CHAPTER XI
TELLING HOW TRADE WITH THE SKRAELLINGS CAME TO A MYSTERIOUS END
The antlers were finally hung over the high-seat, while the hide made a blanket for the bunk below, and the effect was so imposing that every Champion went fur-mad as soon as he saw them. For a month afterward, it took all the chief's authority to keep the fuel pile supplied and cooks at their post. Every lad not told off—and told sternly off—for public service or private drudgery, spent his days in ranging the country in search of spoil, and his nights in dreaming of hunts wherein each dead tree should turn out to be the den of a hibernating bear which he would slay with valorous ease and bring home to deck the high-seat, even as Leif the Lucky had done before him.
The way in which they did finally come into possession of a bearskin, however, was really more dream-like than their dream.
Nothing could have been more peaceful than the beginning of the happening, in the women's room of Karlsefne's booth. Loafing after the noonday meal, Erlend the Amiable had stretched his plump length over the cushions of a bench. At one end of the fire, the long-kirtled forms of Gudrid and her women moved to and fro before their looms. At the other, where the firelight lay brightest, the Sword-Bearer was playing wolf with the baby,—a game evoking so much rumbling growling and squealing laughter that presently it took precedence of the conversation.
"You are spoiling him, Kinsman Alrek," Gudrid said, looking around the edge of her loom with a smile which belied her reproach.
The prettiest of the bondmaids gave her braids a pettish flirt. "That is so," she confirmed. "Yesterday, when it happened that I was at the door trying to talk to Hauk Votsson, I was obliged to turn around and growl between every two words or the child would have deafened us. I do not know what Hauk thought of me."
"If you wish, I will ask him," Erlend offered,—a piece of flippancy which cost him his comfort, as to save his ears he was obliged to take to instant flight around the looms.