"Huh!" cried one. "Here come woman-Charley. Driven out by the man of the teepee!"
A great laugh greeted this sally. The soul of the little man writhed inside him.
"Did she lay a stick to your back, Charley?"
"She give him no breakfast till he bring wood."
"Hey, Charley, get a petticoat to cover your legs. My woman maybe give you her old one."
He sat down among them, grinning as a man might grin on the rack. He filled his pipe with a nonchalant air belied by his shaking hand, and sought to brave it out. They had no mercy on him. They out vied each other in outrageous chaffing.
Suddenly he turned on them shrilly. "Coyotes! Grave-robbers! May you be cursed with a woman-devil like I am. Then we'll see!"
This was what they desired. They stopped work and rolled on the ground in their laughter. They were stimulated to the highest flights of wit.
Charley walked away up the river-bank and hid himself in the bush. There he sat brooding and brooding on his wrongs until all the world turned red before his eyes. For years that fiend of a girl had made him a laughing-stock. She was none of his blood. He would stand it no longer.
The upshot of all his brooding was that he cut himself a staff of willow two fingers thick, and carrying it as inconspicuously as possible, crept back to the village.