LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Gonch and the Mired Mammoth | [Frontispiece] |
| PAGE | |
| Gonch and the Wolves | [11] |
| “Three men were ascending to the cave-threshold” | [21] |
| “Man and boy were charging upon the beasts at top speed” | [35] |
| The Fall of the Tilting Stone | [45] |
| “There stood Pic” | [53] |
| “Friends should ever help each other” | [61] |
| “You must stay behind” | [75] |
| The leader of the Cave Hyenas brings news | [83] |
| The Pursuit | [89] |
| The Cave Lion Cub learning how to shoot | [95] |
| Wulli defies the Cave Beasts | [105] |
| “He sank to his knees, dizzy and scared” | [115] |
| “A shaggy beast hove in sight” | [119] |
| “His fall had ripped a large patch of wool from his trousers’ seat” | [125] |
| The Journey across the Pyrenees | [129] |
| Kutnar bags a hare | [141] |
| The Hetman loses patience | [151] |
| “Gonch recovered by degrees” | [165] |
| “The Cave Bear looked up and growled” | [181] |
| Pic astonishes his friends | [187] |
| “The unknown was plucked from his burrow” | [193] |
| “Hiss! something whistled past” | [203] |
| The Battle of the Giants | [207] |
| “Down he fell” | [217] |
KUTNAR—SON OF PIC
I
Totan, hetman of the northern Spanish cave-folk, sat upon the threshold of Castillo, watching a party of men coming toward him up the mountainside. His people, to the number of eighty or more, were behind him gathered about a roaring fire. All were clad in the skins of beasts and armed with wooden clubs and javelins. They stared down at the newcomers with hungry wolfish eyes.
Those approaching from below were short, thick-set men with hairy bodies and bent limbs—gaunt, hollow-cheeked and beast-like, and yet men. They clambered up to the cavern threshold where Totan and his band awaited them.
In the van strode Gonch the Muskman. All greeted him in sullen silence, for it was plain to be seen that neither he nor his companions brought food of any kind. Totan rose to his feet livid with rage. He was a giant in strength, a grotesque and misshapen Hercules, bandy-legged and short-armed. His head was apparently without neck, so closely did it set upon his brawny shoulders. His low forehead sloped to a pair of heavily bone-ribbed eyes and thick aquiline nose. His big bull-teeth gleamed from his protruding muzzle. His bushy brows were drawn down in a terrible scowl.
“No food!” he roared. “Again our hunters return empty-handed. We must eat. Who shall it be?” He glared fiercely from one man to another. All cringed before him like beaten curs. He was about to vent his wrath upon Gonch, the leader of the party, when his eyes lifted with astonishment at sight of something in the Muskman’s right hand.