The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [25]
Ayla, breathing in the beauty and tranquillity of the scene, could hardly believe such a place could exist in the middle of the dry windy prairie. The valley was an extravagant oasis hidden in a crack of the arid plains; a microcosm of abundance, as though nature, constrained to utilitarian economy on the steppes, lavished her bounty in extra measure where the opportunity allowed it.
The young woman studied the horses in the distance, intrigued by them. They were sturdy, compact animals with rather short legs, thick necks, and heavy heads with overhanging noses that reminded her of the large overhanging noses of some men of the Clan. They had heavy shaggy coats and short stiff manes. Though some tended to gray, most were shades of buff ranging from the neutral beige of the dust to the color of ripe hay. Off to one side stood a hay-colored stallion, and Ayla noticed several foals of the same shade. The stallion lifted his head, shaking his short mane, and whinnied.
“Proud of your clan, aren’t you?” she motioned, smiling.
She started walking down the field close to the brush that hugged the stream. She noted the vegetation without consciously thinking about it, as aware of the medicinal qualities as she was of the nutritional values. It had been part of her training as a medicine woman to learn and collect plants for their healing magic, and there was very little she couldn’t identify immediately. This time food was her aim.
She noticed the leaves and the dried umbeled flower stalk that pointed to wild carrots a few inches below the ground, but passed them by as though she hadn’t seen them. The impression was misleading. She would remember the place just as precisely as if she had marked it, but vegetation would stay put. Her sharp eyes had picked up the trail of a hare, and at the moment she was concentrating on securing meat.
With the silent stealth of an experienced hunter, she followed fresh droppings, a bent blade of grass, a faint print in the dirt, and just ahead she distinguished the shape of the animal hiding in camouflaging cover. She pulled her sling from her waist thong and reached into a fold of her wrap for two stones. When the hare bolted she was ready. With the unconscious grace of years of practice, she hurled a stone and the next instant a second one, and heard a satisfying thwack, thwack. Both missiles found their mark.
Ayla picked up her kill and thought about the time she had taught herself that double-stone technique. An overconfident attempt to kill a lynx had taught her the extent of her vulnerability. But it had taken long sessions of practice to perfect a way to place a second stone in position on the downstroke of the first cast so she could rapid-fire two stones in quick succession.
On her way back, she chopped a branch from a tree, sharpened a point on one end, and used it to dig up the wild carrots. She put them in a fold of her wrap and chopped off two forked branches before returning to the beach. She put down the hare and the roots and got the fire drill and platform out of her basket, then began gathering dry driftwood from under larger pieces in the bone pile, and deadfall from beneath the protective branches of the trees. With the same tool she had used to sharpen the digging stick, one with a V-shaped notch on the sharp edge, she shaved curls from a dry stick. Then she peeled loose hairy bark from the old stalks of sagebrush, and dried fuzz from the seed pods of fireweed.
She found a comfortable place to sit, then sorted the wood according to size and arranged the tinder, kindling, and larger wood around her. She examined the platform, a piece of dry clematis vine, dug a little notch out along one edge with a flint