Mammoth Hunters (17 page)

“We didn’t even get wet!” the girl exclaimed. “Only a few splashes.”

When they reached the next stream and turned east, Ayla slowed the pace for a while to give Whinney a rest, but even the slower gait of the horse was so much faster than a human could walk, or consistently run, they covered ground quickly. The terrain changed as they continued, getting rougher and gradually gaining in elevation. When Ayla stopped and pointed to a stream coming in on the opposite side, forming a wide V with the one they had been following, Latie was surprised. She didn’t expect to see the tributary so soon, but Ayla had noticed turbulence and was expecting it. Three large granite outcrops could be seen from where they stood, a jagged scarp face across the waterway, and two more on their side, upstream and offset at an angle.

They followed their branch of the stream and noticed that it angled off toward the outcrops, and when they approached the first, saw that the watercourse flowed between them. Some distance after they passed the outcrops that flanked the stream, Ayla noticed several dark shaggy bison grazing on still green sedge and reeds near the water. She pointed, and whispered in Latie’s ear.

“Don’t talk loud. Look.”

“There they are!” Latie said in a muffled squeal, trying to keep her excitement under control.

Ayla turned her head back and forth, then wet a finger and
held it up, testing the wind direction. “Wind blows to us from bison. Good. Do not want to disturb until ready to hunt. Bison know horses. On Whinney, we get closer, but not too much.”

Ayla guided the horse, carefully skirting the animals, to check farther upstream, and when she was satisfied, came back the same way. A big old cow lifted her head and eyed them, chewing her cud. The tip of her left horn was broken off. The woman slowed and let Whinney assume movement that was natural to her while her passengers held their breaths. The mare stopped and lowered her head to eat a few blades of grass. Horses did not usually graze if they were nervous, and the action seemed to reassure the bison. She went back to grazing as well. Ayla slipped around the small herd as fast as she could, then galloped Whinney downstream. When they reached previously noted landmarks, they turned south again. They stopped for water for Whinney and themselves after they crossed the next stream, and then continued south.

The hunting party was just beyond the first small creek when Jondalar noticed Racer pulling against his halter toward a cloud of dust moving in their direction. He tapped Talut and pointed. The headman looked ahead and saw Ayla and Latie galloping toward them on Whinney. The hunters did not have long to wait before the horse and riders pounded into their midst, and pranced to a stop. The smile on Latie’s face was ecstatic, her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed with excitement as Talut helped her down. Then Ayla threw her leg over and slid off, as everyone crowded around.

“Couldn’t you find it?” Talut asked, voicing the concern everyone felt. One other person mentioned it at almost the same time, but in a different tone.

“Couldn’t even find it. I didn’t think running ahead on a horse would do any good,” Frebec sneered.

Latie responded to him with surprised anger. “What do you mean, couldn’t even find it? We found the place. We even saw the bison!”

“Are you trying to say you have already been there and back?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Where are the bison now?” Wymez asked the daughter of his sister, ignoring Frebec and blunting his snide remark.

Latie marched to the basket pannier on Whinney’s left side and took out the piece of marked ivory. Then taking the flint
knife from the sheath at her waist, she sat on the ground and began scratching some additional marks on the map.

‘The south fork goes between two outcrops, here,” she said. Wymez and Talut sat down beside her and nodded agreement, while Ayla and several others stood behind and around her. “The bison were on the other side of the outcrops, where the floodplain opens out and there is still some green feed near the water. I saw four little ones …” She cut four short parallel marks as she spoke.

“I think, five,” Ayla corrected.

Latie looked up at Ayla, and nodded, then added one more short mark. “You were right, Danug, about the twins. And they’re young ones. And seven cows …” She looked up at Ayla again for confirmation. The woman nodded agreement, and Latie added seven more parallel lines, slightly longer than the first ones. “ … only four with young, I think.” She pondered a moment. “There were more, farther off.”

“Five young males,” Ayla added. “And two, three others. Not sure. Maybe more we not see.”

Latie made five slightly larger lines, somewhat apart from the first ones, then added three more lines, between the two sets, making them a bit smaller again. She cut a little Y tick in the last mark in the line to indicate she was done, that that was the full number of bison they had counted. Her counting marks had cut over some of the other marks that had been etched into the ivory earlier, but it didn’t matter. They had already served their purpose.

Talut took the ivory flake from Latie and studied it. Then he looked at Ayla. “You didn’t happen to notice which way they were heading, did you?”

“Upstream, I think. We go around herd, careful, not disturb. No tracks other side, grass not chewed,” Ayla said.

Talut nodded and paused, obviously thinking. “You said you went around them. Did you go far upstream?”

“Yes.”

“The way I remember it, the floodplain narrows until it disappears, and high rocks close in the stream, and there is no way out. Is that right?”

“Yes … but, maybe way out.”

“A way out?”

“Before high rocks, side is steep, trees, thick brush with thorns, but near rocks is dry streambed. Like steep path. Is way out, I think,” she said.

Talut frowned, looked at Wymez, and Tulie, then laughed out loud. “The way out is also the way in! That’s what Mamut said!”

Wymez looked puzzled for only a moment, then he slowly grinned his understanding. Tulie looked at both of them. Then a dawning look of comprehension appeared on her face.

“Of course! We can go in that way, build a surround to trap them, then go around the other way and drive them into it,” Tulie said, making it clear to everyone else as well. “Someone will have to watch and make sure they don’t get wind of us and go back downstream while we’re building it.”

“That sounds like a good job for Danug and Latie,” Talut said.

“I think Druwez can help them,” Barzec added, “and if you think more help is needed, I’ll go.”

“Good!” Talut said. “Why don’t you go with them, Barzec, and follow the river upstream. I know a faster way to get to the back end. We’ll cut across from here. You keep them hemmed in, and as soon as we get the trap built, we’ll come back around to help chase them in it.”

The dry streambed was a swath of dried mud and rock cutting through a steep, wooded, brush-entangled hillside. It led to a level but narrow floodplain beside a rushing stream that gushed out between constraining rock in a series of rapids and low waterfalls. Once Ayla had gone down on foot, she went back for the horses. Both Whinney and Racer were accustomed to the steep path that had led to her cave in the valley, and made their way down with little trouble.

She removed the basket harness from Whinney so she could graze freely. But Jondalar worried about removing Racer’s halter since neither he nor Ayla had much control over him without it, and he was getting old enough to be fractious when the mood struck him. Since it didn’t keep him from grazing, she agreed to keep it on him, though she would have preferred to have given him complete freedom. It made her realize the difference between Racer and his dam. Whinney had always come and gone as she wished, but Ayla had spent all her time with the horse—she’d had no one else. Racer had Whinney, but less contact with her. Perhaps she, or Jondalar, ought to spend more time with him, and try to teach him, she thought.

The corrallike surround was already under construction by the time Ayla went to help. The fence was made of whatever materials they could find, boulders, bones, trees and branches, which were built up and intertwined together. The rich and varied animal life of the cold plains constantly renewed itself, and the old bones scattered across the landscape were often swept away by vagrant streams into jumbled piles. A quick search downstream had revealed a pile of bones a short distance away, and the hunters were hauling large leg bones and rib cages toward the focus of activity: an area near the bottom of the dry stream which they were fencing in. The
fence needed to be sturdy enough to contain the herd of bison, but was not intended to be a permanent structure. It would only be used once, and in any case, was not likely to last beyond spring when the rushing stream bloated into a raging torrent.

Ayla watched Talut swinging an enormous axe with a gigantic stone head, as though it were a toy. He had doffed his shirt and was sweating profusely as he chopped his way through a stand of straight young saplings, felling each tree with two or three blows. Tornec and Frebec, who were carrying them away, couldn’t keep up with him. Tulie was supervising their placement. She had an axe nearly as large as her brother’s, and handled it with as much ease, breaking a tree in half, or shattering a bone to make it fit. Few men could match the strength of the headwoman.

“Talut!” Deegie called. She was carrying the front end of a whole curved mammoth tusk that was over fifteen feet in length. Wymez and Ranec supported the middle and back. “We found some mammoth bones. Will you break this tusk?”

The huge red-haired giant grinned. “This old behemoth must have lived a good long life!” he said, straddling the tusk when they put it down.

Talut’s enormous muscles bunched as he lifted the sledgehammer-sized axe, and the air resounded with the blows as splinters and flakes of ivory flew in all directions. Ayla was fascinated just watching the powerful man wield the massive tool with such skillful ease. But the feat was even more astounding to Jondalar, for a reason he never considered. Ayla was more accustomed to seeing men execute prodigious feats of muscular strength. Though she had exceeded them in height, the men of the Clan were massively muscled and extraordinarily robust. Even the women had a pronounced rugged strength, and the life Ayla had led as she grew up, expected to perform the tasks of a Clan woman, had caused her to develop unusually strong muscles for her thinner bones.

Talut put the axe down, hoisted the back half of the tusk to his shoulder, and started toward the enclosure they were building. Ayla picked the huge axe up to move it, and knew she could not have handled it. Even Jondalar found it too heavy to use with skill. It was a tool uniquely suited to the big headman. The two of them lifted the other half-tusk to their shoulders and followed Talut.

Jondalar and Wymez stayed to help wedge the cumbersome
pieces of ivory in with boulders; they would present a substantial barrier to any charging bison. Ayla went with Deegie and Ranec to get more bones. Jondalar turned to watch them go, and struggled to swallow his anger when he saw the dark man move beside Ayla and make a comment that caused her and Deegie to laugh. Talut and Wymez both noticed the red, glowering face of their young and handsome visitor, and a significant look passed between them, but neither commented.

The final element of the surround was a gate. A sturdy young tree, stripped of its branches, was positioned upright at one side of an opening in the fence. A hole was dug for the base, and a mound of stones was piled up around it for support. It was reinforced by tying it with thongs to the heavy mammoth tusks. The gate itself was constructed of leg bones, branches, and mammoth ribs lashed firmly to crosspieces of saplings chopped to size. Then with several people holding the gate in place, one end was attached in many places to the upright pole using a crossed-over lashing that allowed it to swing on its leather hinges. Boulders and heavy bones were piled near the other end, ready to be shoved in front of the gate after it was closed.

It was afternoon, the sun still high, when all was in readiness. With everyone working together, it had taken a surprisingly short time to build the trap. They gathered around Talut, and lunched on the dried traveling food they brought with them, while they made further plans.

“The difficult part will be to get them through the gate,” Talut said. “If we get one in, the others will probably follow. But if they get beyond the gate and start milling around in this small space at the end, they’ll head for the water. That stream is rough here, and some may not make it, but that won’t do us any good. We’ll lose them. The best we could hope for would be to find a drowned carcass downstream.”

“Then we’ll have to block them,” Tulie said. “Not let them get past the trap.”

“How?” Deegie asked.

“We could build another fence,” Frebec suggested.

“How you know bison will not turn into water, when they come to fence?” Ayla asked.

Frebec eyed her with a patronizing expression, but Talut spoke before he did.

“That’s a good question, Ayla. Besides, there’s not much material left around here to build fences,” Talut said.

Frebec gave her a dark look of anger. He felt as though she had made him appear stupid.

“Whatever we can erect to block the way would be helpful, but I think someone needs to be there to drive them in. It could be a dangerous stand,” Talut continued.

“I’ll stand. That’s a good place to use this spear-thrower I’ve been telling you about,” Jondalar said, showing the unusual implement. “It not only gives a spear more distance, it gives it more force than a hand-thrown spear. With a true aim, one spear can kill instantly, at close range.”

“Is that true?” Talut said, looking with renewed interest at Jondalar. “We’ll have to talk more about it later, but yes, if you want, you can take a stand. I think I will, too.”

“And so will I,” Ranec said.

Jondalar frowned at the smiling dark man. He wasn’t sure he wanted to make a stand with the man so obviously interested in Ayla.

“I shall stand here, too,” Tulie said. “But rather than try to build another fence, we should make separate piles for each of us to stand behind.”