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From later observation I mention this as worthy the attention of paleontologists and naturalists I came to the conclusion that such creatures as the cave-bear, the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as well as the larger carnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a day one in the morning and one after night.
They rootled in the tall grass or shouldered in long, snaky lines through the canes, their trunks waggling. "Mammoths they were called," said Arrumpa, "and they hid in the swamp because their tusks curved in and they were afraid of Saber-Tooth, the Tiger. There were a great many of them, though not so many as our people, and also there was Man.
Tim Sullivan had come over with the same opinion, no word of doubt in his mouth. But Mackenzie knew that when he should meet that wild night-prowler he would face a thing more savage than a bear, a thing as terrible to grapple with as the saber-tooth whose bones lay deep under the hills of that vast pasture-land.
For three days nothing of moment occurred. Bradley did not return; nor did we have any word from von Schoenvorts. In the evening Lys and I went up into one of the bastion towers and listened to the grim and terrible nightlife of the frightful ages of the past. Once a saber-tooth screamed almost beneath us, and the girl shrank close against me.
The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we treated all animals that invaded the village. We kept our run-ways and drinking-places to ourselves by making life miserable for the animals that trespassed or strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest hunting animals we so bedevilled that they learned to leave our places alone.
At the approach of the great black lion or the saber-tooth, or the wantonly malignant rhinoceros, they betook themselves to the tree-tops, and continued their way by that aërial path as long as it served them. The most subtle of the beasts they knew they could outwit, and their own anxiety now was Mawg, whose craft and courage Grôm could no longer hold in scorn.
Yet I was soon to know, and I was to know it as a thing more terrible than the Tawny One, than old Saber-Tooth, than the snakes themselves, than which it seemed there could be no things more terrible. Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived by himself. His mother lived in the caves, but two more children had come after him and he had been thrust out to shift for himself.
Before one saber-tooth the bear would have stood his ground scornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly, and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of the rhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split and battered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came, and then another bear.
Thus armed, they fearlessly followed the broad trail of bears, which led them very conveniently down the steep. And bear and saber-tooth alike, at sight of the flame thus apparently seeking them out, remembered their recent scorching discomfiture, and slunk off like whipped curs.
He governs the people, while I go away and think new things. And he is my friend. Look, I will teach him now this new thing. And we will make another just like it, that when we return to the Caves Bawr also shall know how to strike from very far off." With their rough-edged spear-heads of flint they set themselves to the skinning of the saber-tooth.
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