The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [60]
The tributary, nearly equal in size, surged into the mother stream, fighting the controlling influence of swift current. She backed up and surged again, throwing a tantrum of crosscurrents and undertows; temporary maelstroms that sucked floating debris in a perilous spin to the bottom and spewed it up a moment later downstream. The engorged confluence expanded into a hazardous lake too large to see across.
Fall flooding had peaked and a marshland of mud sprawled over the banks where the waters had recently receded, leaving a morass of devastation: upturned trees with roots reaching for the sky, waterlogged trunks and broken branches; carcasses and dying fish stranded in drying puddles. Water birds were feasting on the easy pickings; the near shore was alive with them. Nearby, a hyena was making short work of a stag, undisturbed by the flapping wings of black storks.
“Great Mother!” Thonolan breathed.
“It must be the Sister.” Jondalar was too awed to ask his brother if he believed now.
“How are we going to get across?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to go back upstream.”
“How far? She’s as big as the Mother.”
Jondalar could only shake his head. His forehead knotted with concern. “We should have taken Tamen’s advice. It could snow any day; we don’t have time to backtrack very far. I don’t want to be caught in the open when a big storm blows.”
A sudden gust of wind caught Thonolan’s hood and whisked it back, baring his head. He pulled it on again, closer to his face, and shivered. For the first time since they had set out, he had serious doubts about surviving the long winter ahead. “What do we do now, Jondalar?”
“We find a place to make camp.” The taller brother scanned the area from their vantage point. “Over there, just upstream, near that high bank with a stand of alder. There’s a creek that joins the Sister—the water should be good.”
“If we tie both backframes to one log, and attach a rope to both our waists, we could swim across and not get separated.”
“I know you are hardy, Little Brother, but that’s foolhardy. I’m not sure I could swim across, much less pulling a log with everything we have. That river is cold. Only the current keeps it from freezing—there was ice at the edge this morning. And what if we get tangled up in the branches of some tree? We’d get swept downstream, and maybe pulled under.”
“Remember that Cave that lives close to the Great Water? They dig out the centers of big trees and use them to cross rivers. Maybe we could …”
“Find me a tree around here big enough,” Jondalar said, flinging his arm at the grassy prairie, with only a few thin or stunted trees.
“Well … someone told me about another Cave that makes shells out of birchbark … but that seems so flimsy.”
“I’ve seen them, but I don’t know how they’re made, or what kind of glue they use so they won’t leak. And the birch trees in their region grow bigger than any I’ve seen around here.”
Thonolan glanced around, trying to think of some other idea that his brother couldn’t put down with his implacable logic. He noticed the stand of straight tall alders on the high knoll just to the south, and grinned. “How about a raft? All we’d have to do is tie a bunch of logs together, and there are more than enough alders on that hill.”
“And one long enough, and strong enough to make a pole to reach the bottom of the river to guide it? Rafts are hard to control even on small shallow rivers.”
Thonolan’s confident grin crumpled, and Jondalar had to suppress a smile. Thonolan never could hide his feelings; Jondalar doubted that he ever tried. But it was his impetuous, candid nature that made him so likable.
“That’s really not such a bad idea, though,” Jondalar amended, noting the return