, the huge hump of fat on top of the head, the long reddish-brown hairs, and the sheer size of the beasts was very impressive.
The men spread out in a deep crescent formation. While the center held the attention of the bulls, the horns advanced very slowly.
One of the bulls broke and ran toward the herd. The other two kept up their bluffing charges until the center had gotten within fifty feet and the horns of the crescent were past them. Then the biggest bull charged.
The plan was for the center to turn and flee, drawing the beast after it. The horns would close in and try to hamstring or spear the beast.
The center was not imitating panic. Its members were scared, and rightly so. The beast was over eleven feet high at the shoulder, weighed possibly four tons, and was running faster than any man.
Only Gribardsun did not run. He waited with his spear butt resting against the notch of the atlatl. When the beast was a shrilling gray and reddish-brown wall with great curving ivory tusks and uplifted trunk and big outspread ears and little red eyes, only thirty feet away, he sped to one side.
The mammoth started to turn toward him, but it wasn't fast enough. Gribardsun cast the spear from the atlatl, and half its length disappeared into the beast's left front leg.
The animal went down with a crash that must have broken some of its bones. Trumpeting agonizedly, it struggled to get back onto its feet.
The hunters ran in and lunged, driving their flint or reindeer-antler-tipped spearheads into the stomach or under the tail.
But they ran away then, because the second bull had decided to charge too. It shook the earth, and it screamed through its uplifted proboscis.
Gribardsun's spear had been snapped off when the beast fell on it. He had only a stone axe, which he took from his belt and threw. But, it might as well have been made of feathers. It rotated through the air and its head struck the animal in the open mouth. It bounced out, and now the mammoth was concentrating on him.
He turned and ran. As he did so, he looked for von Billmann, who had been on the left with the rifle. He could see nothing of him and had no time to speculate where he was.
Though Gribardsun was very fast, he was not as swift as the mammoth. Its long legs covered the ground faster than his could, and suddenly the trumpeting and thundering of the hoofs was close behind him. With a yell he leaped to one side, and the mammoth reared up and whirled around with an unbelievable, and terrifying, swiftness.
Gribardsun ran forward and through the front legs of the startled creature and then threw himself to one side.
The mammoth whirled around him, stopped, and reversed its horizontal rotation on seeing the man rolling away.
Angrogrim, yelling, ran in past Gribardsun and hurled his spear into the open mouth of the beast. Its point disappeared into the pinkish flesh.
Gribardsun leaped up and ran off with the mammoth again pursuing him. Shivkaet launched a spear from his atlatl not ten feet from the beast, and the shaft drove at least a foot into its side.
The mammoth, however, would not be turned aside. It had its heart set on trampling Gribardsun.
The Englishman looked to his right. The tribesmen were running toward them with the intention of hurling their spears at the beast. Beyond, Drummond was looking through the camera's viewfinder. He was carrying a 32-caliber rifle with explosive bullets, but he seemed intent only on getting good pictures.
The yelling hunters swarmed in and the spears flew. One scraped Gribardsun's shoulder and another plunged into the ground and he had to leap over it.
But a series of thuds told him that many had plunged into the mammoth. He looked behind him; the beast had slowed down. Half a dozen shafts were sticking out from its sides, and one had entered a few inches into its right front leg and lamed it.
Then the express rifle boomed out three times, and the beast, gouting blood from great holes in its side, fell over. The impact made the earth quiver under Gribardsun's naked feet.
Drummond, his rifle still suspended on a strap over his shoulder, walked up and circled the beast, his camera taking in all the details.
Von Billmann, looked distressed, ran up to the Englishman.
'I'm sorry I didn't shoot sooner,' he said. 'But I caught my heel on a rock and fell on my head. I was stunned for a minute or so.'
He brushed the back of his head and showed Gribardsun the blood still welling from the cut.
Silverstein did not comment. The Englishman said, 'I realize the necessity of taking films. But didn't you understand that I was in bad trouble?'
Silverstein flushed and said, 'No, I didn't. By the time I realized that von Billmann should be shooting, it was too late. And then things happened so fast that I froze. But Robert did shoot then, and everything seemed all right.'
'In the future, the cameraman will have to be a backup for the rifleman,' Gribardsun said. 'An alert backup.' He turned away. There was nothing more to say. Silverstein was an intelligent man and would realize what Gribardsun could have said. Gribardsun was not sure that Silverstein had frozen because of panic. He might have been hoping, consciously or unconsciously, that the mammoth would trample Gribardsun.
The Englishman waved away the tribesmen who wanted to smear his forehead with the mammoth's blood. He sterilized the cut on the German's head and sprayed it with pseudoskin. Then he accepted the mammoth's tail and permitted the daubing.
The rest of the day was heavy work. The beasts were cut up into pieces small enough to haul. The entire tribe, except for the sick and the very old, of whom there were few, helped to carry the meat in.
While the work was going on, the vultures, ravens, wolves, and hyenas gathered around. Presently two cave lions appeared, scattered a pack of hyenas, and occupied their spot. They sat watching, occasionally roaring but not offering to approach closer. And then the hyenas suddenly attacked the lions.
Gribardsun shouted at Drummond to take pictures. This was too good to miss. There was nothing cowardly about these great beasts, and their teamwork was worthy of wolves. One would dash in and snap at a lion, and when the lion whirled and leaped, another would run in behind him and bite. Every time a lion bounded after a fleeing hyena, he had to quit chasing it because of painful bites on his tail or rear legs.
But a hyena was caught and killed by one of the lions as it tormented the other. Before it died, the hyena bit down once and the immensely powerful jaws broke the lioness's right front leg. The lioness closed her jaws on the hyena's hindquarters and scooped out its entrails with a huge paw. But she was crippled thereafter, and her mate, a giant possibly a third larger than the African lions of Gribardsun's time, was hard put to it to defend her. He was of a beautiful golden color that reminded Gribardsun of a pet he had once had in Kenya. He lacked the mane of the African lion, however.