"I buried them deeply—many stones did I roll down over them," said the girl gravely, thinking her own thoughts.
"But, their dogs (Good Wolves) will find them, never doubt," remarked Pŭl-Yūn. "It was bad luck thy not killing their dogs the same night. Nay, I do not blame thee. Thou hadst run far and fast, and fought bravely, wonderfully; it makes my heart laugh to think of one woman fighting three braves and bringing away their scalps. Yes, I own thou wast tired out. All the same it was against us, and is against us still, that those three dogs were left to gnaw through their leashes and get away down to the tribe masterless. They will be brought up again and laid on and followed, and if they do not own to the trails of their dead masters, they will own to ours, which is as bad for us. No, we cannot fight the whole of thy tribe, we must be moving, and at once."
This was final. Dêh-Yān, who had put in three whole days at arrow-making, arose with the last and finest specimen of her art in her hands. It was fledged with the white and black quills of ptarmigan, and pointed with a keen splinter of bone. Holding the venomous looking thing between her hands by point and nock, she straightened a weary back and lifted it towards the Young Moon. "O Totem of my people, and of me, and of my New Thing, grant that this one at the least of all my arrows may serve me at my need!"
They began their packing, a serious affair; their outfit must be cut down to the least, last ounce. It must consist of just food, raw meat, their weapons, the bear-skin to sleep in, and the trophies; no more.
Double-moccasinned they set forth, clothed with deer-skin leggings to the body, dividing the loads between them, an event significant and of the first importance in human history.
"We must march light," said Pŭl-Yūn, and paused. Dêh-Yān frowned, set her mouth, and tossed from the cave-sill the hoard of rock-crystals, amethyst and cairngorm, as dear to a girl of the Magdalanian age as her diamonds to a bride of our own.
"This I will not leave," continued the man, nodding approval of the accomplished sacrifice of vanities. The thing reserved was the shoulder-blade of the dead bear upon which he, no mean draughtsman, had etched the story of the fight; yet, watching the resolution of his wife to disencumber herself, he presently cast down his achievement, and turned his back to it where it lay.—Yet, as we know, it was not lost: did not the drip from the roof glaze it over and preserve it? Did not the wet floor upon which it lay enclasp and seal it down? Did not a sheet of incrustation fall from the roof and cover it, and finally, in the fulness of time, did not the Professor come fumbling along and find it? And is it not to-day the especial glory and pride of a certain case in a certain University Museum?
Pŭl-Yūn was minded to work up as high as his leg would carry him, and then, after a heavy meal, to make a night of it, coiled up with his wife in that thick, warm, capacious bear-skin in a hole in a drift. "Walk whilst the light lasts and you can see your marks," was his rede. "Who knows what the weather upon the pass may be to-morrow?" It might well be that a "firn" from the south would be blowing on the col, and then they must just lie snug and sleep it out, yes, to the last strip of their meat, if needs were, for to face it would be—death!
Up they trudged, and up, and still up, bowed double beneath their burdens, occasionally stopping to straighten weary backs, always choosing the outcrops of bare rock where such trended upward, but for an hour on end sinking mid-thigh-deep at every toilsome step in soft, new snow. The last of the trees was far below them, even the trailing pine and juniper had given out. They were working up into their first cloud; below the ragged coldness of its moving edge Dêh-Yān turned and took her last look upon the country of her childhood and her folk. There was no regret in her heart; nor any love for any human creature whom she was leaving. Her father she had never known, he had perished young. (Most savages die young—hard is the life and heavy the mortality; the hunter-tribes barely keep up their stocks despite early marriage). Her mother, whom she could just remember, was also dead. Her child-life had been made bitter to her by blows and grinding service rendered to gruff masters and shrewish mistresses. The small girl-child had struggled up; other children died, she survived, being one of the indestructibles, sharpened, hardened, toughened exceedingly by her environment. Such an upbringing, whatsoever else it may do, does not cultivate the affections. How jealous she had been of the boys! How she had despised the girls, her inferiors in speed and daring! When promoted to the post of Governess, how she had bullied her small charges!