Mists of Dawn by Chad Oliver Read Free Book Online

again so that he made no sound, he carefully parted the grass and looked out.
    There they were, five of them. Mark examined them intently. They were fairly large animals with shaggy manes. They had short legs and two small horns. They had a distinct hump on their front shoulders and they were heavy and bulky. For a moment, Mark was haunted by a distinct sense of familiarity. Where had he seen animals like these before? Then he had it. They were bison, buffalo, much like those which had once roamed the plains of America before their virtual extermination by white hunters like Buffalo Bill. There were four adults and one smaller calf, and they obviously suspected nothing.
    Cautiously, Mark inched his way closer. He could not afford to waste one of his precious shots, and a .45, for all its smashing power, was a very erratic weapon as a target pistol. He settled on the calf as his best bet. It grazed a little apart from the others and should be easier to bring down.
    Mark halted, a scant thirty yards from his prey. He checked his gun and slipped the safety off. He lay down full length in the grass and raised his pistol to take aim.
    He never had a chance to fire. With a sudden snort, the lead bison lifted its head and broke into a lumbering run that covered ground with a deceptive speed. The others followed him instantly. Mark still had a shot of sorts, but he passed it up. He simply could not take a chance on missing, with bullets in such short supply. It had to be a sure shot or nothing.
    There was something else, something that sent a cold chill through Mark that was not entirely due to the chillness of the coming night. Something had frightened the bison, and he was positive that it hadn’t been himself. He lay very still in the grass, listening. He heard nothing. There was only the whisper of the wind.
    It was growing late. With an alarming rapidity, the sun was gone and the long shadows of twilight were merging into the black of night. It was colder now, a wind-driven cold that threatened to drop the temperature far too low for comfort. Mark was painfully hungry. He had been so close to food that he could almost taste buffalo steaks in his mouth. And the skin could have kept him warm, if he could have managed to get it off with his pocket knife.
    Mark did not want to move. He felt the weird presence of something alien in the shadows of the onrushing night. He felt unseen eyes upon him, boring into his back, lifting the hair on his neck. But he had no choice. He told himself that it was all imagination and got to his feet, the .45 ready in his hand. He saw nothing, but the shadows were thick around him now.
    Desperately, he started back the way he had come, guiding himself by the faint lingering light behind the mountains in the west. He was grimly afraid that he  had waited too long, that he would be unable to find his way back to the space-time machine before nightfall. He could never find it at night and he knew enough not to try to blunder on, which would only result in his getting hopelessly lost. He would have to stop, if he didn’t make it; build a lire perhaps.
    He did not like the idea of a night in the open, in this unknown country, so Mark kept going, praying that the light would not fail. But it was growing darker by the second; he could hardly see at all. The feeling that unseen eyes were upon him persisted; he could not shake the feeling off. He tried to tell himself that it was a normal reaction under the circumstances, but he couldn’t convince himself.
    Doggedly he went on—and then stopped dead.
    There was something there.
    Ahead of him, they were ahead of him. Mark turned around. They were behind him too. He could feel them. He gripped the .45 tightly, feeling cold sweat start out on his forehead. The night wind sighed eerily through the grass and he could not see.
    He was trapped—the things were all around him!

Chapter 5 The Neanderthals

    Mark was terrified. This was too much. Panic 1)1 shrieked