The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [72]
“You’re looking satisfied with yourself,” she said, roughing up his neck fur, so thick and full it was almost a mane. When she stopped, he jumped up on her, putting his muddy paws on her chest, nearly at the level of her shoulders. He caught her by surprise, almost knocking her down, but she recovered her balance.
“Wolf! Look at all this mud,” she said, as he reached to lick her throat and face, and then, with a low rumbling growl, he opened his mouth and took her jaw in his teeth. But for all his impressive canine armaments, his action was as restrained and gentle as if he’d been handling a new puppy. No tooth broke skin; they hardly made an impression on it. She buried both her hands in his ruff again, pushed his head back, and looked at the devotion in his wolfish eyes with as much affection as he showed her. Then she grabbed his jaw with her teeth, and gave him the same kind of growling, gentle love-bite back.
“Now, get down, Wolf. Look at the mess you’ve made of me! I’m going to have to wash this, too.” She brushed off the loose, sleeveless leather tunic she wore over the short leggings that had been used as undergarments.
“If I didn’t know better, Ayla, I could almost be frightened for you when he does that,” Jondalar said. “He’s gotten so big, and he is a hunter. He could kill someone.”
“You don’t have to worry about Wolf when he does that. That’s the way wolves greet each other and show their love. I think he’s glad we woke up in time to get out of the valley, too.”
“Have you looked down there?”
“Not yet … Wolf, get away from there,” she said, pushing him away when he began to sniff between her legs. “It’s my moon time.” She looked aside and flushed slightly. “I came to get my wool, and I haven’t had the chance to look.”
While Ayla attended to her personal needs, washing herself and her clothes in the little stream, tying on the straps that held the wool in place, and getting something else to wear, Jondalar walked toward the edge of the valley to pass his water and looked down. There was no sign of a campsite, or of any place there could be one. The natural basin of the valley was partially filled with water, and the logs and trees and other floating debris were bobbing and dipping as the agitated water continued to rise. The small river that fed it was still blocked at the outlet, and still creating backwash, though it was not sloshing with the sweeping back-and-forth movement of the night before.
Ayla quietly moved beside Jondalar, who had been staring intently at the valley and thinking. He looked up when he felt her presence.
“This valley must get narrow downstream, and something must be blocking the river,” he said, “probably rocks or a mudslide. It’s holding the water in. Maybe that’s why it was so green down there, it may have done it before.”
“The flash flood alone would have washed us away if it had caught us,” Ayla said. “My valley used to flood every spring, and that was bad enough, but this…” She could find no words to express her thought, and she unconsciously finished her sentence with the motions of Clan sign language that to her conveyed more strongly and precisely her feelings of dismay and relief.
Jondalar understood. He, too, was at a loss for words and shared her feelings. They both stood silently watching the movement below; then Ayla noticed his forehead knotting with concentration and concern. Finally he spoke.
“If the mudslide, or whatever it is, gives away too quickly, that water washing downstream will be