The covenant - James A. Michener [5]
Gumsto, gratified that her complaint had been so moderate, turned his attention to the men in the other areas, and they, too, were so close that he could address them from his tree: 'Let us kill that rhinoceros, feed ourselves, and start for the new waters.'
'Where will we find them?'
Gumsto shrugged and pointed to the horizon.
'How many nights?'
'Who knows?'
'We know the desert continues for many nights,' a fearful man said. 'We've seen that.'
'Others have crossed it,' Gumsto said quickly. 'We know that, too.'
'But beyond? What then?'
'Who knows?'
The imprecision of his answers alarmed him as well as the others, and he might have drawn back from this great venture had he not chanced to see Naoka lolling in the dust behind the thin line of sticks that marked her quarters. She was a marvelous girl, smooth of skin and decked with beads cut from the thick shell of the ostrich egg. Her face radiated the joy of a fine young animal, and obviously she wanted a husband to replace the one the rhinoceros had killed. Aware that Gumsto was staring at her in his hungry way, she smiled and nodded slightly as if to say, 'Let's go.' And he nodded back as if to reply, 'What delight to share the dangers with you.'
It was remarkable that a girl as nubile as Naoka was available for a new marriage; a clan might operate together for thirty years without such an accident, because it was the custom of this tribe for a girl to marry when she was seven and her husband nineteen or twenty, for then trouble was avoided. It was a fine system, for the husband could rear his wife in ways he preferred; when she entered puberty to become a real wife, she would be properly disciplined, knowing what things angered or pleased her man. And he, having been forced to practice restraint while his wife was still a childostracism if he molested her sexually prior to her second period acquired that self-control without which no man could ever become a good huntsman.
There were weaknesses in the system. Since the husband had to be much older than the wife, there was in any group a surplus of old widows whose men had died at the hunt or been killed by falls when searching tall trees for honey. These elderly women were welcome to stay with the band as long as they could function; when they could no longer chew or keep up with the march, they would be placed in the shade of some bush, given a bone with meat clinging to it, and one ostrich egg, and there they died in dignity as the clan moved on.
Useless old widows were therefore common, but beautiful young ones like Naoka were a precious rarity, and Gumsto calculated that if he could somehow placate old Kharu, he stood a reasonable chance of gaining Naoka as his second wife. But he realized that he must move with some caution, because Kharu had spotted his intentions, and he was aware that his son was also eying the beautiful girl, as were the other men.
So as he leaned against the tree, his right foot cradled in the cavity above his left knee, he took stock of himself. He was a normal, good-looking man, rather taller than others in his group. He was compact, angular of shoulder and slim of hip, as the desert required. His teeth were good, and although he was deeply wrinkled, his eyes were powerful, unstained by rheum or brown. Best of all, he was the master-tracker. From a distance of miles he could discern the herd of antelope blending with the sand and find the one that was going to lag, so that it could be detached and struck with an arrow.
He possessed an inner sense which enabled him to think like an animal, to anticipate where the antelope would run or