The Hunter Returns Read online

  “Men do not hunt in the darkness, Wolf,” said Elm, the medicine woman. She was very old, perhaps a full generation older than anyone else in the tribe. Although Elm was a woman, age and the spiritual powers which she invoked in healing gave her freedom to speak where others would remain silent.

  Wolf nodded toward the east. “It is not night, it is morning,” he said gruffly. “Besides, we need meat.

  “Come,” he repeated. The hunters were looking at him. They got to their feet without objection. The ten adult men and their sons stayed close together as they slipped through the near-light.

  Old Kar looked back once, toward the campfire which the women would now have to stoke. The Chief Fire-Maker had a duty to the camp, but his greatest duty was to the hunt; especially now, when the tribe’s luck had been bad for so long.

  The mammoth was alone. It was a young bull, perhaps one driven from its herd when it challenged another bull for leadership—and failed.

  The beast’s current problems began when it tried to cross a slow-moving stream during the night. The low creek bank shaded imperceptibly into a marsh of reeds rather than ordinary grasses. The mammoth was now bogged to its belly in sucking mud.

  Wolf frowned at the sight. He and his hunters were not the only predators summoned by the beast’s despairing bellows.

  A pack of a dozen dire wolves snapped and snarled among themselves at the edge of the marsh, waiting for dawn to provide them a better notion of how to proceed. The dire wolves were twice the bulk of ordinary wolves, and their powerful jaws enabled them to break up bones which their lesser cousins could not.

  The increase in size and strength had not been accompanied by a comparable boost in brain capacity. The dire wolves were unusually stupid for carnivores. Their usual tactic was to charge straight in and overpower their prey. That would not work here.

  The mammoth, though trapped beyond hope of rescue, weighed five tons. It was simply too big for the wolves alone to kill. Besides, it still swept a great arc with its trunk and curved tusks.

  The morning sun was not yet high enough to lift vultures from the trees on which they perched overnight. They would come soon enough, drawn by the movements of other meat eaters even before the scent of death reached the birds’ keen nostrils.

  The killers on which all the would-be scavengers depended were the pair of great tigers pacing toward the mammoth from upstream while Wolf and his hunters approached in the opposite direction. The cats advanced with a degree of caution, heads up and sniffing the wind. A grown mammoth was a dangerous opponent, even for tigers whose fangs were six-inch knives.

  “The tigers are already here, Wolf,” said Boartooth, as though the Chief Hunter had not seen the big cats almost a minute before. Boartooth, an Assistant Fire-Maker, was a young man who wore a broad necklace of boar tusks to flaunt his name. He had vast confidence in his own abilities. “We must go back.”

  Wolf looked at Boartooth sourly. “No,” he said. “We need meat, so we will drive the animals away and take the mammoth.”

  “Waugh!” said several of the hunters in surprise. Old Kar looked at Wolf with concern. The Chief Fire-Maker guessed what his own part in the plan would be, and he was worried that he would not be able to perform it.

  “Wolf,” Kar said, “the grass here will not burn well. There will be more smoke than fire, and the flames will spread slowly.”

  He nodded toward the pack of wolves, angrily sidling away from the oncoming tigers. “Besides,” he added, “these are not bison to flee in panic from a fire. While there is so much meat around, they will not go far.”

  Wolf grunted. “We are men,” he said. “It is right that the meat should be ours.”

  The Chief Hunter turned to Boartooth. “You, Boartooth,” he said. “Go back and bring the women and girls. We will camp on the creek bank, and our campfire will keep the wolves and tigers away.”

  Kar grimaced. “Be sure they fetch all the dry wood,” he said. “The alder saplings along the creek here will not burn well, and we will need a very big fire tonight.”

  As the Chief Fire-Maker spoke, one of the saber-tooths sprang with a terrifying scream. Its forelegs locked on either side of the mammoth’s hump. They anchored the cat while the long fangs stabbed and slashed backward under the pull of the tiger’s powerful neck muscles.

  Arterial blood spurted from the deep cuts. The red streams pulsed, paused, and pulsed again. Blood soaked the black wool covering the mammoth’s hide.

  The stricken mammoth bellowed again and clubbed its trunk back over its head. The tiger was already leaping away. The mammoth’s blow staggered the cat and caused it to splash sideways into the marsh. The saber-tooth twisted, then clawed its way to firm ground in a spray of water and shredded reeds.

  The killer’s mate began to groom it on the banks. The long saber fangs were bright with blood. The tiger licked them clean with obvious relish while the mammoth bled to death in the bog nearby.

  Kar fussed with his preparations, plaiting the coarse bottomland grass into torches. The outer leaves were golden and would burn well enough, but the core of each grass stem was still pale and juicy because the soil was so wet.

  The hunters could see that they would have trouble even keeping their torches burning. The tigers began to eat. The smell of fresh meat outweighed the tribe’s concerns.

  Each hunter carried a hollow gourd filled with punk. Kar went from one man to the next, lighting the punk from the smoldering in his own gourd. By the time Boartooth returned, a little embarrassed at having been sent on a task that would usually have been given to a boy, all was ready for this unusual hunt.

  Wolf gave a curt order. The men and boys lighted heir torches and moved forward slowly. This time instead of running ahead of the fire, they let the mild breeze advance the flames.

  As Kar had warned, there was smoke but very little in the way of fire. The gray-white cloud clung to the grassheads as it blew toward the mammoth. The dire wolves had taken no notice of the tribe. Now the pack began to snarl and pace, uncertain of what was happening.

  The male saber-tooth rose to its full height on the mammoth’s back and roared a challenge while its mate hunched low. After a moment, the cats resumed eating, but their attention was now concentrated on the humans.

  The hunters continued to walk forward, relighting their wall of protection wherever it had smoldered out. Their legs were smeared black from the ashes. Occasionally a man would yelp as he brushed the tip of a stem which was still glowing.

  The women and girls, carrying all the possessions of the tribe, stayed close behind the males. Elm muttered, but even she was willing to accept that there was no traditional way to hunt a bogged mammoth—so Wolf was not going against tradition. If the tribe hadn’t been so hungry, there might have been louder protests . . . but they were very hungry.

  Bitter smoke wrapped the carnivores in memories of instinctive fear. The cats stopped eating, but they held their position on top of the mammoth’s carcass. The female growled. The male rose frequently onto its hind legs and slashed out with its widespread claws. The smoke swirled and reformed.

  The line of hunters was within fifty yards of the mammoth. Vultures wheeled in the sky, but the birds would not come down while the smoke from the grassfire drifted over the ground.

  “Hau!” the Chief Hunter shouted. His torch had gone out, but the fire had begun to leap ahead of him over the pithy reed tops closer to the creek.

  He clashed the shafts of his two spears together. “Hau!” he called again. “Run, beasts, run! We are men and we come with fire!”

  “Hau!” cried Kar, who did not have a spear. He waved his club to fan the flames. Other hunters took up the chant, clacking their spears together—tentatively at first, then faster and louder as they found the noise gave them courage and disturbed the animals. The wolves began to back away, then paused.

  Wolf was afraid, but he knew that if the humans turned and ran now, the pack would chase them down and kill all but the s
wiftest. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he shouted, “Come!” to his men and rushed forward.

  The fire singed his thighs as he ran through it. For a moment, the dire wolves were shadows twisting in the thickest part of the smoke. Then the pack broke and fled in the opposite direction. The ground trembled as a dozen 200-pound wolves galloped across it.

  Boartooth threw a spear. It was a good cast, but the range was long. The spear struck a wolf in the haunch and penetrated to half the length of the flint blade—deep enough to cling, but not to disable its victim. The dire wolf, yelping in bass terror, ran even faster.

  For the first time since he exiled Hawk, the Chief Hunter realized that the tribe no longer had a spear-maker to make up for such accidents. They would have to appoint a Chief Spear-Maker soon—

  But first there was the problem of gaining the tons of good meat which were almost in their grasp.

  When the wolves ran, the male saber-tooth leaped to firm ground with effortless grace. He roared a challenge while his mate crouched on the mammoth.

  Kar had paused to plait together several reeds and ignite their dry heads. Though the reeds did not make a bright flame, they burned better than the wet grass, and the new torch had sufficient weight to carry it if thrown. Kar hurled the burning reeds straight at the tiger.

  The bundle caught the cat on the side of the jaw. Its whiskers and the fine tufts of hair on its ears flared up. The tiger roared and sprang off in the direction the wolves had taken.

  For a moment, the female saber-tooth held her place on top of the huge corpse. Then, with a blood-curdling roar, she jumped to the bank also. For a moment her body was a tawny shadow arching like a fish’s back every time it leaped and disappeared again in the high grass. Then Wolf’s tribe was alone with the corpse of the mammoth and a skyful of vultures which were afraid to land.

  “We’ve driven them off!” Boartooth cried exultantly. “Our luck has changed, now that we’ve rid ourselves of Hawk!”

  “Begin laying a proper fire,” said Kar coldly. “We’ll need more than smoke to keep those teeth away from us as soon as the wolves and tigers have time to get over their surprise.”

  But the whole tribe, including the women and children, was splashing through the marsh with hand-axes and flint knives to get pieces of the meat. They were famished. None of them would wait for the mammoth to cook before they ate their bellies full.

  Kar sighed and began to gather dry wood from where the women had dropped it. He was as hungry as the rest of them; but his duty came first, and Kar’s duty was to make the fire that would protect the tribe through the rest of the day—and the night which would follow.

  The sun was two fingers beneath the horizon, but it still cast its red glow over the western sky. The moon would not rise until after midnight, and even then it would be a waning sliver. Through the twilight sounded the hollow tok! tok! tok! of a hand-axe on bone.

  “Boartooth!” Kar shouted. The Chief Fire-Maker and Chinless, his other assistant, were dragging a bundle of alder saplings toward the fire. “Leave the mammoth alone and help us cut wood!”

  Most of the tribe sprawled around the fire on their backs or sides, trying to find a comfortable posture. Their bellies were swollen with the huge amount of raw meat they had stuffed down their throats.

  Many of the humans had eaten so much that they threw up. That didn’t matter; there was plenty more to refill the suddenly emptied stomachs. No matter what, tons of the rich, fat-marbled meat would spoil before the tribe could possibly devour it.

  Even Wolf looked nearly comatose with his eyes half-open. His powerful fingers were laced over his belly as if to keep his guts from bursting out. With the exception of Kar—and Chinless, whom the Chief Fire-Maker had bullied into getting on with his duties—the tribe were not so much humans for the moment as they were like serpents which lay torpid as they digested the swollen lump that marked their most recent meal.

  The campfire was near the mammoth. Kar had set his fire as close to the creek bank as he could in the jubilant confusion after the tribe gained the mountain of warm meat.

  The fire had to be close if it was to keep the other predators away from the mammoth as well as protecting the humans during the night, but the constant procession of people jumping and splashing to and from the corpse made it impossible for the Chief Fire-Maker to build as near the bank as he wanted.

  “I’m cutting out a tusk, Kar,” Boartooth replied. In the near-darkness, it was almost impossible to tell where the young man ended and where the dead mammoth began. “I’ll carve it with this scene, so that the mammoth spirit will be thankful and send us more of his children to eat.”

  “We need wood!” Kar shouted angrily. “We don’t have enough fuel to keep the fire burning all night!”

  Tok! went Boartooth’s hand-axe as he resumed his self-appointed task. “The wood here is green, old man,” he said. “It won’t burn anyway. Tomorrow we can get dry wood from the forest and bring it here.”

  The sky was dark enough now that the eyes of animals glinted red in the light of the fire. The wolf pack lay in a loose semicircle facing the humans’ camp and the partly butchered mammoth in the marsh beyond. Soot from the grassfire stained everything and charged the air with a green, sickly smell quite different from that of the dry wood now burning in the center of the camp.

  Kar threw down his load of alders. They made a swishing sound, not the bang that he could have achieved with dry wood on firm ground. Boartooth was right. These saplings would burn badly, with a crackling, smoky fire and very little flame—but they were the only wood available here in the bottomlands.

  “Nobody listens to me!” he cried in frustration. “You’ll be sorry!”

  Wolf rolled into a sitting posture, looking uncomfortable from the amount he had eaten. The orange firelight darkened the hairs in the Chief Hunter’s beard which were still brown, but it turned the grizzling of age into golden accents.

  “Settle down, Kar,” he called. “It’s too dark to go out now anyway. In the morning, everyone will fetch more wood—even hunters.”

  Tok! went Boartooth’s axe. Tok! Tok!

  The opposite side of the creek was more than thirty feet from the mammoth. The tiger crouching there in darkness gave a terrifying roar and leaped to the back of the huge corpse.

  Boartooth shrieked as though he had been disem-boweled. He hurled his hand-axe away in panic as he jumped to safety on the bank. He was actually unharmed.

  The tigers—the second saber-tooth followed the first in a flat, graceful arc, flexing its backbone like a willow bending in a fierce wind—ignored the man. Their whole attention was concentrated on the mammoth from which they had been briefly driven.

  “Up!” shouted Wolf, active and alert despite his heavy meal. He held a spear in his right hand. With his left, the Chief Hunter snaked a burning branch from the campfire. The brand was alight along most of its length. The bright flames licked within inches of Wolf’s hand and made the hairs shrivel on the back of his forearm. He ignored the pain. Other hunters sprang to their feet and joined him.

  The two tigers balanced on top of what had been their prey in the first place. They glared at the men across the short distance separating them. The male coughed a blood-thirsty challenge.

  Wolf whirled his torch around his head. Sparks flew off in a dazzling circle, falling to the ground and on the men beside him. The male saber-tooth roared and raised his right paw in a gesture like a human waving. The four toes were splayed, and the needle-sharp claws were extended from the pads to their full length.

  For a moment, the scene was frozen. Then the tiger deliberately lowered its head and began to tear at the meat. Its eyes remained fixed on the humans.

  Boartooth had snatched up a spear—in the confusion, not the one of his own which remained. He poised the weapon to throw.

  Wolf clouted the younger man across the temple with the shaft of his own spear. “No!” shouted the Chief Hunter. “You’ll only woun
d it, and then—”

  He didn’t have to complete the sentence. The whole tribe could imagine the infuriated tiger springing into the middle of them and slashing in all directions with claws and the fangs that had slaughtered a mammoth.

  Both cats were now eating noisily, though they continued to watch the humans.

  “We’ll stay close to the fire,” Wolf continued. “The tigers aren’t interested in us, they have food to eat. In the morning, we’ll build up the fire and drive them away again.”

  He backed slowly away from the creek bank. The other men followed willingly, glad to be offered an option which did not require them to fight a pair of saber-tooths. After all, the tribe was full of meat now. Not even the tigers could devour enough of the mammoth to make a difference.

  Beyond the circle of firelight, the dire wolves crept closer on their bellies. They were drawn by the slurping sounds as the saber-tooths gorged on their prey.

  The fire was beginning to burn low. Kar threw another branch on it. He was worried. Not very much dry wood remained, and Boartooth had been right when he said that the alders would not burn well.

  Kar woke up abruptly at the sound of Wolf’s voice shouting, “. . . the fire! It’s too low!”

  The campfire was a bank of red coals, shimmering angrily while the tribe sprawled around it.

  Everyone had been asleep. The huge meal following days of hunger had acted like a drug on the humans, despite the predators encircling them.

  Kar couldn’t believe that he had fallen asleep in the midst of this danger, but even the sound of the tigers eating had become a neutral background instead of a threat. The cats weren’t interested in human beings while the mammoth was available for food, after all.

  Kar scrabbled for wood in the darkness. There had been a bundle of alders beside him. His hand found nothing. One of his assistants—Chinless should have been on watch—had thrown the whole mass on the fire and gone to sleep. The alders would not keep burning without a careful hand to stir the green stems.