The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [90]
She threw the useful, though presently unnecessary, intestines to Wolf, and she and Jondalar turned to butchering the wild beef. After making several strategic cuts, together they began to pull off the hide, a process that was more efficient than skinning it with a knife. They only used a sharp implement to sever a few points of attachment. With a little effort, the membrane between the skin and the muscle separated cleanly, and they ended up with only the two holes of the spear points marring a perfect hide. They rolled it up to keep it from drying too quickly, and they put the head aside. The tongue and brains were rich and tender, and they planned to eat those delicacies that night. The skull with its large horns, however, they would leave for the Camp. It could have special meaning for someone, and if not, there were many useful parts to it.
Then Ayla took the stomach and bladder to the small stream that supplied water for the Camp to wash them, and Jondalar went down to the river to find brush and slender trees that could be bent to make a round bowl-shaped frame for the small boat. They also searched for deadfall and driftwood. They would need several fires to keep animals and insects away from their meat, as well as a fire inside overnight.
They worked until it was nearly dark, dividing the cow into large segments, then cutting the meat into small tongue-shaped pieces and hanging them to dry over makeshift racks made of brushwood, but they still didn’t finish. They brought the racks into the lodge overnight. Their tent was still damp, but they folded it and brought it in, too. They would set it up again the next day when they brought the meat out, to let the wind and the sun finish the drying.
In the morning, after they cut up the last of the meat, Jondalar began to construct the boat. Using both steam and hot rocks heated in the fire, he bent the wood for the boat frame. Ayla was very interested and wanted to know where he learned the process.
“My brother, Thonolan. He was a spearmaker,” Jondalar explained, holding down the end of a small straight tree that he had formed into a curve, while she lashed it to a circular section with sinew made of a tendon from the hind legs of the aurochs.
“But what does spearmaking have to do with making a boat?”
“Thonolan could make a spear shaft perfectly straight and true. But to learn how to take the bend out of wood, you first have to learn how to bend wood, and he could do that just as well. He was much better at it than I am. He had a real feel for it. I suppose you could say his craft was not only making spears, but shaping wood. He could make the best snowshoes, and that means taking a straight branch or tree and bending it completely around. Maybe that’s why he felt so much at home with the Sharamudoi. They were expert wood shapers. They used hot water and steam to bend out their dugouts to the shape they wanted.”
“What is a dugout?” Ayla asked.
“It’s a boat carved out of a whole tree. The front end is shaped to a fine edge, the back end, too, and it can glide through the water so easily and smoothly, it’s like cutting with a sharp knife. They’re beautiful boats. This one we’re making is clumsy by comparison, but there are no big trees around here. You’ll see dugouts when we reach the Sharamudoi.”
“How much longer before we get there?”
“It’s quite a long ways, yet. Beyond those mountains,” he said, looking west, toward the high peaks indistinct in the summer haze.
“Oh,” she said, feeling disappointed. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be so