Ashton Hilliers

“ Within the week the girl, having such a head upon her brown shoulders as is conceded to a savage but once in a thousand generations or so, after much watching and brooding, made for herself a bigger drill from a bough of her own height, and seating herself opposite to her man, drove the bow rapidly, whilst he steadied the bit and watched the holes deepen at a pace quite new to his experience. ”

“ What would the God send (the moon is a man to the savage) , fur or feather? A little hazel-grouse trotted out into the glade; the shot was a difficult one, impossible with spear or throwing-stick, owing to overhanging boughs, but the girl prayed as she drew and brought it off. Her heart filled with gratitude, her totem was still watching over her for good. This should be a whole-burnt offering; a few feathers alone would she retain as her own share of the spoils, the first that ever fell to her bow (the Ghost-Bear always excepted) . ”

“ Dêh-Yān was sixteen, full woman as her people counted, the biggest, strongest and bravest of the unmarried lasses of the Little Moons. She could throw a chert-headed assegai forty strides and make it spin as it flew. She could handle a stone hatchet dexterously, skin, cut up, and roast. She could rub fire out of two sticks more quickly than any member of the tribe, could use her bone needle and split sinew to admiration. ”

“ Suddenly, from down the pass came one small sound, slight and keen as the squeak of a bat, but it was not the squeak of a bat, and Pŭl-Yūn felt the hairs creep upon his neck, for it was the shrieking yelp of a wolf. Now a wolf is an animal which hunts and lives in a society of its own, a society which has common needs and cooperates in its enterprises. ”

“ Pŭl-Yūn laid his hand upon his mouth and perused this wife of his in the flicker of the brands. There was nothing in this by-incident to excite surprise, a piteous tragedy: the coarse woof of savage life is occasionally shot by such a crimson warp. His mental vision was busy with this woman's adventure, picturing the tall, splintered aiguille, springing sheer from its scree, cleft by its one narrow cheminée leading to its one broad platform-ledge so far aloft there. ”

“ Dêh-Yān fitted arrow to string and half bent the great bow, still keeping her eye upon the tiny mark, then with a small sweet laugh she tripped back from the throwing-crease five full strides, drew swiftly and to the ear and as swiftly loosed. Twang! the cord sang shrill in the morning air, the arrow sped, and a whoop of sheer delight broke from the watching tribe, for the shaft had struck the mitten full, had pierced and transfixed it. ”

“ It is two years since I beat my cousin at the spear-throwing. It has always been the law that one trial is enough. The tribe cannot be always changing its war-chief. But I will put the law out of the question for once, for it is not well that the Sun-Folk should be under a war-chief who is weak of hand, or whom they think is weak of hand. The matter shall be retried. At sunrise to-morrow, as soon as there is full light, let Honk-Ah be ready with his spears and I will be ready with mine. And the man of us two who can throw farthest, and make his point go deepest, he shall be war-chief. ”

“ He wished the braves of her tribe had found him.... He would have shown those dirty Little Moons how a Sun-Disc man could stand fire. Ugh!—he was a fool to have given the creature a second thought—a mere Little Moon woman, useful perhaps when properly trained, but one of a backward tribe that ate snake (think, snake!) and plumed their axes with owls' feathers.
The contempt and hatred felt by a savage for a man of another totem and habits is almost inconceivably bitter, nearly as fierce and irrational as the loathing entertained by an Orangeman for a Papist, or a Wee Free for a United. ”

“ Upon the impulse of the moment and without word or look, Pŭl-Yūn struck swift and hard at the brown wrist with the elder bit that he was holding: the stick encountered the rock and split, for the slim brown wrist had been withdrawn with nimble rapidity. The eyes of the young people met and smiled, it was their first attempt at play.
"My husband sees that I can take care of myself," remarked the girl sedately.
"That is well, Dêh-Yān, for with a Ghost-Bear and a hunting party of three in this glen, a woman has need of eyes in the back of her head," was the comment of her lover. ”

“ He had paused in his climb, as who would not?—when the bodies of his friends rushed down past him; quickly he withdrew his eyes from them where they lay, to look too long upon such a sight does a climber no good, and in another step he had won shelter and comparative safety—when—how say it?—his left arm, the one upon which he chiefly depended, was pinned down to its shoulder by a small, but astonishingly hard-thrown assegai! Oh, the pang of it!—and the ignominy of being twice maimed and held-up by a squaw! ”

“ The raven stalked forth to the cave-sill and took wing a-down the gulf of air but, thrice the little snow-white ptarmigan tossed himself aloft into the keen clear morning, and thrice he came circling down again to the cave-sill with stiffly-bent wing and inflated throat singing his song of praise to the Lord who made and warmed him, and then he too was gone and the watcher was alone. ”

“ Pŭl-Yūn had thrown back the hand that held the axe for one last stroke. The bear, just beyond reach, certain of his meal, and perhaps not particularly hungry, or it may be, disposed, as are all beasts of prey, to play with his victim, snarled joyously and half-arose upon his broad haunches, hanging a vast bestial head over the seated man, its pestiferous darkness imperfectly lit by the green glitter of an eye. ”

“ Exactly over the brute's head, and between his round ears, Dêh-Yān caught sight of that pale, thin sickle of moon, her moon, her people's god and hers! Her right hand held the broken assegai, her left the longest strung-drill (she had snatched it from the floor in mistake for a spear) . There was no time to seek another weapon; the spears, as she now remembered, lay between Pŭl-Yūn and the Ghost-Bear. If there was to be fighting she must fight with this toy, naught else. ”

“ Honk-Ah felt himself slipping: he must make a push for it. He spoke.
"We do not believe—" he began, but the old chief cut him short,—
"I believe, and that is enough for my people. And, listen to me, Honk-Ah, and you who side with him, for I know what is in your hearts,—this thing shall come to a head, it shall cease, and at once. My grandson Pŭl-Yūn was war-chief when he went forth. Is he weaker, or less brave, or less cunning since he has returned?" ”

“ What should she do?—Another girl would have crept stealthily away up the cliff; another girl would already have been in full flight, and would have run shrieking to camp. Then the braves would have turned out and found—nothing!—and that girl would have been beaten for crying Wolf!
Dêh-Yān did not relish being beaten. She knew all about it; if she had to run any risks these should not include that risk. She knew herself as strong as some men and as clever as most. In her heart of hearts she was somewhat jealous of men. She would have liked enormously to have been a man and a chief. ”

“ She succeeded from the first attempt, settling after many trials to a shaft as long as her own arm: made herself ten upon this pattern and practised sedulously. Skill came apace, far more quickly to this tense-sinewed one-idead savage woman than it would come to a modern, and at the end of three days' constant archery she found herself able to put all ten arrows into a small circle marked out upon a snow-bank at full assegai-range. Beyond this range her missiles disappointed her, they still wobbled. As a practical spear-thrower she knew what was lacking—there was no spin upon them. ”

“ Dêh-Yān, fortunately for herself, and for Pŭl-Yūn (and for you and me) —Dêh-Yān, I say, possessed this happy faculty of amusing herself with whatever scrap of stone, stick or string came within her reach. These strung-drills for example, she was for ever stretching, releasing, twanging the things, studying their actions and reactions, wondering at the difference in their notes, and had come within a little of discovering the germ of the lyre, when—well, what she did discover [Pg 86] was of more importance than music to mankind in the making. ”

“ All the next day her man lay silent, refusing the various foods which she prepared with her own hands. At sunset she summoned the clan; her subject wives, their handmaidens, daughters and slaves sate around the silent hut: beyond the royal enclosure in a wider ring squatted the body-guard, his sons and grandsons, and the staunchest of the braves of the tribe, grizzled ring-men upon whose scarred, brown chests shifted and glittered the trophies of forty battles. ”

“ But [Pg 119] this cave would be a hateful place without his squaw. Nor could he face the thought of returning to his tribe without her, empty-handed, with nothing to show for his winter-hunting. This was a humiliation not to be borne, the sneering enquiries of his cousin and rival, the wonder of his fellow-braves, the eyes of the women. No wife and no scalps?
Whether besieged or no, Pŭl-Yūn would stay back and avenge her. What was she worth in Little Moon lives? He held up all his ten fingers and solemnly gloomed upon them. Ten should die for her—if he lived—not less. ”

“ Alack, our race has moved with a pitiful slowness, and still moves locally and by jerks, and with much intermediate marking of time and retrogressions elsewhere.
Hence it is not to be supposed that the Sun-Men acclaimed the first performances of the New Thing with shouts of joy. To the braves of the tribe it signified the success of a piece of woman's gear. Their first impulse was to have none of it, to shout it down as foreign magic, certainly novel, probably impious, and no doubt offensive to their deity. Even the old chief, with all to gain by his grandson's victory, was unenthusiastic. ”

“ Nobody slept, and there was but one topic of conversation, the fate of Dêh-Yān.
One boy, indeed, the boy whom she had spanked the day before, stuck to it that she had outrun him whilst making for camp, had passed him running silently and running wide, but none believed him, for he was not a truthful boy, nor did his tale obtain a moment's credence from the fact that next morning certain assegais, axes and skins were missing. Such losses are incidental to a panic when women and girls run and cry out and drop things; they would be found, if and when the snow melted. But the snow did not melt. ”

“ What had become of the dart? 'Twas gone, yet none had seen it go. At such close range, and from such a powerful bow, an arrow travels nearly level and exceedingly fast. The eyes of the tribe, fixed upon the man, and awaiting the vehement action of the spear-thrower, had failed altogether to pursue the flight of the missile.
"Wah! when is he going to throw?" "Where has it gone?" "When did he cast?" "How came it there?" for lo! in the target beside the best spear of Honk-Ah stood the dart of Pŭl-Yūn, quite as well-centred and more deeply fixed. ”

“ The braves formed line and scouted for game ahead of the old men in the centre. The squaws and girls staggered slowly behind bowed beneath the property of the tribe, the accumulated gettings of a summer's hunting. There were also the household stuff and the babies.
So big were the flakes that progress was difficult from the first, and presently became impossible, the smaller and more heavily-laden girls could not be kept going. It was no use beating the stragglers. The old chief called a halt. When young things begin to get behind, someone will presently be missing. ”

“ Thou hadst run far and fast, and fought bravely, wonderfully; it makes my heart laugh to think of one woman fighting three braves and bringing away their scalps. Yes, I own thou wast tired out. All the same it was against us, and is against us still, that those three dogs were left to gnaw through their leashes and get away down to the tribe masterless. They will be brought up again and laid on and followed, and if they do not own to the trails of their dead masters, they will own to ours, which is as bad for us. No, we cannot fight the whole of thy tribe, we must be moving, and at once. ”

“ Dêh-Yān's first shot with it at her snow-bank target flooded her bosom with adoring gratitude, for here was the thing she had sought and prayed for, the shaft spun as it flew! Again and again she essayed shots at increasing ranges and still the wonder persisted, at fifty, yes, and at sixty paces the shaft flew straight, swerving neither to left nor right. ”

“ Dêh-Yān, who had put in three whole days at arrow-making, arose [Pg 172] with the last and finest specimen of her art in her hands. It was fledged with the white and black quills of ptarmigan, and pointed with a keen splinter of bone. Holding the venomous looking thing between her hands by point and nock, she straightened a weary back and lifted it towards the Young Moon. "O Totem of my people, and of me, and of my New Thing, grant that this one at the least of all my arrows may serve me at my need!" ”

“ The finder of this grim relic brought it to the old chief in good faith. The elder looked, sniffed, snarled, "Fool!—this is not blood, but berry-juice!" whereat Gow-Loo, a somewhat jolter-headed young savage, slunk away cursing the lost girl and wishing the bear a good meal of her. Later he cursed her more bitterly still.
A hasty camp was pitched, ill-warmed, ill-lighted. The squaws huddled amid their shuddering children, the men never laid down their arms all night. A cannibal bear was the most terrible enemy known to the tribe ”

“ When a modern woman is startled she shrieks, a perfectly useless expenditure of energy, and worse, for the sound and its reaction upon the system of the shrieker prevent her from hearing more; also she not uncommonly shuts both eyes to shriek the better. Dêh-Yān neither shrieked nor shut her eyes, although thoroughly startled and indeed frightened. Now Dêh-Yān was not easily frightened; there were in fact but three or four things which she really feared, a wolf in open country, a bear or lion in any country, and a wife-hunter from beyond the ranges. ”

“ The drowsing watchers without found her standing in the rift of the hanging skins before the doorway. "Wood," was her word. "Bring wood—much wood, let every man, woman and child bring a faggot, dry and fit. Your lord is a-cold and I am minded to warm him."
There was something terrible in the calmness and intensity of her face, although the words were wild enough, for, what shall a man need with a stack of dry kindling at midsummer? ”