The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [136]
Shortly after the men left in the morning, Oga left Brac with Ebra and Uka and the three started out. It was a pleasant hike. They soon fell into animated conversation with rapidly moving hands and emphatic words. As they drew closer to the animals, their conversation fell off and soon ceased altogether. They stopped and gawked at the massive creatures.
The woolly mammoths were well adapted to the harsh periglacial climate of their cold environment. Their thick hides were covered with an undercoat of dense soft fur and an overlayer of shaggy, long, reddish brown hair up to twenty inches in length. They were further insulated by a three-inch layer of subcutaneous fat. The cold had caused modifications in their body structure, too. They were compact for their species, averaging ten feet high at the withers. Their massive heads, large in proportion to their overall height and more than half the length of their trunks, rose high above their shoulders in a peaked dome. They had small ears, short tails, and relatively short trunks with two fingers at the end, an upper and a lower one. In profile, they had a deep depression at the nape of the neck between their domed heads and a high hump of stored fat on the withers. Their backs sloped down sharply to the pelvis and somewhat shorter hind legs. But most impressive were their long, curved tusks.
“Look at that one!” Oga gestured and pointed to an old bull. His ivory tusks originated close together, pointed steeply downward, curved sharply outward, upward, then inward, crossing over in front of him and continuing on for a full sixteen feet.
The mammoth was tearing out swaths of grass, herbs, and sedge with his trunk and stuffing the tough, dry fodder into his mouth to break it down with efficient rasplike grinders. A younger animal, one whose tusks were not so long and still useful, uprooted a larch and began to strip it of twigs and bark.
“They’re so big!” Ovra motioned with a shudder. “I didn’t think any animal could be so big. How are they ever going to kill one? They can’t even reach one with a spear.”
“I don’t know,” Oga said, just as apprehensive.
“I almost wish we hadn’t come,” Ovra said. “It will be a dangerous hunt. Someone could get hurt. What will I do if something happens to Goov?”
“Brun must have a plan,” Ayla said. “I don’t think he’d even try to hunt them if he didn’t think the men could. I wish I could watch,” she added wistfully.
“I don’t,” Oga said. “I don’t want to be anywhere near. I’ll just be glad when it’s over.” Oga remembered her mother’s mate had been killed in a hunting accident just before the earthquake that took her mother. She was well aware of the dangers in spite of the best of plans.
“I think we should go back now,” Ovra said. “Brun didn’t want us to get too close. This is closer than I want to be.”
The three of them turned to go. Ayla looked back a few times as they hurried away. They were more quiet on the return trip, each lost in her own thoughts and not in the mood for much talk.
When the men returned, Brun directed the women to break camp and move after the hunters left the next morning. He had found a suitable location, they would hunt tomorrow, and he wanted the women well out of the way. He had seen the canyon early the day before. It was an ideal site but too far from the mammoths. He considered it a particularly good omen that the herd, moving slowly in a southwesterly direction, had wandered close enough by the end of the second day to make the site feasible.
A light, dry, powdery snow whipped up by gusting east winds greeted the hunting party as they unrolled from their warm furs and poked their