Hairi’s eyes opened wide. “Pic, sure enough. But his body; where is that? The bear must have eaten it.”
“Perhaps he ate the bear,” whispered Wulli, clutching at a small ray of hope. “Let’s ask him.”
“Ho-ho!” laughed the unknown. “Did I frighten you? Now don’t run away, Hairi, for there is nothing to worry about. Nobody has eaten anybody.”
The voice was reassuring and it belonged to Pic without question. The Mammoth breathed more freely. He advanced a few steps and touched the other with the tip of his trunk. “Fur, long and thick like a bear’s.” He turned to the Rhinoceros and said, “I told him to do it and he has done it. But who would believe that he could grow so much hair and in so short a time?”
Sounds of muffled laughter greeted this last remark. Wulli now came forward to investigate the reason for this unseemly mirth. He sniffed at the bearskin, then suddenly backed away squealing with alarm. “Oo-wee! Blood! I smell it! Oo-wee; somebody has been killed.”
The two animals might have bolted then and there, had not Pic put an end to the farce. He threw the skin from his body and it fell in a heap about his legs.
“It is I; all of me,” he said. “Somebody has been killed but I was not the one. I slew the bear, otherwise he would have slain me. With my flint-blade I cut his pelt from him and now it is mine.”
“And so you did not grow it,” said the Mammoth, somewhat crestfallen. “At any rate, you did your best to do as I told you.”
Wulli took an entirely different view of the matter. He could appreciate a good fighter. “Only a big man could kill such a big bear,” he remarked thoughtfully.
“And a smaller bear would not have been much use to him,” Hairi sagely remarked. “He could never have gotten in its skin. I say he did right.”