Gonch crawled away along the ledge and down the causeway like a beaten hound, terrified but thankful enough that the giant’s teeth and hands were not now tearing his throat. The farther he got away, however, the more comfortable he felt in body and mind, and by the time he reached the valley his courage had in a great measure returned.
“There Stood Pic”
He was safe—for the present—and having no immediate concern on that point, he began to consider and reflect bitterly upon the sudden miscarriage of his plans. Now he could no more think of persuading the master flint-worker to return with him than he could of compelling him to do so by force. The very thought of using force on Pic made him squirm. He might more easily overcome a lion.
As he walked down the valley, his thoughts turned to Totan and the men of Castillo. What would they say when he returned discredited and empty-handed? The big hetman was not one who dealt gently with vain boasters. Gonch could almost feel the hetman’s club crashing down upon his pate. Pic here, Totan there; whether he stayed or went, it was all the same—a giant waiting to crush the life out of him. Gonch felt himself between the devil and the deep, blue sea.
Pic was a friend of animals and a lover of peace, but the prosperity and power that he had brought upon the cave-men of the Vézère was not to be denied. They were the strongest men, the most successful hunters in all the world, and all because of Pic, the genius that ruled over them. No one had said that the master flint-worker was hetman of the Mousterians, but Gonch knew it now, and he knew it without being told. He had failed miserably. Pic the Lion had snared Gonch the Fox with scarce an effort. To all appearances the former was but a flint-worker, skilled beyond belief and a physical giant to boot, but with the disposition of a child, peacefully inclined towards man and beast. A fool? hardly; even though Gonch hated him for not being one. His arm ruled over the Vézère like the paw of a gigantic lion, its claws drawn into their sheath-pads, its powerful muscles hidden beneath their covering of heavy fur.
It was all just as had first been told to him in the southland. Gonch bit his lips until the blood came. Now he saw the truth of what he did not then believe from the lips of the man he himself had slain near the northern Cantabrian slopes. The Mousterian domain was the most powerful in all the world, and the arm that ruled over it, the mind that guided its destinies, were those of a simple flint-worker and weapon maker—Pic, the Mammoth Man.