cely. Now I had him."

"But how did you have him?" 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 ra