“A hyena?” the boy laughed. “No, Wulli; you are wrong for once. Smell again.”
The Rhinoceros took another long careful sniff. Once more he raised his head and maintained stubbornly: “My nose never lies, I tell you. I know that smell of him who eats men and bad meat. I say it was a hyena.”
For an instant the boy eyed his companion in doubt. Heretofore Wulli’s nose had been infallible. It was his eyes versus the Rhino’s nose. Probably the eyes were mistaken. They had caught only a fleeting glimpse. He laughed again. A second laugh echoed overhead. The three friends looked hastily upward and saw a hideous face leering down upon them. Quick as lightning, Kutnar made ready his sling and hurled a pebble. A loud yelp and the face disappeared. “Hyena it was,” said the lad. “Wulli is right; his nose never lies, but had I not seen the beast a second time, I would have sworn that he who pushed the rock down upon us, was a man.”
VII
Gonch fled across the plateau until he found a place where he could conceal himself and here he stayed until he judged that all danger of detection was past. Then he made a wide detour and proceeded to the Rock of Moustier, not from the valley side but across the heights, a route rarely or never taken by ones desiring to reach the grotto below.
As he halted at the cliff overlooking the cave-threshold, he caught sight of a man squatting far beneath him beside a fire. It was Pic engaged in weapon-making. His right arm did not rise and fall with each stroke of the hammerstone. He was devoting his efforts to the finer work, retouching flakes with the mysterious finishing tool. Gonch lay flat upon his chest and stomach and peered over the cliff. While so doing he was unconscious of the fact that he had dislodged several stone chips and caused them to fall.
Beneath him, the giant flint-worker still squatted motionless beside the fire but his ears were straining, his brain working rapidly as he sought the meaning of dust and limestone chips mysteriously descended upon him from above. The sun was warm. It was quite a natural gesture for him to turn his head askew and downward at the same time and wipe the perspiration from it with his arm; also it enabled him to catch a glimpse of a man’s head peering down upon him from the cliff.
Pic resumed his former position but now he was staring at his feet, his brows contracted in deep thought. For several minutes he maintained this attitude, then his brows lifted and he glanced at what he held in his hand. It was a ridiculously simple affair—a piece of bone not much larger than his forefinger, smooth, straight and notched at one end.