Mammoth Boy by John Hart Read Free Book Online

one before.”
    “My people use.”
    Fleeting sadness passed across the light eyes, but Urrell thought better than to enquire further. A shrug would have been his answer. “Now we hunt more, Urrell.”
    By late afternoon, when they turned back towards home gulch, the two bore between them seven game birds brought down by Agaratz’s marksmanship plus pouchfuls of freshwater mussels and crabs that Urrell had been detailed to gather. The boy felt that it had been the happiest day in his life. There was much to be learnt with Agaratz. He vowed that he too would become skilful with a stone-thrower, this new hunting device.
    “Agaratz, will you show me how to use a stone-thrower like yours?”
    “I make one you. For boy.”
    What made Urrell sense that his request had struck a chord in the breast of his strange, hairy protector?
    A grin, the sly smile. “But now eat duck.”
    There was little to do by way of preparation when they got back in the dark. Agaratz revived the fire, Urrell fetched wood, Agaratz plucked and burnt off the feathers of two ducks, filling the cave with the smell of singed plumage. When the fire had been well built up, Agaratz made an oven with stones, placed the ducks inside to roast and scooped embers all round and over.
    While waiting they ate the mussels and crabs, raw, by the fire, as the short summer night drew into the dawn. Never had Urrell feasted as he did then, with a whole duck to himself, gnawing and crunching his way through it, entrails and all, till only the charred bill and cracked bones remained. Happy, glutted, he reeked of singed feathers and burnt fat from his ragged hair to the tatters of fur round his breechclout and jerkin, whereas Agaratz had picked his duck clean without smearing himself in grease and juices. The crookback grinned at Urrell. “You like?” Urrell could only nod.
    “Come.”
    Agaratz lowered the pole in the dark and Urrell followed him down, wondering why, bloated from his feast. They went to the spring. Here Agaratz wet a handful of grass and rubbed his arms and face vigorously, signalling for Urrell to do likewise. He explained: “Smell bad.” Urrell knew that hunters sometimes rubbed themselves with strong-smelling plants to mask their own scent. Children splashed in brooks for fun and he knew women washed off their berry-juice designs to paint on new ones, but this was different. He scrubbed with a will to please his teacher, stood in the pool and rubbed his legs for good measure, enjoying the tingling freshness.
    Then Agaratz indicated, by gesturing, that he was going one way to fulfil private needs and that Urrell should go in the other, before they returned up-ladder to sleep.
    This day set the pattern for the next ones, Urrell swiftly learning from Agaratz by example. Agaratz seldom explained. True to his word, he made a stone-thrower for Urrell and set him to practise in the gulch till his aim became passable. He refashioned the lad’s javelins to sit well in the spear-thrower that he finished carving and paring from the bog-wood elbow. He showed Urrell how to improve spear points and glue them with resin on to the shaft. Agaratz himself used points with tangs that fitted into a slot at the tip of the shaft, an improvement new to Urrell.
    They went fishing along the river using harpoons to spear a fish unknown to Urrell.
    Izokin, Agaratz called it.
    Agaratz’s technique for harpooning salmon was to lie along the trunk of a tree overhanging a pool in a bend of the river and wait till a salmon swam into range. His bone harpoon-tip had barbs and was attached to a line of finely plaited thongs. Urrell watched as at the second or third throw from his perch Agaratz hit a fish, the harpoon tip detached and remained in the salmon’s back while Agaratz paid out line, playing the fish until it weakened enough to draw it inshore for a final spear thrust – Urrell’s task from the bank.
    They ate part of it raw, stowing the rest in a pouch to bake