The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [149]
Then Ayla jumped down in the pit with him, and nudged him aside. “Move over, Baby. I’ve got to tie this rope around his neck so Whinney can pull him out.”
The cub was a bundle of nervous energy as the horse, leaning into the strap across her chest, hauled the onager out of the pit. Baby jumped into the hole and back out of it, and when the onager was finally out of the hole, the cub leaped on top of the animal, then bounded off again. He didn’t know what to do with himself. The lion who made the kill was usually the first to take a share, but cubs did not make kills. By the usual dominance patterns, they were last.
Ayla spread the onager out to make the abdominal cut that started at the anus and ended at the throat. A lion would have opened the animal in a similar way, tearing out its soft underside first. With Baby watching avidly, Ayla cut through the lower part, then turned and straddled the animal to cut up the rest of the way.
Baby couldn’t wait anymore. He dove into the gaping abdomen and snatched at the bloody innards bulging out. His needle-sharp teeth tore through the tender internal tissue and succeeded in grabbing hold of something. He clamped down and pulled back in typical tug-of-war fashion.
Ayla finished the cut, turned around, and felt laughter bubbling up exuberantly. She shook with mirth until tears came to her eyes. Baby had clamped down on a piece of intestine, but, unexpectedly, as he backed up, there was no resistance. It kept coming. Anxiously, he had continued to pull until a long rope of uncoiled entrails was strung out for several feet, and his look of surprise was so funny that Ayla couldn’t contain herself. She collapsed to the ground, holding her side, trying to regain her composure.
The cub, not knowing what the woman was doing on the ground, let the coil drop and came to investigate. Grinning as he came bounding toward her, she grabbed his head in her hands and rubbed her cheek on his fur. Then she rubbed him behind his ears and around his slightly blood-stained jowls, while he licked her hands and wriggled into her lap. He found her two fingers, and, pressing her thighs alternately with his forefeet, he suckled, making low rumbling sounds deep in his throat.
I don’t know what brought you, Baby, Ayla thought, but I’m so glad you’re here.
14
By fall, the cave lion was bigger than a large wolf, and his baby chunkiness was giving way to gangly legs and muscular strength. But for all his size, he was still a cub, and Ayla sported an occasional bruise or scratch from his playfulness. She never struck him—he was a baby. She did, however, reprimand him with the signal for “Stop it, Baby!” while pushing him away, and adding “That’s enough, you’re too rough!” as she walked off.
It was sufficient to cause a contrite cub to come after her making submissive gestures, as members of a pride did to those more dominant. She couldn’t resist, and the happy rambunctdousness that followed her forgiveness was always more restrained. He would sheathe his claws before he jumped up and put his paws on her shoulders to push her over—rather than knocking her down—so he could wrap his forelegs around her. She had to hug him back, and though he bared his teeth when he took her shoulder or arm in his mouth—as he would one day bite a female he was mating—he was gentle and never broke the skin.
She accepted his advances and gestures of affection and returned them, but in the Clan, until he made his first kill and reached adulthood, a son obeyed his mother. Ayla would have it no other way. The cub accepted her as mother. It was therefore natural for her to be dominant.
The woman and the horse were his pride; they were all he had. The few times he had met other lions while on the steppes with Ayla, his inquisitive advances were soundly rejected, as the scar on his nose proved. After the scuffle that sent Baby back with a bleeding nose, the woman avoided other lions when the cub was with her, but when she was out alone, she still observed.
She found herself comparing