Wulli remained at his post for some time to make sure. When convinced that there was nothing more to be feared from the Cave Beasts, he again went about his business. For some time he trudged back and forth in an agony of indecision, but there seemed only one way to go—after the Mammoth whose comfort he yearned for and sorely needed. So he made that his choice, following untiringly over hill and valley, through glades and across swiftly flowing streams.
His woolly coat was torn and shabby and nearly every ounce of his superfluous flesh had been consumed, when at last he came to great mountains, so lofty their peaks seemed to touch the sky. He groaned dismally. Cliffs and high places were the last things on earth any rhinoceros would care to meet. Wulli would have given half of his life just then if the Mammoth and Pic had suddenly appeared before him, homeward bound. He hated mountains. They made him dizzy and weak at his knees and elbows. He gazed despairingly at the towering crests. The trail of his crony the Mammoth led to them, clear and unmistakable. There was no help for it. Wulli set his jaws tightly together, and with many misgivings for his future, plunged blindly and boldly upward among the peaks and crags.
XV
The left bank of the Midouze River was for Pic the parting of the ways between himself and his son. All trace of the latter had vanished absolutely and completely. He tried every known art of woodcraft but without success. Search the river bank as he would, he could find no sign of the missing boy. “The traitor has made use of the water to play me a trick,” he thought, but just what the trick was, he could not determine. “He has fled to his country in the southland,” he told the Mammoth. “If we continue in the same direction as we have been going, we will again find this Gonch following the straight path.”
There was nothing left to do but pursue this plan. Thus far, the Muskman’s flight had been on a straight line to the southwest. It was reasonable to presume that in time he would so continue. He had doubled or side-stepped to avoid his pursuers, but he must get back to the line in the end.
Heretofore the Mammoth’s nose or trunk-tip had guided the way, but now that the trail was lost, the responsibility for taking the right course devolved on Pic. It was a case of direction, and so he made use of his knowledge of the sun’s position at rising and setting, also other signs that good woodsmen knew for determining where they wished to go.
“I will find this man, even if I have to go to the earth’s end to do it,” he vowed, and the way he scowled boded ill for the Muskman. He guided the Mammoth through the Midouze region across another river, the Adour, to a low wet region where traveling was most difficult. It was a veritable network of brooks and rivulets with ponds, sloughs and soft spots scattered promiscuously between. From black muck and mud, the soil gradually changed to marl, then sand and clay as the land surface inclined upward. This latter was seamed everywhere with tiny streams, through which flowed the drainage from a more elevated region. The two travelers were now ascending the slopes, leading to a mountain range which barred their way, extending in a long line from east to west.
At sight of the mountains, Pic said to Mammoth: “The rough country lies before us. Among the rocks and cliffs we will find where men live.”