With them, as gallant if not as strong as his great brother,
stood braced the eager Bark. They were ready, these young men, but, as it
chanced, there could be, at the beginning of the strong clamber of the
foe, only one man to first meet them. All were behind this man at the
front, for the flat rock came to something like a point. He stood there,
hairy and bare except for the skin about his hips, and with only an ax in
his hand, but this did not matter so much as it might have done, for only
axes were borne by the up-clambering assailants. The throwing of an ax
was a little matter to the sharp-eyed and flexile-muscled cave men. Who
could not dodge an ax was better out of the way and out of the world. A
meeting such as this impending must be a matter only of close personal
encounter and fencing with arm and wooden handle and flint-head of edge
and weight.
There was a clash of stone together, and, one after another, strong
creatures with cloven skulls toppled backward, to fall into the babbling
creek, their blood helping to change its coloring. Leaping from side to
side across his rock, along each edge of which the water rushed, old
Hilltop met the mass of enemies, while those who passed were brained by
his great sons or by those behind. But the forces were unequal and the
plane in front was not steep enough nor the water deep enough to prevent
something like an organized onslaught.
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