The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [276]
“What is it, Wolf?” Ayla said. Looking more closely, she found a brown stain on one of the logs and felt a touch of panic drain her face. It was dried blood, she was sure, probably Jondalar’s blood. She patted the canine’s head. “We’ll find him,” she said, to reassure herself as much as the wolf, but she wasn’t at all sure that they would find him alive.
The trail leading from the landing ran between fields of tall dry grass intermixed with brush and was much easier to follow. The problem was that it was so well used that she couldn’t be sure it had been taken by the ones she was pursuing. Wolf was in the lead, for which Ayla was soon more than grateful. They had not been on the path long when he stopped in his tracks, wrinkling his nose and baring his teeth in a snarl.
“Wolf? What is it? Is someone coming?” Ayla said, even as she turned Whinney off the path and headed for some thick brush, signaling Wolf to follow. She slid off the mare’s back as soon as they were screened by the tall, bare branches and grass, grabbed Racer’s lead rope to guide him behind the mare, since he was wearing the pack, and hid between the horses herself. She knelt on one knee and put an arm around Wolf’s neck to keep him quiet, then waited.
Her assessment was not wrong. Before long, two young women ran past, obviously heading for the river. She signaled Wolf to stay and then, using the stealth she had learned when tracking carnivores as a girl, she followed them back, creeping close through the grass, then hiding behind some brush to watch.
The two women talked to each other as they uncovered the raft, and though the language was unfamiliar, she noticed a similarity to Mamutoi. She wasn’t quite able to understand them, but she thought she caught the meaning of a word or two.
The women pushed the log platform almost into the water, then retrieved two long poles that had been underneath it. They fastened one end of a large coil of rope around a tree, then climbed on. As one began to pole across the river, the other played out the rope. When they were near the other side, where the current was not as swift, they started poling upstream until they reached the docking place. With ropes fastened to the raft, they secured it to the poles sticking up from the water and stepped off to the logs stuck into the bank. Leaving the raft, they started running back the way Ayla had just come.
She returned to the animals, thinking about what to do. She felt sure the women would be returning soon, but “soon” could be this day, or the next, or the one after. She wanted to find Jondalar as soon as possible, but she didn’t want to continue following the trail and have them catch up with her. She was also reluctant to approach them directly until she knew more about them. She finally decided to look for a place to wait for them where she could watch them coming without being seen.
She was pleased that her wait was not too long. By afternoon she saw the two women returning, along with several other people, all carrying litters of butchered meat and sections of horse. They were moving surprisingly fast in spite of their loads. When they drew nearer, Ayla realized there was not a single man in the hunting party. All the hunters were women! She watched them load the meat on the raft, then pole across using the rope for a guide. They hid the raft after unloading it, but they left the guide rope strung across the river, which puzzled her.
Ayla was again surprised at how fast they traveled as they started up the trail. Almost before she knew it, they were gone. She waited some time before she followed, and she kept well behind.
Jondalar was appalled at the conditions inside the fence. The only shelter was a rather large, crude lean-to,