"The boys I played with dared me.... Not one of them would do it.... There was a gnawed finger-bone still in a crevice.... So, I knew my footholds to-day."
Pŭl-Yūn laid his hand upon his mouth and perused this wife of his in the flicker of the brands. There was nothing in this by-incident to excite surprise, a piteous tragedy: the coarse woof of savage life is occasionally shot by such a crimson warp. His mental vision was busy with this woman's adventure, picturing the tall, splintered aiguille, springing sheer from its scree, cleft by its one narrow cheminée leading to its one broad platform-ledge so far aloft there. Yes, he had realised the mise-en-scène, and could follow the woman's weary voice carrying on her story, and could accompany her point by point.
The pursuers had seen that she was at the top of a blind couloir from which was no escape upward. Saw too that the overhang protected her from anything sent down from above. Saw too that the rock was absolutely sound, and that she had nothing to throw (a point in their favour).
Then, since daylight was waning, they determined to put the thing through. Their camp, dogs ("good wolves"), karosses and sleeping-robes were hours away. There was neither fuel nor water upon that scree beneath the cliff. After all, strong runner as she was, this was only a girl—unarmed, and probably spent.
Up came the leading couple, boldly and close together, and only when fully committed to the business, recognised the trap.
The girl, who had by this time recovered her wind, held her fire until the leading climber's top-knot showed twenty feet below her ledge. She knew him for Gow-Loo, he turned his head, saw her leaning above him, handling the absurd bent stick which she had carried throughout the run, and, getting his breath, made her a mock offer of marriage, the same bitter little jeer that he had cast after her thrice during the chase. As he made it, he laid his head back upon his shoulder the better to leer at his helpless victim, now safely under his hand, and—even as he bared his dog-tooth, a little short light assegai was sticking deeply beneath his ear. The stricken man plucked hard at the shaft with one hand, but the bone head was barbed and he could not draw it. He uttered no cry, possibly from shame, more probably from inability to articulate, and his fellow-climber, Pongu, just below him in the cheminée, getting no reply from him, and craning out to learn why his leader had stopped, knew not what had happened before a second shaft was driven hard and deep between collar-bone and shoulder-blade into his own lung, which brought him, too, to a stand with his mouth and nose full of blood.
Each man knew that he was hard hit, but knew not of the other's hurt; each felt the immediate need of getting down, but neither could speak, nor warn the man below him to vacate the footholds. To give ground to a young squaw was despicable; both held on grimly, doggedly and too long.
Low-Mah, the lowest, came up the cleft haltingly, crippled by that stab in the arm-pit that we know of, and which he had known for hours past to his bitter cost. The point of the Master-Girl's knife, whilst making a quite inconsiderable puncture, had touched one of the nerves of the brachial plexus, his right arm felt heavy and numb and was giving him exquisite agony, which he was bearing as mutely as a wolf. He knew by trial that he could not throw, but thought he could climb. His honour was engaged. To be known henceforth as the warrior who was lamed by a squaw?—Not he!
He saw that the leaders had stopped, and without visible cause, although Pongu, two spears'-lengths above him, was coughing fast and hard. He could not see their wounds, nor the weapons which had caused them, but the patter of falling blood from the severed artery in Gow-Loo's throat warned him of something amiss. Then an assegai clipped past his own ear very close. Phew! what was this? Whence had this she-lynx weapons?—Was this an old haunt of hers? and had she led them up this cleft to spear them with javelins stored for the occasion? His position, almost exactly beneath his leaders, had its advantages; their bodies screened him; he offered the smallest of marks—but (a fear suddenly gripped him, bred by the silence and immobility of those leaders) what if one of them should fall? He hailed them by name, but elicited no reply. "I must get from under them while I may," thought he, and attempted a traverse, a ticklish piece of work for a man so hampered. If he could but escape from this cheminée, this death-trap, and win around the buttress to the left, he would, as he reckoned, be under cover. He made the move, and not a moment too soon. Why, oh why, had not one or the other of his mates fought his way up within swing of a tomahawk?—(there is no throwing to be done while scaling a vertical fissure). Tomahawk, indeed? Gow-Loo, being by this time in exceeding evil case, and growing blind and weak, dropped his hatchet, and a moment later, with never a cry of warning, let go altogether; his knees buckled, his body bent, and down he came upon Pongu and took him to the bottom with him. There they lay, their life's business accomplished, the matter disposed of so far as they were concerned.
Then Low-Mah, for almost the first time in his life, knew fear. Yet it no more unnerved him than the proximity of the leading hound relaxes the sinews of a failing fox. Desperately, yet cautiously, he wrought to put that salient overhang of cliff between him and the Master-Girl; it was but a matter of a spear's length; if he gained it he were safe. He had paused in his climb, as who would not?—when the bodies of his friends rushed down past him; quickly he withdrew his eyes from them where they lay, to look too long upon such a sight does a climber no good, and in another step he had won shelter and comparative safety—when—how say it?—his left arm, the one upon which he chiefly depended, was pinned down to its shoulder by a small, but astonishingly hard-thrown assegai! Oh, the pang of it!—and the ignominy of being twice maimed and held-up by a squaw! He gnashed his teeth hearing the clear triumphant laugh of the Master-Girl above him, and then in a wink that laugh had changed to a thrilling, brief scream, and something light came bounding down the fissure, the bent stick the girl had held in hand when she crossed him. He must glance up, knowing his wound, but not yet understanding his luck, nor perceiving that his enemy was already disarmed, and saw that enemy in a very close place, for she, whilst laughing, had been overcome by one of those revulsions which lie in wait for the overstrung. Her desperate exertions, her desperate risk, followed by such unimaginable success, had shaken her; she had leaned too far over watching the effect of her shaft, and had almost followed it.