The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [11]
“Wolf! Put that down!” Ayla shouted, rushing to get the leather-wrapped package from the young animal. “I thought you had learned to stay away from leather.” When she tried to take it away, he playfully hung on with his teeth, shaking his head back and forth and growling. She let go, stopping the game. “Put it down!” she said sharply. She brought her hand down as though she meant to strike his nose but stopped short. At the signal and command, Wolf tucked his tail between his legs, abjectly scooted toward her, and dropped the package at her feet, whining in appeasement.
“That’s the second time he’s gotten into these things,” Ayla said, picking up the package and some others he had been chewing on. “He knows better, but he just can’t seem to stay away from leather.”
Jondalar came to help her. “I don’t know what to say. He drops it when you tell him, but you can’t tell him if you’re not there, and you can’t watch him all the time … What’s this? I don’t remember seeing this before,” he said, looking quizzically at a bundle that was carefully wrapped in a soft skin and securely tied.
Flushing slightly, Ayla quickly took the package from him. “It’s … just something I brought with me … something … from Lion Camp,” she said, and she put it on the bottom of one of her pack baskets.
Her actions puzzled Jondalar. They had both limited their possessions and traveling gear to the minimum, taking little that was not essential. The package wasn’t large, but it wasn’t small either. She could probably have added another outfit in the space it took. What could she be taking with her?
“Wolf! Stop that!”
Jondalar watched Ayla going after the young wolf again and had to smile. He wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed that Wolf was purposely misbehaving, teasing Ayla to make her come after him, playing with her. He had found a camp shoe of hers, a soft moccasin-type of foot-covering that she sometimes wore for comfort after they made camp, particularly if the ground was frozen or damp and cold and she wanted to air out or dry her regular, sturdier footwear.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him!” Ayla said, exasperated, as she came toward the man. She was holding the object of his latest escapade, and she looked sternly at the miscreant. Wolf was creeping toward her, seemingly contrite, whining in abject misery at her disapproval; but a hint of mischief lurked beneath his distress. He knew she loved him, and the moment she relented, he would be wriggling and yelping with delight and ready to play again.
Though he was adult size, except for some filling out, Wolf was hardly more than a puppy. He had been born in the winter, out of season, to a lone wolf whose mate had died. Wolf’s coat was the usual gray-buff shade—the result of bands of white, red, brown, and black that colored each outer hair, creating the indistinct pattern that allowed wolves to fade invisibly into the natural wilderness landscape of brush, grass, earth, rock, and snow—but his mother had been black.
Her unusual coloring had incited the primary and other females of the pack into badgering her unmercifully, giving her the lowest status and eventually driving her away. She roamed alone, learning to survive in between pack territories for a season, until she finally found another loner, an old male who had left his pack because he couldn’t keep up any more. They fared well together for a while. She was the stronger hunter, but he was experienced and they had even begun to define and defend a small piece of territory of their own. It might have been the better diet that two of them working together were able to secure, or the companionship and nearness of a friendly male, or her own genetic predisposition that brought her into heat out of season, but her elderly companion was