Gonch fled across the plateau until he found a place where he could conceal himself and here he stayed until he judged that all danger of detection was past. Then he made a wide detour and proceeded to the Rock of Moustier, not from the valley side but across the heights, a route rarely or never taken by ones desiring to reach the grotto below.

As he halted at the cliff overlooking the cave-threshold, he caught sight of a man squatting far beneath him beside a fire. It was Pic engaged in weapon-making. His right arm did not rise and fall with each stroke of the hammerstone. He was devoting his efforts to the finer work, retouching flakes with the mysterious finishing tool. Gonch lay flat upon his chest and stomach and peered over the cliff. While so doing he was unconscious of the fact that he had dislodged several stone chips and caused them to fall.

Beneath him, the giant flint-worker still squatted motionless beside the fire but his ears were straining, his brain working rapidly as he sought the meaning of dust and limestone chips mysteriously descended upon him from above. The sun was warm. It was quite a natural gesture for him to turn his head askew and downward at the same time and wipe the perspiration from it with his arm; also it enabled him to catch a glimpse of a man’s head peering down upon him from the cliff.

Pic resumed his former position but now he was staring at his feet, his brows contracted in deep thought. For several minutes he maintained this attitude, then his brows lifted and he glanced at what he held in his hand. It was a ridiculously simple affair—a piece of bone not much larger than his forefinger, smooth, straight and notched at one end.

“Men have died for even less,” he soliloquized. “I roamed the world over to find this piece of bone—the Terrace Man’s finishing tool. Others may be doing the same. Yes that’s it; I am sure of it now,” and he scowled and gnashed his teeth in a way that would have horrified Gonch, had he been there to see.

For a time, Pic remained squatting motionless; finally he rose to his feet, piled more wood upon the fire and made other elaborate preparations as if for departure, shouldering his ax and gazing long and earnestly down the valley as though there were something there that required his attention. He gathered up his flint-flakes and took them to the cave and last of all, secreted the bone tool near the cliff wall beneath a flat stone. This latter maneuver was conducted mysteriously and with much deliberation. When all was arranged to his satisfaction, he swung his ax over his right shoulder and descended the causeway to the valley below.

The ledge was now deserted. Gonch could see the master weapon maker sauntering leisurely down the causeway. He had also seen his host conceal something beneath a flat stone near the foot of the cliffs. It must be something valuable judging from the elaborate precautions taken to hide it from view. It might be the flint-worker’s finishing tool. If so, this was an opportunity not to be missed.

The cliff-wall overlooking the ledge was too steep and smooth for a speedy descent, so Gonch sought the rougher and more sloping northeast side, the one opposite that which Pic was descending. This shut off his view of the latter and not until he reached the level of the cave-ledge, could he again obtain a glimpse of the causeway and anyone who might be near the cave. He saw no one. Pic had vanished and no doubt was making his way down the valley along the base of the Rock.

Feeling assured on this point and convinced that he was alone and safe from detection, Gonch crept towards the flat stone lying at the foot of the cliff wall, near the mouth of the cave.

His hand was now clutching the stone. Another second and the latter would have been raised disclosing what lay beneath, when a rustling sounded at the cave-mouth. Gonch turned quickly, then sank down upon the threshold in an agony of dread, for there stood Pic, filling the cave-mouth with his great bulk and gazing down upon the Muskman with a look of withering scorn.

“I lost something, I—” stammered Gonch but the other cut him short.

“You lie,” roared Pic, his face becoming rapidly convulsed with rage. “You lie and have lied ever since you came here. I know you now and why you came. To the muck with you and your filthy smell. Your whole body reeks with carrion. Your welcome is at an end, imposter. Begone.”

“But—you mistake,” protested the Muskman, summoning fresh courage on finding his life in no immediate danger. Pic’s ire only increased. His face became that of a demon.

“You are alive now,” he thundered. “Soon you Will not be. Go at once. If you are found in the valley after the next sunrise, your friends the hyenas will be cracking your bones”; and Pic spat upon the cringing Muskman as he would have spat upon a snake.

Gonch crawled away along the ledge and down the causeway like a beaten hound, terrified but thankful enough that the giant’s teeth and hands were not now tearing his throat. The farther he got away, however, the more comfortable he felt in body and mind, and by the time he reached the valley his courage had in a great measure returned.

He was safe—for the present—and having no immediate concern on that point, he began to consider and reflect bitterly upon the sudden miscarriage of his plans. Now he could no more think of persuading the master flint-worker to return with him than he could of compelling him to do so by force. The very thought of using force on Pic made him squirm. He might more easily overcome a lion.

As he walked down the valley, his thoughts turned to Totan and the men of Castillo. What would they say when he returned discredited and empty-handed? The big hetman was not one who dealt gently with vain boasters. Gonch could almost feel the hetman’s club crashing down upon his pate. Pic here, Totan there; whether he stayed or went, it was all the same—a giant waiting to crush the life out of him. Gonch felt himself between the devil and the deep, blue sea.

Pic was a friend of animals and a lover of peace, but the prosperity and power that he had brought upon the cave-men of the VÉzÈre was not to be denied. They were the strongest men, the most successful hunters in all the world, and all because of Pic, the genius that ruled over them. No one had said that the master flint-worker was hetman of the Mousterians, but Gonch knew it now, and he knew it without being told. He had failed miserably. Pic the Lion had snared Gonch the Fox with scarce an effort. To all appearances the former was but a flint-worker, skilled beyond belief and a physical giant to boot, but with the disposition of a child, peacefully inclined towards man and beast. A fool? hardly; even though Gonch hated him for not being one. His arm ruled over the VÉzÈre like the paw of a gigantic lion, its claws drawn into their sheath-pads, its powerful muscles hidden beneath their covering of heavy fur.

It was all just as had first been told to him in the southland. Gonch bit his lips until the blood came. Now he saw the truth of what he did not then believe from the lips of the man he himself had slain near the northern Cantabrian slopes. The Mousterian domain was the most powerful in all the world, and the arm that ruled over it, the mind that guided its destinies, were those of a simple flint-worker and weapon maker—Pic, the Mammoth Man.

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