by Jean M. Auel
The mammoth was tearing out swaths of grass, herbs, and sedge with his trunk and stuffing the tough, dry fodder into his mouth to break it down with efficient rasplike grinders. A younger animal, one whose tusks were not so long and still useful, uprooted a larch and began to strip it of twigs and bark.
“They’re so big!” Ovra motioned with a shudder. “I didn’t think any animal could be so big. How are they ever going to kill one? They can’t even reach one with a spear.”
“I don’t know,” Oga said, just as apprehensive.
“I almost wish we hadn’t come,” Ovra said. “It will be a dangerous hunt. Someone could get hurt. What will I do if something happens to Goov?”
“Brun must have a plan,” Ayla said. “I don’t think he’d even try to hunt them if he didn’t think the men could. I wish I could watch,” she added wistfully.
“I don’t,” Oga said. “I don’t want to be anywhere near. I’ll just be glad when it’s over,” Oga remembered her mother’s mate had been killed in a hunting accident just before the earthquake that took her mother. She was well aware of the dangers in spite of the best of plans.
“I think we should go back now,” Ovra said. “Brun didn’t want us to get too close. This is closer than I want to be.”
The three of them turned to go. Ayla looked back a few times as they hurried away. They were more quiet on the return trip, each lost in her own thoughts and not in the mood for much talk.
When the men returned, Brun directed the women to break camp and move after the hunters left the next morning. He had found a suitable location, they would hunt tomorrow, and he wanted the women well out of the way. He had seen the canyon early the day before. It was an ideal site but too far from the mammoths. He considered it a particularly good omen that the herd, moving slowly in a southwesterly direction, had wandered close enough by the end of the second day to make the site feasible.
A light, dry, powdery snow whipped up by gusting east winds greeted the hunting party as they unrolled from their warm furs and poked their noses out of low tents. The dismal gray sky, hiding the glowing sun that lighted the planet, could not dampen the keen anticipation. On this day they would hunt mammoth. The women scurried to make tea; like athletes finely tuned for the game, the hunters would take nothing else. They stamped around, making practice lunges into the air with their spears to stretch and loosen taut muscles. The tension they projected charged the air with excitement.
Grod took a glowing coal from the fire and put it in the aurochs horn attached to his waist. Goov took another. They wrapped furs securely around themselves. Not the usual heavy outer wraps, but lighter garments that would not restrict them. None of them felt the cold; they were too keyed up. Brun went over the plan quickly, one last time.
Each man closed his eyes and clutched his amulet, picked up an unlit torch they had made the evening before, and set out. Ayla watched them go, wishing she dared to follow them. Then she joined the women who had begun to collect dried grass, dung, brush, and wood for fires before they broke camp.
The men reached the herd quickly. The mammoths had already begun to move again after resting for the night. The hunters squatted down in the tall grass to wait while Brun appraised the animals that moved past. He saw the old bull with the massive curving tusks. What a prize he would be, he said to himself, but rejected the beast. They had a long distance to travel back to the cave and the huge tusks would weigh them down unnecessarily. The tusks of a younger animal would be easier to carry and the meat more tender, besides. That was more important than the glory of displaying massive tusks.
Younger bulls were more dangerous, though. Their shorter tusks were not only useful for uprooting trees, they were very effective weapons. Brun waited patiently. He had not made all the preparations and the long trip in order to rush now. He knew the circumstances he was looking for and would rather return the next day than risk their chance for success. The rest of the hunters waited, too, not all of them as patiently.
The rising sun had warmed the dull overcast sky and scattered the clouds. The snow stopped and bright rays broke through open spaces.
“When is he going to give the signal?” Broud motioned silently to Goov. “Look how high the sun is already. Why start out early and just sit here? What is he waiting for?”
Grod caught Broud’s gestures. “Brun is waiting for the right time. Would you rather go back empty-handed or wait awhile? Be patient, Broud, and learn. Someday it will be you who must decide when the time is right. Brun is a good leader, a good hunter. You are fortunate to have him to teach you. It takes more than bravery to be a leader.”
Broud wasn’t too pleased with Grod’s lecture. He will not be my second-incommand when I am leader, he thought. He’s getting too old, anyway. The young man shifted his position, shivered a little from a strong gust of wind, and settled down to wait.
The sun was high in the sky when Brun finally gave a “get ready” signal. Every hunter felt a sharp stab of excitement. A female, heavy with young, was near the periphery of the herd, and edging farther out. She was fairly young, but by the length of her tusks, the pregnancy was probably not her first. She was far enough along in it to make her ponderous. She wouldn’t be as fast or agile, and fetal meat would be a succulent bonus.
The mammoth spied a stand of grass not yet encountered by the rest and moved toward it. For a moment, she stood alone, a solitary animal away from the protection of the herd. It was the moment Brun was waiting for. He gave the signal.
Grod had the hot coal out and a torch held in readiness. The moment Brun signaled, he held the torch to the ember and blew until it caught and leaped into flames. Droog lit two others from the first and gave one to Brun. The three younger hunters had dashed toward the canyon the moment they saw the signal. Their part would come later. As soon as the torches were lit, Brun and Grod ran behind the mammoth and laid the fiery brands to the dry grass of the prairie.
Full-grown mammoths had no natural enemies; only the very young and very old ever fell prey to any predator-except man. But they feared fire. Prairie fires from natural causes sometimes raged unchecked for days, destroying everything in their path. A man-caused fire was no less devastating. The moment they sensed danger, the herd instinctively closed in. The fire had to take hold quickly to prevent the female from rejoining the rest, and Brun and Grod were between the she-mammoth and the herd. They could be charged from either direction or caught in a stampede of behemoths.
The scent of smoke turned the peacefully grazing animals into a bedlam of trumpeting confusion. The female turned toward the herd, but it was too late. A wall of fire separated her. She sirened for help, but the flames, fanned by the brisk east wind, had converged on the milling animals. They were already stampeding to the west, trying to outdistance the fast-encroaching blaze. The prairie fire was out of control, but that was of little concern to the men. The wind would carry the destruction away from the place they wanted to go.
The she-mammoth, screaming her fright, lurched in panic toward the east. Droog waited until he saw the flames take hold, then raced away. When he saw the mammoth begin her charge, he ran toward the confused and frightened beast, shouting and waving his torch, veering her to the southeast.
Crug, Broud, and Goov, the youngest and fastest of the hunters, were pelting away at top speed in front of her. They were afraid the frantic mammoth would outpace them even with their head start. Brun, Grod, and Droog raced behind her, trying to keep up and hoping she wouldn’t alter her course. But once started, the behemoth charged blindly straight ahead.
The three young hunters reached the box canyon and Crug turned into it. Broud and Goov stopped at the south wall. Nervous and out of breath, Goov reached for the aurochs horn, sending an unspoken plea to his totem that the coal had not died. It was live, but neither of them had much breath to blow flame to the torch. The brisk wind provided an assist. They both lit two torches, holding one in each hand, and moved out from the wall, trying to anticipat
e where the mammoth would approach. The wait was not long. With a silent prayer to their totems as the frightened, trumpeting, gigantic animal stampeded toward them, the brave young men raced into the face of the charging mammoth waving smoky torches in front of them. They had the difficult and dangerous job of turning the petrified animal into the canyon.
The panic-stricken pachyderm, already running in fear from the fire and confronted with the smell of smoke ahead, looked for an escape. She swerved and pounded into the canyon, with Broud and Goov right behind her. The bellowing behemoth plowed through the canyon, reached the narrow defile, and found her way blocked. Unable to move ahead or to turn in the tight space, she screamed her frustration.
Broud and Goov sprinted up breathlessly. Broud had a knife in his hand, one carefully shaped by Droog and charmed by Mog-ur. In a swift, reckless dash, Broud ran for her left hind leg and with the sharp blade slashed her tendons. Her strident cry of pain split the air. She could not move forward, she could not turn sideward, and now she could not move backward. Goov followed Broud and hamstrung her right foot. The great beast fell to her knees.
Then Crug jumped up from behind the boulder in front of the faltering mammoth trumpeting in agony, and plunged his long, pointed spear straight into her open mouth. Instinctively she tried to attack and spewed blood over the weaponless man. But he was not weaponless for long. Other spears had been stashed behind the rocks. As Crug reached for another spear, Brun, Grod, and Droog reached the canyon and raced to the blind end, leaping up on the rocks at either side of the huge, pregnant mammoth. They lunged their spears into the wounded creature almost simultaneously. Brun’s penetrated one small eye, spurting him with warm scarlet. The animal lurched. With her last burst of life, the mammoth trumpeted a defiant scream, and slumped to the ground.
Realization came slowly to the exhausted men. In the sudden silence, the hunters looked at each other. Their hearts beat faster with a new kind of excitement. A formless, primal urge from deep within rose and exploded from their mouths in a cry of victory. They did it! They killed the mighty mammoth!
Six men, pitifully weak by comparison, using skill and intelligence and cooperation and daring, had killed the gigantic creature no other predator could. No matter how fast or how strong or how cunning, no four-legged hunter could match their feat. Broud leaped up on the rock beside Brun, then jumped onto the fallen animal. In a moment, Brun was beside him, clapped him warmly on the shoulder, then pulled his spear from the mammoth’s eye and held it aloft. The other four quickly joined them and, moving to the rhythm of their own heartbeats, they jumped and danced their elation on the back of the massive beast.
Then Brun leaped down and circled the mammoth nearly filling the narrow space. Not one man was wounded, he thought. Not one man has so much as a scratch. This was a very lucky hunt. Our totems must be pleased with us.
“We must let the spirits know we are grateful,” he announced to the men. “When we return, Mog-ur will hold a very special ceremony. For now, we will take the liver- each man will have his piece and we will bring back a piece for Zoug and Dorv and Mogur. The rest will be given to the Spirit of the Mammoth, it is what Mog-ur told me to do. We will bury it here where she fell, and the liver of the young mammoth inside her, too. And Mog-ur said we are not to touch the brain, that must be left where it is for the Spirit to keep. Who struck the first blow, Broud or Goov?”
“Broud did,” Goov responded.
“Then Broud will get the first piece of liver, but the kill is credited to all.”
Broud and Goov were sent to bring the women. In one burst of energy, the men’s job was completed. Now it was up to the women. To them fell the tedious task of butchering and preserving. The men remaining behind eviscerated the huge mammoth while they waited for them and removed the nearly full-term fetus. After the women arrived, the men helped them skin the animal. It was so large, it took the effort of all. Selected favorite parts were cut out and stored in stone caches, to freeze. Fires were built around the rest, partly to keep it from freezing and partly to keep away the inevitable scavengers drawn to the smell of blood and raw meat.
The tired but happy hunting party sank gratefully into their beds of warm furs after their first meal of fresh meat since leaving the cave. In the morning, while the men gathered together to relive the exciting hunt and admire each other’s bravery, the women went to work. There was a stream close by but enough of a distance from the canyon that it presented a minor inconvenience. Once they had the carcass divided into large haunches, they moved closer to the stream, leaving most of the bones with bits of meat still clinging to them to the prowling and flying scavengers, but little else.
The clan used nearly every part of the animal. The tough mammoth hide could be made into foot coverings-sturdier and longer lasting than the skin of other animals- windbreaks for the mouth of the cave, cooking pots, sturdy thongs for lashings, outdoor shelters. The soft undercoat of downy hair could be beaten into a kind of felt material, used for stuffing pillows or pallets for beds, even as absorbent filling for babies’ swaddling. The long hair was twisted into sturdy cord, the tendons into strands of sinew; bladders, stomach, intestines could be used as water containers, soup pots, food storage, even waterproof rainwear. Little was wasted.
Not only were meat and other parts used, the fat was particularly essential. It made up the balance of necessary calories to fuel their energy requirements, which included metabolic warmth in winter as well as vigorous activity during warmer seasons; it was used as a dressing to cure hides, since many of the animals they killed-deer, horses, range-grazing aurochs and bison, rabbits, and birds-were essentially lean; it supplied fuel for stone lamps that added an element of warmth as well as light; it was used for water-proofing and as a medium for salves, unguents, and emollients; it could be used to help start fires in wet wood, for long-burning torches, even as fuel to cook with in the absence of other fuels. The uses for fat were many.
Every day, while the women worked, they watched the sky. If the weather was clear, the meat would dry in about seven days aided by the winds which blew continually. There was no need for smoky fires-it was too cold for blowflies to spoil the meat-and it was just as well; Fuel was far more scarce on the steppes than on the wooded hillsides of their cave or even the warmer southern steppes which supported more trees. With intermittent clouds, overcast sky, or precipitation, it might take up to three times as long for the thin strips of meat to dry. The light powdery snow whipped about by the gusting winds was not a major problem; only if the weather turned unseasonably warm and wet would the work be halted. They hoped for dry, clear, cold weather. The only way the mountains of flesh could be hauled back to the cave was if it was dried before they left.
The heavy, shaggy skin with its thick layer of fat and connective blood vessels, nerves, and follicles was scraped clean. Thick slabs of the cold-hardened fat were placed in a large skin pot set over a fire and the rendered fat poured into sections of the cleaned intestines and tied off like large fat sausages. The hide, with the hair left on, was cut into manageable sections and tightly rolled, then allowed to freeze hard for the return trip. Later in the winter, back at the cave, it would be dehaired and cured. The tusks were broken off and proudly displayed at the campsite. They, too, would be carried back.
During the days while the women worked, the men hunted smaller game or kept watch in a desultory fashion. Moving closer to the stream had eliminated one inconvenience, but there was another, harder to remedy. The scavengers drawn to the fresh kill followed the hunting party to their new location. The strips of meat draped over lines of cords and thongs had to be constantly watched. One huge spotted hyena was more than persistent. It had been driven off many times, but it continued to lurk on the fringes of the camp, eluding the halfhearted efforts of the men to kill it. The fiercelooking creature was just crafty enough to snatch a mouthful of drying mammoth meat several times a day. It was a nuisance.
Ebra and Oga were hurrying to finish
slicing the last of the huge chunks of meat into thin strips to start them drying. Uka and Ovra were pouring fat into a section of intestine, and Ayla was at the stream flushing out another section. A crust of ice had formed at the edges, but the water was still flowing. The men were standing near the tusks trying to decide if they wanted to hunt jerboas with their slings.
Brac had been sitting near his mother and Ebra playing with pebbles. He became bored with the stones and got up to find something more interesting to do. The women were concentrating on their task and didn’t notice him wandering off toward the open plains, but another pair of eyes watched him.
Every head in the camp turned at the sound of his terrified, high-pitched scream.
“My baby!” Oga cried. “The hyena has my baby!”
The loathsome scavenger, which was also a predator and always ready to attack the unwary young or enfeebled old, had seized the child by his arm with powerful jaws and was quickly retreating, dragging the small boy with him.
“Brac! Brac!” Broud was shouting as he ran after them, followed by the rest of the men. He reached for his sling-he was too far away for a spear-and stooped to pick up a stone, hurrying before the beast got out of his range.
“No! Oh, no!” he cried in despair as the stone fell short and the hyena kept going.
“Brac! Braaac!”
Suddenly, from another direction came the thwack, thwack of two stones fired in quick succession. They landed squarely on the animal’s head and the hyena dropped in his tracks.
Broud stood in open-mouthed amazement that turned to stunned astonishment when he saw Ayla running toward the wailing child with her sling still in her hand and two more stones held ready. The hyena was her prey. She had studied these animals, knew their habits and their weak spots, trained herself until hunting such quarry was second nature. When she heard Brac scream, she didn’t think of the consequences, she just reached for her sling, quickly grabbed two pebbles, and hurled them. Her only thought was to stop the hyena that was dragging Brac away.
