The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [41]
“Ayla,” she called to the child who had wandered toward the stream again. The girl came running. Looking at her leg, Iza saw the water had softened the scabs, but it was healing well. Hurrying back into her wrap, Iza led the child toward the ridge, stopping first to get her digging stick and the small pouch she had made. She had noticed a ditch of red soil just on the other side of it, near the place they had stopped before Ayla showed them the cave. When they reached it, she poked with her stick until several small chunks of red ochre broke loose. Picking up a few small pieces, she held them out to Ayla. The girl looked at them, not sure what was expected, then tentatively touched one. Iza took the small lump, put it in the pouch, and tucked the pouch in a fold. Before turning to go back, Iza looked out over the view and saw small figures moving across the plains below. The hunters had left early in the morning.
Many ages before, men and women, far more primitive than Brun and his five hunters, learned to compete for game with four-legged predators by watching and copying their methods. They saw, for example, how wolves, working together, could bring down prey many times larger and more powerful than themselves. Over time, using tools and weapons rather than claws and fangs, they learned that by cooperating, they, too, could hunt the large beasts that shared their environment. It prodded them along their evolutionary journey.
With a need for silence so as not to warn the game they were stalking, they developed hunting signals that evolved into the more elaborate hand signals and gestures used to communicate other needs and desires. Warning cries changed in pitch and tone to include greater informational content. Though the branch of the tree of man that led to the people of the Clan did not include sufficiently developed vocal mechanisms to evolve a full verbal language, it did not impair their ability to hunt.
The six men started out at first light. From their vantage point near the ridge, they watched the sun, sending its beams ahead as scouts, creep tentatively over the edge of the earth, then blazon forth in full command of the day. Toward the northeast, a vast cloud of soft loess dust shrouded an undulating mass of shaggy brown movement accented by curving black spikes; a broad trail of trampled earth, entirely devoid of vegetation, followed the slowly moving herd of bison defacing the golden green plains. No longer slowed by women and children, the hunters covered the distance to the steppes quickly.
Leaving the foothills behind, they fell into a ground-eating dogtrot, approaching the herd downwind. As they drew close, they crouched low in the tall grass watching the huge beasts. Gigantic humpbacked shoulders, tapering to narrow flanks behind, supported massive woolly heads bearing enormous black horns that spanned well over a yard in mature animals. The rangy, sweaty smell of the close-packed multitude assaulted their nostrils and the earth vibrated with the movement of thousands of hooves.
Brun, holding up a hand to shade his eyes, studied each individual creature that passed, waiting for the right animal in the right circumstances. To look at the man, it was impossible to tell the unbearable tension the leader kept under tight control. Only his pulsing temples above locked jaws betrayed his nervously pounding heart and raw-edged nerves. This was the most important hunt of his life. Not even his first kill that had elevated him to the status of manhood matched this one, for on it rested the final condition for residence in the new cave. A successful hunt would not only bring meat for the feast that would be part of the cave ceremony, but would assure the clan that their totems did, indeed, favor their new home. If the hunters returned empty-handed from their first hunt, the clan would be required to search further for a cave more acceptable to their protective spirits. It was their totems’ way of warning them that the cave was unlucky.