The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [60]
“Roe Deer, when your spirit returns to the Great Earth Mother, thank Her for giving us one of your kind, that we may eat,” Jondalar said quietly.
Ayla, standing beside the man, nodded, then prepared to help him skin and butcher their dinner.
7
I hate to leave the hide. Roe deer makes such soft leather,” Ayla said as she put the last piece of meat in her parfleche, “and did you see the fur on that sable?”
“But we don’t have time to make leather, and we can’t take much more with us than we already have,” Jondalar said. He was erecting the tripod of poles from which the parfleche full of meat would be suspended.
“I know, but I still hate to leave it.”
They hung the parfleche; then Ayla glanced toward the fireplace, thinking about the food she had just put on to cook, though nothing was apparent. It was cooking in a ground oven, a hole in the ground lined with hot rocks into which she had put the deer meat seasoned with herbs, along with mushrooms, bracken fern fiddleheads, and cattail roots she had gathered, all wrapped in coltsfoot leaves. She then added more hot rocks on top and a layer of dirt. It would be a while before it was done, but she was glad they had stopped early enough—and had been lucky enough to get fresh meat soon enough—to cook it that way. It was a favorite method since it made food both flavorful and tender.
“I’m hot and the air feels heavy and humid. I’m going to go and cool off,” she said. “I’m even going to wash my hair. I saw some soaproot growing downstream. Are you going to come for a swim?”
“Yes, I think I will. I may even wash my hair, if you can find enough of that soaproot for me,” Jondalar said, his blue eyes crinkling with a smile as he held up a lank strand of greasy blond hair that had fallen across his forehead.
They walked side by side along the broad sandy bank of the river. Wolf bounded after them, running in and out of brush, exploring new scents. Then he dashed ahead and disappeared around a bend.
Jondalar noticed the trail of horse hooves and wolf track they had made earlier. “I wonder what someone would make of spoor like this,” he said, grinning at the thought.
“What would you make of it?” Ayla asked.
“If Wolf’s track was clear, I’d think a wolf was trailing two horses, but in some places it’s obvious that the horse prints are on top of the wolf prints, so he can’t have been following. He was walking with them. That would confuse a tracker,” he said.
“Even if Wolf’s prints were clear, I’d wonder why a wolf was following these two horses. The tracks show they are both strong and healthy, but look at the impression, how deep it is, and the set of the hooves. You can tell they’re carrying weight,” Ayla said.
“That would confuse a tracker, too.”
“Oh, there they are,” Ayla said, seeing the rather tall, somewhat straggling plants with light pink flowers and leaves shaped like spear points, that she had noticed earlier. With her digging stick she quickly loosened several roots and pulled them out.
On their way back, she searched for a flat, hard stone or piece of wood, and a rounded stone to crush the soaproot and release the saponin, which would foam into a light cleansing lather in the water. At a bend, upstream but not too far from their campsite, the small river had scoured out a waist-deep pool. The water was cool and refreshing, and after washing, they explored the rocky river, swimming and wading farther upstream until they were stopped by a churning waterfall and swift rapids where the sloping sides of the valley narrowed and became steeper.
It reminded Ayla of the small river in her valley, with its fuming, churning waterfall blocking her way upstream, though the rest of the area made her think more of the mountain slopes around the cave where she grew up. There was a waterfall there that she remembered, a gentler, mossy one that had led her to a small cave she had claimed as her own, and that had more than once offered her a haven.
They let the current carry them back, splashing