The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [51]
At the last moment, she dug through the pile of driftwood and bones until she found the long humerus from the foreleg of a deer with its knobby end. She smashed it against a large piece of mammoth ivory and winced at the recoil through her arm. The long bone was undamaged; it was a good solid club.
The moon rose before the sun set. Ayla wished she knew more about hunting ceremonies, but women had always been excluded. Women brought bad luck.
I never brought bad luck to myself, she thought, but I’ve never tried to hunt a big animal before. I wish I knew something that would bring good luck. Her hand went to her amulet, and she thought of her totem. It was her Cave Lion, after all, that had led her to hunt in the first place. That’s what Creb said. What other reason could there be for a woman to become more skilled with her chosen weapon than any man? Her totem was too strong for a woman—it gave her masculine traits, Brun had thought. Ayla hoped her totem would bring her luck again.
Twilight was fading into darkness when Ayla walked to the bend in the river and saw the horses finally settling down for the night. She gathered up the flat bone and the tent hide, and ran through the tall grass until she came to the break in the trees where the horses watered in the morning. The green foliage was gray in the waning daylight, and the more distant trees were black silhouettes against a sky ablaze with color. Hoping the moon would shed enough light to see, she laid the tent on the ground and began to dig.
The surface was hard-packed, but, once she broke through it, digging was easier with the sharpened bone shovel. When a pile of soil was mounded on the hide, she dragged it into the woods to dump it. As the hole became deeper, she laid the hide out on the bottom of the pit and hauled the dirt up with it. She felt her way more than seeing, and it was hard work. She had never dug a pit by herself before. The large cooking pits, lined with rocks and used to roast whole rumps, had always been a community effort by all the women, and this pit had to be deeper and longer.
The hole was about waist high when she felt water and realized she should not have dug so close to the stream. The bottom filled quickly. She was ankle deep in mud before she gave up and climbed out, breaking down one edge as she lifted out the hide.
I hope it’s deep enough, she thought. It will have to be—the more I dig, the more water comes in. She glanced at the moon, surprised at how late it was. She was going to have to work fast to finish, and she wasn’t going to get the short rest she had planned.
She ran toward the place where the brush and trees were piled, and tripped on an unseen root, falling heavily. This is no time to be careless! she thought, rubbing her shin. Her knees and palms stung, and she was sure the slippery ooze down one leg was blood, though she couldn’t see it.
With sudden insight, she understood how vulnerable she was, and had a moment of panic. What if I break my leg? There’s no one here to help me—if anything happens. What am I doing out here at night? With no fire? What if an animal attacks? She vividly recalled a lynx that leaped at her once, and reached for her sling, imagining glowing eyes in the night.
She found the weapon still securely tucked into her waist thong. It brought reassurance. I’m dead anyway, or supposed to be. If something is going to happen, it will happen. I can’t worry now. If I don’t hurry, it will be morning before I’m ready.
She found her brush pile and began to drag the small trees toward the pit. She couldn’t surround the horses by herself, she had reasoned, and there were no blind canyons in the valley, but, with an intuitive leap, she got an idea. It was the stroke of genius to which her brain—the brain that had differentiated her