The Faith of Men | Page 7

I queried. "Who ever heard of a man
killing a mammoth with a hand-axe? And, for that matter, with
anything else?"
"O man, have I not told you I was mad?" Nimrod replied, with a slight
manifestation of sensitiveness. "Mad clean through, what of Klooch
and the gun. Also, was I not a hunter? And was this not new and most
unusual game? A hand-axe? Pish! I did not need it. Listen, and you
shall hear of a hunt, such as might have happened in the youth of the
world when cavemen rounded up the kill with hand-axe of stone. Such
would have served me as well. Now is it not a fact that man can
outwalk the dog or horse? That he can wear them out with the
intelligence of his endurance?"
I nodded.
"Well?"
The light broke in on me, and I bade him continue.
"My valley was perhaps five miles around. The mouth was closed.
There was no way to get out. A timid beast was that bull mammoth,
and I had him at my mercy. I got on his heels again hollered like a
fiend, pelted him with cobbles, and raced him around the valley three
times before I knocked off for supper. Don't you see? A race-course! A
man and a mammoth! A hippodrome, with sun, moon, and stars to

referee!
"It took me two months to do it, but I did it. And that's no beaver dream.
Round and round I ran him, me travelling on the inner circle, eating
jerked meat and salmon berries on the run, and snatching winks of
sleep between. Of course, he'd get desperate at times and turn. Then I'd
head for soft ground where the creek spread out, and lay anathema
upon him and his ancestry, and dare him to come on. But he was too
wise to bog in a mud puddle. Once he pinned me in against the walls,
and I crawled back into a deep crevice and waited. Whenever he felt for
me with his trunk, I'd belt him with the hand-axe till he pulled out,
shrieking fit to split my ear drums, he was that mad. He knew he had
me and didn't have me, and it near drove him wild. But he was no
man's fool. He knew he was safe as long as I stayed in the crevice, and
he made up his mind to keep me there. And he was dead right, only he
hadn't figured on the commissary. There was neither grub nor water
around that spot, so on the face of it he couldn't keep up the siege. He'd
stand before the opening for hours, keeping an eye on me and flapping
mosquitoes away with his big blanket ears. Then the thirst would come
on him and he'd ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me
every name he could lay tongue to. This was to frighten me, of course;
and when he thought I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away
softly and try to make a sneak for the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get
almost there--only a couple of hundred yards away it was--when out I'd
pop and back he'd come, lumbering along like the old landslide he was.
After I'd done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he changed his
tactics. Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of warning,
away he'd go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and
back before I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he
raised the siege and deliberately stalked off to the water-hole.
"That was the only time he penned me,--three days of it,--but after that
the hippodrome never stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six
days' go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags and
tatters, but I never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son of
earth, with nothing but the old hand-axe in one hand and a cobble in the
other. In fact, I never stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the crannies

and ledges of the cliffs. As for the bull, he got perceptibly thinner and
thinner--must have lost several tons at least--and as nervous as a
schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I'd come up with
him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he'd jump like a
skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail and
trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing,
and the way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral
beast he was, a murderer, and a blasphemer.
"But towards the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering