The Edge of the Ice

By Bannager Bong

Science tells us that 15,000 years ago three wolves gave birth to what would become all the dogs in the world today. This is a story of how that might have happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257538119

Book preview

Twelve

Book 1

The Elk Hunters

Foreword to Book 1

Wolves and people like to bond. In a way that is qualitatively different from the way other animals group together, wolves, and other canids, share with people a characteristic behavior of group living. Within the group, they bond tightly, protective and loyal. Outside of the group, they are suspicious of the Other, even hostile. The group is not just a living arrangement, as it seems to be with other animal groupings, including primates. The group has a structure that extends to all the activities of its members’ lives. Whether hunting, or defending, or attacking, the members of the group have distinct and complementary roles that makes the ensemble more complex, more powerful than just a collection of members.

It’s dangerous to resort to physics analogies but I can’t help it. Nuclear particles are subject to a force that tries to keep them apart. This force is very powerful in a range that is large relative to the size of a nucleus. But, if that force can be overcome, if the particles can breech the barrier that that force erects and get closer, there is an even stronger force, that operates on that small range, that will bind them together so tightly that, well, matter can exist.

It’s kind of like that. Individual wolves and people want to bond. But there’s a basic sense of suspicion, a repulsive force that makes them wary of getting too close, especially with each other – members of different species. But if something were to force them into that close proximity, an even greater force, the need to bond, can take over.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Jack London

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Druid wolf pack chasing elk in Lamar Valley;

Jim Peaco; November 1996

Chapter One

Outcast Man was, well, an outcast. The people he had known all his life had sent him out of their midst to live (or more likely die) alone. Now he lived alone a few days' walk from the band he had been cast out of. That band, part of the Red Sand people, had traveled toward the sunrise for many generations, always along the edge of the great ice, farther away in the winter, closer in the summer, following the great herds. The Red Sand people were hunters, but that wasn't all they did. The women gathered edible plants and herbs. One man, whose name, aptly enough, was Stonecutter, was a master at making tools from stones. He made spear points and scrapers and axes and knives. About the time Outcast Man had become old enough to join the hunt, Stonecutter had found just the right stone, and just the right way, to make spears that were lighter and truer than the band had ever known before. That was just as well, too, because the winters were colder and the mammoths were harder to take. Outcast Man considered Stonecutter his friend, had considered him a friend, that is. When he was unhappy, he would sit with Stonecutter and watch him work, watch the tools take form. Stonecutter showed him how to strike the proper flakes. Outcast Man had learned how striking with an antler piece produced one kind of flake and how a strike with another stone would make another kind.

One old woman, who everyone called Grandmother, was the doctor of the band. She treated sickness with herbs. Sometimes she was able to help wounded hunters but often the injuries were too severe for her simple skills. Then she would comfort the dying as best she could and, later, lead the people in their rituals for the dead.

The Red Sand People lived in small, mobile clusters of huts made from mammoth bones, tusks, and wood, covered with mammoth hides. When they could, they would stay in caves and overhangs but they moved with the mammoths. The mammoths didn't always go where there were suitable caves. The Red Sand people believed their people had crossed the ice from somewhere else in the time of the ancestors and had fathered the bands who hunted on the edge of the ice.

Outcast Man's own father had been a good hunter, but not good enough. He was killed during a mammoth hunt when Outcast Man was a boy, known as Dark Otter. Times were hard for Dark Otter and his mother, without a father or husband. Their share of the hunt was, understandably, small. But they survived. Then, when their band met up with another Red Sand tribe, Dark Otter's mother married a new man. Things changed. There was more to eat but Dark Otter was never accepted by his new father. He would beat Dark Otter for no reason, and sometimes he would beat Dark Otter's mother, too. Dark Otter became angry, and as he grew, he became dangerous. One day, when his stepfather was hitting his mother, Dark Otter could no longer stand it. He knocked the man down and punched him, hard, in the face. Predictably, this only enraged his stepfather more and he grabbed his spear and would have killed Dark Otter right then and there. But his mother's screams had brought the other men of the band and they intervened. Dark Otter was brought before the elders. His stepfather claimed that his authority, and thereby the traditions of the people, had been challenged. He claimed that challenges to authority could not be tolerated, that Dark Otter must be killed. The elders considered this but they also knew the circumstances. It was a small band and nobody was ignorant of the way Dark Otter and his mother were treated. In the end, the elders decided that Dark Otter would not be killed. But he must go. He was stripped of his name and with that, his connection to the people.

So Outcast Man was cast out. He was scared and lonely. He didn't know how to live by himself and he missed his mother. At first he stayed close to the band. He watched them from the hills around the camp. He saw that life went on without him while his life seemed to be standing still. So then he got angry and turned his back on them. He would show them. He would hunt and live. One day they would be sorry. One day they would wish they had not sent him away. One day. But today, he was hungry and lonely and nobody cared. It was just as well he was strong and quick; one hunter alone needed all his skill and luck to find game he could bring down without falling prey to the bears or cats.

He moved down into the valley, south of the summer camp of his former band. His anger and resentment burned and he ran through the forest looking for something to kill. Over time hunger overtook anger and he channeled his energy into more productive pursuits. But these pursuits were only slightly more productive. He was always hungry.

The valley where Outcast Man lived ran mostly East-West, with a stream in the center. The stream ran from a pond in the eastern uplands down through the valley to the west where it joined a stream running south. Outcast Man's former band lived about eight miles from the north rim of the valley, on the plateau above. The southern side of the valley was punctuated with side canyons opening to the south. The entire valley was thickly wooded. But since it was relatively high, up on either rim the trees thinned out. The north side was rolling hills all the way north to the glacier's edge, some thirty miles from the valley. The southern edge was a level plateau for ten miles or so. Then it sloped down into the lowlands. Outcast Man lived in a cave on the northern side of the valley. It was a small cave, just enough room for him to sleep and store his meager belongings. Outcast Man had kept his three most valuable possessions when he was cast out: 2 spears, with tips made by Stonecutter, and a knife with an antler handle and a blade made of obsidian. He had carved the handle himself and he carried it in a leather wrapper strapped to his back. He also had a string of beads made by his mother and a little carved figurine, a gift from a childhood friend. Outside the mouth of the cave, Outcast Man had built a stone-ringed fire pit. He would sit there and stare into the fire and think about the future, the past, anything but the present.

In the present, the ice (The Ice) was retreating. For thousands of years, ice had held the world in its grip, and now, slowly, over more thousands of years, it was retreating northward. In its wake, the ice left lush fertile plains, new meadows that had been waiting to grow. Where the new prairie flowered, great herds of beasts moved in to exploit the rich pasture. Mammoths, sloths, bison, elk, antelope, camels, all flourished in the new fields where the ice had been. All around the world, the herds moved and thrived. They moved up, close to the ice in the summer, and down, away from the ice, in the winter. With them, inevitably, inexorably, came the great predators: bears, cats, jackals, eagles.

There were wolves, too, following the herds in organized social groups, packs, ruthlessly efficient, exquisitely self-confident. And people, too, followed the herds. So long ago that even the stories had been forgotten, people had come out of the tropics, probably running away from the predators that followed the migrating animals they hunted, huddling where they could find shelter. They moved over the world and became hunters themselves. Like the wolves, people lived and hunted in organized social groups. They had fire and tools and they prospered.

Then the ice came and covered the world. The people adapted, covering their frail bodies with skins and furs, living in caves to keep the cold at bay. And when the long winter of ice was finally waning and the great herds prospered, people prospered with them. Now the ice was retreating. The people continued to prosper but they kept the racial memories of when they were hunted, by lions and leopards, cowering and naked. They hunted now, themselves, sure. They hunted well. But they avoided other hunters when they could, and fought them like scared monkeys when they had to.

The wolves also avoided other hunters. There was no profit in fighting a bear, even less with a cat. There was plenty of game for everyone and wolves were consummate profiteers. The wolves lived in structured societies where the dominant pair defined the rhythms of life. They hunted and cared for the cubs. They cooperated with well defined roles for each member in the hunt, the family, and the protection of the pack. The wolves especially avoided people with their fire and strange noises. Wolves had well defined rules for interacting with other wolves, necessary for genetic distribution. Both sides knew the rules. Encounters were orderly and choreographed: lots of snarling and posturing, and, of course, urinating. Real fighting was rare and killing even rarer. But wolves did not have rules for interacting with people. Except one rule: don't.

Lone Wolf was, well, a lone wolf. When his mother had been killed, he dropped from being a privileged aristocrat to the lowest juvenile. He would have been willing to tolerate all the difficulty, all the babysitting, all the starvation, all the submission; but the new alpha female kept torturing him, even when he submitted. She would not let up until she drove him off. So Lone Wolf was alone. It was not a happy state for a young wolf but he bore it. He was, however, getting really tired of mice. He was also tired of always being on guard lest he violate some pack's territory, his own or another.

Outcast Man knew how to hunt as the Red Sand people hunted. He knew how to encircle and distract, to stab and withdraw. The trouble was, all his knowledge was based on having five or six other hunters along, all working together. Alone, he was fairing rather poorly. He had managed to catch a few rabbits. He built fish traps. He gathered berries (berries were good). His success with deer hunting, however, was extremely limited. He wanted desperately to kill a deer. He needed the hide as much as he needed the meat. Since being cast out, he had managed to kill a deer only once, out of a dozen tries. His mother had gathered edible leaves and nuts but he didn't know the good from the bad. So he ate meat and fish and berries.

Lone Wolf knew, from the tip of his nose the tip of his tail, how to hunt. He had always been a chaser. He and another adolescent pack mate would take turns running after a quarry, wearing it down, making it go where the rest of the pack were waiting. He was good at it. He knew, better even than other wolves, what an elk, or a deer, or a bison was thinking, where it would turn, when it was finished. But alone, a chaser, even a good one, was overqualified and underfed. So he ate mice and roamed around with more energy than purpose. He lived in the woods on the slope of the valley. Sometimes he watched the man who prowled along the stream. He was normally wary of humans; they weren't food and they weren't wolves. But since he was alone, he watched the things around him because he didn't have much else to do.

Outcast Man knew he was being watched. He became aware of it about the time he crossed the stream and picked up the trail of some ice deer. He heard a movement and got just a glimpse of a shape in the brush. Well, if he was being hunted whoever it was would get a fight; Outcast Man was hungry and it would be hard enough to take down a deer by himself without having to ward off some crazed whatever it was. He was, in short, cranky. He knew it was a single animal. No human could move that fast and more than one carnivore could not remain so completely hidden. Outcast Man did not think he was in danger of being killed. He could drive off any beast short of a mad bear. But he was in danger of going hungry if whatever was stalking him spooked the deer or distracted him when he needed to concentrate. He backtracked to where he had seen the movement but was not surprised to find nothing. Outcast Man resumed tracking the deer and whatever it was resumed tracking Outcast Man.

Normally, Lone Wolf did not like the scent of humans. From time to time, the pack had come across an abandoned camp, even the occasional hunting band of people. The pack stayed away from encounters when they could; they always got bloodied when they couldn't. When Lone Wolf had passed through a human camp, the mixture of smells had been confusing: the awful fire smell, the wonderful blood and hide smell, the intriguing burnt flesh smell, and the just plain weird human smell. On the whole, he'd rather just stay away. Normally, that is. Now that he was alone, Lone Wolf was bored. If he got too close to other wolves, there would be trouble. Wolves were predictable. Humans were, from his limited experience, curiously unpredictable. They were also pretty sloppy eaters. Whenever the pack had come across a place where people had killed and butchered game, there were bound to be scraps, if someone else hadn't gotten there first.

Trotting along a small ridge, alert to some meal of opportunity, Lone Wolf saw the human following the stream below. Lone Wolf lay down and watched through the bushes. At times, the human would stoop to the ground and examine something he found there, not with his face as Lone Wolf would, but with those strange forelegs that never touched the ground. Sometimes he would turn and look where Lone Wolf was, but Lone Wolf was no longer there. At the first hint the human was turning his attention from the trail, Lone Wolf would leap into the undergrowth and creep away, as silent as, well, a wolf. But he would return to the ridge to watch the strange, fascinating human, alone like himself. After an hour or so of this espionage, Lone Wolf smelled the ice deer. There were several, at least eight, just up and over the hill. His nose twitched and he drooled uncontrollably in spite of his tense concentration on the human. He reasoned, as best he could as he was, after all, a wolf: I can get to the deer before the human, if that's even where he's going. Unless one of them is really bad at being an ice deer, I won't get to eat any of them when I do. If the human is tracking the deer, he may be able to kill one and I may get some of it when he leaves. If he gets killed trying to bring down a deer, I can eat him. All in all, Lone Wolf concluded, his best chance of getting something to eat besides mice was to keep following the human and see what happened next.

Outcast Man lay down on the ground and crawled up the small hill until just his eyes poked over the top. He could see a small herd of deer, maybe 12, including a large buck, a few juveniles, and several does. This presented Outcast Man with a bit of a dilemma. Killing the buck would yield a lot of collateral material: a large hide with longer fur than the others, much larger antlers, bigger bones, and more meat. On the other hand, the buck would be harder, and more dangerous, to kill. Also, even a doe would have more meat than he could eat and he really didn't have enough free time (or skill) to do anything useful with the bone or antler material. The large skin would be useful, though. He didn't take much time to resolve this problem; Outcast Man was a realist. He'd been a hunter since he was old enough to hold a spear. The buck would be too much work with too little likelihood of success.

The deer were grazing in a meadow along with a handful of horses and a few sloths. The meadow was lush and green and dotted with wild flowers. Here and there, in low spots, the ground was spongy and wet and thick with rushes and wading birds. There was a pond near the edge of the meadow that fed the stream that Outcast Man had followed. The deer were about twenty feet from the pond on the far side from Outcast Man. If he had been with a hunting party from his band, they would have encircled the meadow and coordinated their approach. They would have been almost assured of getting a few does, maybe the buck, too. But one hunter, alone, had to be very skillful and very lucky, to get even one. He chose his prey, a medium sized doe near the water. He had his spears, and his knife strapped to his back. He crawled forward as far as he dared and stopped, prone in the grass. He watched the grazing animals for several minutes, until he was sure they were undisturbed. Then he crawled forward again and stopped again. He repeated this until he was within a spear throw of his target.

Lone Wolf watched the man watch the deer. Lone Wolf was a hunter, too. He understood in his blood what the man was doing; his ears stood erect and his nose twitched. He agreed with the man's assessment of the herd's state of mind. Unlike Outcast Man, Lone Wolf knew there were two hunters here.

Outcast Man held his long spear in his left hand and his shorter spear in his right. His plan was to stand up and throw his right hand spear at the doe. With un-natural luck, he would drop her where she stood. More likely he would wound her badly. He was planning on the other deer preventing her from running in that direction, at least for a few seconds. That might give him time to close the distance and drive his long spear into her heart. It was a reasonable plan, about the best a man alone could implement.

Lone Wolf angled around the edge of the meadow; out of sight of both man and deer. He kept a careful eye on the deer, the single deer, that he knew was the target.

Outcast Man's spear found the doe's flank, just in front of her left hind leg. She stumbled and wheeled around. As expected, the startled herd stood in her way for a second and then bolted away, around the buck. Unfortunately for Outcast Man's plan, the big buck stood his ground and Outcast Man had to maneuver around him. The doe was badly hurt and limping. But she could still outrun Outcast Man for a while longer. If she beat him to the forest edge, he would have to throw his long spear. He could lose the spear which would be bad. If she could still run when she got to the trees, he would have to track the blood trail, if he could.

Outcast Man ran after the doe. He was gaining on her but he knew he couldn't reach her in time. He had just decided to throw the spear while running, bad for his aim but time was pressing, when the doe stopped. Over her shoulder he saw Lone Wolf leaping up out of the tall grass. Outcast Man's conscious brain was completely dumbstruck. If he hadn't been so totally concentrated on the hunt, his conscious mind would have reacted to the wolf as a predator, a danger, or at least something that needed to be dealt with. But Outcast Man's conscious mind was not running things just then. And his unconscious mind was so focused on the hunt that all he realized was that he was in striking distance. He plunged his spear into the doe and she was dead.

They stood facing each other for several minutes, both panting, both staring, both trying to understand what had just happened and what would happen next. Man and wolf. Both know that they should not, did not, interact. Not enemies, exactly, but certainly competitors. Lone Wolf had never been this close to a man before. But, oh, how good it felt to have hunted again! Outcast Man, for his part, had always thought of wolves as