The light snow, barely covering
the ground, flashed in the sun, and the hunters, practically impervious to
the slight cold, were almost prankish in their demeanor. Ab and Oak
especially were buoyant. This was the first hunt upon the rocky peninsula
of either of them, and they were delighted with the new surroundings and
eager for the fray to come. All about was talk and laughter, which became
general with any slight physical disaster which came to one among the
hunters in the climbing of some tree for a promising dead branch or
finding a treacherous hollow when assailing the roots of some upturned
pine. It was a brisk scene and a lively one, that which occurred that
crisp morning in late autumn when the wild men gathered to hunt the
mammoth. All was brightness and jollity and noise.
Very different, in a moment, was the condition when the hunters entered
the forest and, extended in line, began their advance toward the huge
objects of their search. The cave man, almost a wild beast himself in some
of his ways, had, on occasion, a footfall as light as that of any animal
of the time. The twig scarcely crackled and the leaf scarcely rustled
beneath his tread, and when the long line entered the wood the silence of
death fell there, for the hunters made no sound, and what slight sound the
woodland had before--the clatter of the woodpeckers and jays--was hushed
by their advance.
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