The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [30]
“Hai! Hai! Get away from there! Go on, you filthy beasts! Get out of here!” she shouted, galloping Whinney toward them, as she hurtled stones with her sling. Wolf was beside her, looking pleased with himself, as he growled and puppy-barked at the retreating pack.
A few yelps of pain made it clear that Ayla’s stones had reached their mark, though she had held the force of her weapon in check and aimed for nonvital parts. If she had wished, her stones could have been fatal; it wouldn’t have been the first time that she had killed a hyena, but that had not been her intention.
“What are you doing, Ayla?” Jondalar asked, riding toward her as she was returning to the bison the hyenas had killed.
“I’m chasing those filthy, dirty hyenas away,” she said, though it certainly must have been obvious.
“But why?”
“Because they are going to share that bison kill with us,” she replied.
“I was just going after one of those that are standing around,” Jondalar said.
“We don’t need a whole bison, unless we’re going to dry the meat, and this one is young and tender. The ones that are standing around are mostly tough old bulls,” she said as she slid off Whinney to chase Wolf away from the downed animal.
Jondalar looked more closely at the gigantic bulls, who had also retreated from Ayla’s hazing, and then at the young one on the ground. “You’re right. This is a male herd, and that one probably left his mother’s herd recently and just joined this male group. He still had a lot to learn.”
“It’s a fresh kill,” Ayla announced, after she examined it. “They’ve only torn out the throat, and the gut, so far, and a little of the flank. We can take what we want, and leave the rest for them. Then we won’t need to take the time to hunt down one of those others. They can run fast, and they might get away. I think I saw a place down by the river that may have been a camp. If it’s the one we’re looking for, there’s still time for me to make something nice tonight with all the food we gathered and this meat.”
She was already cutting through the skin up from the stomach to the flank before Jondalar really grasped all that she had said. It had happened so fast, but suddenly all his concerns about losing an extra day because of having to hunt and look for the camp were gone.
“Ayla, you’re wonderful!” he said, smiling as he dismounted from the young stallion. He pulled a sharp flint knife, which was hafted to a handle of ivory, out of a stiff rawhide sheath attached to his waist thong, and went to help butcher out the parts they wanted. “That’s what I love about you. You’re always full of surprises that turn out to be good ideas. Let’s get the tongue, too. Too bad they already got to the liver, but after all, it is their kill.”
“I don’t care if it is theirs,” Ayla said, “so long as it’s a fresh kill. They’ve taken enough from me. I don’t mind taking something back from those nasty animals. I hate hyenas!”
“You really do, don’t you? I never hear you talk that way about other animals, not even wolverines, and they scavenge rotten meat sometimes and are more vicious and smell worse.”
The hyena pack had been edging back toward the bison they had expected to feast on, snarling their displeasure. Ayla flung a few more stones to drive them back again. One of them whooped, then several cackled a loud laugh that made her skin crawl. By the time the hyenas decided to chance her sling once more, Ayla and Jondalar had gotten what they wanted.
They rode off, heading down a gully toward the river, with Ayla leading the way, leaving the rest of the carcass behind with the snarling beasts, who had immediately returned and begun to tear it apart again.
The signs she had seen were not of the camp itself, but a marker cairn pointing the way. Inside the heaped-up pile of stones were some dry emergency rations, a few tools and other implements, a fire drill and platform with some dry tinder, and a rather stiff fur with patches of hair falling out. It would