“I remember when I was a kid,” Thomas Stevens sniffed (he had a most confounded way of
sniffing), “that I saw a petrified watermelon. Hence, though mistaken persons sometimes delude
themselves into thinking they are really growing or eating them, there are no such things as
extant watermelons.”
“But the question of food,” I objected, ignoring his point, which was puerile and without bearing.
“The soil must bring forth vegetable life in lavish abundance to support so monstrous creatures.
Nowhere in the North is the soil so prolific. Ergo, the mammoth cannot exist.”
“I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for you are a young man
and have traveled little; but, at the same time, I am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The
mammoth no longer exists. How do I know? I killed the last one with my own right arm.”
Thus spake Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at the dogs and bade them
quit their unholy howling, and waited. Undoubtedly this liar of singular felicity would open his
mouth and requite me for my St. Elias bear.
“It was this way,” he at last began, after the appropriate silence had intervened. “I was in camp
one day–”
“Where?” I interrupted.
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the northeast, where stretched a terra incognita
into which vastness few men have strayed and fewer emerged. “I was in camp one day with
Klooch. Klooch was as handsome a little kamooks as ever whined betwixt the traces or shoved
nose into a camp kettle. Her father was a full-blood malemute from Russian Pastilik on Bering
Sea, and I bred her, and with understanding, out of a clean-legged bitch of the Hudson Bay stock.
I tell you, O man, she was a corker companion. And now, on this day I have in mind, she was
brought to pup through a pure wild wolf of the woods–gray, and long of limb, with big lungs and
no end of staying powers. Say! Was there ever the like? It was a new breed of dog I had started,
and I could look forward to big things.
“As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and
safely delivered. I was squatting on my hams over the
litter–seven sturdy, blind little beggars–when from
behind came a bray of trumpets and crash of brass.
There was a rush, like the wind squall that kicks the
heels of the rain, and I was midway to my feet when
knocked flat on my face. At the same instant I heard
Klooch sigh, very much as a man does when you’ve
planted your fist in his belly. You can stake your sack I
lay quiet, but I twisted my head around and saw a huge
bulk swaying above me. Then the blue sky flashed into view and I got to my feet. A hairy
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6
mountain of flesh was just disappearing in the underbrush on the edge of the open. I caught a
rear-end glimpse, with a stiff tail, as big in girth as my body, standing out straight behind. The
next second only a tremendous hole remained in the thicket, though I could still hear sounds like
a tornado dying quickly away, underbrush ripping and tearing, and trees snapping and crashing.
“I cast about for my rifle. It had been lying on the ground with the muzzle against a log; but now
the stock was smashed, the barrel out of line, and the working gear in a thousand bits. Then I
looked for the slut, and–and what do you suppose?”
I shook my head.
“May my soul burn in a thousand hells if there was anything left of her! Klooch, the seven
sturdy, blind little beggars–gone, all gone. Where she had stretched was a slimy, bloody
depression in the soft earth, all of a yard in diameter, and around the edges a few scattered hairs.”
I measured three feet on the snow, threw about it a circle, and glanced at Nimrod.
“The beast was 30 long and 20 high,” he answered, “and its tusks scaled over six 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
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7
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 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