The timber was near; with such a start and on so short a course escape seemed possible. Save those of the head-wife, bent in agony upon the resolutely-composed face of her dying lord, the eyes of all were upon the runners, who had reached a hundred strides from the lists and were nearing the edge of the scrub. The avenger of blood carried nought but an axe, he ran desperately, but haltingly, for his leg failed him, suddenly he stopped, threw, and missed! Honk-Ah drew away, and then,—all was momentary, whence came it?—What was happening?—it was done! A cry "Moon, help me!" had shrilled,—a tense string had hummed behind the backs of the gazing crowd, a light fledged assegai had sped its curve over their heads, had dipped and was sticking between the working shoulder-blades of the murderer. A throw prodigious and incredible!—The stricken man ran staggering for a few paces, then his head went forward and he pitched upon his face, struggled to his knees and strove to rise. But Pŭl-Yūn was after him with the long leaping strides of the master-wolf when he hurls himself at the flank of the sinking buck. He was upon him, a knife rose and fell, all was over. Why did he not take his scalp?—For what was he waiting? To whom beckoning? Round wheeled the tribe to see more of the thrower of that amazing cast, and met Dêh-Yān, last night the foreign woman, and now the just-admitted brave, her black eyes burning, her white teeth a-glitter in the glory of victory. Bow in hand she broke through the throng, her light limbs twinkled as she raced to her husband's side. Her bow she cast down, her knife was out, an avenging fury she knelt upon her fallen foe and tore away his scalp as the falcon strips the breast-bone of a partridge.
Her shriek of triumph ended in a peal of elvish laughter. Shall we blame her? No, nor praise. Why should we? Here stands a primitive human document. This was no product of nursery, High School and drawing-room, nor was she an unsexed termagant of the slum, neither super-civilised nor residual. No, nor an abnormality, but something above a typical woman of the Old Stone Age, a fine specimen, if you will, of woman as we know her in the shaping, half-way up from the ridge-browed, spidery-armed, dog-toothed Forerunner, who, some hundred thousand years or so earlier, had dropped from her tree at the cry of her fallen piccaninny, and, greatly daring, had beaten off a hyena with a club. There, indeed stood the First Parent whom we need recognise, for, past gainsaying the crucial moment was that which found us upon firm ground instead of clinging to a branch, which saw us upon two feet instead of four, and with a tool in hand.
The difference betwixt that far-away, hirsute, anthropoid heroine who discovered the club, and her distant descendant who invented the bow, was great, but was chiefly physical. The lengthening of the lower limbs and the shortening of the upper, changes in the forms of the extremities, a progressive opening of the facial angle, and modifications in eye, ear, and spinal column had obliterated the ape and brought to the birth a stalwart savage, ingenious, artistic, and in many ways distinctively human, without sensibly raising the moral standard. Yet another hundred thousand years, more or less, would have to elapse ere a Voice should cry "Love your enemies!"
The Master-Girl had already once in her life gone as far in that direction as could be expected of her. There were no tribal or religious sanctions for sparing the life of a ruffian who had shed the blood of the father of his people in a treacherous attempt upon the wife of his cousin.
Leaving the corpse to the care of whom it might concern, and her weapons to her husband, Dêh-Yān strode back to the lists swinging the dripping scalp around her head, singing her chant of triumph, transfigured, her six feet of supple bronze seeming to o'ertop the tallest brave of her tribe. They drew away from her cowering, deprecating her incantation and the magical potencies of her glance and hand; a priestess confessed.
Meanwhile the widowed head-wife rent the air with her wailing; to her the victor addressed herself, a woman to a woman. The mourner had seen nothing, knew nothing, nor understood what had befallen, until in answer to her passionate appeals for vengeance upon the slayer of her lord, the newcome foreign woman laid in her hands the wet scalp of the murderer.
The braves returning from stepping-out the full distance of that still only just credible cast, found the head-wife of their dead chief grovelling at the feet of the New Leader.
"Dêh-Yān," said her husband tremulously, himself half afraid of this prodigy to whom he found himself mated, "will it please thee to draw thy shaft?—they—we—do not seem to care to lay hand to it. It is still fast in his heart. Its head was small enough to pass between his back-ribs. Thou wilt remember the arrow—the last of thy making."
"The white ptarmigan's feather? Yes, I prayed to my Totem for its luck when I made it; and again as I loosed. What are they saying?"
"They are hailing thee chieftainess—Yes, and I, too, hail thee!" He came near, very near, to prostrating himself, but something in her eye, some movement of her lip deprecated, forbade.