The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [302]
Rydag was not nervous, though, he had been on the back of a horse before. He was just excited when the tall man picked him up and put him on Racer’s back. He had never ridden the stallion. He grinned at Latie, who was watching him, with a mixture of concern for his safety, delight at his new experience, and just a bit of envy. She had observed Jondalar training the horse, as much as she could from a distance, since it was hard to convince another woman to go with her just to stand around and watch—there were drawbacks to adulthood. She decided training a young horse wasn’t necessarily magical. It just took patience, and of course, a horse to train.
A last check was made of the Camp, and then they started up the slope. Halfway up, Ayla stopped. Wolf did too, watching her expectantly. She looked back at the earthlodge where she had found a home and acceptance among her own kind. She missed its snug security already, but it would be there when they returned, ready to shelter them again through a long cold winter. Wind riffled the drape across the archway of mammoth tusks at the entrance, and she could see the skull of the cave lion above it. The Lion Camp seemed lonely without people. Ayla of the Mamutoi shivered with a sudden uneasy pang of sadness.
30
The great grasslands, bountiful source of life in that cold land, displayed yet another face of the renewing cycle as the Lion Camp traveled. The bluish-violet and yellow flowers of the last dwarf iris were fading but still colorful, and fernleaf peonies were in full bloom. A broad bed of the dark red blossoms filling the entire depression between two hills caused exclamations of wonder and appreciation from the travelers. But it was the young bluegrass and ripening fescue and feather grasses that predominated, turning the steppes into waves of softly billowing silver accented by shadows of blue sage. Not until later, after the young grass grew ripe and the feather grass lost its plumes, would the rich plains change from silver to golden.
The young wolf took delight in discovering the multitude of small animals that lived and thrived on the vast prairie. He dashed after polecats and stoats—ermine in summer-brown coats—and backed off when the dauntless predators held their ground. When mice, voles, and velvety-furred shrews, who were used to evading foxes, scurried into holes burrowed just below the surface, Wolf chased gerbils, hamsters, and long-eared, prickly hedgehogs. Ayla laughed at his look of startled surprise when a thick-tailed jerboa, with short forelegs, and three toes on its long hind legs, bounded away in jumps and dived into the burrow in which it had hibernated all winter. Hares, giant hamsters, and great jerboas were large enough for a meal, and tasty when skinned and skewered over an evening fire. Ayla’s sling brought down several that Wolf flushed.
The digging steppe rodents were beneficial, loosening and turning over the topsoil, but some changed the character of the land with their extensive burrowing. As the Lion Camp hiked overland, the ubiquitous holes of spotted susliks were too numerous to count, and in some areas they had to wend their way around hundreds of grass-covered mounds, two to three feet high, each a community of steppe marmots.
Susliks were the preferred prey of black kites, though the long-winged hawks also fed on other rodents, and carrion and insects as well. The graceful birds usually detected the unsuspecting susliks while soaring in the air, but the kite could also hover like a kestrel, the native falcon, or fly very low to take its prey by surprise. Besides hawks and falcons, the tawny eagle favored the prolific little rodent. On one occasion, when Ayla noticed Wolf striking a pose that caused her to look closer, she saw one of the large dark brown predatory birds land near its nest on the ground, bringing a suslik to its young. She watched with interest, but neither she nor the wolf disturbed