The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [115]
When she reached the place where she had left her gathering basket, Ayla was shaking. She dropped the animal a few feet away, loosened the carrying blanket, and shifted Jonayla around to the front. She hugged her daughter as tears rolled down her cheeks, finally letting her fear and anger out. She was sure the wolverine had been after her baby.
Even with Wolf on guard—and she knew he would have fought to his death for her—the large, vicious weasel could have hurt the healthy young canine, and attacked her child. There were very few animals that would go up against a wolf, especially one as big as Wolf. Most large cats would have backed off, or just passed them by, and those were the predators that were most on her mind. That was the only reason she had left Jonayla, not wanting to disturb her sleeping infant while she went to gather a few greens. After all, Wolf was watching her. Jonayla wasn’t out of her sight more than a few moments, just when she was in the marsh getting the cattails. But she hadn’t considered a wolverine. She shook her head. There was always more than one kind of predator around.
She nursed the baby for a while, as much to comfort herself as the child, and praised Wolf, petting him with her other hand and talking to him.
“Right now I have to skin out that wolverine. I would rather have killed something we could eat, though I suppose you could eat him, Wolf, but I do want that fur. It’s the one thing wolverines are good for. They are mean and vicious and steal food from traps and when meat is drying, even if people are around. If they get inside a shelter, they destroy everything they can and make a big stink, but their fur makes the best trim around a winter hood. Ice doesn’t cling to it when you breathe. I think I’ll make a hood for Jonayla, and a new one for me, and maybe Jondalar, too. But you don’t need one, Wolf. Ice doesn’t cling much to your fur, either. Besides, you’d look funny with wolverine fur around your head.”
Ayla recalled the wolverine that had been bothering the women of Brun’s clan when they were cutting up an animal from a hunt. It kept dashing into their midst and stealing the freshly cut strips of meat they had set out to dry on cords stretched close to the ground. Even when they threw stones, it wasn’t deterred for long. Finally some of the men had to go after it. That incident had given her one of the reasons she had used to rationalize her decision when she resolved she would teach herself to hunt with the sling she had secretly learned to use.
Ayla put her baby down on the soft buckskin carrying blanket again, this time on her stomach, since she seemed to like pushing up and looking around. Then she dragged the wolverine carcass a few more paces away and turned it on its back. First she cut out the two flint points that were still embedded in the animal. The one stuck in the hindquarters was still good—she would only need to wash off the blood—but the one she had thrown with such force that it went clear through the neck had a broken tip. She could resharpen it and use it for a knife if not a spear point, but Jondalar could do it better, she thought.
With the new knife he had recently given her, she turned to the wolverine. Starting at the anus, she cut away his genital organs and made a deft cut up toward the stomach but stopped short of the ventral scent gland. One of the ways wolverines marked their territory was to straddle low logs or bushes and rub the strong-smelling material that issued from the gland on them. They also marked territory with urine and feces, but it was the gland that could ruin the fur. It was almost impossible to get the smell out and unbearable to wear the fur around the face if it was