The next day he was better. Dêh-Yān found herself able to leave her new treasure. It was hard, but business is business, and the girl was as practical as she was enthusiastic.
"It has stopped. I go to hunt—for us."
"The fall is too young," he objected. "Nothing will be afoot yet—no spoor."
"You shall see," said the girl. "At least I can be getting more wood."
At the edge of the covert below the face Dêh-Yān, moving slowly and with eyes all around her, saw a something tiny and black moving upon the whiteness, the jetty tail-tip of an ermine in his winter pelage. Pursing her lips she gave the shrill, small squeal of a leveret in difficulties, and was presently looking into the face of the eager little robber who had raced to her lure. Her throwing-stick broke his back. Dêh-Yān was not fond of stoat, no one is, but meat is meat; she cut out the gland and pouched him. Observing that his muzzle was bloody, she worked his line to heel, and coming upon the hole he had just left, dug down to a family party of hedgehogs laid up for their winter sleep in beech leaves, each as fat as butter, and only one of them sucked. Here, with economy, was meat for three days at a pinch. She returned to the cave silently pleased with herself to meet the silent approval of her man.
For the rest of the day she accumulated firewood. Her man should be warm.
At night Pŭl-Yūn, as he bade her call him, groaned in sleep. By daylight his wife would examine his hurt. The limb was sufficiently wasted to show the overlapping of the bones. It was a simple fracture of the fibula, and the muscle was enfeebled enough to tempt her to put into practice the woman's lore learnt of the old chiefs head-wife.
"Hold to the rock—hard—I shall pull." He braced himself, she drew with slow power and felt the limb give, then, venting pent breath, relaxed and heard the broken ends of the bone cluck neighbourly as they came to a renewed understanding.
"Now, lie upon your sound side, and the leg will keep its shape."