THE FEAST OF MAMMOTH'S MEAT
One morning after Thorn had come back to his grandfather's cave, he woke up with tears on his face.
"Last night when I was asleep," he said to himself, "my shadow self went away to the home cave. And there it saw my mother and Pineknot and the baby sitting about the fire, just as they used to sit. And they were talking about me, saying that they wanted to see me. And I want to go home to see them."
The homesick boy went into the woods for comfort; he loved to watch the wild things going about. Not far off, he saw a herd of mammoths feeding. He never tired of looking at the big hairy elephants with their turned-up tusks and long snaky trunks. They were reaching up for the tender leaves of the birch, or needles of the hemlock, and would carry the green stuff to their mouths with their trunks. Young ones with shaggy coats of woolly hair, were playing about their mothers or eating grass. Sometimes one of the big mothers would give her young one a bunch of leaves. Then she would rub it gently with her trunk, petting it.
The herd ate on toward the edge of the woods. Then, following a big mammoth, it left the forest and went toward a swamp.
Thorn slipped down from his tree and ran to another one on the edge of the woods, where he could get a better view. From here he saw the mammoths out in the swamp. Some were drinking, others were wallowing, and still others were throwing water over themselves with their trunks. After getting a thick coat of mud on their shaggy skins, the herd began to leave the swamp.
But one big mammoth did not leave with the others. He could not; he had gone far out in the swamp. His feet sank in the soft mud; and when he tried to pull them out, he found them stuck fast. Then he began to trumpet. At this the whole herd grew uneasy and turned back and walked round him, waving their trunks and trumpeting and throwing mud and water.
