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The chestnut female had just rejoined her family group after outdistancing three young males in their twenties, who had been chasing her. The males, who had given up, but only temporarily, were standing away from the close-packed herd resting, while she sought respite from her exertions within the midst of the excited females. A two-year-old calf rushed up to the object of the male's attention, was greeted by a gentle touch of a trunk, found one of the two breasts between her front legs and began to suckle, while the female reached for a trunkful of grass. She had been chased and harassed by the males all day, and had had little opportunity to feed her calf, or even to eat or drink herself. She was not to have much chance then.
A medium-size bull approached the herd and began touching the other females with his trunk, well down from the tail between their hind legs, smelling and tasting, to test their readiness. Since mammoths continued to grow all their lives, his size indicated he was older than the three who had been chasing the beleaguered female before, probably in his thirties. As he neared the chestnut-furred mammoth, she moved away at a fast walk. He immediately abandoned the others and started after her. Ayla gasped when he released his huge organ from its sheath and it started to swell into a long curving S-shape.
The young man beside her heard the sudden intake of breath and glanced at her. She turned to look at him, and their eyes, equally astonished and full of wonder, held for a moment. Although they had both hunted mammoths, neither of them had observed the great woolly beasts very often from so near, and neither had ever seen them mate. Jondalar felt a quickening in his own loins as he watched Ayla. She was excited, flushed, her mouth slightly open, taking quick breaths, and her eyes, opened wide, held a sparkle of curiosity. Fascinated by the awesome spectacle of the two massive creatures about to show honor to the Great Earth Mother, as She required of all Her children, they quickly turned back.
But the female ran in a large arc, keeping ahead of the larger bull, until she made it back to her family herd again, though it made little difference. In a short time she was being chased again. One male caught up to her and managed to mount, but she was uncooperative and got out from under him, though he sprayed her hind legs. Sometimes her calf tried to follow the chestnut as she sped away from the bachelors several more times, before it finally decided to stay with the other females. Jondalar wondered why she was trying so hard to avoid the interested males. Didn't the Mother expect female mammoths to honor Her, too?
As though they had mutually decided to stop and eat, it was quiet for a while, with all the mammoths moving slowly south through the tallgrass tearing out trunkful after trunkful in a steady rhythm. In the rare moment of relief from the harassment of the males, the chestnut mammoth stood with her head low, looking very tired as she tried to feed.
Mammoths spent most of the day, and night, eating. Though it could be of the roughest, poorest quality – they could even eat shreds of bark torn off with tusks, though that was more often winter feed – mammoths needed huge quantities of the fibrous fare to sustain them. Included in the several hundred pounds of roughage consumed every day, which they passed through their bodies within twelve hours, was a small, though necessary, addition of succulent, broad-leaved, more nutritious plants, or occasionally a few choice leaves of willow, birch, or alder trees, higher in food value than the coarse tallgrass and sedge, but toxic to mammoths in large quantities.
When the great woolly beasts had moved some distance away, Ayla tied the restraining rope on the young wolf, who was if anything even more interested than they were. He kept wanting to get closer, but she didn't want him to disturb the herd or a
As they slowly followed after the herd, they both studied the huge animals closely, but each from a separate perspective. Ayla had been a hunter from an early age, and had observed animals often, but her prey was ordinarily much smaller. Mammoths weren't usually hunted by individuals; they were hunted by large, organized, and coordinated groups. She had actually been closer to the great beasts before, when she had gone to hunt them with the Mamutoi. But while hunting there was little time to watch and learn, and she didn't know when she would ever have the opportunity to get such a good look at them, both female and male, again.
Though she was aware of their distinctive shape in profile, this time she took particular note of it. The head of a mammoth was massive and high-domed – with large sinus cavities that helped to warm the searing cold winter air as it was breathed – accentuated by a hump of fat and a conspicuous topknot of stiff, dark hair. Just below the high head was the deep indentation of the nape of its short neck, leading to a second hump of fat high on the withers above the shoulders. From there, the back sloped steeply to the small pelvis and almost dainty hips. She knew from the experience of butchering and eating mammoth meat that the fat of the second hump had a different quality from that of the three-inch-thick layer of blubber that lay under the tough inch-thick skin. It was more delicate, tastier.
Woolly mammoths had relatively short legs for their size, making it somewhat easier for them to acquire their food, since they fed primarily on grass, not the high green leaves of trees as did their browsing warm-climate relatives; there were few trees on the steppes. But like them, the mammoth's head was high up off the ground, and too big and heavy, especially with enormous tusks, to be supported by a long neck so that it could reach food or drink directly the way horses or deer did. The evolution of the trunk had solved the problem of bringing food and water to the mouth.
The furry, sinuous snout of the woolly mammoth was strong enough to tear out a tree, or to pick up a heavy chunk of ice and send it crashing down to break into smaller, more usable pieces for water in winter, and dexterous enough to select and pluck a single leaf. It was also marvelously adapted to pulling grass. It had two projections on the end of it. A fingerlike appendage on the upper part, which it could delicately control, and a broader, flattened, very flexible structure on the lower part, almost like a hand, but without bones or separate fingers.
Jondalar was amazed at the dexterity and strength of the trunk as he watched a mammoth wrap the muscular lower projection around a hunch of closely growing tallgrass, then hold it together while the upper digit fingered more stems that were growing nearby into its clutch, until it had accumulated a good sheaf. Getting a grip by closing the upper finger around the bunch like an opposing thumb, the furry trunk yanked the grass out of the ground, roots and all. After shaking off some of the dirt, the mammoth stuffed it all in its mouth, and while it was chewing, reached for more.
The devastation that a herd left behind them as they made their long migrations across the steppes was considerable, or so it seemed. But for all the grass ripped out by its roots, and bark stripped from trees, their disturbance was beneficial to the steppes, and to other animals. By clearing away the woody-stemmed tallgrass and small trees, a place was made for richer forbs and new grass to grow, food that was essential to several of the other inhabitants of the steppes.