Ayla could see Guban was interested, and she sensed he wanted to believe her, but he still had doubts. She took off the decorated bag from around her neck, untied the cords, and spilled out some of the contents into her palm, then picked out a small black stone and held it out to him.

Guban knew what it was, the black stone that would leave a mark was a mystery. Even the smallest piece could hold a tiny fraction of the spirits of all the people of the Clan, and was given to a medicine woman when a piece of hers was taken. The amulet she wore was strange, he thought, typical of the way the Others made things, but he hadn't known they wore amulets at all. Maybe the Others weren't all ignorant and brutish.

Guban noticed another of the objects from her amulet and pointed to it. "What is that?"

Ayla put the rest of her objects back in her amulet and put it down so she could answer. "It is my hunting talisman," she said.

That could not be true, Guban thought. This would prove her wrong. "Women of the Clan do not hunt."

"I know, but I was not born to the Clan. I was chosen by a Clan totem who protected me and led me to the clan that became mine, and my totem wanted me to hunt. Our mog-ur reached back and found the old spirits who told him. They made a special ceremony. I was called the Woman Who Hunts."

"What is this Clan totem that chose you?"

Much to Guban's surprise, Ayla lifted her tunic, unloosened the drawstring ties from around the waist of her leggings, and lowered the side enough to show her left thigh. Four parallel lines, the scars left by the claws that had raked her thigh when she was a girl, showed clearly. "My totem is the Cave Lion."

The Clan woman caught her breath. The totem was too strong for a woman. It would be difficult for her to have children.

Guban grunted acknowledgment. The Cave Lion was the strongest hunting totem, a man's totem. He had never known a woman to have it, yet those were the marks that were cut into the right thigh of a boy whose totem was the Cave Lion, after he'd made his first major kill and become a man. "It is on the left leg. The mark is put on a man's right leg."

"I am a woman, not a man. The woman's side is the left side."

"Your mog-ur marked you there?"

"The Cave Lion himself marked me, when I was a girl, just before my clan found me."

"That would explain using the weapon," Guban signed, "but what about children? Does this man with hair the color of Yorga's have a totem strong enough to overcome such a totem?"

Jondalar looked uncomfortable. He had wondered something like that himself.

"The Cave Lion also chose him, and left his mark. I know because The Mog-ur told me the Cave Lion chose me, and put the marks on my leg to show it, just as the Cave Bear chose him, and took his eye…"

Guban sat up, visibly shaken. He slipped out of the formal language, but Ayla understood him.

"Mogor One-Eye! You know Mogor One-Eye?"

"I lived at his hearth. He raised me. He and Iza were siblings, and after her mate died, he took her and her children in. At the Clan Gathering, he was called the Mog-ur, but to those who lived at his hearth, he was Creb."

"Even at our Clan Gatherings, there is talk of Mogor One-Eye, and his powerful…" He was going to say more, but thought better of it. Men were not supposed to talk about the private esoteric male ceremonies around women. That would explain her skill with the ancient signs, too, if she was taught by Mogor One-Eye. And Guban did recall that the great Mogor One-Eye had a sibling who was a respected medicine woman from an ancient line. Suddenly Guban seemed to relax, and he allowed a fleeting look of pain to cloud his face. He took a deep breath, then looked at Ayla, who was sitting cross-legged, looking down, in the position of a proper Clan woman. He tapped her shoulder.

"Respected medicine woman, this man has a… small problem," Guban signaled in the ancient silent language of the Clan of the Cave Bear. "This man would ask the medicine woman to look at leg. The leg may be broken."

Ayla closed her eyes and let out her breath. She had managed to convince him. He would allow her to treat his leg. She signaled to Yorga, telling her to prepare a sleeping place for him. The broken bone had not pierced the skin, and she thought there was a good chance that he would have full use of it again, but for the leg to heal properly, she would have to straighten it, set it back in place, and then she would make a birchbark cast to hold it stiff, so he could not move it.

"It will be painful to straighten it, but I have something that will relax the leg, and make him sleep." Then she turned to Jondalar. "Will you move our camp here? I know it's a chore with all those burning stones, but I want to set up the tent for him. They didn't plan to be gone overnight, and he needs to be out of the cold, especially when I give him something to sleep. We'll need some firewood, too, I don't want to use the burning stones, and we'll need to cut some wood for splints. I'll get birchbark when he's asleep, and maybe I can make some crutches for him. He'll want to move around later."

Jondalar watched her take charge, and he smiled to himself. He hated the delay, even one more day seemed too much, but he wanted to help, too. Besides, Ayla wouldn't leave now. He just hoped they wouldn't be there too long.

Jondalar took the horses to their first camp, repacked, moved, and unpacked again, then led Whinney and Racer to a clearing where they could search out dried grass. There was some standing hay, but more flat against the ground under old snow. It was a little distance from their new location, but out of sight so the animals would trouble the Clan people less. They seemed to think that the tame animals were another manifestation of the strange behavior of Others, but Ayla noticed that both Guban and Yorga seemed relieved when the unnaturally complaisant horses were out of sight, and she was pleased that Jondalar had thought of it.

As soon as he returned, Ayla got her medicine bag out of a pack basket. For all that he had decided to accept her help as a medicine woman, Guban was relieved to see her old Clan-style otter-skin medicine bag, functional and not decorated. She made a point of keeping Wolf out of the way as well, and strangely, the animal, though usually curious and approachable by people whom Ayla and Jondalar had made friends with, showed no inclination to befriend the people of the Clan. He seemed content to stay in the background, watchful, though in no way menacing, and Ayla wondered if he sensed their uneasiness about him.

Jondalar helped Yorga and Ayla move Guban into the tent. He was surprised at how much the man weighed, but the sheer volume of muscle in a body so strong that six men could barely hold it down, was bound to add weight. Jondalar also realized that the move was very painful, though Guban's impassive face showed no sign of it. The man's refusal to admit pain made Jondalar wonder if he felt it as much, until Ayla explained that such stoic denial was ingrained in Clan men from boyhood. Jondalar's respect for the man increased. His was not a race of weaklings.

The woman was amazingly strong, too, smaller than the man but not greatly so. She could lift as much as Jondalar could, and when she chose to exert force, the grip of her hand was unbelievably powerful; yet he'd seen her use her hands with fine precision and control. He was becoming intrigued with discovering the similarities between people of the Clan and his own kind, as well as the differences. He wasn't sure exactly when it happened, but at some point he realized that he no longer questioned in any way the fact that they were human. They were different, certainly, but most definitely the people of the Clan were people, not animals.

Ayla ended up using a few of the burning stones after all to make a hotter fire to prepare the datura more quickly, adding hot cooking stones directly to the water to make it boil. But Guban resisted drinking all that she felt he should, claiming that he didn't like the idea of waiting too long for its effects to wear off, but she wondered if part of the problem was his doubt whether she could prepare the datura properly. With help from both Yorga and Jondalar, Ayla set the leg, and then made a sturdy splint. When it was all over, Guban finally slept.