“Shadow? Oomp! He would need food even more.”
“True enough,” Pic admitted. “I had not thought of that.” He crawled on hands and knees to the rear of the cave and groped about in the darkness. In a few moments he returned carrying a long ill-smelling object—the almost putrid limb of a wild-ox. Its odor sickened him. “Poor stuff but it must do for the want of something better,” was his only comment as the two animals shrank back in disgust. He dropped it into the grave. There seemed nothing more to be done, so he covered all with dirt, stamping it firmly down and piling more rocks over the head and feet. This finished, he crawled to the cave-mouth and emerged into the open with eyes blinking at the blinding light.
“All is done,” he said. “And now for the country of the flint-workers.”
“And the cave with its buried treasure. Do not forget that,” Wulli added. “It must be found.”
Nothing more was said. The trio descended the slope and followed the winding base of the hill along the same route as that by which Hairi and Wulli had first come. As they reached the bend which veered their course to the north, the Ape Boy who was last in line, stopped short. As the others plodded on, he turned for a last look at the distant grotto. His right hand gripping the prized flint-blade was raised high above his head in farewell to the dead Cave Man.
“Rest while your shadow guards you,” he said in a solemn voice. “The night has come; your day is ended.” The uplifted arm fell to his side. He faced about and in a moment had vanished around the bend, leaving the last tie which bound him to humanity lying buried in the floor of the cave.
IX
Some forty thousand years ago plus or minus a few odd centuries, years, months, weeks and days, a strange group might have been seen wending its way northward through the very heart of France. It was the Ape Boy and his two animal friends, the Hairy Mammoth Elephant and Woolly Rhinoceros. The two shaggy beasts lumbered on side by side, the former towering twice above the height of his smaller companion. On the Mammoth’s neck settled deeply in the depression between head and shoulders, sat Pic with ax held across his thighs and his hyena robe trailing behind him in the breeze.