People of the Sea(33)
“Well, we’re heading in that direction,” she said and squeezed his arm affectionately. “Come on.”
Six
The sound of cautious feet grating against stone startled Kestrel. She braced her toes on the ledge and lifted herself to peer through the pile of dead branches she had erected to block the game trail here at the edge of the cliff. She stood on a narrow ledge that stuck out like a pouting lip eight hands below the crest of the bluff. Cloud Girl, in her rabbit-fur sack, slept next to her mother’s feet.
Kestrel squinted at the trail, seeing nothing, but the sound of approaching footsteps grew stronger as each moment passed. Anxiously, her eyes roved the juniper-dotted uplands. Deep drainages cut meandering swathes down the bluff, creating a series of parallel finger ridges. The bellies of the drainages were so choked with willows and cattails that they resembled green snakes slithering down the bluff toward the river. To the east, a gray haze of rain had devoured the horizon. She could vaguely hear the rumbling voices of the Thunderbeings as they carried the storm northward.
Kestrel sucked in a breath of the pungent juniper-sharp wind and waited.
Her trap had been built in two sections. The first blocked this main game trail that came down from the breaks and followed the canyon rim. The second section lay to the south, where two drainages collided. Her wing walls of brush should force her quarries into that bottleneck. If they didn’t balk, if they stayed between the wing walls, they would be funneled to the edge of the sandstone cliff.
Kestrel froze with excitement. Morning sunlight burned along the edges of the bluff and shimmered in the bristly fur of two tapirs—a cow and a yearling calf—trotting toward her on the trail.
Legend claimed that tapirs were the cousins of horses, but they looked much different than horses, with long, wrinkled snouts that curved downward over their lower jaws, and squat, heavy bodies whose legs were much shorter than those of horses. They also had four toes on their front feet and three on their hind feet. Adult tapirs stood maybe six hands tall at the shoulder, but they were powerfully built and dangerous when threatened. Kestrel studied the cow and her calf. Odd, to see tapirs in broad daylight. They clung to the night like bats and voles. Had something, or someone, spooked them from their beds and sent them fleeing? Cautiously, she searched the top of the bluff for any sign of men. The only movement came from high above, where two buzzards soared on the air currents, their wings spread in such freedom that it made Kestrel’s soul ache.
All night long, a cold wind had blown down from the north, and this morning, ash-colored fluffs of cloud filled
the skies. Could another storm be coming in? So soon?
The cow lifted her head and sniffed the wind when she saw the barricade. Both animals stopped. Kestrel barely breathed. The cow shied, pranced nervously and stopped again. The calf, curious, stepped forward. It cocked its head and twisted one ear, wondering at the new sight on the familiar trail. Gusts of wind ruffled the tapirs’ bristly black hair.
Please, Above-Old-Man, let them veer southward to take the trail where I have my trap set.
After a few moments, the calf snorted and trotted off down the southward trail. Kestrel’s heart leaped. The cow lifted a front foot, peered intently at Kestrel’s hiding place, then hesitantly followed her calf. But she kept looking back, forcing Kestrel to stay hidden until they had moved out of sight over the rounded crest of the bluff.
Kestrel picked up the small pack she’d woven out of strips of juniper bark and yucca fibers and tied it around her waist; it carried the few necessities she’d been able to find along the riverbank. Then she looked at Cloud Girl. Gray tufts of fur framed her beautiful four-day-old face. The pacifier that Kestrel had made from the soft underbelly of a field mouse lay halfway out of Cloud Girl’s mouth.
Kestrel had found a flat piece of pine driftwood at the river’s edge and turned it into a cradle board. After that, she had killed four cottontails with a throwing stick made from an angled juniper limb. The sweet meat had given her sustenance, and she’d used her chert flake to cut the hides to shape. Then she’d sharpened a choke cherry stick to a fine point on a piece of sandstone and punched out holes in the hides, through which she’d laced rabbit tendons to sew the hides closed; two of the hides covered the cradle board for warmth. Cloud Girl wore the other two hides as a shirt and pants.
Kestrel quickly slung the sack’s hide carrying-thong around her neck and scrambled over the lip of stone to follow the tapirs. As she ran, her heavy breasts cushioned Cloud Girl’s head.
Magnificent vistas stretched before her. To the east and south, beyond the juniper-sprinkled uplands, chunky red buttes melted into the scudding clouds, while westward, the tortured, muddy swath of the Big Spoonwood River gave way to the slopes of the Mammoth Mountains. Somewhere in the foothills beneath those jagged peaks lay the {rail that led across the divide and down to Otter Clan Village.