silver, this time unmarred by the criss-crosses of feeding or hunting
animals. There was no sign of life; no creature of the forest or the
plain was so daring as to venture soon upon the battlefield of the
rhinoceros and the cave tiger. Cautiously the cave men and their sons
made their way across the valley and approached the pitfall. What was
revealed to them told in a moment the whole story. The half-devoured body
of the rhinoceros calf was in the pit. It had been killed, no doubt, by
the tiger's first fierce assault, its back broken by the first blow of
the great forearm, or its vertebrae torn apart by the first grasp of the
great jaws. There were signs of the conflict all about, but that it had
not come to a deadly issue was apparent. Only by some accident could the
rhinoceros have caught upon its horns the agile monster cat, and only by
an accident even more remote could the tiger have reached a vital part of
its huge enemy. There had been a long and weary battle--a mother creature
fighting for her young and the great flesh-eater fighting for his prey.
But the combatants had assuredly separated without the death of either,
and the bereaved rhinoceros, knowing her young one to be dead, had
finally left the valley, while the tiger had returned to its prey and fed
its fill. But there was much meat left. There were, in the estimation of
the cave people, few more acceptable feasts than that obtainable from the
flesh of a young rhinoceros. The first instinct of the two men was to
work fiercely with their flint knives and cut out great lumps of meat
from the body in the pit. Hardly had they begun their work, when, as
by common impulse, each clambered out from the depression suddenly, and
there was a brief and earnest discussion. The cave tiger, monarch of the
time, was not a creature to abandon what he had slain until he had
devoured it utterly. Gorged though he might be, he was undoubtedly in
hiding within a comparatively short distance. He would return again
inevitably. He might be lying sleeping in the nearest clump of bushes! It
was possible that his appetite might come upon him soon again and that he