The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [96]
By the time she reached the little stream of clear water that was racing and skipping down the slope, the morning chill had burned off. She put down the waterbag she had taken from the lodge and, checking her wool, was glad to see that her moon time seemed to be over. She unfastened her straps, took off her amulet, and stepped into a shallow pool to wash. When she was through, she filled the waterbag at the splashing cascade that ran into the slight depression of the pool, then got out and pushed the water off with one hand and then the other. Putting her amulet back on and picking up the washed wool and her straps, she hurried back.
Jondalar was knotting a tie around their rolled-up sleeping furs when she stepped down into the semisubterranean earthlodge. He looked up and smiled. Noticing that she wasn’t wearing her leather straps, his smile took on a decidedly suggestive look.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to roll up the furs this morning,” he said.
She flushed when she realized he was aware that she was past her moon time. Then she looked directly into his eyes, which were full of teasing laughter, love, and burgeoning desire, and smiled back. “You can always unroll them again.”
“There go my plans for an early start,” he said, pulling an end of the thong that released the knot on the sleeping roll. He unrolled it and stood up as she walked to him.
After their morning meal, it took little time for them to finish packing. Gathering all their possessions and the boat, along with their animal traveling companions, they moved down to the river. But deciding the best way to get across was another matter. They stared at the expanse of water rushing past, so wide that details of the bank on the other side were difficult to see. With its fast current sliding over and around itself in subdued ripples and eddies, making small choppy waves, the sound of the deep river was almost more revealing than its look. It spoke its power in a muted, gurgling roar.
While he was making the circular craft, Jondalar had thought often about the river and how to use the boat to get across. He had never made a bowl boat before, and he had only ridden in one a few times. He had become fairly adept at handling the sleek dugout canoes when he lived with the Sharamudoi, but when he tried his hand at propelling the round bowl boats of the Mamutoi, he found them very clumsy. They were buoyant, hard to tip over, but difficult to control.
The two peoples not only had different types of materials at hand to construct their floating craft, they used boats for different purposes. The Mamutoi were primarily hunters of the open steppes; fishing was only an occasional activity. Their boats were used primarily to get themselves and their possessions across waterways, whether small tributaries or the rivers that swept down, continent-wide, from the glaciers of the north to the inland seas of the south.
The Ramudoi, the River People moiety of the Sharamudoi, fished the Great Mother River—though they referred to it as hunting when they went after the thirty-foot sturgeons—while the Shamudoi half hunted chamois and other animals that lived on the high cliffs and mountains that overlooked the river and, near their home, confined it in a great gorge. The Ramudoi lived on the river during the warm seasons, taking full advantage of its resources, including the large durmast oaks that lined its banks, which were used to make their beautifully crafted and maneuverable boats.
“Well, I think we should just put everything in it,” Jondalar said, picking up one of his pack baskets. Then he put it down and picked up the other one instead. “It’s probably a good idea to put the heaviest things on the bottom, and this one has my flint