Thorn well knew that a mammoth stuck in the mud meant meat for the cave folks for many a day. So he lightly slid down the tree and ran to the stone yard with the news. The men there ran to the nearest caves with the word, and it was sent on from cave to cave.
The herd stayed with the mired mammoth all day. But when night fell, the other mammoths slowly left him, often turning back to touch him with their trunks and to trumpet.
A crowd of cave men had already gathered, and were waiting in the woods until the herd should leave. They now made fires around the mammoth to keep off the wolves and hyenas that had already begun to skulk about. And then they killed the mammoth with their spears.
[Illustration: Wolves]
As the sun rose next morning, Thorn and his grandfather and grandmother went over to the swamp. The cave people soon began to come in from all the caves round about in the hill country. They came in little crowds, laughing and talking very loud. They were happy, for there was plenty to eat and somebody to eat with. As they came up, they stood for a long time looking at the mammoth and talking about how big he was. And some told of other mammoths that had got stuck in swamps and of how they had found them.
Thorn sat down on the side of a hill and watched the people coming. The arms and faces of the men and women were painted in stripes of red or yellow. All the cave men that Thorn knew were there, and many that he did not know. Before long his own family came.
Soon after that the men began to cut great pieces of meat from the mammoth. They gave them to the women to roast. The women made fires and put stones in them to get hot. They dug holes in the ground and rolled into them some of the hot stones. Next they threw meat upon the hot stones and rolled more hot stones upon it. Then they covered the holes with dirt and built fires upon them. While the meat was roasting, the women went over to watch the men playing.
The men were talking together in a crowd. A man named Crowfoot stood out and shouted, "I can climb a tree faster than any man here!"