The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [100]
As the young woman watched the filly pulling the log, she thought of the Clan and shook her head. They would have thought I was strange just for living with a horse; I wonder what the men would think now? But there were many of them, and women to dry the meat and carry it back. None of them ever had to try it alone.
Spontaneously, she hugged the horse, pressing her forehead into Whinney’s neck. “You’re such a help. I never knew you’d turn out to be such a help. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Whinney. What if the Others are like Broud? I can’t let anyone hurt you. I wish I knew what to do.”
Tears filled her eyes as she held the horse; then she wiped them away and unfastened the harness. “Right now I know what to do. I have to keep an eye out for that herd of young bucks.”
The reindeer bucks were not many days behind the does. They migrated at a leisurely pace. Once she spotted them, it wasn’t difficult for Ayla to observe their movements and confirm that they were following the same trail, nor to gather her equipment and gallop ahead of them. She set up camp beside the river downstream of the reindeer crossing. Then, with her digging stick to loosen the ground, the sharpened hipbone to shovel and lift the dirt, and the tent hide to carry it away, she went to the crossing place of the female herd.
Two main trails and two ancillary paths cut through the brush. She chose one of the main trails for her trap, close enough to the river so that the reindeer would be using it in single file, but far enough back so she could dig a deep hole before water seeped in. By the time it was dug, the late afternoon sun was closing with the end of the earth. She whistled for the horse and rode back to see how far the herd had moved, and estimated they would reach the river sometime the next day.
When she returned to the river, light was fading, but the large gaping hole was conspicuously evident. None of those reindeer are going to fall into that hole. They’ll see it and run around it, she thought, feeling discouraged. Well, it’s too late to do anything tonight. Maybe I’ll think of something in the morning.
But morning brought no lightening of spirit or brilliant ideas. It had clouded up overnight. She was awakened by a huge splat of water on her face to a dreary dawn of diffused light. She hadn’t set up the old hide as a tent the night before, since the sky had been clear when she went to bed and the hide wet and muddy. She had spread it out to dry nearby, but it was now getting wetter. The drop in her face was only the first of many. She wrapped the sleeping fur around her and, after a search of the carrying baskets revealed she had forgotten to bring her wolverine hood, pulled an end over her head and huddled over the black wet remains of a fire.
A bright flash crackled across the eastern plains—sheet lightning that illuminated the land to the horizon. After a moment, a distant rumble growled a warning. As though it were a signal, the clouds above dumped a new deluge. Ayla picked up the wet tent hide and wrapped it around her.
Gradually daylight brought the landscape into sharper focus, driving shadows out of crevices. A gray pallor dulled the burgeoning steppes, as though the dripping nimbus cover had washed out the color. Even the sky was a nondescript shade of nothing, neither blue nor gray nor white.
Water began to pool as the thin layer of permeable soil above the level of the subterranean permafrost became saturated. Still rather near the surface, the frozen earth beneath the topsoil was as solid as the frozen wall to the north. When warming weather melted the soil deeper down, the frozen level was lowered, but the permafrost was impenetrable. There was no drainage. Under certain conditions the saturated soil could turn into treacherous quicksand bogs