Pŭl-Yūn, without vaunts, took the fact of his victory for granted, and, noting his backer's reserve, came to the front.
"I have just one small thing to ask," said he, raising his hand, "a very little thing. It is that my cousin will now throw spears with my wife."
The listening tribe stared with open-mouthed amazement. The challenged man fairly bristled. To a brave such a proposal was an indelible insult. Yet Pŭl-Yūn's manner was not insulting; nothing could be less provocative than the gentle, unsmiling simplicity of his mien.
"A brave plays only with braves," said the old chief, interpreting the challenged man's rigid silence.
Then, at a nod from her husband, Dêh-Yān came from the curtained doorway of the wigwam. She was wearing the full spring-months' working dress of a woman of the tribe, to wit, her own supple beauty hidden only from the waist to the knee by an apron of skins.
There was nothing to remark in this, but, what drew a murmur of amazement from the circle, a murmur which presently turned to scoffs and incredulous laughter, was the bear-skin which she bore upon her arm, and the collar of teeth and claws which encircled the ruddy symmetry of her throat. Sedately she spread the skin and took her stand upon it. She knew, none better, that this hour would be the making or the breaking of her man and herself, but she bore herself superbly. If her heart fluttered within her breast her mouth was hard and her eye steady. Silently she fingered the necklace and looked a question to her husband who raised his hand.
"Do you ask why my wife stands upon that bear-skin whilst I stand upon bare earth? Do you ask why she, and not I, wears that necklace? Those are fair questions which I will answer presently. But, first I too have a question to ask of you—
"If two go to the woods to hunt and a bear is killed by one of the two, who shall wear the spoils—he who did the killing or he who looked on?
"That is our case, my wife's and mine. Whilst I lay with a broken leg-bone, that bear came like a lynx upon a wood-hen in a gin and thought to have made a meal of me. My wife was there, she might have run for it, but she took spear in hand and killed that bear,"—he stooped and lifted one of the enormous paws of the hide. "At one thrust she killed that bear. He was very near to me, nearer than my cousin is now; he was upreared for the stroke; he was not a young bear, nor a brown bear, but a Grizzly of the rocks; an Old Man Grizzly; so my chief says who knows more of bear than any of us; for myself I have never had much to do with bear of any sort, two, perchance, Brown Bears both—they fought well—did not they, Honk-Ah? But this was my first Grizzly (he came near to being my last). We were in a cave, the three of us. I was sitting, with my leg stiff and weak, so—" he was now upon the ground at Dêh-Yān's feet, acting the scene. "The Grizzly came thus—" he bounded from the earth, crawled, reared, pawed the air, impersonating the monster. "She—she here, my wife,—who was not attacked, who might have saved herself,—what did she?—What did she?—I ask!" his voice rose to a shout. "What would my cousin have done?" it fell to a soft, penetrating tone, he spread his hands and bent towards Honk-Ah as though genuinely seeking an answer to his question, a question put with an air of suave simplicity which it was impossible to effectively resent. "My cousin would have done what my wife did, yes, he would have killed that Grizzly, I see it in his eye!—Thou wouldst have done just that, Honk-Ah!"