The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [137]
“That’s true, but I think we are also a little north, and if we just go east, we’ll have to cross both North River and The River,” Zelandoni said. She picked up a stick and started drawing lines on the ground where it was bare. “If we start out going east but somewhat south, we can reach Summer Camp of the Twenty-ninth Cave before nightfall and stay with them tonight. North River joins The River near South Face of the Twenty-Ninth Cave. We can cross The River at the ford between Summer Camp and South Face and have only one river to cross. The River is bigger there, but shallow, and then we can go on toward Reflection Rock and to the Fifth Cave the way we did last year.”
Jondalar studied her scratchings on the ground, and while he was looking at them, Zelandoni added another comment. “The trail is fairly well blazed on the trees between here and Summer Camp, and there’s a path on the ground the rest of the way.”
Jondalar realized that he had been thinking about traveling the way he and Ayla did on their Journey. On horseback, with the bowl boat attached to the end of the travois to float their things across streams, they didn’t need to concern themselves much about crossing any but the biggest of rivers. But with the First sitting on the pole-drag Whinney was pulling, it wasn’t likely to float, and neither was the one Racer was dragging with all their supplies. Besides, it would be easier to find their way with blazed trails.
“You are right, Zelandoni,” he said. “It might not be quite as direct, but your way would make it easier, and likely get us there just as fast or faster.”
The trail blazes weren’t quite as easy to follow as the First had remembered. It seemed that people hadn’t been that way very often lately, but they renewed some of them as they went along so the trail would be easier for the next person to use. It was nearing sunset when they reached the home of Summer Camp, also known as the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, which was sometimes known as Three Rocks, meaning three separate locations.
The Twenty-ninth Cave had a particularly interesting and complex social arrangement. They once had been three separate Caves that lived in three different shelters that looked out on the same rich expanse of grassland. Reflection Rock faced north, which would have been a major disadvantage except that what it had to offer more than compensated for its north face. It was a huge cliff, a half mile long, two hundred sixty feet high, with five levels of shelters and a vast potential for observing the surrounding landscape and the animals that migrated through it. And it was a spectacular sight that most people looked upon with awe.
The Cave called South Face was just that: a two-story shelter facing south, situated to get the best of the sunlight in summer and winter, high enough up to get a good view of the open plain. The final Cave was Summer Camp, which was on the west end of the plain and offered among other things a wealth of hazelnuts, which many of the people from the other Caves went to pick in late summer. It was also the one with the closest proximity to a small Sacred Cave, which was called by the people who lived in the vicinity simply Forest Hollow.
Since all three Caves utilized essentially the same hunting and gathering areas, hard feelings were developing, leading to fights. It wasn’t that the area couldn’t support all three groups—it was not only rich in itself, it was a major migration route—but often two or more gathering groups or hunting parties from different Caves went after the same things at the same time. Two uncoordinated hunts trying for the same migrating small herd interfered with the plans of both, and had been known to chase away the animals, with neither group getting a kill. If all three groups went after them independently, it was worse. All the Zelandonii Caves in the region were being pulled into the disagreements, one way or another,