It was a magnificent animal, bulging with winter fat and the finest of heavy fur. Pic looked down upon it and sighed. Bears in general interested him and appealed to his gentler nature; bluff and ungainly and so different from skulking flesh-eaters. The beast had died without a chance to defend himself. Pic’s triumph was tinged with profound regret; but one or the other of them had to die, he consoled himself, and he preferred the bear to be that one. He marvelled at the beast’s vast proportions; its thick hams and mighty paws; then his attention was drawn to the fur. “A wonderful coat,” he said, as he kneeled and ran his fingers through it. “Would that I had one like it to keep out the cold.”
“It is yours; take it,” something within him answered and the idea once born, soon became a reality. In a trice, his ax-blade was unbound from its wooden handle and became a knife. With this, Pic began to skin the beast, a tremendous task for a lone man with nothing but a flint tool to aid him. But the flint was sharp and the man’s strength and determination carried him through. He slit the neck, chest and belly downward, then the forepaws, and after much cutting and tugging pulled the complete hide from the carcass. The hind legs were uncovered without slitting, leaving those parts of the skin solid like a pair of boots. When the hide was completely detached inside out, Pic turned it back the right way again and the job was done.
He remounted his ax-head, rested and refreshed himself with some flesh-strips from the carcass, then proceeded to have a try-on of his new one-piece suit. The hind legs made comfortable trousers, and the rest of it, although somewhat loose and badly hung, might have been much worse. No better garment could have been devised to keep out the cold, and that was the main idea. It had but one drawback. Pic found it a most unwieldy thing to navigate in. When he tried to walk, he did nothing but trip and stumble over his own feet. This was no more than amusing, for he was feeling warm and comfortable and ready to smile at anything. “Hairi and Wulli will be surprised when they see me in this,” he laughed. “Agh! What a relief! My coat is every bit as warm as theirs. Snow, ice, cold wind; what of them? Now our way may lead to the country of the Mammoth and Rhinoceros, for all I care.”
XXIV
The Mammoth and Rhinoceros were standing near the foot of the mountain beneath an overhanging cliff. From time to time they glanced eastward as though expecting some one. The storm had moderated considerably.
“It’s about time he were returning,” Hairi remarked. “I hope when he does come back he will be all rested and warm. What a pity he cannot learn to fancy the cold weather as we do.”
“Here he comes now,” said the Rhinoceros.
Both animals possessed keen ears and noses, but their eyesight was not at all good. They saw a blurred figure coming toward them through the snow, but neither one of them could have distinguished a man from an elk at that distance. The figure moved in a most peculiar manner. It walked on its hind legs, but as it approached them the two friends saw, to their astonishment, that it was not a man.