The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [195]
Then, using the spear as a lever, in much the same way as she would have used a digging stick to turn over a log or pry out a root, she prized free the large stone and jumped back out of the way as a cascade of loose rock covered the dead man.
Before the dust settled, she had led Whinney out of the canyon. Ayla got on the horse’s back and began the long return trip to the cave. She stopped a few times to tend to the man, and once to dig fresh comfrey roots, although she was torn between hurrying to get him back and taking it a little easy for Whinney’s sake. She breathed easier when she got the injured man across the stream and around the bend, and saw the jutting rock wall far ahead. But not until she stopped to change the position of the travois poles, just before starting up the narrow path, did she let herself believe she had reached the cave with the man still alive.
She led Whinney into the cave with the travois, then got a fire going to heat water before she untied the unconscious man and dragged him to her sleeping place. She unharnessed the horse, hugged her with gratitude, then looked over her store of medicinal herbs and selected those she wanted. Before beginning the preparations, she took a deep breath and reached for her amulet.
She couldn’t clarify her thoughts enough to address her totem with a particular plea—she was too filled with inexplicable anxieties and confusing hopes—but she wanted help. She wanted to bring the force of her powerful totem to bear on her efforts to treat this man. She had to save him. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but nothing had ever been more important. Whatever she had to do, this man must not die.
She added wood and checked the temperature of the water in the leather pot which was slung directly over the fire. When she saw steam rise, she added marigold petals to the pot. Then finally she turned to the unconscious man. From the tears in the leather he wore, she knew he had other gashes besides the wound on his right thigh. She needed to take his clothes off, but he was not wearing a wrap tied on with thongs.
When she looked closely to find out how to remove them, she saw that leather and fur had been cut, shaped into pieces, and joined together with cords to encase his arms and legs and body. She examined the joinings carefully. She had cut through his trousers to treat his leg, and she decided that was still the best way. She was more surprised when she cut through his outer garment and found another unlike anything she had ever seen. Bits of shell, bone, animal teeth, and colorful bird feathers had been attached to it in some orderly fashion. Was it a kind of amulet? she wondered. She hated to cut it, but there was no other way to get it off. She did it carefully, trying to follow the pattern to disturb it as little as possible.
Under the decorated garment was another one that covered the lower part of his body. It wrapped around each leg individually and was joined with cord, then came together and tied around his waist like a drawstring pouch, overlapping in front. She cut that off as well, and noted in passing that he was most definitely male. She removed the tourniquet and gently eased the stiff, blood-soaked leather away from the lacerated leg. She had loosened the tourniquet a few times en route, while manually applying pressure to both control the bleeding and allow some circulation in the leg. The use of a tourniquet could mean the loss of the limb if proper measures were not understood and applied.
She stopped again when she came to the footwear which was also shaped and joined to conform to the shape of his foot; then she slashed through the laces and wrapped thongs and pulled them off. His leg wound was seeping again, but not pumping, and she examined him quickly to learn the extent of his injuries. The other lacerations and scratches were superficial, but there could be danger from infection. Cuts from lion’s claws had a nasty tendency to fester; even the minor scratches Baby had inflicted on her often did. But infection was not her