The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [10]
The hunters were not the only source of food for the clan. The women often contributed the greater share, and their sources were more reliable. Despite their burdens, they foraged as they traveled, and so efficiently it hardly slowed them down. A patch of day lilies was quickly stripped of buds and flowers, and tender new roots exposed with a few strokes of the digging sticks. Cattail roots, pulled loose from beneath the surface of marshy backwaters, were even easier to gather.
If they hadn’t been on the move, the women would have made a point of remembering the location of the tall stalky plants, to return later in the season to pick the tender tails at the top for a vegetable. Later still, yellow pollen mixed with starch pounded from the fibers of old roots would make doughy unleavened biscuits. When the tops dried, fuzz would be collected; and several of the baskets were made from the tough leaves and stalks. Now they gathered only what they found, but little was overlooked.
New shoots and tender young leaves of clover, alfalfa, dandelion; thistles stripped of prickles before they were cut down; a few early berries and fruits. The pointed digging sticks were in constant use; nothing was safe from them in the women’s deft hands. They were used as a lever to overturn logs for newts and delectable fat grubs; freshwater molluscs were fished out of streams and pushed closer to shore for easy reach; and a variety of bulbs, tubers, and roots were dug out of the ground.
It all found its way to the convenient folds of the women’s wraps or an empty corner of their baskets. Large green leaves were wrappers, some of them, such as burdock, cooked as greens. Dry wood, twigs, and grass, and dung from grazing animals, were collected too. Though the selection would be more varied later in the summer, food was plentiful—if one knew where to look.
Iza looked up when an old man, past thirty, hobbled up to her after they were on their way again. He carried neither burden nor weapon, only a long staff to help him walk. His right leg was crippled and smaller than the left, yet he managed to move with surprising agility.
His right shoulder and upper arm were atrophied and the shriveled arm had been amputated below the elbow. The powerful shoulder and arm and muscular leg of his fully developed left side made him appear lopsided. His huge cranium was even larger than those of the rest of the clan, and the difficulty of his birth had caused the defect that crippled him for life.
He was also a sibling of Iza and Brun, first-born, and would have been leader but for his affliction. He wore a leather wrap cut in the masculine style and carried his warm outer fur, which was also used as a sleeping fur, on his back as the other men did. But he had several pouches hanging from his waist thong and a cloak similar to the kind the women used which held a large bulging object to his back.
The left side of his face was hideously scarred and his left eye was missing, but his good right eye sparkled with intelligence, and something more. For all his hobbling, he moved with a grace that came from great wisdom and a sureness of his place within the clan. He was Mog-ur, the most powerful magician, most awesome and revered holy man of all the clans. He was convinced that his wasted body was given to him so that he could take his place as intermediary with the spirit world rather than at the head of his clan. In many ways he had more power than any leader, and he knew it. Only close relatives remembered his birth name and called