The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [57]
The continental steppes of the peninsula only beckoned the woolly beasts in late fall. The summers were too hot and the heavy snows of winter were too deep to brush away. Many other animals were driven north in winter to the borders of the colder but dryer loess. Most of them migrated back in summer. The forest animals who could browse on brush or bark or lichen stayed on the wooded slopes that offered seclusion and precluded large herds.
Besides forest horses and forest rhinos, wild pigs and several varieties of deer found a home in the tree-filled landscape: red deer, later called elk in other lands, in small herds; individuals and small groups of shy roe-deer with simple three-pointed antlers; the slightly larger, fawn-and-white dappled fallow deer; and a few elk, referred to as moose by those who call the red deer elk; all shared the wooded environment.
Higher up the mountain, large-horned sheep, mouflon, clung to crags and outcrops, feeding on alpine pastures; and higher still, ibex, the wild mountain goat, and chamois gamboled from precipice to precipice. Darting swift-winged birds lent color and song to the forest, if not often a meal. Their place on the menu was more easily satisfied by the fat, low-flying ptarmigan and willow grouse of the steppes brought down by swift stones, and the autumn visitations of geese and eider ducks snared by nets as they landed on marshy mountain ponds. Birds of prey and carrion-eaters floated lazily on thermal updrafts, scanning the bountiful plains and woodlands below.
A host of smaller animals filled the mountains and steppes near the cave, providing food and fur: hunters—minks, otters, wolverines, ermines, martens, foxes, sables, raccoons, badgers, and the small wild cats that later gave rise to legions of domestic mouse chasers; and hunted—tree squirrels, porcupines, hares, rabbits, moles, muskrats, coypu, beavers, skunks, mice, voles, lemmings, ground squirrels, great jerboas, giant hamsters, pikas, and a few never named and lost to extinction.
Larger carnivores were essential to thin the ranks of the abundant prey. There were wolves and their more ferocious relatives, the doglike dholes. And there were cats: lynxes, cheetahs, tigers, leopards, mountain-dwelling snow leopards, and, twice as large as any, cave lions. Omnivorous brown bears hunted near the cave, but their overgrown cousins, the vegetarian cave bears, were now absent. The ubiquitous cave hyena filled out the complement of wildlife.
The land was unbelievably rich, and man only an insignificant fraction of the multifarious life that lived and died in that cold, ancient Eden. Born too raw, without superior natural endowments for it—save one, his oversize brain—he was the weakest of the hunters. But for all his apparent vulnerability, lacking fang or claw or swift leg or leaping strength, the two-legged hunter had gained the respect of his four-legged competitors. His scent alone was enough to veer a far more powerful creature from a chosen path wherever the two lived in close proximity for very long. The capable, experienced hunters of the clan were as skilled in defense as they were in offense, and when the safety or security of the clan was threatened, or if they wanted a warm winter coat decorated by nature, they stalked the unsuspecting stalker.
It was a bright sunlit day, warm with the beginning fullness of summer. The trees were leafed out but still a shade lighter than they would be later. Lazy flies buzzed around scattered bones from previous meals. A fresh breeze from the sea carried a hint of the life within it, and the moving foliage sent shadows chasing across the sunny slope in front of the cave.
With the crisis of finding a new home over, Mog-ur’s duties were light. All that was required of him was an occasional hunting ceremony or ritual to drive away evil spirits or, if someone was hurt or ill, to ask the assistance of beneficent ones to aid Iza’s healing magic. The hunters were gone