The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [266]
As they trudged higher, Jondalar saw a herd of mammoths grazing far to the north, and somewhat closer, reindeer. He knew horses roamed nearby—the people had been hunting them—and he guessed that bison and bear frequented the region in the warmer seasons. The land resembled his own country more than it did the dry grassy steppes to the east, at least in the types of plants that grew, although the dominant vegetation was different, and probably the proportional mix of animals, too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jondalar caught movement to the left. He turned in time to see a white hare dash across the hill chased by an arctic fox. As he watched, the large rabbit suddenly bounded in another direction, passing by the partially decomposed skull of a woolly rhinoceros, then scooted into its hole.
Where there are mammoths and rhinoceroses, Jondalar thought, there are cave lions, and with the other herding animals, probably hyenas, and certainly wolves. Plenty of meat and fur-bearing animals, and food that grows. This is a bountiful land. Making such an assessment was second nature to him, as it was to some degree to most people. They lived off the land, and careful observations about its resources were necessary.
When the group reached a high, level place on the side of the hill, they stopped. Jondalar looked down the hillside and saw that the hunters who lived in this area had a unique advantage. Not only could the animals be seen from a distance, the vast and various herds that roamed the land had to pass through a narrow corridor below that lay between steep walls of limestone and a river. They would be easy to hunt right here. It made him wonder why they had been hunting horses near the Great Mother River.
A keening wail brought Jondalar’s attention back to his immediate surroundings. A woman with long, stringy, disheveled gray hair was being supported by two somewhat younger women as she wailed and cried in obvious grief. Suddenly she broke free, fell on her knees, and draped herself over something on the ground. Jondalar edged forward to get a closer look. He was a good head taller than most of the other men, and with a few steps he understood the woman’s grief.
This was obviously a funeral. Stretched out on the ground were three people—young, probably late teens or early twenties, he guessed. Two of them were definitely male; they were bearded. The biggest one was probably the youngest. His light facial hair was still somewhat sparse. The gray-haired woman was sobbing over the body of the other male, whose brown hair and short beard were more apparent. The third one was fairly tall but thin, and something about the body and the way it lay made him wonder if that person had had some physical problem. He could see no facial hair, which made him think it was a woman at first, but it also could have been a rather tall young man who shaved, just as easily.
The details of clothing were not much help. They were all dressed in leg-coverings and loose tunics that disguised distinguishing characteristics. The clothes appeared to be new, but lacked decoration. It was almost as though someone didn’t want them recognized in the next world and had attempted to make them anonymous.
The gray-haired woman was lifted, almost dragged—though not roughly—away from the body of the young man by the two women who had tried to support her. Then another woman stepped forward, and something about her made Jondalar look again. Her face was strangely skewed, oddly unsymmetrical, with one side seemingly