The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [148]
Ayla and Jondalar started north in the morning on foot, with the travois poles lashed together, and then fastened across the middle of the round boat. With each of them carrying an end, they could lift the poles and the boat over and around obstacles much more easily than trying to drag them behind the horse. It gave the horses a rest, too, with only the pack baskets to carry and their own feet to worry about. But after a while, without the guiding hand of the man on his back, Racer had a tendency to wander off to browse a little on the green leaves of young trees, since there hadn’t been much pasture. He took a detour to the side and back a ways when he smelled the grass in a small clearing where a strong wind had blown down several trees, allowing sunlight in.
Jondalar, tired of going after him, tried for a time to hold on to both Racer’s lead rope and his end of the poles, but it was hard to watch where Ayla was going to lift the poles out of the way, to watch his own footing, and to be careful that he wasn’t leading the young horse into a hole, or something worse. He wished that Racer would follow him without rein or harness the way Whinney followed Ayla. Finally, when Jondalar accidentally shoved his end of the poles and jabbed Ayla rather hard, she came up with a suggestion.
“Why don’t you tie Racer’s lead rope to Whinney?” she said. “You know she’ll follow me, and she’ll watch her own footing, and won’t lead Racer astray, and he’s used to following her. Then you won’t have to be concerned about him wandering off, or getting into some other kind of trouble, and you’ll only have to worry about your end of the poles.”
He stopped for a moment, frowning, then suddenly broke into a big grin. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he said.
Though they had been gaining in elevation slowly, when the land began to get noticeably steeper the forest changed character rather abruptly. The woodland thinned out, and they quickly left the large deciduous hardwood trees behind. Fir and spruce became the primary trees, with the remaining hardwoods, even those of the same variety, much smaller.
They reached the top of a ridge and looked out over it onto a wide plateau that dropped down gently and then extended nearly level for quite some distance. A mostly coniferous forest of dark green fir, spruce, and pine, accented by a scattering of larch, with needles turning golden, dominated the plateau. It was set off by bright greenish-gold high meadows, and splashed with blue and white tarns, reflecting the clear sky above and the clouds in the distance. A fast river partitioned the space, fed by a rampaging falls cascading down the mountainside at the far end. Rising up beyond the tableland, and filling the sky, was the breathtaking vista of a high peak capped in white, partially masked by the clouds.
It seemed so close that Ayla felt she could almost reach out and touch it. The sun behind her illuminated the colors and shapes of the mountain stone; light tan rock jutting out from pale gray walls; nearly white faces contrasting with the dark gray of strangely regular columns that had emerged from the fiery core of the earth and cooled to the angled form of their basic crystal structure. Shimmering above that was the beautiful blue-green ice of a true glacier, frosted with snow that still lingered on the highest reaches. And while they watched, as if by magic, the sun and the rain clouds created a glowing rainbow and stretched it in a great arc over the mountain.
The man and woman gazed in wonder, drinking in the beauty and the serenity. Ayla wondered if the rainbow was meant to tell them something, if only that they were welcome. She noticed that the air she was breathing was deliciously cool and fresh, and she breathed with relief to be away from the deadening heat of the plains. Then she suddenly realized that the swarming bothersome gnats were gone. As far as she was concerned, she wouldn’t have needed to go a step farther than this plateau. She could have made her home right there.
She turned to face the man, smiling. Jondalar