Pŭl-Yūn was the first to pull himself together. As a conservative he felt that the hour might not pass without the ritual proper to the occasion, the hallalai sanctioned by custom and use. So, he sang the Bear Song, an ancient chanty which had come down from the youth of his tribe; full of absurd boasting, insults to the slain, and gastronomic anticipations; but, even whilst trolling it out upon the frosty air and watching his hot breath smoke in the red dawn, he felt less than himself, and knew well who, by right, should have been celebrating the victory. (Only, who ever heard of a squaw singing the Bear Song?) He had not borne himself ill, as he knew; but, had not another interposed, this ogre had been cracking his marrow-bones by this time.
Meanwhile, Dêh-Yān, being intensely practical, was hardly giving her husband's music the applause and critical attention which he may have thought due to it. Hungry and cold as she was she must set to work ere the great unwieldy carcass should have stiffened, and, labouring as she had never laboured in her life, heaved, thrust, wrenched and tugged until the hide came away. During this mœnadic spasm of toil I am bound to confess that my heroine worked stark naked despite the cold, and neither ate nor drank save for the morsels of raw bear-meat with which she filled a distended cheek at intervals. For Dêh-Yān, though a savage, was no fool. She knew, none better, that the smell of so much spilt blood would bring upon the scene eagle and lammergeier, buzzard and raven, and what she feared more, wolverene, lynx, wolf, and she knew not what beside, possibly Man! Whilst it lay there it was a menace to herself and to her husband; but, promptly and properly dealt with, it was warmth and food and safety for the remainder of the winter.
The hide when off proved an unhandy burden, made still more massive by its accumulations of frozen blood and snow. Two whole deer-skins went in thongs before a cord was knotted by which she, Pŭl-Yūn assisting, drew the load up the cliff to the cave. Nor was the girl even then content with her day's work, but ere the short winter's day closed, had lit fires on three sides of the carcass and begun to strip the bones.
SALVING THE GHOST-BEAR'S SKIN
The salving of that bear's-meat was a four-days' poem. By the fifth evening the youngsters were victualled for the rest of the winter, and Dêh-Yān had not one thumb-nail's breadth of cutting-edge upon the last of her chert-flakes. She was also dead beat.
The whole of the sixth day and the following night the girl slept the deep, dreamless sleep of a healthy organism wearied out, watched by Pŭl-Yūn, who had seen to it that she had gorged herself to repletion before lying down, and who had himself rubbed her swollen joints vigorously with fat, and who watched over her whilst she slept beneath the vast hairy spoil of her twice-dead lover.
"Saw-Kimo," jeered the young brave during the long chilly night-watches, "this is the third time thou hast bid for my woman. She was not for thee, nor thy Little Moons. She is mine! mine!—I tell thee!—Was there ever such a woman?—never!—I have seen two bears die in my time on the other side of the ranges, but they were Brown Bears, and young bears at that, yet they died within a ring of as many braves as they (or thou) had claws upon their feet. It took the whole strength of a war-party to bring either of them to bay and keep them there. We brought two braves who did not go home with us. One we buried to each bear. And, look thou at thy business, O Saw-Kimo (if that be thy name) and whimper for shame, thou who died at one stroke, and that from the hand of a squaw—of a girl! a stroke in the eye of thee; in the brain of thee. Such a stroke! And thou a Cave Grizzly! Was there ever such a woman?"
So Pŭl-Yūn; for the glory of the feat had got upon his imagination. The more he sang of it, the less he understood it. You must remember that his knowledge of how the thing had been done was all by hearsay. The bolt had been discharged from behind him, and owing to the darkness of the cave, he had not watched it home; Dêh-Yān's description of the wound, and of the chert assegai-head still enfixed in the eye-socket, was unsatisfying. He must see for himself, some day, soon—yes, at once—the great stripped skull which lay a hundred feet beneath him. And whilst he pondered a certain familiar sound reached his ears from the foot of the cliff; it was the cracking of a bone. Some furry scavenger of the forest had been drawn to the carcass and would not be long without competitors. The man must risk something. He cast loose his bandages and splints, crawled to the sill and hurled stone after stone upon the marauder. Nor did his leg suffer. The bone had knit.