The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [401]
Without having to get close enough to put themselves in danger from a swift, break-away charge, Ayla and Jondalar could take their pick of the animals standing their ground and aim from a safe distance. It was almost too easy, although they had to be accurate and throw hard to make sure the spear would penetrate the dense undercoat.
With several varieties of animals to choose from, they didn’t often lack for food, and they frequently left the less choice pieces of meat for other carnivores and scavengers. It wasn’t a matter of waste but of need. Their high-protein diet of lean meat often left them less than satisfied, even when they had eaten their fill. Inner barks, and teas made from the needles and twig tips of trees offered only limited relief.
Omnivorous humans could subsist on a variety of foods, and proteins were essential, but not adequate alone. People had been known to die of protein starvation without, at least, one or the other of vegetable produce or fats. Traveling at the end of winter with very little in the way of plant food, they needed fat to survive, but it was so late in the season that the animals they hunted had used most of their own reserves. The travelers selectively took the meat and inner organs that contained the most fat, and left the lean, or gave it to Wolf. He found ample nourishment on his own from the woods and plains along the way.
Another animal did inhabit the region, and though they always noticed them, neither Jondalar nor Ayla could bring themselves to hunt horses. Their fellow travelers fared well enough on the rough dry grass, mosses, lichens, and even small twigs and thin bark.
Ayla and Jondalar traveled west, following the course of the river and angling slightly north, with the massif across the river pacing them. When the river turned somewhat southwest, Jondalar knew they were getting close. The depression between the ancient northern highland and the southern mountains climbed upward toward a wild landscape that outcropped in rugged crags. They passed the place where three streams joined to form the recognizable beginning of the Great Mother River, then crossed over and followed the left bank of the middle course, the Middle Mother. It was the one that Jondalar had been told was considered the true Mother River, though any one of the three could have been.
Reaching what was essentially the beginning of the great river was not the profound experience that Ayla had thought it might be. The Great Mother River didn’t spring forth from some clearly defined place, like the great inland sea where she ended. There was no clear beginning, and even the boundary of the northern territory, considered flathead country, was uncertain, but Jondalar had a familiar feeling about the area they were in. He thought they were close to the edge of the actual glacier, though they had been traveling over snow for some time and it was hard to tell.
Although it was only afternoon, they decided to start looking for a place to set up camp, and they cut across the land to the right bank of the upper feeder. They decided to stop ahead, just beyond the valley of a fairly large stream that joined from the north side.
When Ayla saw an exposed gravel bar beside the river, she stopped to pick out several smooth round stones that would be perfect for her sling, and she put them in her pouch. She thought she might go hunting for ptarmigan or white hare later in the afternoon, or perhaps the next morning.
Memories of their short stay with the Losadunai were already fading, replaced by concerns about the glacier ahead, particularly for Jondalar. On foot and heavily loaded, they had been traveling more slowly than he had planned and he feared the end of the long winter would come too soon. The arrival