The man touched the skins wistfully, he hardly understood as yet.
"But a bear would not eat bison-robe and hatchets. When you go back to camp—" he began, feeling his way towards the incredible.
"I am not going back to camp," said Dêh-Yān, in a whisper. "This is my camp."
The broken-legged man sucked in both lips and stared, but his eyes kindled and smiled. "It seems that I am to get my wife after all," he said softly.
The Master-Girl brought to the point—the point for which she had been scheming and working for the past day and night, was already modern woman enough to cover her mouth with her hand and shiver. After all then, she would belong to this man, not he to her; her captive had caught her, and thus soon!—Well, it was to be, she had no retreat open to her, and—and—he was gloriously beautiful, and—and—so gentle! She nodded assent, her hand still over her mouth. The young people's eyes met. It meant marriage.
"It is well," said the man. "We will—live!"—his eyes shone—"for a little while, perhaps. But, who knows? The Gods of your hills may be kind to us. They have been kind to us so far, and have covered my hiding-place and your tracks with the ptarmigan's feathers. Let us praise them! I do not know their names. As for the God of my tribe, She is hidden. She must wait. I will greet Her when next She shows me Her face. Meanwhile, be our time together long or short, I will sing my wedding-song."
He sate as erect as he was able, staying himself upon his palms and, filling his chest, began to chant trumpet-lipped the hymn of his people, the one reserved for such occasions. Its exact terms are, perhaps fortunately, irrecoverable. It was even then of an immemorial antiquity (nothing changes more slowly than the wedding custom of a primitive people), this was an archaic survival, sanctioned by use and wont and age; there were words and idioms in it which were wholly foreign to the girl—imbedded fragments of the long-dead River-drift men's gabble, frog-like guttural cluckings of tongue and the tonsil mingled with newer and nobler speech, vocables truly human and musical. The girl listened and panted and glowed, tingling to the tips of her toes. This was life!—Life!—If, by any hap, she were tracked, caught and dragged back to her tribe to suffer the frightful penalty reserved for a girl who so far forgot herself as to "steal her man"—as their speech had it (a phrase still used by our peasantry)—well, she would grin it out to the very last. She had lived!
How shall we picture the youngsters? Were they handsome? According to modern canons—no. High in the cheek, narrow and low in the brow, and something heavy in the jaw, one fancies; strongly outlined sketches of the race to come after. Comely enough though, in one another's eyes—oh (a detail this, but worth preserving), stalwart exceedingly—he a good seven feet in height by our measure, and the Master-Girl six feet three.
Suddenly in mid-chant the singer's eyes rolled inward, his lip was drawn up from the teeth and he was sinking back. She caught and cherished him to warmth and comfort. He was splendidly plucky, but weak.
So passed the first day of these young people's housekeeping. The girl got some kindling in before the light went, and made fire, and watched the night out beside her sleeping patient. The First Nurse. Before dawn she recognised and prostrated herself to the crescent moon, her totem, to whom she gave credit for her successful elopement, and to whose mercy she committed her husband and herself.