[Illustration: Throwing a spear]

"Strongarm's eye is best!" the others shouted. "His arm is strongest!"

After that a young man cried, "I have flying feet! Who will run with me?"

"I will!"

And young men ran out and stood beside him, and all the people watched.

The race started. The young men ran lightly, like deer. They skimmed the ground like swallows. Some of them ran all the way side by side, and came in together sweating and panting.

The people clapped their hands and said laughing, "They are good cave men; they can both fight and run away."

By this time the meat was roasted. The women pulled it from the holes with long sticks, and the people took great pieces in their hands and ate them, and then took more.

"Mammoth meat is good and juicy," one man said.

"Yes," said another, "but not so tender as horse or reindeer meat."

After eating all they wanted, Thorn and Pineknot and old Hickory's children and some of the other children went off to play. They played being grown up; and Thorn fought with the other little hunters and caught and carried off a wife, and played living with her and their children in a cave.

The men ate for a long time, but at last they had enough. Then they began to break up the tusks of the mammoth, and they gave a piece to each man who had helped to kill the animal.

"To wear on your necklace," they said.

And they gave a piece to Thorn because he had found the mired mammoth. Strongarm looked at him proudly then, and the boy stood straight and tall and held his head high.

A man standing near him snatched for the piece of tusk, but Strongarm shouted, "Get off!" and scowled and shook his fist.

The man grew angry and raised his stone ax. Strongarm snatched his, and in a minute there was a clash of stone axes. The other men stood around and watched. They loved a good fight. Before long Strongarm's ax crashed down on the man's head, and he fell over and lay still. The others looked at him, and then went on breaking up the tusks.

After that every man grew busy, and began to cut as much meat from the big bones of the mammoth as he could carry. One bone was all cut bare. Three men standing near it whispered together. Then they lifted the bone and carried it toward a man who could not make axes and was too lazy to hunt. They set it down before him.

"This is your prize," they said, without a smile.

Everybody was looking.

The man turned red and snatched a spear. But the other men ran away and laughed. And everybody laughed.

Then the people started homeward, carrying the mammoth meat. Thorn said good-bye to his grandfather for a while and went home with his mother. Old Hickory and his family went along with Strongarm and his family, and the children ran through the bushes and scared up the wild rabbits and porcupines.

When they reached the cave, Thorn told Pineknot all over again about the mammoth. And he scratched a picture on the piece of tusk to show him. Holding up the picture he said, "This is the way the angry mammoth looked. His mouth was open, and his trunk was up. When still a long way off, the men heard him trumpeting."

Then Thorn made another picture of the mammoth. In it he showed the big body with the long hair, and the turned-up tusks, the long trunk, the small eyes, and the shaggy ears.

Thorn was very happy that evening, as he sat in his old place by the fire. Pineknot sat beside him, and Wow wow lay at his feet.

CHAPTER XV

THE RED MEN OF OUR OWN COUNTRY IN THE STONE AGE

Last summer a little boy went to visit his grandfather who lived near one of the beautiful lakes in the northern part of our own land. The family doctor was very kind to the boy and often took him on long walks into the country.