PIC THE WEAPON-MAKER
I
The cold weight of bitter glacial winter lay heavy upon the Dordogne region of southwestern France. Grass and sedge tuft were hidden beneath a mantle of ermine snow. The last withered oak and sycamore leaves had long since fluttered to the ground and only bare branches were left pointing skyward like dead fingers. The bushes stuck straight up like bundles of stiff rods. No sounds could be heard except faint whisperings of sleet blown over the snow-crust and of rending creaking frost gnawing into every hole and crevice.
Bison, moose, stag, ox and every other hoofed and horned beast of meadow, mountain and glade were assembled near the base of the southern slope of a long high ridge bristling with outcropping limestone crags and pinnacles. Every pair of horns and eyes was directed upward and every heart beat fast with great awe and fear.
For a monstrous creature was lumbering down the slope toward them, plowing its way irresistibly through the snow-packs like an avalanche launched from the heights—a strange beast of another world descending as it were from the sky. Its huge head crowned with peaked forepart, nigh equalled in bulk the Bison’s body. A ponderous nose-lip dangled from its face, writhing python-like, between two long cream-colored tusks which swept downward then outward, then upward and forward to their polished tips in three graceful, twisting curves. And yet the colossal head was but a fragment compared with the vast body behind it. Both were thatched with jumbled masses of shaggy hair fluffed and tossed about by the breeze like tasseled plumes. The massive hulk was borne along upon four hairy pillar legs, each rivalling in girth the wrist of a stout oak which stood in the giant’s path, thrust upward through the snow like a great gnarled fist. The lowermost branch rising some twelve feet above the ground, barely cleared the shaggy head-peak as it passed beneath. Such was the Hairy Mammoth, monarch of the bleak northern wastes and largest of all creatures ranging the length and breadth of Europe.
The Arrival of the Mammoth