"London, Jack - A Relic of the Pliocene" - читать интересную книгу автора (London Jack)

times three feet. I couldn't believe, myself, at the time, for all that it had
just happened. But if my senses had played me, there was the broken gun and the
hole in the bush. And there was--or, rather, there was not--Klooch and the pups.
O man, it makes me hot all over now when I think of it. Klooch! Another Eve! The
mother of a new race! And a rampaging, ranting, old bull mammoth, like a second
flood, wiping them, root and branch, off the face of the earth! Do you wonder
that the blood-soaked earth cried out to high God? Or that I grabbed the hand
axe and took the trail?"
"The hand axe?" I exclaimed, startled out of myself by the picture. "The hand
axe, and a big bull mammoth, 30 feet long, 20 feet--"
Nimrod joined me in my merriment, chuckling gleefully. "Wouldn't it kill you?"
he cried. "Wasn't it a beaver's dream? Many's the time I've laughed about it
since, but at the time it was no laughing matter, I was that danged mad, what
with the gun and Klooch. Think of it, O man! A brand-new, unclassified,
uncopyrighted breed, and wiped out before it opened its eyes or took out its
intention papers! Well, so be it. Life's full of disappointments, and rightly
so. Meat is best after a famine, and a bed softer after a hard trail.
"As I was saying, I took out after the beast with the hand axe, and clung to its
heels down the valley; but when he circled back toward the head, I was left
winded at the lower end. Speaking of grub, I might as well stop long enough to
explain a couple of points. Up thereabouts, among the mountains, is an almighty
curious formation. There is no end of little valleys, each like the other much
as peas in a pod, and all neatly tucked away with straight, rocky walls rising
on all sides. And at the lower ends are always openings where the drainage or
glaciers must have broken out. The only way in is through these mouths, and they
are small, and some smaller than others. As to grub--you've slushed around on
the rain-soaked islands of the Alaskan coast down Sitka way, most likely, seeing
as you're a traveler. And you know how stuff grows there--big, juicy, and
jungly. Well, that's the way it was with those valleys. Thick, rich soil, with
ferns and grasses and such things in patches higher than your head. Rain three
days out of four during the summer months; and food in them for a thousand
mammoths, to say nothing of small game for man.
"But to get back. Down at the lower end of the valley I got winded and gave
over. I began to speculate, for when my wind left me my dander got hotter and
hotter, and I knew I'd never know peace of mind till I dined on mammoth foot.
And I knew, also, that that stood for skookum mamook pukapuk--excuse Chinook, I
mean there was a big fight coming. Now the mouth of my valley was very narrow,
and the walls steep. High up on one side was one of those big pivot rocks, or
balancing rocks, as some call them, weighing all of a couple hundred tons. Just
the thing. I hit back for camp, keeping an eye open so the bull couldn't slip
past, and got my ammunition. It was worthless with the rifle smashed; so I
opened the shells, planted the powder under the rock, and touched it off with
slow fuse. Wasn't much of a charge, but the old boulder tilted up lazily and
dropped down into place, with just space enough to let the creek drain nicely.
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