“Hey, look there! Mammoths!”
Wolff wanted to stop to watch the huge gray beasts, which were about a quarter of a mile away. But Kickaha urged him on. “There’re plenty more around, and there’ll be times when you wish there weren’t. Spend your time watching the grass. If it moves contrary to the wind, tell me.”
They walked swiftly for two miles. During this time, they came close to a band of wild horses. The stallions whickered and raced up to investigate them, then stood their ground, pawing and snorting, until the two had passed. They were magnificent animals, tall, sleek, and black or glossy red or spotted white and black.
“Nothing of your Indian pony there,” Kickaha said. “I think the Lord imported nothing but the best stock.”
Presently, Kickaha stopped by a pile of rocks. “My marker,” he said. He walked straight inward across the plain from the cairn. After a mile they came to a tall tree. The youth leaped up, grabbed the lowest branch, and began climbing. Halfway up, he reached a hollow and brought out a large bag. On returning, Kickaha took out of the bag two bows, two quivers of arrows, a deerskin breechcloth, and a belt with a skin scabbard in which was a long steel knife.
Wolff put on the loincloth and belt and took the bow and quiver.
“You know how to use these?” Kickaha said.
“I’ve practised all my life.”
“Good. You’ll get more than one chance to put your skill to the test. Let’s go. We’ve many a mile to cover.”
They began wolf-trotting: run a hundred steps, walk a hundred steps. Kickaha pointed to the range of mountains to their right.
“There is where my tribe, the Hrowakas, the Bear People, live. Eighty miles away. Once we get there, we can take it easy for awhile, and make preparations for the long journey ahead of us.”
“You don’t look like an Indian,” Wolff said.
“And you, my friend, don’t look like a sixty-sixyear-old man, either. But here we are. Okay. I’ve put off telling my story because I wanted to hear yours first. Tonight I’ll talk.”
They did not speak much more that day. Wolff exclaimed now and then at the animals he saw. There were great herds of bison, dark, shaggy, bearded, and far larger than their cousins of Earth. There were other herds of horses and a creature that looked like the prototype of the camel. More mammoths and then a family of steppe mastodons. A pack of six dire wolves raced alongside the two for awhile at a distance of a hundred yards. These stood almost as high as Wolff’s shoulder.
Kickaha, seeing Wolff’s alarm, laughed and said, “They won’t attack us unless they’re hungry. That isn’t very likely with all the game around here. They’re just curious.”
Presently, the giant wolves curved away, their speed increasing as they flushed some striped antelopes out of a grove of trees.
“This is North America as it was a long time before the white man,” Kickaha said, “Fresh, spacious, with a multitude of animals and a few tribes roaming around.”
A flock of a hundred ducks flew overhead, honking. Out of the green sky, a hawk fell, struck with a thud, and the flock was minus one comrade. “The Happy Hunting Ground!” Kickaha cried. “Only it’s not so happy sometimes.”
Several hours before the sun went around the mountain, they stopped by a small lake. Kickaha found the tree in which he had built a platform.
“We’ll sleep here tonight, taking turns on watch. About the only animal that might attack us in the tree is the giant weasel, but he’s enough to worry about. Besides, and worse, there could be war parties.”
Kickaha left with his bow in hand and returned in fifteen minutes with a large buck rabbit. Wolff had started a small fire with little smoke; over this they roasted the rabbit. While they ate, Kickaha explained the topography of the country.
“Whatever else you can say about the Lord, you can’t deny he did a good job of designing this world. You take this level, Amerindia. It’s not really flat. It has a series of slight curves each about 160 miles long. These allow the water to run off, creeks and rivers and lakes to form. There’s no snow anywhere on the planet-can’t be, with no seasons and a fairly uniform climate. But it rains every day-the clouds come in from space somewhere.”