The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“Yes, it’s to honor …”

“Look, Deegie! It is spring!” Ayla interrupted, jumping up and rushing toward a willow shrub nearby. When the other woman joined her, she pointed to the hint of swelling buds along a slender twig, and one, coming into season too early to survive, that had burst forth in bright spring green. The women smiled at each other in wonder, full of the discovery, as though they had invented spring themselves.

The sinew snare loop still dangled not far from the willow. Ayla held it up. “I think this is a very good way to hunt. You do not have to look for animals. You make a trap and come back later to get them, but how do you make it, and how do you know that you will catch a fox?”

“It’s not hard to make. You know how sinew gets hard if you wet it and let it dry, just like leather that is not treated?”

Ayla nodded.

“You make a little loop at the end,” Deegie continued, showing her the loop. “Then you take the other end and put it through to make another loop, just big enough for a fox’s head to go through. Then you wet it, and let it dry with the loop open so it will stay open. Then you have to go where the foxes are, usually where you’ve seen them or caught them before. My mother showed me this place. Usually there are foxes here every year, you can tell if there are tracks. They often follow the same paths when they are near their dens. To set the snare, you find a fox trail, and where it goes through bushes or near trees, you set the loop right across the trail, at about the height of their heads, and fasten it, like this, here and here,” Deegie demonstrated as she explained. Ayla watched, her forehead furrowed in concentration.

“When the fox runs along the trail, the head goes through the loop, and as he runs, it tightens the noose around his neck. The more the fox struggles, the tighter the noose gets. It doesn’t take long. Then the only problem is finding the fox before something else does. Danug was telling me about the way people to the north have started setting snares. He says they bend down a young sapling and tie it to the noose so that it comes loose as soon as the animal is caught, and jerks it up when the tree springs back. That keeps the fox off the ground until you get back.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Ayla said, walking back toward their seats. She looked up, then suddenly, to Deegie’s surprise, she whipped her sling off her head and was scanning the ground. “Where is a stone?” she whispered. “There!”

With a movement so swift Deegie could hardly follow, Ayla picked up the stone, set it in her sling, whipped it around and let fly. Deegie heard the stone land, but only when she got back to the seats did she see the object of Ayla’s missile. It was a white ermine, a small weasel about fourteen inches long overall, but five of the inches was a white furry tail with a black tip. In summer the elongated, soft-furred animal would have a rich brown coat with a white underbelly, but in winter the sinuous little stoat turned pure silky white, except for its black nose, sharp little eyes, and the very tip of its tail.

“It was stealing our roast meat!” Ayla said.

“I didn’t even see it next to that snow. You’ve got good eyes,” Deegie said. “And you’re so quick with that sling, I don’t know why you need to worry about snares, Ayla.”

“A sling is good for hunting when you see what you want to hunt, but a snare can hunt for you when you are not even there. Both are useful to know,” Ayla replied, taking the question seriously.

They sat down to finish their meal. Ayla’s hand kept returning to rub the soft thick fur of the little weasel as they talked. “Ermines have the nicest fur,” she said.

“Most of those long weasels do,” Deegie said. “Minks, sables, even wolverines have good fur. Not so soft, but the best for hoods, if you don’t want frost clinging around your face. But it’s hard to snare them, and you can’t really hunt them with a spear. They’re quick and vicious. Your sling seemed to work, though I still don’t know how you did it.”

“I learned to use the sling hunting those kinds of animals. I only hunted meat eaters in the beginning and learned their ways first.”

“Why?” Deegie asked.

“I was not supposed to hunt at all, so I did not hunt any animals that were food, only those that stole food from us.” She snorted a wry chuckle of realization. “I thought that would make it all right.”

“Why didn’t they want you to hunt?”

“Women of the Clan are forbidden to hunt … but they finally allowed me to use my sling.” Ayla paused for an instant, remembering. “Do you know, I killed a wolverine long before I killed a rabbit?” She smiled at the irony.

Deegie shook her head in amazement. What a strange childhood Ayla must have had, she thought.

They got up to leave, and as Deegie went to get her foxes, Ayla picked up the soft, white little ermine. She rubbed her hand along the body all the way to the tip of the tail.

“That is what I want!” Ayla said, suddenly. “Ermine!”

“But that’s what you have,” Deegie said.

“No. I mean for the white tunic. I want to trim it with white ermine fur, and the tails. I

like those tails with the little black tips.”

“Where are you going to get enough ermine to decorate a tunic?” Deegie asked. “Spring is coming, they will be changing color again soon.”

“I do not need very many, and where there is one, there are usually more nearby. I will hunt them. Now,” Ayla said. “I need to find some good stones.” She started pushing snow out of the way, looking for stones near the bank of the frozen creek.

“Now?” Deegie said.

Ayla stopped and looked up. She had almost forgotten Deegie’s presence in her excitement. She could make tracking and stalking more difficult. “You do not have to wait for me, Deegie. Go back. I will find my way.”

“Go back? I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”