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

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 caveman rounded up the kill
with hand axe of stone. Such would have served me 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.
"My valley was perhaps five miles around. The mouth was closed. There was no way
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
racecourse! 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 traveling 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.
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 eardrums, 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 ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every name
he could lay tongue to. This was to frighten me, of course; and when he thought
I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away softly and try to make a sneak for
the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get almost there--only a couple hundred yards
away it was--when out I'd pop and back he'd come, lumbering along like the old
landslide he was. After I'd done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he
changed his tactics. Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of
warning, away he'd go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and
back before I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he raised the
siege and deliberately stalked off to the waterhole.
"That was the only time he penned me--three days of it--but after that the
hippodrome never stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six days'
go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags and tatters, but I
never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son of earth, with nothing
but the old hand axe in one hand and a cobble in the other. In fact, I never
stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As
for the bull, he got perceptibly thinner and thinner--must have lost several
tons at least--and nervous as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When
I'd come up with him and yell, or lam him with a rock at long range, he'd jump
like a skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail
and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing, and the
way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral beast he was, a