WITH ALL MY WORLDLY GOODS I THEE ENDOW
Poor, indeed, in worldly goods must be those to whom the discarded
refuse of an abandoned Indian camp seems wealth. Yet such was the case
with us, two representatives of the higher civilization, thus removed
from that civilization by no more than a few days' span. As soon as I
was able to stand we removed our little encampment to the ground lately
occupied by the Indian village.
We must have food, and I could not yet hunt. Here at the camp we found
some bits of dried meat. We found a ragged and half-hairless robe,
discarded by some squaw, and to us it seemed priceless, for now we had a
house by day and a bed by night. A half-dozen broken lodge poles seemed
riches to us. We hoarded some broken moccasins which had been thrown
away. Like jackals we prowled around the filth and refuse of this savage
encampment---we, so lately used to all the comforts that civilization
could give.
In the minds of us both came a thought new to both--a desire for food.
Never before had we known how urgent is this desire. How few, indeed,
ever really know what hunger is! If our great men, those who shape the
destinies of a people, could know what hunger means, how different would
be their acts! The trail of the lodge poles of these departing savages
showed where they had gone farther in their own senseless pursuit of
food, food. We also must eat. After that might begin all the deeds of
the world. The surplus beyond the necessary provender of the hour is
what constitutes the world's progress, its philosophy, its art, all its
stored material gains. We who sat there under the shade of our ragged
hide, gaunt, browned by the sun, hatless, ill-clad, animals freed from
the yoke of society, none the less were not free from the yet more
perpetual yoke of savagery.
For myself, weakened by sickness, such food as we had was of little
service. I knew that I was starving, and feared that she was doing
little better. I looked at her that morning, after we had propped up our
little canopy of hide to break the sun. Her face was clean drawn now
into hard lines of muscle. Her limbs lay straight and clean before her
as she sat, her hands lying in her lap as she looked out across the
plains. Her eyes were still brown and clear, her figure still was that
of woman; she was still sweet to look upon, but her cheeks were growing
hollow. I said to myself that she suffered, that she needed food. Upon
us rested the fate of the earth, as it seemed to me. Unless presently I
could arise and kill meat for her, then must the world roll void through
the ether, unpeopled ever more.
It was at that time useless for us to think of making our way to any
settlements or any human aid. The immediate burden of life was first to
be supported. And yet we were unable to go out in search of food. I know
not what thoughts came to her mind as we sat looking out on the pictures
o; the mirage which the sun was painting on the desert landscape. But,
finally, as we gazed, there seemed, among these weird images, one
colossal tragic shape which moved, advanced, changed definitely. Now It
stood in giant stature, and now dwindled, but always it came nearer. At
last it darkened and denned and so disappeared beyond a blue ridge not
half a mile away from us. We realized at last that it was a solitary
buffalo bull, no doubt coming down to water at a little coulee just
beyond us. I turned to look at her, and saw her eyes growing fierce. She
reached back for my rifle, and I arose.
"Come," I said, and so we started. We dared not use the horse in
stalking our game.
I could stand, I could walk a short way, but the weight of this great
rifle, sixteen pounds or more, which I had never felt before, now seemed
to crush me down. I saw that I was starved, that the sap was gone from
my muscles. I could stagger but a few yards before I was obliged to stop
and put down the rifle. She came and put her arm about me firmly, her
face frowning and eager. But a tall man can ill be aided by a woman of
her stature.
"Can you go?" she said.
"No," said I, "I cannot; but I must and I shall." I put away her arm
from me, but in turn she caught up the rifle. Even for this I was still
too proud. "No," said I, "I have always carried my own weapons thus
far."
"Come, then," she said, "this way"; and so caught the muzzle of the
heavy barrel and walked on, leaving me the stock to support for my share
of the weight. Thus we carried the great rifle between us, and so
stumbled on, until at length the sun grew too warm for me, and I
dropped, overcome with fatigue. Patiently she waited for me, and so we
two, partners, mates, a man and a woman, primitive, the first, went on
little by little.
I knew that the bull would in all likelihood stop near the rivulet, for
his progress seemed to indicate that he was very old or else wounded.
Finally I could see his huge black hump standing less than a quarter of
a mile away from the ridge where I last paused. I motioned to her, and
she crept to my side, like some desert creature. We were hunting animals
now, the two sexes of Man--nothing more.
"Go," said I, motioning toward the rifle. "I am too weak. I might miss.
I can get no farther."
She caught up the rifle barrel at its balancing point, looked to the
lock as a man might have done, and leaned forward, eager as any man for
the chase. There was no fear in her eye.
"Where shall I shoot it?" she whispered to me, as though it might
overhear her.
"At the life, at the bare spot where his shoulder rubs, very low down,"
I said to her. "And when you shoot, drop and He still. He will soon lie
down."
Lithe, brown, sinuous, she crept rapidly away, and presently was hid
where the grass grew taller in the flat beyond. The bull moved forward a
little also, and I lost sight of both for what seemed to me an
unconscionable time. She told me later that she crept close to the water
hole and waited there for the bull to come, but that he stood back and
stared ahead stupidly and would not move. She said she trembled when at
last he approached, so savage was his look. Even a man might be smitten
with terror at the fierce aspect of one of these animals.
But at last I heard the bitter crack of the rifle and, raising my head,
I saw her spring up and then drop down again. Then, staggering a short
way up the opposite slope, I saw the slow bulk of the great black bull.
He turned and looked back, his head low, his eyes straight ahead. Then
slowly he kneeled down, and so died, with his forefeet doubled under
him.
She came running back to me, full of savage joy at her Success, and put
her arm under my shoulder and told me to come. Slowly, fast as I could,
I went with her to our prey.
We butchered our buffalo as Auberry had showed me, from the backbone
down, as he sat dead on his forearms, splitting the skin along the
spine, and laying it out for the meat to rest upon. Again I made a fire
by shooting a tow wad into such tinder as we could arrange from my coat
lining, having dried this almost into flame by a burning-glass I made
out of a watch crystal filled with water, not in the least a weak sort
of lens. She ran for fuel, and for water, and now we cooked and ate, the
fresh meat seeming excellent to me. Once more now we moved our camp, the
girl returning for the horse and our scanty belongings.
Always now we ate, haggling out the hump ribs, the tongue, the rich back
fat; so almost immediately we began to gain In strength. All the next
day we worked as we could at drying the meat, and taking the things we
needed from the carcass. We got loose one horn, drying one side of the
head in the fire. I saved carefully all the sinews of the back, knowing
we might need them. Then between us we scraped At the two halves of the
hide, drying it in the sun, fleshing it with our little Indian hoe, and
presently rubbing into it brains from the head of the carcass, as the
hide grew drier in the sun. We were not yet skilled in tanning as the
Indian women are, but we saw that now we would have a house and a bed
apiece, and food, food. We broiled the ribs at our fire, boiled the
broken leg bones in our little kettle. We made fillets of hide to shade
our eyes, she thus binding back the long braids of her hair. We rested
and were comforted. Each hour, it seemed to me, she rounded and became
more beautiful, supple, young, strong--there, in the beginning of the
world. We were rich in these, our belongings, which we shared.