The man with the broken leg had made a poor night of it. He had finished the jerked deer-meat and was ravenously hungry, sickeningly, dreadfully hungry, and quite desperately cold. He had been telling himself all night between the brief naps permitted him by the various pains, cramps and gnawings which assailed him, that this girl could not return, yet, all through, something within him kept the spark of hope alight. A dark, thick, long-delayed morning, with eddying flakes as big as beech-leaves, put that spark out. Such weather he knew would break up the summer camp at once. The girl, who, under other circumstances, might conceivably have paid him a single surreptitious visit, would be tied to her burden and to the line of march; every hour would lengthen the distance between them. No, it was all up ... he must die ... and this dying was very slow work ... and abominably painful.... 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.
So the broken-legged man sate and shuddered involuntarily, for he was true to stock, and made no more moan about his condition and prospects than does a trapped wolf. He had gone over his chances and appraised and laid the last of them down—worthless! But, there was one which he had given not a thought to—the ardent strength of a woman's first passion.
"Man, I am come."
His dim eyes opened very slowly. 'Twas no dream, she was there, dark bronze-red with exertion and exhaling warmth. She was burdened too; he marvelled dully how she had got such a bundle down that rock-face. A bison-robe was drawn under him, another laid over him: he was fed again, and again he revived, but more slowly, for this time he was far gone with cold and exhaustion. He had not spoken. She was gone. He wondered. Then the mouth of the cave was darkened once more, and she was back with something, a small sheaf of assegais, two axes, and a dozen flake-knives. A second absence and a second return revealed her in another character, for there lay her fire-sticks, and scrapers, yes, and more skins, a housekeeping!
The man's eyes were clear by this time. "What will the Little Moons say to this?" he asked, his brown cheek bulging with food.
The girl frowned and plucked at the hair of her kilt. "I am dead. A bear got me at our first camp. Oh, I did it well! We were out for wood; the snow was falling thickly; I laid a trail of my things up a side glen, mittens, wallet, and an old kaross, then I cried Bear! and sprinted back to camp, picked up these things (none of mine—no scent for the pack—am I a child?) and doubled on our trail across the open where tracks were many. If a hound opens on my line they will whip him off for running heel!—But there was no padding me after the first minute—the snow saw to that!" She grinned. "Neither spoor nor scent!—And while they are casting forward on a false line, I am here,—with you!" Her eyes shone, her voice, hard and hunter-like at first, fell softly and almost shyly at the end.
Here again, as at their first interview, the man's intelligence followed the girl's speech laggingly. Her people and his had been separated for many generations by mutual distrust and mountains. Intertribal trade did not exist, nor peaceful communication, but internecine wife-stealing had kept alive a common glossary. When she had passed to another subject he recalled something strange in her story: "the pack," she had said, she had referred to "a hound" ("good wolf" was her word—Pŭl-Yūn knew bad wolves only). He did not interrupt his meal and her recital at the time with questions, but learnt later that the Master-Girl's people, more backward than his in most respects, had recently domesticated wolf-whelps.