THE TESTING OF THE NEW THING
And now there was gloom in the household. Pŭl-Yūn was gaining strength
daily and as irritable as your convalescent is permitted to be. His leg
was not yet sound enough or supple enough to attempt the descent of the
face, for the knee-joint creaked from its six weeks of disuse; on the
other hand, it could not get enough of play within the limits of the
cave. His nerves excited him, his temper was less even than when he was
helpless, and, worst of all, his conscience would not let him be. Thus
came Aidôs down to men.
Dêh-Yān put up with her man's petulant outbreaks and slaved for him
harder than ever. A diet of dark bear-meat--solid bear-meat daily and
twice a day, although admirably suited to keep up the bodily warmth,
is hard upon the liver unless regulated by abundant exercise, which
in the case of her husband was out of the question. She cast about
for something lighter, but game was getting scarce in the immediate
neighbourhood of the cave, and indeed in the glen itself; she had
hunted it too closely and too long. It was the depth of winter in the
mountains, migratory life had long since left for the lower levels,
resident life was scanty. Dêh-Yān betook herself to trapping. A bird of
some kind her man should have.
Pŭl-Yūn, peering moodily from his cave-platform, watched her bending
over a trap far below and a long way off. The cackle of a chough came
up clearly through the cold air, a danger-signal, and it struck him as
singular that the bird should be calling so far from the woman, for
as a rule they ignored her movements unless she were within, say, a
hundred paces, yet he put the matter from him, no dream had given him
prescience of impending danger.
The girl, busied at her work, crouched beside her gin, her deer-skin
quiver upon her shoulder, her bow laid beside her hand. The man was
annoyed at the sight, he distrusted this new-fangled plaything of hers;
why could she not carry spears as he would have done, as he was going
to do in a week or so? Everything she did, or failed to do, had power
to annoy the poor fellow now. That she bore with him so quietly was an
offence in itself. Had she answered him back, had she met him half-way
in the quarrel which he had been provoking for a week past, he would
have taken such an attitude in good part. That is to say he would have
found it natural and treated it naturally, beaten her, to wit, as every
savage man has ever done since the male subjugated the female.
But Dêh-Yān's gentle, unselfish reserve, and perpetual activities on
his behalf, gave him never an opening.
So he watched her moodily, _jealously_--come, the secret is out at
last, we have a name for the complaint.
This is of the primitive passions. It is one which we share with, or
inherit from the brutes. A cat, a lap-dog, a parrot, will sicken of
jealousy. Children, savages, uneducated people, our semi-educated
fellow-citizens (our new masters), are subject to severe and protracted
fits of this torturing disease. We have known a working-man,
middle-aged, of failing health, and with a sickly wife and young family
to support, throw up a foreman's post of twenty-eight shillings the
week and begin life again upon seventeen as a common labourer, from
sheer jealousy of one of the gang under him whom he could not induce
his firm to discharge without a reason.
Women are more liable to the malady than men because they have, upon
the whole, less distractions for their minds. A man can escape from
the proximity of his enemy (once possibly his friend), he can steep his
mind in business, in politics, in literature, in sport. A woman has
her rival ever at her elbow, in her kitchen, in the nursery, in the
school-room or next door.
In the case of poor Pŭl-Yūn the position was reversed. It was he, who
with hardening muscles and strengthening passion, was debarred from
healthy and adequate physical exercise, and was fain to eat his heart
in bitterness of spirit, with an accusing conscience ever at his elbow,
a house-mate for which he had no name, for the Thing, like many other
Things, rheumatism, gravity, panic-terror, malaria, etc., although
maleficent, had not yet been separated, personified and named.
Picture him overlooking with the beady, deep-set, far-sighted eyes
of the savage, like an eagle from his eyrie, the doings of his
jealously-loved squaw a half-mile away and three hundred feet below.
There, she had set that gin, and half arose, her chert-knife in one
hand, her bow in the other. Sudden as the pounce of a lynx (and nothing
in nature save the stroke of a snake can be swifter), a man leaped upon
her from the scrub. Pŭl-Yūn caught his breath, for the enemy had her by
the kaross and must have borne her down had not his foot caught in a
trailing bough of _pumilus_. As it was, it was the nearest thing in the
world, for as he stumbled, still fast to her, the skewer at her throat
snapped, he reeled back with the kaross, the woman was free. He was
at her again, but she doubled under his tossed-up arm, striking back
and up as she did so and getting him in the arm-pit, as her husband
thought. By some means she was at liberty, off and away; not along the
glade, but winding swift and puzzlingly amid the tangling scrub of
which she knew every game-track by heart. This was the saving of her,
as Pŭl-Yūn saw and breathed again, for two other hunters now upsprang
from beside the path which they had anticipated her flying feet would
follow. These seemed for a moment somewhat out of it, for their quarry
had doubled back and secured a lead, but they were hardened braves in
the pink of condition, winter-hunters who seemed to know the valley,
and once clear of that patch of scrub what would happen?
There is but one thing that can happen when an unarmed woman is set
upon by three armed men--unless, indeed, she be helped. But how was
Dêh-Yān to be helped?--and by whom?--By himself only! He smote his
stiff knee and yelped a short and very bitter laugh. Yes, the girl must
come to him for help at the last.
Meanwhile she was playing the game, running her ring about the thicket,
as a vixen does when roused. There was just the off-chance that she
might throw her pursuers out, and get back to her earth unviewed. But,
with three men (and such men), it was the poorest of chances, and she
was incurring the most outrageous risks. She had boasted somewhat to
him of her speed, and he had believed that she was fleet for a woman,
but what woman, or what man, for the matter of that, could stand up
before three?--She was heading down-glen when he lost sight of the
chase, and every step would have to be retraced, and the double made
in face of a runner-up pressing her for all he was worth, and flankers
running wide to cut her off when she turned.
He threw himself upon the cave-floor and gnawed his knuckles in
impotent chagrin.
She should not have turned. She should have headed straight for him at
once. They would have stood out the siege together, and died together,
for that was what it would have come to, as he saw too clearly.
As for his wife making a successful stand anywhere, or under any
circumstances, and fighting it out with that new Thing of hers, the
idea never occurred to him once during the long hours of his lonely
vigil.
The shadows of the winter's day lengthened. The imprisoned man had
given up hope. His wife did not come, would never come to him again.
The husband's heart grew heavy with the sorrow which settles down
upon the watcher whose anxieties are over at last, whom the worst has
befallen.
For himself he did not particularly care. He had no fear that she would
give him away under torture. Dêh-Yān would be staunch to the last, of
that he was assured, doing her justice now that she was gone. He had
stores enough for another four months, and long before that would be
as sound a man again as ever he was. But 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. So the night wore.
Then a stick cracked below in the darkness, and her signal, the shrill
whistle of the marmot, rang out. His heart leaped, he gripped his axe
and a stone for a down-throw; she would be hard-pressed to a surety,
but why did the fool-creature make such a noise?--'Twas madness!
He hirpled to the lip of the rock-platform and craned over, peering
down into the impenetrable dusk below, ready for action, listening,
eye, ear and nostril at stretch for news of the whereabouts of his
foes. But the only sounds were the scrape of his squaw's moccasins and
her hardly-taken breaths. How heavily she climbed!--Was she wounded?
She did not reply to his low-spoken questions. She was coming nearer,
nearer; his eyes, accustomed to seeing in the worst of lights, could
make out her bare unbandaged head and shoulders, her arms too, there
seemed little the matter with what of her he could see. Her kaross
was gone, he had seen it go, she was still encumbered with that silly
bag of arrows, and the big bow-drill hampered her climbing. Drawing
her breath in gasps, she reached the sill of the cave, crawled in
and sate mutely panting, her eyes shining glassily in her head. She
seemed unharmed; she was unharmed; it was wonderful--amazing! Now, what
had happened? Why could not the creature speak? "What of the chase,
Dêh-Yān?"
Still mute and with an open mouth drawn up from the teeth with the
muscular contraction of extreme toil, she unrolled and laid out before
him in the dusk--_One_--Two--THREE bloody scalps each with the top-knot
of a brave,--raw, fresh-stripped.
Pŭl-Yūn caught his breath in with a harsh cry:
"_Wah!--What?--How?--Where?_" but the woman squatting over her spoils
did not answer. She had reached her farthest. She swayed, she leaned,
she collapsed, she tumbled forward almost into his arms.
The man drew the bear-skin over her as she lay shuddering, whimpering.
He marvelled to hear her long-drawn sobbing in the darkness. This was
new indeed; never had he known her to weep. Presently she relaxed and
slept. He watched her slumber, gnawing a tortured lip, incredulous and
convinced, exulting and humiliated, adoring and furiously jealous by
fits. What would come out of this? 'Twas glorious! But 'twas absurdly
disconcerting! Wonderful, no doubt, past whooping, but not to be put up
with!
At midnight she awoke with a start, sighed once, rubbed her eyes, put
back her hair, pulled herself together and was a new creature. Ashamed
of her weakness, she silently got to her feet, made up the fire and
cooked food for both.
Pŭl-Yūn watched her, would give her time, when she had eaten forth it
came.
She had led her pursuers over a long and difficult line, hoping to
throw them out, but Gow-Loo, though less fleet than she, was not
to be shaken off; in fact he had pressed her hard and fired thrice
as the leading greyhound fires at his hare, whilst the others,
running to point, had headed-off her attempts at doubling. The men
were in training, knew the country, and thought to wear her down by
sprinting in succession. Again, and yet again, had her turn of speed
been the saving of her.
[Illustration: HE THREW SHORT WITH A GASP]
But she was getting a long way down the glen and the daylight held. It
would see her out unless she changed her tactics. In a little while she
would be out of her country and (for aught that she knew) in theirs,
then the game would be up.
So, tightening her throat, she had made up her mind, and doubled
right-handedly close across the line of Low-Mah, whom she believed she
had hurt, taking the risk of his assegai at short range. Her judgment
justified itself when the hunter threw short with a gasp and she
slipped past him and made her point, a salient rock-face that she knew,
steep, narrow, where she could neither be overlooked nor outflanked.
There, at more than a very tall spruce-tree's height from the last
stones of the scree below her, she had chosen her ledge and stood at
bay, regulating her breath and schooling her swimming head for the
final tussle.
"I think those rocks were not wholly new ground to thee," suggested the
listener.
"I had been up there before--three years back, when I was a girl. Our
old men call them '_The Two Fangs_,' but the tribe has re-named them;
they are '_The Hungry Boys_' since--since something happened there
which is not good to speak about," she shot a glance over her shoulder
to make sure that The Dead were not listening. "Three of our unproved
lads, two half-growns and a child, whilst berrying, were driven up
that cleft by a wolf. They were not found in time. The two boys must
have eaten the little one. Then--who knows?--perhaps they fought with
knives. They were found up there, dead,--with the bones."
"Ugh! not a clean place after dark. Surely your children went wide of
it in all lights. How then--?"
"The boys I played with dared me.... Not one of them would do it....
There was a gnawed finger-bone still in a crevice.... So, I knew my
footholds to-day."
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. Yes, he had
realised the _mise-en-scène_, and could follow the woman's weary voice
carrying on her story, and could accompany her point by point.
The pursuers had seen that she was at the top of a blind _couloir_
from which was no escape upward. Saw too that the overhang protected
her from anything sent down from above. Saw too that the rock was
absolutely sound, and that she had _nothing to throw_ (a point in their
favour).
Then, since daylight was waning, they determined to put the thing
through. Their camp, dogs ("good wolves"), karosses and sleeping-robes
were hours away. There was neither fuel nor water upon that scree
beneath the cliff. After all, strong runner as she was, this was only a
girl--unarmed, and probably spent.
Up came the leading couple, boldly and close together, and only when
fully committed to the business, recognised the trap.
The girl, who had by this time recovered her wind, held her fire until
the leading climber's top-knot showed twenty feet below her ledge.
She knew him for Gow-Loo, he turned his head, saw her leaning above
him, handling the absurd bent stick which she had carried throughout
the run, and, getting his breath, made her a mock offer of marriage,
the same bitter little jeer that he had cast after her thrice during
the chase. As he made it, he laid his head back upon his shoulder the
better to leer at his helpless victim, now safely under his hand,
and--even as he bared his dog-tooth, a little short light assegai was
sticking deeply beneath his ear. The stricken man plucked hard at the
shaft with one hand, but the bone head was barbed and he could not
draw it. He uttered no cry, possibly from shame, more probably from
inability to articulate, and his fellow-climber, Pongu, just below him
in the _cheminée_, getting no reply from him, and craning out to learn
why his leader had stopped, knew not what had happened before a second
shaft was driven hard and deep between collar-bone and shoulder-blade
into his own lung, which brought him, too, to a stand with his mouth
and nose full of blood.
Each man knew that he was hard hit, but knew not of the other's hurt;
each felt the immediate need of getting down, but neither could speak,
nor warn the man below him to vacate the footholds. To give ground to a
young squaw was despicable; both held on grimly, doggedly and too long.
Low-Mah, the lowest, came up the cleft haltingly, crippled by that stab
in the arm-pit that we know of, and which he had known for hours past
to his bitter cost. The point of the Master-Girl's knife, whilst making
a quite inconsiderable puncture, had touched one of the nerves of the
brachial plexus, his right arm felt heavy and numb and was giving him
exquisite agony, which he was bearing as mutely as a wolf. He knew by
trial that he could not throw, but thought he could climb. His honour
was engaged. To be known henceforth as the warrior who was lamed by a
squaw?--Not he!
He saw that the leaders had stopped, and without visible cause,
although Pongu, two spears'-lengths above him, was coughing fast
and hard. He could not see their wounds, nor the weapons which had
caused them, but the patter of falling blood from the severed artery
in Gow-Loo's throat warned him of something amiss. Then an assegai
clipped past his own ear very close. Phew! what was this? Whence had
this she-lynx weapons?--Was this an old haunt of hers? and had she led
them up this cleft to spear them with javelins stored for the occasion?
His position, almost exactly beneath his leaders, had its advantages;
their bodies screened him; he offered the smallest of marks--but (a
fear suddenly gripped him, bred by the silence and immobility of those
leaders) what if one of them should fall? He hailed them by name, but
elicited no reply. "I must get from under them while I may," thought
he, and attempted a traverse, a ticklish piece of work for a man so
hampered. If he could but escape from this _cheminée_, this death-trap,
and win around the buttress to the left, he would, as he reckoned, be
under cover. He made the move, and not a moment too soon. Why, oh why,
had not one or the other of his mates fought his way up within swing of
a tomahawk?--(there is no throwing to be done while scaling a vertical
fissure). Tomahawk, indeed? Gow-Loo, being by this time in exceeding
evil case, and growing blind and weak, dropped his hatchet, and a
moment later, with never a cry of warning, let go altogether; his knees
buckled, his body bent, and down he came upon Pongu and took him to the
bottom with him. There they lay, their life's business accomplished,
the matter disposed of so far as they were concerned.
Then Low-Mah, for almost the first time in his life, knew fear. Yet it
no more unnerved him than the proximity of the leading hound relaxes
the sinews of a failing fox. Desperately, yet cautiously, he wrought to
put that salient overhang of cliff between him and the Master-Girl;
it was but a matter of a spear's length; if he gained it he were
safe. 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! He gnashed his teeth hearing the
clear triumphant laugh of the Master-Girl above him, and then in a wink
that laugh had changed to a thrilling, brief scream, and something
light came bounding down the fissure, the bent stick the girl had held
in hand when she crossed him. He must glance up, knowing his wound,
but not yet understanding his luck, nor perceiving that his enemy was
already disarmed, and saw that enemy in a very close place, for she,
whilst laughing, had been overcome by one of those revulsions which
lie in wait for the overstrung. Her desperate exertions, her desperate
risk, followed by such unimaginable success, had shaken her; she had
leaned too far over watching the effect of her shaft, and had almost
followed it.
"And, O husband" (let the Master-Girl tell the adventure in her own
words), "then, for the second time, I so nearly gave up! The first time
was when Gow-Loo made his last sprint for me. My heart seemed bursting,
my legs shook as I raced. He got within throw ... I felt all up my
back what was coming. '_This is the end_,' I thought,--but his hatchet
struck my quiver. Then I took fresh heart, I remembered thee. '_My man
shall not starve like a sick badger in his earth. Little Moon, help my
man_,' I prayed! and new strength came to my legs, and Gow-Loo dropped
back blown. It was after that that I doubled and all came right. But
now, for the second time, I thought all was over. I had overbalanced,
I stumbled, I let fall my bow and my last arrow, and came down twice
my height, scrambling and clutching hard. When I stopped and my eyes
cleared I was in a bad place and could find no footholds for ever so
long. But, again I thought of thee, and again I cried to my Totem, and
lo! at once my right foot was on something, and I was safe."
"Safe?" echoed Pŭl-Yūn hoarsely, catching his breath, "with all thy
weapons at the foot of the cliff, and that half-crippled wolf between
thee and them?--was there no scraping past him?"
"It was not to be done. He was well-placed astride the outer angle of
the buttress with both feet firm; but the only holds for getting down
that _cheminée_ lay close under his hand, and he knew it. I worked
down to within my length of him, but it would not do. I had to return
to my ledge and wait."
"And he?"
"He made mouths at me and said all the worst that he knew. No, I will
not tell thee what he said. This is his scalp, is not that enough?"
"Nay, but I _will_ hear. What said he?"
"First he fixed his eyes upon mine and would have charmed me down, and
when that would not serve, he must show me point by point what must be
the end; this hold, and that hold, and then the one next to him; and
that, as I must needs come down feet foremost, he would set his hand
or his teeth in me, for he was too badly hurt to get down himself. And
it was all--_Come down to me, my Little Love, and thou and I will go
gently to the bottom together, and thou shalt sleep long (Oh long!) and
soundly (very soundly) in my arms!_"
"Eh, but he said _that_?" blurted the husband. "Which didst say was his
scalp?"
"What matter?--nay, thou must not spoil it! It was almost the last
thing he did say. Oh, but we were thirsty, he and I! I sucked the
rock!--and cold--we were cold; I could see him shaking. Is he cold now,
dost thou think? I hope he is very, very cold!"
"And then?" asked the husband, recovering himself, and prosaically
detached from the possible sensations of a dead enemy, but Dêh-Yān
paused.
Yes, what then?--for there seemed no way out of this stale-mate. The
man might cling on there until the woman above him perished of the
night's wind-frost, of exhaustion, or thirst, or made some despairing
attempt and met her death so.
But, what of the other, the brute denizens of the glen? The rapid
movement of a chase hath a stimulating influence upon whatever is
within sight or hearing. Have we not seen the apparition of a pack
of hounds in full cry set a whole countryside in motion?--horses at
grass, calves, colts, sows, pigs of all sizes, breaking bounds, yea,
the heavy-footed Wessex labourer, school-children, the curate upon his
rounds, and the village postman upon his, swept out of their several
orbits and drawn into the tail of the passing comet?
Yes, these four racing figures had been seen, and noted, and followed
as far as appetite prompted or means of progression allowed. A lean,
lone wolf with a festering fore-pad struck the trail and limped on
at a steady, questing, three-legged trot, in hopes that the end of
the matter might provide something toothsome. The rapid movements of
parties of men had been known to have such an effect even at that time
(as since).
But the chief watchers and followers had been the fowls of the air.
Every mountain peak had then, and many have still, a planetary
system of birds of prey. In clear weather these swing in circles at
unimaginable heights, scrutinising in turn every radiating glen, and
remarking all that moves therein.
Yes, man and beast, each fly-tormented mule, new-yeaned ibex kid and
German botanist climbing economically without a guide, is marked,
scrutinised, summed up and kept under day-long observation, and his
probabilities of life assessed upon certain grim actuarial tables known
only to the tribes who seek their meat from God. You had not thought
it? You scarce credit it. "Have never seen them." _But they have seen
you_, and in the Hautes Pyrénées, or the Atlas, your every step has
been marked from your rising up to your lying down.
Without counting the buzzards, which are chiefly concerned with mice,
there are at least three kinds of watchers of the world below.
First, and most in evidence, is the griffon, a lordly creature to
the eye, with vast, square-cut wings and a small woolly head sunk
into a snow-white ruff; a vulture he, with a vulture's appetite for
carrion--and for nothing else. His interest in a man begins when that
man is in the act of falling, and becomes urgent only in the case of
the fall proving fatal.
The eagle is smaller, but more powerful; he, too, is a carrion feeder,
but will carry off grouse, marmot and red-deer calf. In hard weather
Scottish eagles will pack and destroy a full-grown hind, whilst the
larger race of Tibet is credited with killing wolf in fair fight. But
the fear of man is on him--he learned it long ago, and there is no
record of this bird attacking even a small boy. Sooth to say, he is
both cowardly and stupid, though all-glorious to see.
Last and most formidable, because incalculable, is the great bearded
vulture, or lammergeier (the gypaëte of the Gavarnie izard-hunters),
a sly ruffian who makes up in brains what he lacks in weapons. This
sort is as fond of carrion as the others, and has ways of his own for
providing it.
The Master-Girl and her pursuers had not run three bow-shots before the
eye of a watcher was upon them. By the time they had gone a mile the
whole planetary system of the nearest peak was disturbed; and before
the girl had taken sanctuary a ring of big birds was circling half a
mile above her. This might mean business.
Her climbing was watched by the griffons without excitement; their turn
might come later, but had not come yet; it was the bearded vulture
which dropped out of the blue in bold spirals and marked the four
humans disappear into that _cheminée_. Then, if a bird of prey ever
swears he swore, for a man climbing between the strait walls of a cleft
is of no use to him.
When two bodies fell there was commotion, the griffons shut their wings
and plunged two thousand feet in a few seconds, but clapped on the
brakes and bore up again with the wind rattling in their great drab
quills, for the bodies had not rebounded upon the scree, but lay close
under the rock--_where something else might fall_. Patience, brothers!
Moreover, there were two living figures yet upon that rock, and these
the griffons held in fear. They climbed the sky again and waited on,
wheeling narrowly and near.
Not so the bearded vulture, playing a lone hand and pursuing the
traditional tactics of his race, he skimmed the summit of that
_aiguille_ and took stock of its capabilities. Two humans were still
within the cleft. The upper was well sheltered from above, and on both
sides. He turned short to keep her in his eye (a wicked crimson eye
it was). At that moment she faltered, slipped and was almost gone.
Instantly he dipped and edged in, but she recovered herself; out he
went again. Whilst turning he once more caught sight of the lower
figure; he had lost it for a while. It had shifted, had emerged
from the cleft, and was clinging to an exposed, projecting buttress,
overhung from above, safe from a downright stroke, but from a
side-flick, eh?
The human moved slowly, it went short upon one of its fore-legs; it
seemed, and was, very lame, very tired and unsure of its footing.
Meanwhile the two humans in question knew nothing of the scrutiny
of which they were the subjects, being otherwise and fully engaged.
Besides, griffons may guide a hunter to a kill, but signify naught
else. The presence of the real danger had clean escaped them, for
the bearded vulture is less given to soaring than to gliding along a
cliff-face close in, ready for the emergencies of anything that moves
thereon.
The light had begun to go; it was abominably cold, a flurry of small
snow found its way into the cleft, and ran in little round dry pellets
upon the naked back of the Master-Girl crouching for warmth like a
hare in her form, and hugging herself against the strong shudders
which ran through her. To have fought her battle and to have so nearly
won, and to lose life and all from such a childish blunder!--If she
had but the smallest of weapons, a skinning-knife, a bodkin, she would
take her chance; but the bodkin had gone when the kaross went, and her
knife had been wrenched from her hand when she struck. There was not
one little wee loose stone within reach; she had tried them all, even
to breaking her nails.
And that wretch Low-Mah, down there, not six bows'-lengths away, lamed
as he was, would be girding at her all the time, breaking off at
whiles to work desperately at that crippling arrow. It was certainly
loosening. One barb held; but such was the fellow's courage that he
would tear it out yet, and then?
Until it drew he could not get back into the cleft, for his pinned-up
hand was upon that side. When he rested from his bouts of self-torture
he indemnified himself by assailing her with insults and taunts,
governing his voice lest she should guess how far he was gone. She did
guess, and with chattering teeth gave him fully as good as she took.
It was very pitiful, inexpressibly vulgar, this nose-to-nose pitched
battle of primeval Billingsgate. Lo, did ye think that passionate hate
first found expression in our time?
He played upon her shaken nerves. Could she not see those child-eating
boys, sitting at her either elbow, their reddened teeth a-work, click!
click! To which sally Dêh-Yān, stroking her own hair and pointing down
to his, rejoined that his scalp should hang from her belt ere night
with the top-knots of the other two. "And, ah me! I have no knife,
Lo-Mah; shall I find it under thine arm?--or am I to borrow thine for
our little business?" With other like endearments. Pity them both.
In the middle of one of her ripostes the girl choked, for the last
barb had given, his arm was free. Nodding to her mutely, for he was
well-nigh sick with agony, the man brought his hand down; he stripped
the feathers, biting the gut whipping, and took the barbs in his teeth;
he had but to draw the nock through his forearm and would be not only
free but weaponed.
He drew inch by inch, it came, he had it in his hand. "Now, my Heart, I
begin. Wait for me, my dove, my love! I am coming for thee!"
He shook the new snow from his ears, shifted his hold, lifted a foot,
still grimly nodding his unspoken threat, and--next moment was reeling
out into empty air, whilst a huge bird which had dealt the buffet,
staggered past and plunged, then opening wide wings regained its
balance and swept short zigzags down--down in pursuit of its falling
booty.
[Illustration: STALE MATE]
But the Master-Girl beat her little fists upon the stone and wept. "I
would have killed him yet," she wailed in that bitterness of spirit
which overcomes the bravest when the ideal perfection of some all-but
achieved success has been marred at the ultimate moment.
It is always so in life. Napoleon instead of yielding his sword to
the conquering Briton, rattles off from his last battle-field in a
well-horsed _calèche_. Nor did every French ship strike her colours
at Trafalgar. Nor did the allies enter Sevastopol on the night of the
Alma, as they might have done so easily; nor did Kitchener catch the
gallant and adroit De Wet.
Her chaplet lacked the full foliage that is accorded to the victor in
fiction only.
Bear not too hardly upon her, ye, who are proudly and perfectly
straightforward in all speech and action, if I confess upon her behalf
that in after life the Master-Girl made not quite so much of the
bearded vulture's intervention as you might have done.
She had achieved an unheard-of and almost incredible feat, and knew
it--but (now came that deadly reaction!)--the Shape-Strength was ebbing
from her. Would her luck hold?
She had no fear of her feathered ally. Him, she, craning far over, had
watched take seizin of his kill, and then, as the light went suddenly,
spread vast wings and racquet-tail and sail forth across the darkening
scree and blacker forest-spires to some roosting cranny of his own.
Her knees gave way beneath her, her wrists jerked as she let herself
down from ledge to jut and from jut to cranny of that _cheminée_ of
death; her eyes were set in her head and her jaws cramped with a
tongue-drying ague of fear of falling. In a word she was as nearly
forespent as a girl of sixteen may be, and has a right to be, who has
run as she had run, fought as she had fought, and fasted as she had
fasted, and was still fasting.
At last (after what agonies of apprehension and endurance) the tension
upon her fingers might be relaxed, for one foot was upon the first
loose stone of the scree. Its fellow found something soft and chilly
beneath it. At the touch of a dead enemy the Master-Girl's eyes were
enlightened as if with food.
The rites of victory must be observed. She fell to, panting thickly
as she cut and tugged, not for the horror of her task but from sheer
exhaustion, and whilst arising to her feet to utter the three whoops
which the occasion demanded,[4] found her legs bending, and dropped
asleep upon the stones between her silent foes. So have men fallen
asleep upon the rack when the screws were eased.
But the Porter-Soul which seldom sleeps would allow her no long
respite. Much remained to do, and was she not still in peril? Before
long she suddenly threw the gathering snow off her and glanced around
keenly. The night-wind blowing up the crevice was tainted with--what?
Four green, shining eyes were watching her. She sniffed, "Fox!" and
contemptuously threw a stone and, ere its rattle had ceased, felt her
scalp crawl, for over the spruce spires travelled the drear, anti-human
menace of the wolf.
Her Totem was obscured and for once seemed far, but there was another
resource near at hand and familiar, if only--only--it were propitious!
those malignant Boy-Ghosts whose jibbering squeaks and rustlings had
added untold horrors to the last hour of her darkling vigil upon the
ledge. These, for some cause, had spared her, might she not entreat
their continued good-will? She had known and played with all three
before her promotion to the tribal governess-ship: there was nothing
between herself and the elder two; the eaten child did not count.
Doubtless they would be hungry--(Oh, how her own vitals pinched!)
Quick, then, an offering! Savagely, desperately she hacked the hands
from Low-Mah, and (it had been impossible before her sleep) bestowed
them upon a ledge some five bows'-lengths up that dark ascent.
"Pen-noo!--Lab-go-nee!--here is meat! See I bring you food!--I bring it
in peril of my life! Ye, who kept yourselves from the grey wolf, _keep
me this night_!"
She was down again and tore herself from the place. Partake she would
not, though nature cried out for food. A brave of her race would have
had no qualms, but--a squaw?--No!
Feebly, and with her spirit riding her reluctant flesh as a ruthless
rider urges a failing horse, did Dêh-Yān set her face upon that
ghost-guarded journey up the valley, nor did wolf, lynx or worse molest
her.
Her foes were the tormenting thoughts which, vulture-like, wheel
closely around a spirit encumbered by a weakened body.
Was it worth it? Her man had grown cold and silent and strange to her.
Twice the agony of wounded affection superadded to crushing bodily
fatigue brought her to a stand beneath dark boughs at some rougher
gradient. Then with shut eyes and chin driven hard against a labouring
bosom she fought it out. The nurse-spirit triumphed.--"If I lie down
and sleep here--I shall not awake again, and he--will die, or at best
be a lame man for his life." Then, lifting her face again, she would
draw a deep breath and set her jaw to endure the anguish of walking,
and so, by a series of shortening spurts, reeling and rocking, she
reached the foot of the face. But it was a dog-weary girl, without one
spark of the pride of victory alight within her, who crawled in over
the cave-sill.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Still given at the breaking-up of a fox, and more
ceremoniously, with winded horn as the _hallalai_ at the death of the
German stag.]