NETAWIS.
The encampment stood under the lee of a tall sandhill, a few paces
back from the brink of a frozen river. Here the forest ended in a
ragged fringe of pines; and, below, the river spread into a lagoon,
with a sandy bar between it and the lake, and a narrow outlet which
shifted with every storm. The summer winds drove up the sand between
the pine-stems and piled it in hummocks, gaining a few yards annually
upon the forest as the old trees fell. The winter winds brought down
the snow and whirled it among the hummocks until these too were
covered.
For three weeks the encampment had been pitched here; and for two
weeks snow had fallen almost incessantly, banking up the lodges and
freezing as it fell. At length wind and snow had ceased and given
place to a hard black frost, still and aching, and a sky of steel,
and a red, rayless sun.
A man came down the river-bank, moving clumsily in his snow-shoes
over the hummocks; a man dressed as an Indian, in blanket-cloak and
scarlet _mitases_. His head was shaven to the crown around a
top-knot skewered with heron's feathers; his face painted with black,
vermilion, and a single streak of white between the eyebrows.
He carried a gun under his left arm, and over his shoulder a pole to
which he had slung the bodies of five beavers. Two dogs ran ahead of
him straight for the encampment, which he had not discerned until
they began to salute it with glad barking.
Five lodges formed the encampment--four of them grouped in a rough
semicircle among the main lodge, which stood back close under the
sand-bank where an eddy of wind had scooped it comparatively clear of
snow.
The hunter followed his dogs to the door of the main lodge and lifted
its frozen tent-flap.
"Is it well done, Menehwehna?" he asked, and casting his pole with
its load upon the floor he clapped his mittened hands together for
warmth. "Ough!" He began to pull the mittens off cautiously.
Menehwehna, seated with his back against the roof-pole (he had lain
sick and fasting there all day), looked triumphantly towards his
wife, who crouched with her two daughters by the lodge fire.
"Said I not that he would bring us luck? And, being bitten, did they
bite, my brother?" he asked mischievously.
"A little. It did not hurt at the time."
One of the two girls rose from beside the fire.
"Show me your hands, Netawis," she said.
Netawis--that is to say, John a Cleeve--stretched out his lacerated
hands to the firelight. As he did so his blanket-cloak fell back,
showing a necklace of wampum about his throat and another looser
string dangling against the stained skin of his breast. On his
outstretched wrists two silver bangles twinkled, and two broad bands
of silver on the upper arms.
The girl fetched a bladder of beaver-fat and anointed his hands, her
own trembling a little. Azoka was husband-high, and had been
conscious for some weeks of a bird in her breast, which stirred and
began to flutter whenever she and Netawis drew close. At first, when
he had been fit for little but to make kites for the children, she
had despised him and wondered at her father's liking. But Netawis
did not seem to care whether folks despised him or not; and this
piqued her. Whatever had to be learnt he learned humbly, and now the
young men had ceased to speak of him as a good-for-nothing, Azoka
began to think that his differing from them was not wholly against
him; and all the women acknowledged him to be slim and handsome.
"Many thanks, cousin," said Netawis as she bound up the wounds.
Then he began to talk cheerfully over his shoulder to Menehwehna.
"Five washes I tried, and all were empty; but by the sixth the water
bubbled. Then I wished that I had you with me, for I knew that my
hands would suffer." He smiled; this was one of his un-Indian tricks.
"It was well done, brother," said Menehwehna, and his eyes sought
those of his wife Meshu-kwa who, still crouching by the fire, gazed
across it at the youth and the girl.
"But that is not all. While I was at work the dogs left me.
At first I did not miss them; and then, finding them gone, I made
sure they had run home in scorn of my hunting. But no; their tracks
led me to a tree, not far up the stream, and there I found them.
They were not barking, but sometimes they would nose around the trunk
and sometimes fall back to a little distance and sit whining and
trembling while they stared up at it."
"And the tracks around the tree?"
"I could find none but what the dogs themselves had made. I tapped
the tree, and it was hollow. Then I saw on the north side, a little
above my head, many deep scratches with moss hanging in strips from
them. The trunk ran up straight, and was so stout that my two arms
would not span more than a tenth of it; but the scratches went up to
the first fork, and there must be the opening, as I guess."
"Said I not that Netawis would become a hunter and bring us luck?"
asked Menehwehna again. "He has found bear."
"Bear! Bear! Our Netawis has found bear!" cried two small urchins
who had been rolling and tumbling with the dogs and almost burning
their toes at the edges of the fire. They were the children of
Azoka's elder sister Seeu-kwa, Muskingon's widow. Scrambling past
Menehwehna, who never spoke harshly to them, and paying no heed to
their mother's scolding, they ran out into the snow to carry the news
to the other lodges.
"Our Netawis has found bear!"
"What news is this?" asked some of the young men who lived in a
lodge apart--the bachelors' lodge--gathering round the doorway.
"Seeu-kwa, look to it that your children do not grow up to be little
liars."
Now John, surprised to find his news so important, had turned to
Azoka with a puzzled smile. The firelight which danced on his face
danced also on the long bead necklace heaving like a snake with the
rise and fall of her bosom. He stared down at it, and Azoka--poor
girl--felt his wrist trembling under her touch; but it was with the
thought of another woman. She caught her hand away; and John,
looking up, saw a young Indian, Ononwe by name, watching him gloomily
from the doorway.
"Ask Netawis to tell the story," said Menehwehna. So John told it
again, and added that it had been difficult to call the dogs away
from the tree.
"But about the bear I say nothing; that is Menehwehna's talk.
I only tell you what I saw."
"The wind has fallen," said one, "and soon the moon will be up.
Let us go and prove this tale of Netawis."
Meshu-kwa opposed this, calling it folly. "We have no axes heavy
enough for tree-cutting," she said; not giving her real reason, which
was that she came of a family which claimed descent from a bear.
When they mocked at her she said, "Also--why should I hide it?--there
came to me an evil dream last night."
"This is the first that I have heard of your evil dream," answered
Menehwehna, and gave order that after supper Netawis should lead the
party to the tree, promising that he himself would follow as soon as
the sickness left him.
At moonrise, therefore, they set out--men and women together, and
even the small children. But Menehwehna called Azoka back from the
door of the lodge.
"My daughter," he asked, they two being left alone, "has Ononwe a
cause of quarrel against Netawis?"
"They are good friends," Azoka answered innocently. "Ononwe never
speaks of Netawis but to praise. Surely my father has heard him?"
"That is returning a ball I never flung," her father said, fixing
grave eyes on her, under which she flinched. "I am thinking that the
face of Netawis troubles the clear water that once was between you
and Ononwe. Yet you tell me that Ononwe praises him. Sit down,
therefore, and hear this tale."
Azoka looked rebellious; but no one in his own household disobeyed
Menehwehna--or out of it, except at peril.
"There was a man of our nation once, a young man, and good-looking as
Ononwe; so handsome that all the village called him the Beau-man.
This Beau-man fell deeply in love with a maiden called Mamondago-kwa,
who also was passably handsome; but she had no right to scorn him as
she did, both in private and openly, so that all the village talked
of his ill-success. This talk so preyed on his mind that he fell
ill, and when his friends broke up their camp after a winter's
hunting to return to the village, he lay on his bed and would not
stir, but declared he would remain and die in the snow rather than
look again on the face of her who scorned him. So at length they
took down the lodge about him and went their ways, leaving him to
die.
"But when the last of them was out of sight this Beau-man arose
and, wandering over the ground where the camp had been, he gathered
up all kinds of waste that his comrades had left behind--scraps of
cloth, beads, feathers, bones and offal of meat, with odds and ends
of chalk, soot, grease, everything that he could pick out of the
trodden snow. Then, having heaped them together, he called on his
guardian _manitou_, and together they set to work to make a man.
They stitched the rags into coat, _mitoses_ and mocassins, and
garnished them with beads and fringes; of the feathers they made a
head-dress, with a frontlet; and then, taking mud, they plastered the
offal and bones together and stuffed them tightly into the garments.
The _manitou_ breathed once, and to the eye all their patchwork
became fresh and fine clothing. The _manitou_ breathed twice, and
life came into the figure, which the Beau-man had been kneading into
the shape of a handsome youth. 'Your name,' said he, 'is Moowis, or
the Muck-man, and by you I shall take my revenge.'
"So he commanded the Muck-man to follow, and together they went after
the tracks of the tribe and came to the village. All wondered at the
Beau-man's friend and his fine new clothes; and, indeed, this Moowis
had a frank appearance that won all hearts. The chief invited him to
his lodge, and begged the Beau-man to come too; he deserved no less
for bringing so distinguished a guest. The Beau-man accepted, but by
and by began to repent of his deception when he saw the Muck-man fed
with deer tongue and the moose's hump while he himself had to be
content with inferior portions, and when he observed further that
Mamondago-kwa had no eyes for anyone but the Muck-man, who began to
prove himself a clever rogue. The chief would have promoted Moowis
to the first place by the fire; but this (for it would have melted
him) he modestly refused. He kept shifting his place while he
talked, and the girl thought him no less vivacious than modest, and
no more modest than brave, since he seemed even to prefer the cold to
the cheerful warmth of the hearth. The Beau-man attempted to talk;
but the Muck-man had always a retort at which the whole company
laughed, until the poor fellow ran out of the lodge in a fury of
shame and rage. As he rose he saw the Muck-man rise, with the assent
of all, and cross over to the bridegroom's seat beside Mamondago-kwa,
who welcomed him as a modest maiden should when her heart has been
fairly won.
"So it happened--attend to me well, my daughter--that Mamondago-kwa
married a thing of rags and bones, put together with mud. But when
the dawn broke her husband rose up and took a bow and spear, saying,
'I must go on a journey.' 'Then I will go with you,' said his bride.
'My journey is too long for you,' said the Muck-man. 'Not so,'
answered she; 'there is no journey that I could not take beside you,
no toil that I could not share for love of you.' He strode forth,
and she followed him at a distance; and the Beau-man, who had kept
watch all night outside their lodge, followed also at a distance,
unseen. All the way along the rough road Mamondago-kwa called to her
husband; but he went forward rapidly, not turning his head, and she
could not overtake him. Soon, as the sun rose, he began to melt.
Mamondago-kwa did not see the gloss go out of his clothes, nor his
handsome features change back again into mud and snow and filth.
But still as she followed she came on rags and feathers and scraps of
clothing, fluttering on bushes or caught in the crevices of the
rocks. She passed his mittens, his mocassins, his _mitases_,
his coat, his plume of feathers. At length, as he melted, his
footprints grew fainter, until she lost even his track on the snow.
'Moowis! Moowis!' she cried; but now there was none to answer her,
for the Muck-man had returned to that out of which he was made."
Menehwehna ceased and looked at his daughter steadily.
"And did the Beau-man find her and fetch her back?" asked Azoka.
"The story does not say, to my knowledge; but it may be that Ononwe
could tell you."
Azoka stepped to the moonlit doorway and gazed out over the snow.
"And yet you love Netawis?" she asked, turning her head.
"So much that I keep him in trust for his good, against a day when he
will go and never return. But that is not a maiden's way of loving,
unless maidens have changed since I went a-courting them."
Netawis having led them to the tree, the young men fell to work upon
it at once. It measured well over ten fathoms in girth; and by
daybreak, their axes being light, they had hewed it less than
half-way through. After a short rest they attacked it again, but the
sun was close upon setting when the tree fell--with a rending scream
which swelled into a roar so human-like that the children ran with
one accord and caught hold of their elders' hands.
John, with Seeu-kwa's small boys clinging to him, stood about thirty
paces from the fallen trunk. Two or three minutes passed, and he
wondered why the men did not begin to jeer at him for having found
them a mare's nest. For all was quiet. He wondered also why none of
them approached the tree to examine it.
"I shall be the mock of the camp from this moment," he thought, and
said aloud, "Let go of my hands, little ones; there is no more
danger."
But they clung to him more tightly than ever; for a great cry went
up. From the opening by the fork of the trunk a dark body rolled
lazily out upon the snow--an enormous she-bear. She uncurled and
gathered herself up on all fours, blinking and shaking her head as
though the fall had left her ears buzzing, and so began to waddle
off. Either she had not seen the crowd of men and women, or perhaps
she despised it.
"Ononwe! Ononwe!" shouted the Indians; for Ononwe, gun in hand, had
been posted close to the opening.
He half-raised his gun, but lowered it again.
"Netawis found her," he said quietly. "Let Netawis shoot her."
He stepped back towards John who, almost before he knew, found the
gun thrust into his hands; for the children had let go their clasp.
Amid silence he lifted it and took aim, wondering all the while why
Ononwe had done this. The light was fading. To be sure he could not
miss the bear's haunches, now turned obliquely to him; but to hit her
without killing would be scarcely less dishonouring than to miss
outright, and might be far more dangerous. His hand and forearm
trembled too--with the exertion of hewing, or perhaps from the strain
of holding the children. Why had he been fool enough to take the
gun? He foretasted his disgrace even as he pulled the trigger.
It seemed to him that as the smoke cleared the bear still walked
forward slowly. But a moment later she turned her head with one loud
snap of the jaws and lurched over on her side. Her great fore-pads
smote twice on the powdery snow, then were still.
He had killed her, then; and, as he learned from the applause, by an
expert's shot, through the spine at the base of the skull. John had
aimed at this merely at a guess, knowing nothing of bears or their
vulnerable points, and in this ignorance neglecting a far easier mark
behind the pin of the shoulder.
But more remained to wonder at; for the beast being certified for
dead, Meshu-kwa ran forward and kneeling in the snow beside it began
to fondle and smooth the head, calling it by many endearing names.
She seated herself presently, drew the great jaws on to her lap and
spoke into its ear, beseeching its forgiveness. "O bear!" she cried
for all to hear, "O respected grandmother! You yourself saw that
this was a stranger's doing. Believe not that Meshu-kwa is guilty of
your death, or any of her tribe! It was a stranger that disturbed
your sleep, a stranger who fired upon you with this unhappy result!"
The men stood around patiently until this propitiation was ended; and
then fell to work to skin the bear, while Meshu-kwa went off with her
daughters to the lodges, to prepare the cooking pots. In passing
John she gave him a glance of no good will.
That night, as Azoka stood by a cauldron in which the bear's fat
bubbled, and the young men idled around the blaze, she saw Netawis
draw Ononwe aside into the darkness. Being a quick-witted girl she
promptly let slip her ladle into the fat, as if by mischance, and ran
to her father's lodge for another, followed by Meshu-kwa's scolding
voice. The lodge had a back-exit towards the wall of the sandhill,
where the wind's eddy had swept a lane almost clear of snow; and
Azoka pushed her pretty head through the flap-way here in time to spy
the dark shadows of the pair before they disappeared behind the
bachelor's lodge. Quietly as a pantheress she stole after them,
smoothing out her footprints behind her until she reached the
trampled snow; and so, coming to the angle of the bachelors' lodge,
cowered listening.
"But suppose that I had missed my shot?" said the voice of Netawis.
"I tell you that my heart was as wax; and when the lock fell, I saw
nothing. Why, what is the matter with you, Ononwe?"
"I thought you had led me here to quarrel with me," Ononwe answered
slowly, and Azoka held her breath.
"Quarrel, brother? Why should I quarrel with you? It was a risk, as
I am telling you; but you trusted me, and I brought you here to thank
you that in your good heart you gave the shot up to me."
"But it was not my good heart." Ononwe's voice had grown hoarse.
"It was an evil thought in my head, and you will have to quarrel with
me, Netawis."
"That Ononwe is a good man," said Azoka to herself.
"I do not understand. Did you expect me, then, to miss? Do not say,
brother, that you gave me the gun _wishing_ me to miss and be the
mock of the camp!"
"Yes, and no. I thought, if you took the gun, it would not matter
whether you hit or missed."
"Why?"
"Are you so simple, Netawis? Or is it in revenge that you force me
to tell? . . . Yes, I have played you an evil trick, and by an evil
tempting. I saw you with Azoka. . . . I gave you the gun, thinking,
'If he misses, the whole camp will mock him, and a maid turns from a
man whom others mock. But if he should kill the bear, he will have
to reckon with Meshu-kwa. Meshu-kwa fears ill-luck, and she will
think more than twice before receiving a son-in-law who has killed
her grandmother the bear.'"
"I will marry Netawis," said Azoka to herself, shutting her teeth
hard. And yet she could not feel angry with Ononwe as she ought.
But it seemed that neither was Netawis angry; for he answered with
one of those strange laughs of his. She had never been able to
understand them, but she had never heard one that sounded so unhappy
as did this.
"My brother," said Netawis--and his voice was gentle and bitterly
sorrowful--"if you did this in guile, I have shot better indeed than
you to-day. As for Meshu-kwa, I must try to be on good terms with
her again; and as for Azoka, she is a good girl, and thinks as little
of me as I of her. Last night when you saw us . . . I remember that
I looked down on her and something reminded me . . . of one . . ."
He leaned a hand against a pole of the lodge and gripped it as the
anguish came on him and shook him in the darkness. "Damn!" cried
John a Cleeve, with a sob.
"Was that her name?" asked Ononwe gravely, hardly concealing the
relief in his voice.
But Azoka did not hear Netawis' answer as she crept back, smoothing
the snow over her traces.