The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [193]
“I don’t want fresh meat from a cave lion’s kill.”
“It’s not her kill. It’s my kill. That doe still has my spear in her.”
It was useless to argue. They followed the lioness to a blind canyon, littered with rock from the walls. They waited and watched, and, as Thonolan predicted, the lioness left shortly after. He started for the canyon.
“Thonolan, don’t go down there! You don’t know when that lioness will come back.”
“I just want to get my spear, and maybe a little of the meat.” Thonolan made his way over the edge and scrambled down loose rubble into the canyon. Jondalar followed him, reluctantly.
Ayla had become so familiar with the territory east of the valley that she was bored with it, particularly since she wasn’t hunting. It had been gray and rainy for days, and, when a warm sun burned off morning clouds by the time she was ready to ride, she couldn’t stand the thought of covering the same ground again.
After she fastened on traveling baskets and travois poles, she led the horse down the steep path and around the shorter wall. She decided to head down the long valley rather than out on the steppes. At the end, where the stream turned south, she noticed the steep gravelly slope she had climbed before to look toward the west, but she thought the footing was too unsure for the horse. It did encourage her, however, to ride farther to see if she could find a more accessible exit to the west. As she continued south, she looked around with eager curiosity. She was in new territory, and she wondered why she hadn’t ridden this way before. The high wall was easing into a gentler slope. When she saw a shallow crossing, she turned Whinney and urged her across.
The landscape was the same kind of open grasslands. Only the detail was différent, but that made it interesting. She rode until she found herself in somewhat rougher country, with ragged canyons and abruptly sheared mesas. She was farther than she had planned to go, and, as she approached a canyon, she was thinking she ought to turn back. Then, she heard something that chilled her blood and set her heart racing: the thundering roar of a cave lion—and a human scream.
Ayla stopped, hearing her blood pounding in her ears. It had been so long since she had heard a human sound, yet she knew it was human, and something else. She knew it was her kind of human. She was so stunned that she couldn’t think. The scream pulled at her—it was a cry for help. But she couldn’t face a cave lion, nor expose Whinney to one.
The horse sensed her acute distress and turned toward the canyon, though Ayla’s body-contact signal had been tentative at best. Ayla approached the canyon slowly, then dismounted and looked in. It was blind, only a wall of rubble at the other end. She heard the growling of the cave lion and saw its reddish mane. Then she realized Whinney had not been nervous, and she knew why.
“That’s Baby! Whinney, that’s Baby!”
She ran into the canyon, forgetting there might be other cave lions around and not even considering that Baby was no longer her young companion but a full-grown lion. He was Baby—that was all that mattered. She had no fear of this cave lion. She climbed up some jagged rocks toward him. He turned and snarled at her.
“Stop it, Baby!” she commanded with signal and sound. He paused only a moment, but by then she was beside him and pushing him out of the way so she could see his prey. The woman was too familiar, her attitude too certain for him to resist. He moved aside, as he had always done before when she came upon him with a kill and wanted to save the skin or take a piece of meat for herself. And he wasn’t hungry. He had fed on the giant deer brought by his lioness. He had only attacked to defend his territory—and then he had hesitated. Humans were not prey to him. Their scent