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"Uncle Karl," she called out, her voice echoing
He strode over to where she knelt on the cavern floor Illuht was a brownish etation
"What is it?" Schroeder asked
She didn't answer right away After a moment, she said, "It looks like elephant scat"
Schroeder roared with laughter "Do you think the circus passed this way?"
She stood up and touched it with the toe of her boot A rassy smell arose from the mound "I think I need to sit down," she said
They found a wall outcropping to sit on and refreshed themselves from their water bottles Karla told Schroeder about the baby mammoth that had been discovered not far froure out how it could be so well preserved," she said "No one has ever found a specio"
"Are you suggesting that there are woollyin these caves?"
"No, of course not," she said with a laugh "That would be ih, and the scat is very old Letthrough the taiga, the great Siberian forest, when he saw huge tracks in the snow For days, he followed the creatures thatand broken tree branches He described seeing two huge elephants with chestnut hair and massive tusks"
"An apocryphal hunter's tale, with no evidence, meant to impress?"
"Possibly But the Eskigy creatures In 1993, the skeletons of dwarf el Island, between Siberia and Alaska, not far from here Their bones were dated between seven thousand and thirty-seven hundred years ago, which means mammoths roamed the earth well past Paleolithic tie and the Pyramids"
Schroeder chuckled and said, "You'd like to explore further, wouldn't you?"
"I wouldn't want to waste an opportunity like this sitting around and twiddling our thumbs Maybe we'll come across some well-preserved specimens"
"I don't think preparing to repel a gang of desperate cutthroats qualifies as twiddling our thumbs, but I shouldn't be surprised Once, when you were a child, I read you Alice in Wonderland Not long after, I found you out in the yard trying to squeeze your head down a rabbit hole You said you wished you had some tonic that would shrink you, like Alice"
"Itme such stories"