“You here?” Wulli gasped. “I am so glad. We have found you at last.”
“I, too, am glad,” said the Mammoth. “We have come far to find you. But why should these men destroy each other? I do not see Pic and am so afraid. Where is he?”
Kutnar stared at the huge beast like one not in his right mind. He pointed to the body over which he kneeled and replied in a hollow voice: “Here he lies and yet it is not he. The best of him is gone. He tried to save me from these savage men. For that he died;” and the boy rocked back and forth over his father’s body, moaning as though his heart would break.
The Mammoth bowed his head, overwhelmed, crushed as the terrible truth drove itself home. “Dead?” he groaned dismally. “I too will stay. I will not leave him.”
“Nor I,” said the Rhinoceros solemnly.
All three remained with heads bent low, paying their last tribute to the Mousterian chief. The Mammoth was the first to recover himself. He stamped his feet and flapped his ears. His eyes reddened like hot coals. “Who killed him?” he screamed. “If one of these men did it, I will trample the life out of every one of them, even though I have to climb over the top of this mountain to do it.”
Kutnar was on his feet in an instant. “Who killed him? I do not know. But there is one who caused all this, my traitor-friend the Hyena Man. I heard his voice above us. He must die.” He darted across the ledge and picked up his sling and pebble-pouch which had fallen there during the melee, then leaped down the slope and looked above him. A man was ascending the Scarp. Kutnar ran to one side of the rock-shelter and began climbing up.
High above his head, Gonch was ascending leisurely, feeling comfortable in the thought that Totan and Pic were no more. He had seen Totan’s body and would have relished a glimpse of Pic’s but the Mammoth and Rhinoceros stood on guard below and he dared not descend. However Pic was as dead as Totan, he felt reasonably certain and now that his enemies were out of the way, he planned to return to Castillo and seize the reins of authority. Some day, Fate permitting, he might even venture into the Mousterian country and take Pic’s place. The possibilities of his future were unlimited. He might become the foremost potentate in all the world.
He was looking behind him now and then from force of habit. There were none left to pursue him but he had not seen Pic’s body and therefore could not feel absolutely sure. As he snatched one of his hurried glances, to his horror, he saw a figure scaling the cliff below him. For an instant he thought that the Mousterian chief must have risen from the grave to destroy him, then he breathed a sigh of relief. It was not Pic but a much smaller man. One of his own people perhaps. He halted until the other came near enough to be recognized. Gonch stared at him in amazement then snarled hatefully, “Kutnar! What brings the boy here?”
As if in reply, Kutnar shook his fist at the Muskman and cried out, “Traitor, you shall not escape me this time,” and climbed up as fast as he could.