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PART 2

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It was early morning as Bill Humbolt sat by the fire in his cave and
studied the map Craig had made of the plateau's mountain. Craig had left
the mountain nameless and he dipped his pen in ink to write: _Craig
Mountains_.

"Bill----"

Delmont Anders entered very quietly, what he had to tell already evident
on his face.

"He died last night, Bill."

It was something he had been expecting to come at any time but the lack
of surprise did not diminish the sense of loss. Lake had been the last
of the Old Ones, the last of those who had worked and fought and
shortened the years of their lives that the Young Ones might have a
chance to live. Now he was gone--now a brief era was ended, a valiant,
bloody chapter written and finished.

And he was the new leader who would decree how the next chapter should
be written, only four years older than the boy who was looking at him
with an unconscious appeal for reassurance on his face....

"You'd better tell Jim," he said. "Then, a little later, I want to talk
to everyone about the things we'll start doing as soon as spring comes."

"You mean, the hunting?" Delmont asked.

"No--more than just the hunting."

He sat for a while after Delmont left, looking back down the years that
had preceded that day, back to that first morning on Ragnarok.

He had set a goal for himself that morning when he left his toy bear in
the dust behind him and walked beside Julia into the new and perilous
way of life. He had promised himself that some day he would watch the
Gerns die and beg for mercy as they died and he would give them the same
mercy they had given his mother.

As he grew older he realized that his hatred, alone, was a futile thing.
There would have to be a way of leaving Ragnarok and there would have to
be weapons with which to fight the Gerns. These would be things
impossible and beyond his reach unless he had the help of all the others
in united, coordinated effort.

To make certain of that united effort he would have to be their leader.
So for eleven years he had studied and trained until there was no one
who could use a bow or spear quite as well as he could, no one who could
travel as far in a day or spot a unicorn ambush as quickly. And there
was no one, with the exception of George Ord, who had studied as many
textbooks as he had.

He had reached his fi