Living Fossil

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WHERE the rivers flowed together, the country was flat and, in places, swampy. The combined waters spread out and crawled around reedy islands. Back from the banks, the ground rose into low tree-crowned humps.

The May flies were swarming that day, and as thousands of them danced, the low afternoon sun, whose setting would bring death to them all, glinted on their wings. There was little sound, other than the hum of a belated cicada and the splashing of an elephantlike beast in the southern tributary.

The beast suddenly raised its head, its great mulish ears swiveling forward and its upraised trunk turning this way and that like a periscope. It evidently disapproved of what it smelled, for it heaved its bulk out of its bath and ambled off up a creek bed, the feet on its columnar legs making loud sucking noises as they pulled out of the mud.

Two riders appeared from downstream, each leading an animal similar to the one he rode. The animals' feet swished through the laurel beds and went squilch-squilch as they struck patches of muck. As they crossed the creek bed, the leading rider pulled up his mount and pointed to the tracks made by the elephantine beast.

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