The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [28]
The two men hurried toward their leader, followed by Iza who went to fetch Ayla. She, too, took a more searching look at the cave and nodded her head with satisfaction before returning with the child to the knot of people gesturing excitedly. Brun’s repressed emotion communicated itself. They knew a cave had been found and they knew Brun thought it had good possibilities. Piercing the somber gloom of the overcast sky, bright rays of sun seemed to charge the atmosphere with hope, matched by the mood of the anxiously waiting clan.
Brun and Grod gripped their spears as the three men approached the cave. They saw no signs of human habitation, but that was no guarantee the cave was uninhabited. Birds darted in and out of the large opening, twittering and chirping as they swooped and circled. Birds are a good omen, Mog-ur thought. As they neared, they walked cautiously, skirting the mouth while Brun and Grod searched carefully for fresh tracks and droppings. The most recent were a few days old. The spoor and large toothmarks on heavy leg bones cracked by powerful jaws told their own story: a pack of hyenas had used the cave for temporary shelter. The carnivorous scavengers had attacked an aging fallow deer and dragged the carcass to the cave to finish their meal at leisure and in relative security.
Off to one side, near the west end of the opening nested in a tangle of vines and brush, was a spring-fed pool; its outlet a small rivulet trickling down the slope to the stream. While the others waited, Brun followed the spring to its source rising out of the rock a short way up the steep, rugged, overgrown side of the cave. The sparkling water just outside the mouth was fresh and pure. Brun added the pool to the benefits of the location and rejoined the others. The site was good, but the cave itself would contain the decision. The two hunters and the crippled magician prepared to enter the large dark opening.
Returning to the east end, the men looked up at the apex of the triangular entrance high overhead as they passed into the hole in the mountain. All senses alert, they proceeded warily into the cave, keeping close to the wall. When their eyes grew accustomed to the dim interior, they gazed around in wonder. A high-vaulted ceiling domed an enormous room, large enough for many times their number. They inched along the rough rock wall watching for openings that might lead to deeper recesses. Near the back, a second spring oozed out of the wall, forming a small dark pool that melted into the dry dirt floor a short distance beyond. Just past the pool, the cave wall turned sharply toward the entrance. Following the west wall back to the mouth, they saw in the gradually increasing light a dark crack outlined by the dim gray wall. At Brun’s signal, Creb stopped his shuffling walk while Grod and the leader approached the fissure and looked inside. They saw absolute blackness.
“Grod!” Brun commanded, adding a gesture that signified his need.
The second-in-command dashed outside while Brun and Creb waited tensely. Grod scanned the vegetation growing nearby, then headed toward a small stand of silver fir. Clumps of hard resinous pitch, exuded through the bark, made shiny patches on the trunks. Grod pried the bark loose; fresh sticky sap beaded up in the white scar left on the tree. He broke off dead dry branches still clinging below the living, green-needled boughs, then withdrew a stone hand-axe from a fold of his wrap, hacked off a green branch, and quickly stripped it. He wrapped the pitchy bark and dry twigs with tough grass to the end of the green branch, and carefully removing the live coal from the aurochs horn at his waist, he held it to the pitch and began to blow. Soon, he ran back into the cave with a blazing torch.
With Grod holding the light high over his head and Brun in the lead gripping his club in readiness, the two men entered the dark crack. They crept silently along a narrow passage that turned abruptly after a few steps, doubling back toward the rear of the cave, and just beyond the turn, opened into a