king 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.

[Illustration: Mammoth trapped in swamp]

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
lon