“And the deer to be butchered?”
She looked at the carcass and then put her fingers over her eyes. But she looked up at him resolutely.
“Yes,” she persisted, “I’ll do that, too—if you’ll show me how.”
He looked at her a moment with a soft light in his deep-set eyes and then rose heavily to his feet.
“It’s very kind of you to want to make me an invalid,” he said, “but that can’t be. There’s nothing wrong with me. What I want is work. The more I have the better I’ll feel. I’m going to skin the deer.” And disregarding her protests, he leaned over and caught up the hind-legs of the creature, dragging it into the bushes.
The effort cost him a violent throbbing in the head and pains like little needle pricks through his body. His eyes swam and the hand that held his knife was trembling; but after a while he finished his work, and cutting a strong young twig, thrust it through the tendons of the hind legs and carried the meat back to camp, hanging it high on a projecting branch near the fire.
She watched him moving slowly about, but covered her eyes at the sight of his red hands and the erubescent carcass.
“Don’t you feel like a murderer?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I do; half of me does—but the hunter, the primitive man in me is rejoicing. There’s an instinct in all of us that belongs to a lower order of creation.”