LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
The younger girls picked fast in fear of the Master-Girl's hard little hand, eating surreptitiously when her eye was off them. They made small progress, for what with the badgers and the birds and the lateness of the season the whortleberries were getting thin upon that rock. The Master-Girl ran a critical eye over the steep face below them. It was blue with fruit, but dangerous, for the strata dipped and the stuff was soft. She peeped into her pupils' skin wallets and uttered words of counsel, took the biggest satchel and went over the edge. It was finger-and-toe work and loose in places; she could hear smothered giggling above her as she climbed, and knew that the youngsters were indulging, but held upon her way. The fruit she had reached was blue-black, dead-ripe, and for some reason untouched by the birds for days past. She had never tried this face before; she began to pick.
Then, all suddenly, her hands stopped, her eyes fixed, and every muscle grew tense, for from just below her feet had sounded a little faint sneeze!
Dêh-Yān was sixteen, full woman as her people counted, the biggest, strongest and bravest of the unmarried lasses of the Little Moons. She could throw a chert-headed assegai forty strides and make it spin as it flew. She could handle a stone hatchet dexterously, skin, cut up, and roast. She could rub fire out of two sticks more quickly than any member of the tribe, could use her bone needle and split sinew to admiration. In fact she was more than well-grounded in the domestic arts then practised by woman, and hence the chief, and the head-wife of that chief, were in no hurry that this household treasure should marry out of the clan, and had set her in permanent charge over the younger children. Dêh-Yān was the First Governess.
When a modern woman is startled she shrieks, a perfectly useless expenditure of energy, and worse, for the sound and its reaction upon the system of the shrieker prevent her from hearing more; also she not uncommonly shuts both eyes to shriek the better. Dêh-Yān neither shrieked nor shut her eyes, although thoroughly startled and indeed frightened. Now Dêh-Yān was not easily frightened; there were in fact but three or four things which she really feared, a wolf in open country, a bear or lion in any country, and a wife-hunter from beyond the ranges. This sneeze was the sneeze of a man, of a strange man in a neighbourhood and in times in which a stranger was an enemy confessed. So, the girl held her breath tightly and remained perfectly rigid for a few seconds, strung for such activities of flight as might be possible under the circumstances.
Nothing happened. Her presence was plainly unsuspected. And now the woman-nature in her proved itself. That small muffled sneeze excited in her bosom a vehement curiosity. Her duty, her safety, the safeties of the brats committed to her guardianship, depended upon a silent and prompt retreat, but, she must needs first see this man who had sneezed.
With infinite precaution she lowered herself to a ledge a few feet beneath her, crawled, leaned and peeped; farther and yet farther she craned for a view, and—there he was!—She found herself overlooking the brow of a cave, a fissure in the limestone, and there, at the cave's mouth, sate her enemy!
One steady, all-embracing glance assured the girl that this interloper was not of her clan, nor of its allies. The stone-axe beside him was plumed with crimson feathers, the wings of a Wall Creeper. Its owner must needs be a Sun-Disc man, an enemy from the other side of the mountains, and one who was presumably hunting herself.
What should she do?—Another girl would have crept stealthily away up the cliff; another girl would already have been in full flight, and would have run shrieking to camp. Then the braves would have turned out and found—nothing!—and that girl would have been beaten for crying Wolf!
Dêh-Yān did not relish being beaten. She knew all about it; if she had to run any risks these should not include that risk. She knew herself as strong as some men and as clever as most. In her heart of hearts she was somewhat jealous of men. She would have liked enormously to have been a man and a chief. Moreover she had been for some time in silent rebellion against her lot. She was well aware that by right and usage she should have been sold in marriage any time within the past two years. An old maid was an unknown creature among her people. Savages do not appreciate the utility of old maids, any more than does our working-class to-day. Nothing but the covetousness of the old chief stood between this girl and a husband of one of the allied totems. She was too useful to part with at any price which her suitors could pay. Dêh-Yān knew all this, there is not much that a savage woman aged sixteen does not know which concerns herself. There is nothing which answers to false modesty in your savage. Hence Dêh-Yān was as discontented as a young person is likely to be whose future is blocked.