The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [141]
With a deft, knowledgeable touch, the young medicine woman probed to discover the extent of the cub’s injuries. One rib was broken but didn’t threaten to cause other damage. Spasms of contraction and little mewling sounds indicated where he hurt; he might have internal injuries. The worst problem was an open wound on his head, no doubt caused by a hard hoof.
Her fire had long since burned out, but it was no longer a concern. She had come to depend on her firestones, and she could start a fire very quickly if she had good tinder. She started water boiling, then wrapped a leather band smoothly and tightly around the baby cave lion’s ribs. As she peeled the dark brown skin off the comfrey roots she had picked on the way back, a glutinous mucilage oozed out. She put marigold flowers in the boiling water, and, when the liquid turned golden, she dipped in a soft absorbent skin to wash the cub’s head wound.
Soaking off the dried blood caused bleeding again, and she saw that his skull was cracked, but not crushed. She chopped the white comfrey root and applied the gummy substance directly to the wound—it stopped the bleeding and would help heal the bone—then wrapped it with more soft leather. She hadn’t known what use she might find for them when she cured the hides of nearly every animal she had killed, but in her wildest imagination she never would have dreamed the use to which some had just been put.
Wouldn’t Brun be surprised to see me, she thought, smiling. He never allowed animals that hunted, he wouldn’t even let me bring that little wolf cub into the cave. Now look at me, with a lion cub! I think I’m going to learn a lot about cave lions in a hurry—if he lives.
She set more water to boil for a comfrey-leaf and chamomile tea, though she didn’t know how she was going to get the internally healing medicine into the baby lion. She left the cub then and went out to skin the reindeer. When the first thin, tongue-shaped slices of meat were ready to hang, she was suddenly at a loss. There was no layer of soil on top of the stone ledge, nothing into which she could sink the sticks she used to string her cords across. She hadn’t even thought of that when she was so concerned about bringing the deer carcass up to the cave. Why was it the small things that always seemed to stymie her? Nothing could be taken for granted.
In her frustration, she couldn’t think of any solution. She was tired, and overwrought, and anxious about bringing a cave lion home. She wasn’t sure she should have, and what was she going to do with him? She threw down the stick and got up. Walking to the far end of the porch, she looked out over the valley while the wind blew in her face. What could she be thinking of—to bring a baby lion back that would need care, when she should be getting ready to leave and continue her search for the Others? Maybe she should just take him back out to the steppes now, and let him go the way of all weakened animals in the wild. Had living alone made her stop thinking straight? She didn’t know how to take care of him, anyway. How would she feed him? And what would happen if he did recover? She couldn’t send him back to the steppes then; his mother would never take him back, he would die. If she was going to keep the cub, she’d have to stay in the valley. To continue her search, she’d have to take him back to the steppes.
She went back into the cave and stood over the young cave lion. He still hadn’t moved. She felt his chest. He was warm and breathing, and his fuzzy coat reminded her of Whinney’s when she was a baby. He was cute, and he looked so funny with his head bandaged up that she had to smile. But that cute baby is going to become a very large lion, she reminded herself. She stood up and looked down