CHAPTER XXVII
WITH ALL MY WORLDLY GOODS I THEE ENDOW
Poor, indeed, in worldly goods must be those to whom the discardedrefuse of an abandoned Indian camp seems wealth. Yet such was the casewith us, two representatives of the higher civilization, thus removedfrom that civilization by no more than a few days' span. As soon as Iwas able to stand we removed our little encampment to the ground latelyoccupied by the Indian village.
We must have food, and I could not yet hunt. Here at the camp we foundsome bits of dried meat. We found a ragged and half-hairless robe,discarded by some squaw, and to us it seemed priceless, for now we had ahouse by day and a bed by night. A half-dozen broken lodge poles seemedriches to us. We hoarded some broken moccasins which had been thrownaway. Like jackals we prowled around the filth and refuse of this savageencampment---we, so lately used to all the comforts that civilizationcould give.
In the minds of us both came a thought new to both--a desire for food.Never before had we known how urgent is this desire. How few, indeed,ever really know what hunger is! If our great men, those who shape thedestinies of a people, could know what hunger means, how different wouldbe their acts! The trail of the lodge poles of these departing savagesshowed where they had gone farther in their own senseless pursuit offood, food. We also must eat. After that might begin all the deeds ofthe world. The surplus beyond the necessary provender of the hour iswhat constitutes the world's progress, its philosophy, its art, all itsstored material gains. We who sat there under the shade of our raggedhide, gaunt, browned by the sun, hatless, ill-clad, animals freed fromthe yoke of society, none the less were not free from the yet moreperpetual yoke of savagery.
For myself, weakened by sickness, such food as we had was of littleservice. I knew that I was starving, and feared that she was doinglittle better. I looked at her that morning, after we had propped up ourlittle canopy of hide to break the sun. Her face was clean drawn nowinto hard lines of muscle. Her limbs lay straight and clean before heras she sat, her hands lying in her lap as she looked out across theplains. Her eyes were still brown and clear, her figure still was thatof woman; she was still sweet to look upon, but her cheeks were growinghollow. I said to myself that she suffered, that she needed food. Uponus rested the fate of the earth, as it seemed to me. Unless presently Icould arise and kill meat for her, then must the world roll void throughthe ether, unpeopled ever more.
It was at that time useless for us to think of making our way to anysettlements or any human aid. The immediate burden of life was first tobe supported. And yet we were unable to go out in search of food. I knownot what thoughts came to her mind as we sat looking out on the pictureso; the mirage which the sun was painting on the desert landscape. But,finally, as we gazed, there seemed, among these weird images, onecolossal tragic shape which moved, advanced, changed definitely. Now Itstood in giant stature, and now dwindled, but always it came nearer. Atlast it darkened and denned and so disappeared beyond a blue ridge nothalf a mile away from us. We realized at last that it was a solitarybuffalo bull, no doubt coming down to water at a little coulee justbeyond us. I turned to look at her, and saw her eyes growing fierce. Shereached back for my rifle, and I arose.
"Come," I said, and so we started. We dared not use the horse instalking our game.
I could stand, I could walk a short way, but the weight of this greatrifle, sixteen pounds or more, which I had never felt before, now seemedto crush me down. I saw that I was starved, that the sap was gone frommy muscles. I could stagger but a few yards before I was obliged to stopand put down the rifle. She came and put her arm about me firmly, herface frowning and eager. But a tall man can ill be aided by a woman ofher stature.
"Can you go?" she said.
"No," said I, "I cannot; but I must and I shall." I put away her armfrom me, but in turn she caught up the rifle. Even for this I was stilltoo proud. "No," said I, "I have always carried my own weapons thusfar."
"Come, then," she said, "this way"; and so caught the muzzle of theheavy barrel and walked on, leaving me the stock to support for my shareof the weight. Thus we carried the great rifle between us, and sostumbled on, until at length the sun grew too warm for me, and Idropped, overcome with fatigue. Patiently she waited for me, and so wetwo, partners, mates, a man and a woman, primitive, the first, went onlittle by little.
I knew that the bull would in all likelihood stop near the rivulet, forhis progress seemed to indicate that he was very old or else wounded.Finally I could see his huge black hump standing less than a quarter ofa mile away from the ridge where I last paused. I motioned to her, andshe crept to my side, like some desert creature. We were hunting animalsnow, the two sexes of Man--nothing more.
"Go," said I, motioning toward the rifle. "I am too weak. I might miss.I can get no farther."
She caught up the rifle barrel at its balancing point, looked to thelock as a man might have done, and leaned forward, eager as any man forthe chase. There was no fear in her eye.
"Where shall I shoot it?" she whispered to me, as though it mightoverhear her.
"At the life, at the bare spot where his shoulder rubs, very low down,"I said to her. "And when you shoot, drop and He still. He will soon liedown."
Lithe, brown, sinuous, she crept rapidly away, and presently was hidwhere the grass grew taller in the flat beyond. The bull moved forward alittle also, and I lost sight of both for what seemed to me anunconscionable time. She told me later that she crept close to the waterhole and waited there for the bull to come, but that he stood back andstared ahead stupidly and would not move. She said she trembled when atlast he approached, so savage was his look. Even a man might be smittenwith terror at the fierce aspect of one of these animals.
But at last I heard the bitter crack of the rifle and, raising my head,I saw her spring up and then drop down again. Then, staggering a shortway up the opposite slope, I saw the slow bulk of the great black bull.He turned and looked back, his head low, his eyes straight ahead. Thenslowly he kneeled down, and so died, with his forefeet doubled underhim.
She came running back to me, full of savage joy at her Success, and puther arm under my shoulder and told me to come. Slowly, fast as I could,I went with her to our prey.
We butchered our buffalo as Auberry had showed me, from the backbonedown, as he sat dead on his forearms, splitting the skin along thespine, and laying it out for the meat to rest upon. Again I made a fireby shooting a tow wad into such tinder as we could arrange from my coatlining, having dried this almost into flame by a burning-glass I madeout of a watch crystal filled with water, not in the least a weak sortof lens. She ran for fuel, and for water, and now we cooked and ate, thefresh meat seeming excellent to me. Once more now we moved our camp, thegirl returning for the horse and our scanty belongings.
Always now we ate, haggling out the hump ribs, the tongue, the rich backfat; so almost immediately we began to gain In strength. All the nextday we worked as we could at drying the meat, and taking the things weneeded from the carcass. We got loose one horn, drying one side of thehead in the fire. I saved carefully all the sinews of the back, knowingwe might need them. Then between us we scraped At the two halves of thehide, drying it in the sun, fleshing it with our little Indian hoe, andpresently rubbing into it brains from the head of the carcass, as thehide grew drier in the sun. We were not yet skilled in tanning as theIndian women are, but we saw that now we would have a house and a bedapiece, and food, food. We broiled the ribs at our fire, boiled thebroken leg bones in our little kettle. We made fillets of hide to shadeour eyes, she thus binding back the long braids of her hair. We restedand were comforted. Each hour, it seemed to me, she rounded and becamemore beautiful, supple, young, strong--there, in the beginning of theworld. We were rich in these, our belongings, which we shared.
The Way of a Man Page 27