The Master Girl: A Romance by Henry Marriage Wallis

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Prolog to the Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. To my cave Mother, quarried from
world old gloom, yellow, brittle and dry. Here in our

(00:25):
science room, locked under glass, they lie bone to its bone,
brought nigh bar to general view. Bones that of yr
were you, and bone of your bonam i nature her
course has changed. The sea worm's lair is dry, your
moon aloof estranged stairs from an alien sky leveled, are

(00:51):
low and high mountains of rumbled down. Here is a
gas lit town. But bone of your bonam I, of
the wild, who reigned by fear of fang and eye, antle,
tusked and maned under the ooze, they lie mute is
their hunting cry, their forests fallen and gone. Yet the

(01:14):
soul that was you lives on, and bone of your
bone am I bend from your cavern crypt Mother, A
kindling eye breathe through my manuscript, strength of a day
long by color, vitality, passion, and laughter, give till the
story's dry bones live. For bone of your bone, am

(01:39):
i ah prologue. He had come gently and observantly up
the glen, tapping here and scratching there as he climbed,
and ever and anon, straightening an elderly back to deliver
a small cough. Also, at intervals he would turn his

(02:00):
face to the way by which he had come, to
rest the planter muscles and study the lie of the land.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Chance led.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
He came and unadventurously, as one might say, and with
no more premonition of an impending change, or of this
being a white day in his life, than had you yourself,
dear reader, when you left your breakfast table this morning.
He was a little person in the clerical, wide awake
and dark tweeds of a dawning vacation, elderly and gray,

(02:32):
with heavy lower middle class features, refined by expression as
a sunset refines a dull street. Something about the rounded
shoulders and narrow chest bespoke the bookish man, the scholar's slope,
they used to call it. His hands were large and
broad at the fingertips. Such must have done manual labor

(02:54):
in their time, pick and shovel work, possibly at the
moment of his walking into the story. They were I
will not say dirty, but redolent of the soil. But
as he went, he would still be fumbling in a
roomy wallet which pulled down his shoulder, and be taking
therefrom for close and loving inspection this or that shapeless

(03:16):
fragment of stone, which he would presently return to the
society of its fellows. It never came here by accident.
There is no such thing, he murmured, conversing with himself.
Thought discussing matters with thought, as do the thoughts of
those of us who live the single life, or cherish

(03:38):
interests which are unshared by those with whom we cohabit.
We have no example from this level. He went on,
turning in hand as something small and angular which he
had picked up a few yards down the slope, a
fragment of great shirt. It was three conchoidal fractures are

(03:58):
sufficient when associated with such patination. Here are six eight
minor flaws in these cutting edges, apart from the cross
fracture patinated. Two yes, undoubtedly are used up flake. And
the thing hasn't traveled half a mile from home. Where's
the floor. And to think, he went on, that such

(04:21):
evidence would be lost, wasted upon that young doctor fellow.
It is almost incredible the crass ignorance of our so
called scientific men tried to interest him. No use out
here to climb, he says, and with lovely things like
these under his feet. Amazing. In fact, the professor exhibited

(04:45):
the impatience which the man of one idea feels for
the man of another, and had even the personal repulsion
which a man with the Oxford manner experiences for one
who begins all his sentences with yes, from which disjointed
self communings. The reader will have already deduced that the
professor was an ethnologist, one of that small band of

(05:08):
heroes who, during the past hundred years have quietly dug
out and fitted together the buried past of the human race,
pelted all the while by ignorance and bigotry. As they delved.
The little great Professor had come in for his share
of pelting, not very recently, for his science had won

(05:28):
her right to exist and speak her mind. Dogma which
would have burned the ethnologist some time back, and more
recently did her best to starve him, has of late
lifted the boycott. He is now merely glanstat with a
pitying shrug and passed over. When anything good is going
as eminent in his own line, but peculiar and forthwith

(05:52):
the good thing goes to a safe man, someone who
never did anything, nor ever will. This is Dogma's way
of coming round. The sons of the men who pelted
us will build our sepulchers, never fear whilst themselves making
a cockshy of some other poor devil, whom their sons
will canonize in turn. For the bigots and the poor,

(06:14):
he have always with you. So it had come to
pass that the professor, by dint of giving to fossil grubbing,
the forty five years of life which he might have
given to money grubbing and spending upon the collection and
verification of tiny fragments of unpopular evidence, the time which
he might have spent more profitably in the delivery of

(06:37):
sermons in Saint Mary's, which would have delighted the stupid
by the safety of what they didn't see the bottom of,
and amused the clever by the preacher's address. In skating
upon Catais, had come to know as much as was
known about the Magdalenian period. Others worked at River Drift,

(06:58):
Thames gravels, and the terraces north of Amion, and other
Some questioned the plateau deposits for eoliths, and got but
uncertain answers as to which our professor reserved his judgment, unconvinced,
but not wishing to be found sitting in the seat
of the scornful at the Last day. Neoliths he pretended

(07:19):
to know nothing about, whilst knowing everything that had been written.
It was the men of the Madeline Cave, the giant
hunters of Menton, and their artist fellows to whom he
had given his life. Now, some studies can be pursued
by the fireside. The mathematics of a boomerang, for instance,

(07:40):
or why a breakfast egg, if you set it spinning
vigorously upon its side, will presently arise and spin upon
its end. For the collation of Syriac Gospels. The neighborhood
of the bodili And is as good a neighborhood as any.
But our professor, whose fireside was within a stone's throw
of the Bodily, cared for neither mathematics nor codices, And

(08:04):
as regards his own particular study, had long since known
that to prosecute it as it should be prosecuted, entailed
days and weeks in clammy dark caverns long miles from anywhere,
and subsequent months put in with a series of little
sieves and acids and gelatine and what not, cleaning out

(08:24):
and piecing together the uncleanly little bits of brittle rubbish,
which eventually would constitute a new fact and take a
place in the growing chain of evidence. To anybody capable
of weighing testimony, muttered the professor, this flake, which can
only have been brought eighty miles upstream by human agency,

(08:48):
is as good evidence of early man at this end
of the valley as if I had projected myself back
a thousand centuries and seen the fellow break his tool
and drop it. He was somewhat out of breath with
his climb. Moreover, the going was none of the best.
There was no path, and the slope was clothed with

(09:09):
a tall growth of flowering weeds, mountain coltsfoot, and the
great purple Gentian dogwood, juniper and aconite. He replaced his
hat after wiping his forehead and turning parted the brush
to find himself faced by a low bluff, an outcrop
of the underlying bed rock jutting through the rough slope

(09:30):
of debris into which the at one time precipitous sides
of the glen had broken down. The bluff bore a
ludicrous resemblance to the countenance of some ancient person asleep
and half buried in bedclothes. There aloft was a massive
nose and receding rocky forehead. Nearer an upper lip overhung

(09:53):
a transverse fissure, an open mouth nearly filled with a
tongue of soapy looking brown stalagmites, resting upon a lower
jaw of the same material, hidden by a growth of
martagon lilies. The professor, unaware of what fate had in
store for him, and to tell the truth, expecting nothing

(10:13):
out of the way for a man of his years
and experiences his past, being sanguine, peered through the lush greenery,
and saw beneath the edge of that lower lip a
jumble of small broken stone, loosely cemented like ill compacted
concrete into which water has percolated. Which was precisely what
the material was, and what had befallen it. And peering

(10:38):
thus as something caught the professor's eye. Now the thing,
whatever it might turn out, to be could not fly away,
nor was its finder a callow novice, that he should
hawk out his trove at sight and maybe destroy evidence
in so doing so. He made himself a mental rough

(10:58):
sketch of its surroundings before disturbing them. A lot of weathering.
Just here, he muttered, glen half filled up, since the
watershed was cut back and the stream diverted. This was
a cliff once upon a time, And this was a
cave rufe fallen in and cemented down to an ancient

(11:19):
stalagmite floor breccha beneath, with apparently a layer of charcoal
in it. If you please this to the lilies. They
did please, or at least made way for him. He
was down upon his elderly knees in the moist dirt,
breaking away the perished flooring of the old cave with

(11:39):
his hammer, interested, of course, for the case was exactly
in his line, but still without enthusiasm. When see how
our best things approach us unsought, the man made his
great find. The chance of his lifetime came to him
such a trove as he had ceased to expect for

(12:01):
despite many long vacations and snatched easters, spent impatient and
systematic grubbing. The man had not been one of the
successful cave explorers.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
This was his day.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
A plate of stalagmite came away, and the disintegrated breacher
beneath it gave to his cautious and practiced handling, and
lo he drew forth the whole and perfect shoulder blade
of a cave bear, the mighty Ursus spilius, himself glazed

(12:35):
all over back and front with a transparent film of
carbonate of lime. The relic bore abundant marks of the
chert knife, a shard of which was cemented down to it.
But what raised its interest and value to the nth power,
and made its discoverer's heart to flutter in his bosom

(12:56):
was the clear, boldly drawn lines of the picture with
which the flat surface of the bone was etched. Here
was a find, indeed, a leaf from the sketch book
of a primitive, as good as anything found by Latette
and Christie. Delightful a find at last, exclaimed the professor,

(13:17):
a contemporary picture of Spelius. Positively our first, I think
a bear attacking two humans opposite sexes. Hey, what that
seems unlikely? And what is this bent object in the
hand of the indeterminate figure. Weapon, But what screwing up
his eyes? Bent throwing stick Egyptian type boomerang? Very curious,

(13:45):
same object repeated in a corner of picture behind bear,
conceivably boomerang in flight. As to this a epiccene figure,
I doubt it's being female somehow, And yet he turned
the bone. Hey, what have we here? This, I might say,

(14:06):
almost justifies a feminine interpretation. There apparently was a woman
in the case, for adhering to the back of the
scapula was a bone needle rough work. This for a female,
remarked the professor, wagging his head whilst polishing his glasses
and attempting to realize the scene. This fellow was as big.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
As a horse.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
A grizzly would be considerably smaller and with inferior jaw power.
The Magdalenian type was tall. I grant you she might
have studed six feet and an inch. But he wagged
his head again in disapproval of a woman participating in
so rough a field sport. As this sketch indicated, the

(14:50):
professor was an old bachelor with mid Victorian conceptions of
the functions of womanhood. There is no getting over the
ch hole. It was a cooking place. A half the
design here implies leisure and permanent residence, and a needle
a lady. This was a home, a housekeeping. He wrapped

(15:13):
the relic in a silk handkerchief. It was more precious
in his eyes than the arm of Saint Mark in
those of a Venetian, and at least as authentic. This done,
he turned to take stock of the place, conversing gently
with himself. The while kay, if more roomy at one
time hardly to call a cave now, possibly was never

(15:36):
better than unabri just the rock shelter that I once
spent an uncomfortable night under among the Spanish Pyrenees. He
glanced up at the overhang, fringed with fern calls for
systematic exploration. Costly business at this height, short season, and
no quarters with any reasonable distance entails a camp. I

(16:00):
fear wonder if the university would come down with a grant.
Who were these people? He stroked the handkerchief. We get
no nearer. One hundred thousand years is a wide gap.
Very it makes the pre dynastic Egyptian seem neborly. We dig,
we fit together. But they had two remote personally, I

(16:24):
despair of getting to closer quarters with them in my time,
he mused, with half shut speculative eyes. The Mayers and
Gurney business gives unsatisfactory results at its best, and what
communications they claim to have received seemed chiefly from the
recently deceased classic idea of a genius. Loci might have

(16:47):
had something behind it, but they approached the surmise with
propitiatory sacrifices. We try the planchette and get piffle other plants.
Seems sounder, But how to set up about it? Language
question a difficulty. Something might be attempted with an esperanto
of esquimaux and bushman roots. Eh, he smiled, and the

(17:10):
offering coarsish tastes I conceive in common with some three
hundred millions of his fellow Europeans, the professor had never
seen a sacrifice offered. The conception, once universal, has completely
passed out of our ken, that a trousered, cravatd white
man should take anything which he really valued, a whar samota,

(17:34):
a family heirloom, a prize, pedigree, ram, a cask of claret,
what you will, and deliberately destroy it in public. For
some definite religious object or to purchase some visible result,
recompense or immunity, is unthinkable. The professor's mind fell back
from this impermeable wall of alien thought and custom. He

(17:59):
sighed and shifted himself as if about to rise, still muttering.
I'd give a good deal, said he, without the faintest
idea that he was really and veritably offering something to someone.
But sincere as far as he went for one hour's
genuine comfab say once communication, call it what you like

(18:22):
with this couple here, what wouldn't I give ah, say,
a clear month out of my life? He said no
more for that time. In fact, he stopped short in
the middle of his sentence and fell forward, doubled up
into a soft mass of the green stuff which he
had treated with so little ceremony. Nor did he fall alone.

(18:47):
A sheet of stalactite, part of the ancient roof of
the cave, had detached itself from the impending lip and
fallen upon and with him. Was it possible that the
genius Low had taken him at his word? End of Prolog,

(19:11):
Chapter one of The Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers.
This libryvox recording is in the public domain, love at
first sight. The younger girls picked fast in fear of
the master girl's hard little hand, eating surreptitiously when her
eye was off them. They made small progress, for what

(19:35):
with the badgers and the birds and the lateness of
the season, the wadleberries were getting thin. Upon that rock,
the master girl ran a critical eye over the steep
face below them. It was blue with fruit, but dangerous,
for the strata dipped and the stuff was soft. She
peeped into her pupil's skin wallets and uttered words of counsel,

(19:57):
took the biggest satchel and went over the edge. It
was finger and toe work and loose in places. She
could hear smothered giggling above her as she climbed, and
knew that the youngsters were indulging, but held upon her way.
The fruit she had reached was blue black, dead, ripe,
and for some reason untouched by the birds for days past.

(20:21):
She had never tried this face before she began to pick.
Then all suddenly her hands stopped, her eyes fixed, and
every muscle grew tense, for from just below her feet
had sounded a little faint sneeze.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Day Jan was.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Sixteen, full woman, as her people counted the biggest, strongest,
and bravest of the unmarried glasses of the little moons.
She could throw a churt headed assaguy forty strides and
make its spin as it flew. She could handle a
stone hatchet dexterously, skin cut up and roast. She could

(21:01):
rub fire out of two sticks more quickly than any
other member of the tribe, could use her bone needle
and split sinew to admiration. In fact, she was more
than well grounded in the domestic arts then practiced by woman,
and hence the chief and the head wife of that
chief were in no hurry that this household treasure should

(21:23):
marry out of the clan, and had set her in
permanent charge over the younger children. De Yan was the
first governess. When a modern woman is startled, she shrieks,
a perfectly useless expenditure of energy, and worse for, the
sound and its reaction upon the system of the shrieker

(21:44):
prevents her from hearing. More. Also, she not uncommonly shuts
both eyes to shriek. The better day Yan neither shrieked
nor shut her eyes, although thoroughly startled and indeed frightened,
now dey Yan was not easily frightened. There were, in fact,
but three or four things which she really feared. A

(22:06):
wolf in open country, a bear or lion in any country,
and a wife hunter from beyond the rangers. This sneeze
was the sneeze of a man, of a strange man
in a neighborhood, and in times in which a stranger
was an enemy confessed. So the girl held her breath
tightly and remained perfectly rigid for a few seconds, strung

(22:28):
for such activities of flight as might be possible under
the circumstances. Nothing happened. Her presence was plainly unsuspected. And
now the woman nature in her proved itself. That small
muffled sneeze excited in her bosom a vehement curiosity. Her duty,

(22:49):
her safety, the safety of the brats committed to her
guardianship depended upon a silent and prompt retreat. But she
must needs first see this man who had sneezed. With
infinite precaution, she lowered herself to a ledge a few
feet beneath her, crawled, leaned and peeped father, And yet

(23:11):
farther she craned for a view, and there he was
she found herself overlooking the brow of a cave, a
fissure in the limestone, and there at the cave's mouth
sat her enemy. One steady, all embracing glance assured the
girl that this interloper was not of her clan nor

(23:32):
of its allies. The stone axe beside him was plumed
with crimson feathers the wings of a wall creeper. Its
owner must needs be a sundisk man, an enemy from
the other side of the mountains, and one who was
presumably hunting herself. What should she do? Another girl would

(23:52):
have crept stealthily away up the cliff. Another girl would
already have been in full flight and would have run
shrieking to camp. Then the braves would have turned out
and found nothing, and that girl would have been beaten
for crying.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Wolf.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
De Yan did not relish being beaten. She knew all
about it. If she had to run any risks, these
should not include that risk. She knew herself as strong
as some men, and as clever as most. In her
heart of hearts, she was somewhat jealous of men. She
would have liked enormously to have been a man and

(24:30):
a chief. Moreover, she had been for some time in
silent rebellion against her lot. She was well aware that
by right and usage, she should have been sold in
marriage anytime within the past two years. An old maid
was an unknown creature among her people. Savages do not

(24:51):
appreciate the utility of old maids any more than does
our working class today. Nothing but the covetousness of the
old chief stood between this girl and a husband of
one of the allied totems. She was too useful to
part with at any price which her suitors could pay.
Day Yan knew all this. There is not much that

(25:13):
a savage woman aged sixteen does not know which concerns herself.
There is nothing which answers to false modesty in your savage.
Hence day Yan was as discontented as a young person
is likely to be whose future is blocked. The girl
panted for a larger life than she was enjoying. She

(25:33):
wanted to score, but being only a woman, she was
never allowed an innings. She knew by fair trial that
she had the legs of any young brave in her tribe,
that she was a far better climber than most, and
could handle a man's weapons as well as any lad
of her age. Yet when there was anything to be

(25:53):
done with an axe or assa guy, it was their call,
while she must be stitching a cross or gathering sticks.
The unfairness of it. And there had been no war
in their country for some years, nor any chance for
her to prove her capacity and courage an emergency. Here
was her chance, here, just beneath her feet. Twas now

(26:17):
or never she would kill this woman hunter and take
his scalp back to camp. It would be a glorious feat.
The women would be jealous, no doubt, and so might
the younger men. But someone would make a song about it,
and her name would be remembered. That would be something
that would comfort her when, after a few brief years

(26:39):
of overwork and child bearing, she was no longer supper
and swift, and had shriveled into a blear eyed, haggard
old square of thirty five, bullied and bidden about by
her own sons. And it was really quite easy, as
the villain sat there exactly below her. He was so
utterly in her hand, one smashing downcast and her hatchet

(27:04):
would be in his brain, and well it would spoil
the scalp. Was there no other way? She would peep again.
He had not changed his position.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
For signs.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
She could see that he had not changed it for days.
His left foot fell inwards unpleasantly. It was broken above
the ankle. The man was starving to death water he
did not want for a trickle oozed near him. Then
Deyan understood why the watleberries upon that cliff face had

(27:38):
ripened untouched. Then the alternative occurred to her. The custom
of the country considered its sound practice that an enemy
taken alive should be tortured before being eaten. The girl
knew this as a matter of course, just as a
modern duchess knows that a garrotta is whipped and a
murderer hanged by the neck, nor is broken of her sleep.

(28:01):
By the knowledge, de Yan had listened with horrified interest
to the talk of old women who professed to have
watched the process out or nearly out. Immemorial customs sanctioned
a woman's presence at the salutary spectacle. The girl was
no more responsible for the usages and customs of her

(28:21):
people than a Saint Louis bell is responsible for lynching.
So there remained the alternative, A dreadfully thrilling catch you
by the throat alternative of giving this wife hunter over
to the tribe. She played with the idea for a moment,
women think quickly. Then she acted as women act upon impulse.

(28:46):
She would have a good look at the wretch first,
would have her fill of gibing at him, teasing him,
terrifying him, if that were possible. At least she would
tell this outlander who had come for her, proposing, as
she knew, to knock her over the head in the
dusk at the dipping hole down by the river and
drag her off half stunned, to be his trophy and

(29:06):
slave for the term of her natural life. She would
tell this raider, I say, in good set terms, precisely
what was in store for him, and see how he
took it. She peered and dropped a pebble. He looked up, and,
albeit neither knew it, her business and his too, was done. Incidentally,

(29:29):
the fates of countless millions of humans were spun by
that brief passage of eyes. The horoscopes of empires were
cast then and there, there and then was delimitated the
eastern frontier of Old Rome, the Parthian March, which the
legion was never to cross, the issue of Senlac was decided.

(29:51):
Ajincour and Khresi were lost and won. The seated man
below leaned slowly back and turned his face up. It
was the handsomest face the girl had ever seen. He
wasn't at all what she had fancied, not by any
means of brute but quite young and and nice. You there,

(30:16):
said the man, quite naturally dean studying his face, did
not answer. Come down and talk to me. I shall
not eat you, he smiled wearily. The girl pouted. This
was putting the moccasin upon the wrong foot, and then
the bush she was holding by parted without warning. She snatched,

(30:37):
but failed in getting hold. Snatched again at sliding rock
and stone, saw firmaments of constellations, and went asleep. A
few minutes later, not more she awoke with a wet face.
Some one was dabbing her sore head with water. Who
where she opened her eyes, The hunter, his own head

(31:02):
bleeding from a fallen stone, was holding a sponge of
wet moss to hers. She struggled up dizzily and sat
within his reach, for the sill of the cave was narrow,
and the face beneath it fell steeply. There was no
escape for her. If he was still strong enough to strike.
She thought for a moment that he had struck, for

(31:24):
she was running red. She was sitting in a red puddle.
But it was wortleberry juice. Her wallet had partially broken
her fall. I sha'n't eat you, he repeated. Nature had
been pressing him to experiment. He had got so far
as to finger his knife. Why, she asked, stupidly, thinking aloud.

(31:46):
One of her little moon braves in similar circumstances would
have regarded the tumble of an enemy woman as a
sheer food gift from the God of the hills Sun.
Men don't eat girls, he was saying, Now you are
well again, what will you do? I don't know, said
day Yan. He was not only very very beautiful, but

(32:08):
incredibly gentle, wholly quite absolutely different from the young braves
of her clan who had been making eyes at her,
and whom the old chief had warned off, Pongu Lo
mar and Gauloo rough boastful fellows whom she had known
and played with US boys on inequality, but who since

(32:29):
their midnight initiations, had seemed fit to treat her as
the dirt under their noble masculine feet. Run away now,
if you feel strong again, said the man, quite gently,
and seemed to mean it, run and fetch your braves.
I'm tired of sitting here. He looked dead, tired, and
oh so thin. They will take my scalp and eat me.

(32:53):
You little moons are not nice feeders. They will roast
you first. Alive, said day Yan, very low, and covered
her mouth with her hand, the unpleasantness of the practice
coming home to her for the first time.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yes, I know tis my risk. I took it.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
But unless they come quickly, I shall be dead first.
His words came slowly. He leaned back and fainted. Dean
looked him over as he lay, and was conscious that
new and strangely pleasant and unnamed feelings were moving within her.

(33:33):
She no longer feared this man. He had given her
a horrid fright, but that was over and had left
no after effects. Savages are insensible to what doctors call shock.
Nor did she hate him as she had thought. She
hated all sun disk men and had been prepared to
hate this one until he had turned his face up

(33:54):
to her and spoken gently. The girl's wallet lay where
it had fallen this gorgeing crushed berries and disclosing a
certain ration of jerked meat which she had brought with
her for the day. An extraordinary and holly irrational desire
suddenly possessed her to capture and tame this man. He

(34:14):
promised to be nice in another sense than the gastronomical.
She really was pitying him, but of this she was unaware,
for pity was in emotion unknown to the little moons,
who had no equivalent for the word in their speech.
Having bathed his head in her turn and brought him round,
the girl fed her man with bits of meat, and

(34:36):
presently found him stronger. It was not that the food
was assimilated, it would be an hour before it passed
out of the stomach and was picked up and distributed.
But the nerves sent word along that help had arrived,
and the system responded sympathetically. He looked better, more beautiful
than any man had ever looked to dayan Besides, he

(35:00):
was her discovery, her capture. No one else, man or
woman should share her possession. He was her very own.
Here came into play the sense of property, but behind
it gratitude awoke a very rare growth in paleolithic times
as rare as pity. She sat thinking, hand to mouth,

(35:23):
her man still slowly eating, restraining his ravenousness, enjoying the
food as he had never enjoyed food in his life
of seventeen years or so. What was to do next?
A shrill cry from above brought on the crisis. The
children had missed her and were growing anxious. If one

(35:44):
of those youngsters caught a glimpse, had the faintest inkling,
she would lose her treasure. Necessity was upon her. She
must act, and act decisively. Swiftly, shoveling with both hands
the rest of her day's food from the bottom of
the wallet into the lap of the man, She whispered
quick and low more tomorrow, and began to reclimb the face.

(36:09):
The boys above saw her coming and grinned roguishly at
her slow movements, and more at her empty wallet and
juice stained kilt and bleeding head. She got her breath
before chasing and smacking the biggest, then marshaling her little army.
She kept it hard at work until the sun dipped

(36:29):
behind the snows, and twas time to be making for camp.
End of chapter one, Chapter two of the Master Girl,
a romance by Ashton Hilliers. This libriyvox recording is in
the public domain. A housekeeping more tomorrow, the master girl

(36:56):
had said, But tomorrow has a knack of taking the
bit in its teeth. When da Yan looked forth at
the weather very early next morning, she knew that her
path was blocked. Snow had fallen in the night and
was still falling from clouds which were creeping down the
wooded shoulders of the foothills after powdering their bare poles

(37:17):
with the first fall of autumn. The nine white giants,
which never changed, were hidden, and the horrid, bitter, frozen
river of ice, which came winding down from the closed valley,
which we call the lap of the Gods, bearing dirt
and stones upon its cracked and dirty back, was hidden too.

(37:38):
The old Chief sniffed more snow in the sky, and
bathes strike the wigwams, the summer homes of his people
twas hoe for their winter's quarters. The range of southward
facing limestone caverns. The ten fingers marched downstream. Certain braves
were sent on ahead to prospect as smoke out the highs,

(38:00):
which were pretty sure to have usurped possession. Preparations began
at once, and the Master Girl must make herself conspicuously
useful and prominent in the flitting with whatever heart she
set to it. As she worked and packed, she thought
hard and keenly, as she had never thought before in
her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been solely for her tribe,

(38:24):
and upon topics upon which she could think aloud. But now,
and for the first time, she had thoughts for someone
outside the circle which had enclosed her since she could
first remember, and thoughts which must most carefully be kept
to herself. Yes, so rigorously that she gabbled loudly, as

(38:44):
girls who work in company will when they feared the
suspicion of having any private thoughts at all. Before midday,
the march was begun, and the Master Girl, still chatting
loudly and thinking hard, must take her place on the trail,
albeit with a very backward looking heart. How was her

(39:05):
man getting on? This cold was bad for him. He
had no bison skin robe with him, a wife hunter's
kitty's light, and no doubt the weather had been warmer
when he left his people upon the other the sunny
side of the rangers. Another night of this would finish him.
She had given him her word too, And the master

(39:27):
girl was as truthful as girls went in those days,
which means she didn't lie from choice, and had a
natural pride in doing the thing which she had said
she would do, even if it proved unexpectedly difficult. Thus
it befell that, without committing herself to any specific plan,
the master girl kept a definite end resolutely in view,

(39:48):
even to the extent of selecting for her special burdens
on the march certain articles which on another occasion she
might have placed upon the back of one and another
of her pupils. The braves formed line and scouted for
game ahead of the old men in the center. The
squaws and girls staggered slowly behind, bowed beneath the property

(40:12):
of the tribe, the accumulated gettings of a summer's hunting.
There were also the household stuff and the babies. So
big were the flakes that progress was difficult from the
first and presently became impossible. The smaller and more heavily
laden girls could not be kept going. It was no

(40:33):
use beating the stragglers. The old chief called a halt.
When young things begin to get behind someone will presently
be missing. The braves who had come upon bear sign
might follow it up. But a camp must be pitched
for the night at any rate, and the girls must
drop their burdens and forth for firing. Before the snow

(40:55):
covered all down went ill secured bundles of skins, sheaves
of assagui's, wallets of jerked deer meat, the miscellaneous lumber
of a tribe of hunters, and out went the stick collectors.
Twas then or not at all. A little girl near
the edge of the covert saw the master girl bending

(41:16):
beneath a fagot, saw her drop it and run, heard
her shriek bare. There was a headlong race through swirling flakes,
over and under fallen trees and laden boughs. Five minutes later,
the last of the runners was safe in camp. The
mother squaws were scolding, counting, cackling, But where was Dayan.

(41:40):
The hunters must be recalled, but were far ahead running
a trail. By the time they were told of what
had happened, and the pack had been lifted, the snow
had covered all marks. Indeed, a good deal of property
which had been thrown down in the confusion was temporarily lost.
For the rest the short dark day. The braves cast

(42:02):
forward up this scully and that glen. But it was
upon their return that a hound scratched up from under
a drift, a skin wallet, stiff and red. The finder
of this grim relic brought it to the old chief
in good faith. The elder looked, sniffed, snarled, fool, this
is not blood but berry juice, whereat gauloo. A somewhat

(42:27):
jolter headed young savage slunk away, cursing the lost girl
and wishing the bear a good meal of her. Later
he cursed her more bitterly. Still, a hasty camp was pitched,
ill warmed, I lighted, the squaws huddled amid their shuddering children.

(42:47):
The men never laid down their arms all night. A
cannibal bear was the most terrible enemy known to the tribe.
A taste for human flesh once acquired, and the fear
of man once overcome. No knowing to what lengths such
a beast might go. Twas a pine to be, no
brown bear either, but a grizzly, or worse, a cave monster,

(43:10):
one of the sorts that even the lions feared. A
brute that hung around the mammoth herd on its march
had occasionally cut off a calf. Nobody slept, and there
was but one topic of conversation, the fate of de yan.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
One boy.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Indeed, the boy whom she had spanked the day before,
stuck to it that she had outrun him whilst making
for camp, had passed him, running silently and running wide.
But none believed him, for he was not a truthful boy.
Nor did his tail obtain a moment's credence from the
fact that next morning certain Assagui's axes and skins were missing.

(43:51):
Such losses are incidental to a panic when women and
girls run and cry out and drop things. They would
be found if and when the snow man melted. But
the snow did not melt, so a day later the
little moons trailed down in close order to their winter quarters,
leaving their summer camp under a robe of new snow.

(44:14):
The fate of the first governess added a delicious piquancy
to the nightly tremors of the children whom she had whipped.
The women regretted, grumbled, and speculated without a misgiving, But
a doubt remained in the mind of a certain young
brave which doubts. He later imparted to a couple of
his comrades, who turned it over silently in their minds.

(44:40):
The man with the broken leg had made a poor
night of it. He had finished the jerk deer meat,
and was ravenously hungry, sickeningly, dreadfully hungry, and quite desperately cold.
He had been telling himself all night, between the brief
naps permitted him by the various paines, cramps, and gnawings
we as sailed him that this girl could not return.

(45:04):
Yet all through something within him kept the spark of
hope alight. A dark, thick, long delayed morning with eddying
flakes as big as beech leaves, put that spark out.
Such weather, he knew, would break up the summer camp
at once. The girl, who under other circumstances might conceivably

(45:26):
have paid him a single surreptitious visit, would be tied
to her burden and to the line of march. Every
hour would lengthen the distance between them. No, it was
all up. He must die, and this dying was very
slow work and abominably painful. He wished the braves of

(45:47):
her tribe had found him. He would have shown those
dirty little moons. How a sundisc man could stand fire. Ah,
he was a fool to have given the creature a
second thought. A mere little moon woman, useful perhaps when
properly trained, but one of a backward tribe that ate snake,
think snake, and plume their axes with owl's feathers. The

(46:12):
contempt and hatred felt by a savage for a man
of another totem and habits is almost inconceivably bitter, nearly
as fierce and irrational as the loathing entertained by an
orange man for a papist, or a wee free for
a united So the broken legged man sat and shuddered involuntarily,

(46:33):
for he was true to stock, and made no more
moan about his condition and prospects than does a trap
to wolf. He had gone over his chances, and appraised,
and laid the last of them down worthless. But there
was one which he had not given a thought to,
the ardent strength of a woman's first passion. Man, I

(46:57):
am come. His dim eyes open very slowly. There's no dream.
She was there, dark bronze, red with exertion and exhaling warmth.
She was burdened too. He marveled dully, how she had
got such a bundle down that rock face. A bison

(47:17):
robe was drawn under him, another laid over him. He
was fed again, and again he revived, but more slowly.
For this time he was far gone with cold and exhaustion.
He had not spoken. She was gone, he wondered. Then
the mouth of the cave was darkened once more, and

(47:37):
she was back with something, A small sheaf of asseguise,
two axes, and a dozen flake knives. A second absence
and a second return revealed her in another character. But
there lay her firesticks and scrapers, yes, and more skins,
a housekeeping. The man's eyes were clear by this time.

(48:00):
What will the little moon say to this? He asked,
his brown cheek bulging with food. The girl frowned and
plucked at the hair of her kilt.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
I am dead.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
A bear got me at our first camp. Oh, I
did it well. We were out for wood. The snow
was falling thickly. I laid a trail of my things
up aside Glen Mitten's wallet and an old caross. Then
I cried bear and sprinted back to the camp. Picked
up these things, none of mine, no scent for the pack.

(48:32):
Am I a child, and doubled on our trail across
the open, where tracks were many. If a hound opens
on my line, they will whip him off for running heel.
There was no padding me after the first minute. The
snow saw to that she grinned neither spore nor scent.
And while they are casting forward on a false line,

(48:53):
I am here with you. Her eyes shone, her voice
hard and hunterlike at first, fell softly and almost shyly
at the end. Here again, as at their first interview,
The man's intelligence followed the girl's speech laggingly. Her people
and his had been separated from many generations by mutual

(49:14):
distrust and mountains into tribal trade did not exist, nor
peaceful communication, but into Nissian wife's stealing had kept alive
a common glossary. When she had passed to another subject,
he recalled something strange in her story. The pack she
had said she had referred to a hound. Good wolf

(49:37):
was her word. Pullyun knew bad wolves only. He did
not interrupt his meal and her recital at the time
with questions, but learned later that the master Girl's people,
more backward than his in most respects, had recently domesticated
wolf whelps. The man touched the skins wistfully. He hardly

(50:00):
understood as yet, but a bear would not eat pie,
and robin hatchets. When you go back to camp, he
began feeling his way towards the incredible. I am not
going back to camp, said Diane in a whisper.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
This is my camp.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
The broken legged man sucked in both lips and stared,
but his eyes kindled and smiled. It seems that I
am to get my wife, after all, he said softly.
The master girl, brought to the point, the point for
which she had been scheming and working for the past
day and night, was already modern woman enough to cover

(50:40):
her mouth with her hand and shiver. After all, then
she would belong to this man, not he to her.
Her captive had caught her, and thus soon well it
was to be. She had no retreat open to her,
and and he was gloriously beautiful and and so gentle.

(51:02):
She nodded, assent, her hands still over her mouth. The
young people's eyes met. Its meant marriage, It is well,
said the man.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
We will live.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
His eyes shone for a little while, perhaps, but who
knows the gods of your hills may be kind to us.
They have been kind to us so far, and have
covered my hiding place and your tracks with the ptarmigan's feathers.
Let us praise them. I do not know their names.
As for the god of my tribe, she is hidden.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
She must wait.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I will greet her when next she shows me her face. Meanwhile,
be our time together long or short. I will sing
my wedding song. He sat, as erect as he was able,
staying himself upon his palms and filling his chest, began
to chant trumpet lipped the hymn of his people, the

(51:57):
one reserved for such occasions. Its exact terms are perhaps
fortunately irrecoverable. It was even then, of an immemorial antiquity.
Nothing changes more slowly than the wedding custom of a
primitive people. This was an archaic survival, sanctioned by use
and wants and age. There were words and idioms in

(52:20):
it which were wholly foreign to the girl. Embedded fragments
of the long dead river drift men's gabble, froglike guttural
cluckings of tongue and the tonsil, mixed with newer and
nobler speech, vocables truly human and musical. The girl listened
and panted and glowed, tingling to the tips of her toes.

(52:43):
This was life, life, if by any hap she were tracked, caught,
and dragged back to her tribe to suffer the frightful
penalty reserved for a girl who so far forgot herself
as to steal her man. As their speech had it,
a phrase still used by our peasantry. Well, she would

(53:04):
grin it out to the very last she had lived.
How shall we picture the youngsters with a handsome according
to modern cannons, no high in the cheek, narrow and
low in the brow, and something heavy in the jaw.
One fancies strongly outlined sketches of the race to come after,

(53:24):
comely enough, though in one another's eyes, Oh the detail
this but worth preserving stalwart exceedingly. He a good seven
feet in height by our measure, and the master girl
six feet three. Suddenly, in mid chant, the singer's eyes

(53:44):
rolled inward, his lip was drawn up from the teeth,
and he was sinking back. She caught and cherished him
to warmth and comfort. He was splendidly plucky, but weak.
So passed the first day of these young people's housekeeping.
The girl got some kindling in before the light, went

(54:06):
and made fire and watched the night out beside her
sleeping patient. The first nurse. Before dawn, she recognized and
prostrated herself to the Crescent Moon, her totem, to whom
she gave credit for her successful elopement, and to whose
mercy she committed her husband and herself. The next day

(54:28):
he was better, Deyan found herself able to leave her
new treasure. It was hard, but business is business, and
the girl was as practical as she was enthusiastic. It
has stopped. I go to hunt for us. The fall
is too young, he objected. Nothing will be your foot.
Yet no spore you shall see, said the girl. At

(54:51):
least I can be getting more wood. At the edge
of the covert below the face, de Yan, moving slowly
and with eyes all around her, saw as something tiny
and black moving upon the whiteness, the jetty tail tip
of an ermine in his winter pellage. Pursing her lips,
she gave the shrill, small squeal of a leverett in difficulties,

(55:14):
and was presently looking into the face of the eager
little rubber who had raced to her lure. Her throwing
stick broke his back. De yan was not fond of stoat.
No one is but meat his meat. She cut out
the gland and pouched him, observing that his muzzle was bloody.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
She worked his.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Line to heal, and, coming upon the hole he had
just left, dug down to a family party of hedgehogs
laid up for their winter sleep in beech leaves, each
as fat as butter, and only one of them sucked
here with economy was meat for three days at a pinch.
She returned to the caves silently, pleased with herself to

(55:58):
meet the silence approved of her man. For the rest
of the day, she accumulated firewood. Her man should be
warm at night, pullyun as he bade her call him,
groaned in sleep. By daylight, his wife would examine his hurt.
The limb was sufficiently wasted to show the overlapping of

(56:20):
the bones. It was a simple fracture of the fibula,
and the muscle was enfeebled enough to tempt her to
put into practice the woman's law learnt of the old
chief's head. Wife hould on to the rock, hard I
shall pull. He braced himself. She drew with slow power,
and felt to a limb give then venting pence breath, relaxed,

(56:45):
and heard the broken ends of the bone cluck neighbly
as they came to a renewed understanding. Now lie upon
your sound side, and the leg will keep its shape.
Her man took breath, for the operation had hurt him abominably,
albeit he had not let the least little moan, Oh woman,

(57:07):
what talk is this? It is a moon and a
half of a matter before broken leg bone knits strongly?
How am I to keep it in one shape so long?
When I am sleeping? Say wah, you are very clever,
But I shall break it again before morning. The girl
thought hard, sitting at the entrance of the cave and
studying the curve of the young moon, just visible afloat

(57:30):
in the darkening blue, her people's totem and her own,
and her favorite object among the heavenly hosts. Oh moon,
little moon, teach me to medicine, my man, She murmured,
Here are not the things which we of your people
use in such a case. This cave floor is hard rock.
I cannot drive little pegs to keep the limb in place,

(57:53):
Nor while this frost holes can I dig clay to
make a mold to hold its firm, What shall I.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Do for him? Little moon?

Speaker 1 (58:01):
And behold it came a thought, an expedient, bright and
wonderfully simple, and perfectly novel and practicable. Arising without a word,
she fetched six straight hazel ones, and, having wound the
limb carefully in a dearse, hide bound it within a
cradle of splints. Twas new practice. She had never seen

(58:24):
nor heard of such work before, nor had her man.
But he let her have her way with him, for
he was not only very weak and weary, But the
fellow saw that he had fallen into the hands of
a wise woman. We too, are by way of recognizing
that here was that rare and invaluable creature, a born inventor.

(58:45):
Such are of altogether incalculable value to the race, And
bethink you, how seldom do they appear our own age. Verily,
an age of miracles is altogether exceptional. Never in the
whole course of man's history has there been such a time.
Dimly one descries a period, the so called Second Dynasty,

(59:08):
when the Egyptian rain, then young and new and plastic,
scintillated once in a century or so admirable inventions, the wedge,
the lever inclined plane, wheel and axle. But who invented
anything since until our own day? Gunpowder and printing, the arch,
and steel, the mariner's compass, you'll remind me, and what

(59:31):
else in the course of six thousand years within the memory.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Of living men.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
If an Oxford Don wanted light in haste, he had
recourse to flint and steel and an oil lamp. If
he wished to reach London in haste, a good horse
was his best servant. Rameses the Great would have done
no otherwise in either emergency. Most of Earth's greatest men
have harbored an inexplicable prejudice against inventors. Greek philosophers, for instance,

(01:00:02):
Even the greatest generals in history would trust nothing that
was new. Alexander Hannibal Marlborough conquered with the ordinary weapons
of their day. Wellington distrusted the rocket and preferred brown
best to the rifle. Napoleon, fortunately for Liberty and England,

(01:00:22):
sneered at inventions and had a nickname for inventors. No,
not only the practice of invention, but the very theory
of it is modern. The mere idea that there is
anything that can be discovered without mortal sin is of yesterday,
your ancient inventor investigated, at the risk of his life,

(01:00:43):
and published his invention in terror. However obvious and useful
it might chance to be, if it hit a vested
interest or offended a priest, the man would be burned
for having commerced with the devil. So with the lowest savages,
not to the filthiest of their foods, the most objectionable
of their customs, or the silliest and clumsiest of their

(01:01:06):
tools or weapons, but is bound up in some way
with their religion and protected from innovation by its sanctions.
Did not Mumbo Jumbo give them the throwing stick in
the days before the moon began to chase his sister
of the Sun. Who so presumptuous then as to suggest
any improvement upon the throwing stick, the divinely inspired throwing stick.

(01:01:30):
Let him be skinned, alive and eaten, says Mumbo Jumbo,
And let the best and tenderest of his chops be
the portion of me rum Tum. The high priest of
Mumbo Jumbo thus hampered. Man's intelligence moves slowly, and racial
advance has not been precipitate in Korea, Say or Spain.

(01:01:53):
Among the little moons, the very possibility of inventing anything
had been long forgotten. From his childhood to his death,
each member of the tribe moved in a web of
routine and did what he did at stated times, because
it was the custom of the community. There was never
any change. Improvement was impossible for the corpus of the law,

(01:02:17):
which regulated his life and bound him hand and foot,
resided in the retentive memories of the oldest and most
pig headed of his people, themselves brought up in a
similar environment and mentally incapable of breaking away from it
in any one's smallest particular. Hence, this departure from practice

(01:02:39):
in the matter of treating a broken leg filled the
man's bosom with wonder too deep for words. He found
himself encumbered with novel feelings, feelings for which he had
no suitable vocabulary. When a young brave went on a
wife hunt, it was not to be supposed that he
should respect or reverence the dear rejected in sulky captive,

(01:03:01):
whom he drove home before him, that in the course
of years their mutual relations might improve, that some regard
for the mother of his sons, some admiration even for
her capacity and judgment might arise was possible, But at
the first her lot was a sorry one. She stood
for the proof of her captor's strength, courage, and address

(01:03:25):
his slave no more. But Deyan stood for nothing of
the kind. And what she did stand for, Pullyun was
at a loss to explain to himself. Having nothing to do,
he watched her about the cave and marveled at her,
also at himself, and at something which was going on

(01:03:45):
inside him and in her, though he did not know it.
The first passage of their eyes had begun it, But
much had happened since she had touched him. She had handled, lifted,
support him, given him exquisite pain, as she knew by intuition,
fed him, rubbed his cold, stiff limbs back to warmth

(01:04:08):
and suppleness. Needless to say that this girl had never
had occasion to deal thus with a man creature of
her own age. Hitherto what she had done, she had
done with a steady and purposeful hand. But now it
was over, she found herself shaking, as if from cold,
yet she was not cold.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
What was it?

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
De Yan could put no name to this novel experience,
and while she thought upon it, seated as far from
her patients as the limits of the cave permitted for
the revulsive fits was upon her. It came over her
with a horrid clearness, how near she had been to
handing this delightful, troublesome, beautiful, helpless, bewilderingly strange creature comrade

(01:04:55):
of hers over to the braves of her tribe. Momentary
gleam of insight, she saw him as he might have
been at the stake. The sight wrung her heart. Oh,
she groaned and clapped her hand over her mouth. Then
with a second gleam of prescience, she saw herself in

(01:05:16):
a like predicament, as yet might be her fate, and laughed,
what are you laughing at?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Her?

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Man was asking weakly, I was thinking that I must
get to my hunting. We cannot live long upon a
stoat and a wallet full of hedgehogs. Also, I'm thinking
we must have skins for leggings and mittens, smiled the girl,
lying glibly to conceal feelings of which she was half ashamed.

(01:05:44):
The frost had not given and wildlife, hunger nipped, was
getting over the first paralyzing fear of making tracks. The
big game elephants and bison would have moved downstream for
the winter, and lion would have followed them, and bear
laid up to sleep off his fat. She knew as much.

(01:06:05):
The edge of the covert was printed thickly with slot
of hair, badger, fox, and martin. She could see that
the shamois and stone buck had come down, But Shamua
and stone buck were kittle cattle. There were the broad
pads of big tom Lynx. The girl looked them over narrowly,
and knew them from wolf by the sign of hair

(01:06:27):
upon the soles of the feet. She dreaded Lynx, but
meat she must have. There Among the tangle of creeping pine,
the penis pumulus, which makes such desperately hard going, was
the well beaten run of Kappakaili. De Yan followed it
into the scrub as far as a fallen spruce and

(01:06:49):
set that log with twenty springes of deer sinew. Then,
fetching a circle, she beat the covert with some small
outcry back towards her nooses, and with results.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
The master cock, a.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Great black bearded tyrant twice as big as his wives,
had got a hairy leg into trouble, but had broken away,
but not before six youngsters and hens, hastening to their
lord's assistance, had been themselves ensnared.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
The man said, when the huntress panted up the cliff face,
carrying an almost throttling necklace of heavy birds. We have
food for days. Give that cover to rest, Diane. Also,
I have another reason. Listen, I dreamed of a hair
whilst you were away. Danger is near. Without a word,

(01:07:42):
Weary as she was, the girl left the cave and
ascended the rock face, climbing slowly and very carefully, keeping
to the bare exposures lest she should leave incriminating sign
and Ensconcing herself in a juniper bush, spied far and
long over the white expanse, the dream had already come true.

(01:08:05):
There below her, and more than four miles away by
our measurement, three tiny black specks moved slowly across a
snowfield between two dark belts of wood.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
The girl watched with a.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Hardening mouth, bending upon these crawling black specks the wonderful,
long sighted eyes of a savage. Nearer they came, and
nearer she made out and named each. There was Laoma,
there was Pongou, and worst of all, there was the
detested Gaulou, a brave whom she most particularly disliked, and

(01:08:42):
with whose property she had accordingly made free when she
left the tribe. Plainly, the man had missed his axes
and spears, had revisited the camp where they had last
been seen, and had not found them. Pongo, in like manner,
had missed his bison robes and laoma, certain deer skins,
properties which, if cast away by girls in a panic

(01:09:05):
stricken rush, would have lain where they fell. Each had
his dog with him, and, having failed in finding what
they sought at the sight of the snow camp, were
casting up the glen with a certain air of grim determination,
which the watcher did not like. They had reasoned the
matter out, and had ceased to believe in that bear orbeit.

(01:09:28):
Just what had induced an unmarried girl to break away
from her tribe and make a winter hunting of her
own was beyond them. It was a matter which needed
clearing up. There must be no fire for her man
that day, no next day, nor for a handful of days.
Deyan spied from her bush, her patient from his cave,

(01:09:50):
and once heard the three hunters pass below him. The
sprinkle of fresh snow had covered the girl's tracks, or
this story would never have been written. But they had
lit upon one of her springes, and were justly scandalized.
Her motive in absconding was still a mystery, but such
conduct was outrageous. They would see the matter out, and

(01:10:14):
were curious in devising punishments for the truant. But next
day the girl beheld them in full flight down the
glen before an angry bear. This was to exchange one
danger for another. It might well be that the dream
pretended this wolf. The dwellers in the cave did not fear,

(01:10:35):
for no wolf could climb so steep a face. But
wherever a man can go on rocks, a grizzly can go.
Deane told her fears to her husband, who bade block
the cave mouth with big stones and let a spear
be always beside him. Poor defense, but better than none.

(01:10:57):
His arms were regaining flesh. End of chapter two, chapter
three of The Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
The Ghost Bear.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
The cold increased Pullyune debarred his usual exercise, suffered in
his circulation, and felt nipped within the robes, which his
nurse heaped upon him mittenst thou shalt have, said she,
and made her promise good at the charges of a
brace of blue hair, whose lungs and shorts she patiently

(01:11:41):
followed up until her throwing stick decided the ownership of
the peltries, which she claimed. Pullyune watched her stitching a
needle snapped. My wife will be wanting a touch of
my skill, he said, and selected a shank bone slim
and straight split it and scraped the more, promising peace

(01:12:02):
to a point. That is all very well, said the
master girl. But how about the eye. I have no
bits small enough for drilling a needle eye. We must
punch our holes in the skin and poke the sinew
through with a forked bone, as when one nets. That
makes clumsy stitches, remarked the man. No, I do not

(01:12:22):
think we shall come down to the punch. Thy needles
are pit eyed, we always make them. So how else
with the scenter bit, a bent stick, a twist of hazel,
said the girl. But we use the strong drill. Has
never seen it, she stared. Then there is something that
even a little moon woman can learn from her man,

(01:12:44):
he spoke in humorous mockery, but with a spirit of malice.
But truly, this astonishing swore of his had forereached upon
her master in a manner beyond all precedents. Would he
ever get the whip hand of her again? She understood?
She crawled to him, cooing gently, patted his hand. They

(01:13:04):
rubbed noses. Why are my needles clumsy? She asked humbly,
and he showed her that her people's method of boring
the eye, a funnel shaped hole driven from each side
and meeting midway, necessitated a broader head than a small
true hole drilled straight through at one, asking our holes

(01:13:24):
are big and shallow. Yes, like ant lion pits, she laughed,
that is because our scent a bit wobbles. But how
can one help the center bit wabbling from the raffle
of bones upon the floor. The caveman was an untidy fellow.
What is little we should know about him? From the
remains of his yesterday's dinner? Pull Yun chose a young

(01:13:45):
rose shim bone, sawed off the joints with care, and
sucked out the marrow. I want, said he a small
sharp stone to sit in that hollow. There are such
and the bellies of bigger stones. He meant quartz crystals,
and the master girl nodded. So far his requirements presented
no difficulty, and I must have he went on a

(01:14:07):
couple of smooth rods of rowan or hazel as long
as my arm, also an elder stick as long as
my hand. There was meat in the larder for two days.
The nurse was keen to provide playthings for her convalescence,
nor was she herself loath or incurious. Within the hour
she was back with a handful of sparkling gems from

(01:14:30):
the hollow of a big pebble, and a pair of rods,
one of which she watched her husband bend and string
with a thong of deer skin. Presently he had found
a shard of rock crystal tea his mind, and had
half did it in the hollow bone, with a morsel
of pitch picked from his axe head and warmed in
the embers. It is singular but beyond controversy, that the

(01:14:52):
old stone men, who used the drill so adroitly for
small work, and could pierce the enamel of a bare's
tooth on the ne acre of a seashell when a
necklace was required, never applied their invention to the hafting
of their weapons. An axe was apparently too serious a
matter to be bored. Nor did the presence of a
natural hole in a flint pebble suggest the insertion of

(01:15:15):
a stick any more than the hole for the handle
in a trade hatchet appeals to a south Sea islander
of one of the more backward races. No, he stops
the hole with gum and halfs, as his forefathers did,
and as Pullion and Dayan did in a cleft stick.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
What next?

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
De Yan, still very much in the dark but longing
for light, watched her husband with absorbed attention. Now he
had laid aside the strong rowan rod and the armed
bone for a moment, and was at work upon the
elder stick, working one end of it to a smooth,
rounded head, driving into the tough, yielding, pithy hollow of

(01:15:57):
its opposite extremity the sharpened shank of the armed roe
deer's bone as far as it would go. He had
now to his hand a short, solidly made dagger, stoutly
cylindrical in form, and bearing as its head a glittering
morsel of crystal. He next fastened the slip of hare's bone,
which he proposed to convert to a needle, firmly to

(01:16:19):
the handle of his axe, and bound the axe in
turn to the thigh of his sound leg, raised his
knee and said, now I begin wah, this is a wonder,
but have a care of thy broken ankle. I will
have a care. Give me that strong rowan rod. He
took it from her hand, bent it yet more, and

(01:16:40):
looped the slackened thong once around the barrel of his
drill or bit, and then, using his own breast and
left hand as bearings for the smooth butt, applied the
crystal point to the blind head of the needle, and
drew the bent rod swiftly from left to right. The
drill revolved its armature began to mark the bone to

(01:17:02):
penetrate infinitesimally. He reversed the action, and again the tools
spun and cut. He persisted it began to excavate. Pullyun
was no novice at the work. He had an instinctive
appreciation of what his tool would bear. He knew to
a nicety just what the fragile bone might be trusted

(01:17:24):
to take without splitting. I am through or nearly said
he The sweat running into his eyes, for he was
wholly out of condition, and the attitude was trying. Let
us turn the needle. I will work a little from
the other side, and then we can give it a
point and a polish. The master girl meanwhile, overlooked this

(01:17:46):
new magic of the sun men with a breathless, frowning intentness,
which and this marks the woman we have to deal with,
had no contempt in it. Your savage has a fathomless,
irrational scorn for the arts and youths of any other
tribe than his own. A traveler who had photographed a
group of Fingo women at their fieldwork showed them a

(01:18:07):
picture of a similar group of Pondous taken a fortnight before.
There was a shout of derisive laughter. They are using
the long handled hoe bab boons. Up On his return journey,
he showed the Fingo photograph to his Pondo friends, again
the yell of scorn. They are using the short handled hoe.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
The bab boons.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
The girl's cast of mind, or her relation to this man,
saved her from this fatal attitude of sterile complacency. She
waited and watched, reserving judgment. Full approval was conceded, with
an undercurrent of doubt as to the possibility of improvement
to her husband. The size and curvature of his implement

(01:18:54):
were fixed by custom and unimprovable. To Deyan, these dimensions
were open questions. She experimented, would not a longer bow
give longer strokes? He stared, But, being sensible beyond the
run of men, and grateful somewhat, and what was possibly
more to the point than all else, having no one

(01:19:15):
to laugh at him, consented to give the larger drill
a trial, and presently found his tool biting faster. Footnote, Children,
countrymen and savages are keenly sensitive to ridicule. It is
the fear of failure and of becoming the butt of
his fellows which keeps many a young laborer from attempting

(01:19:36):
anything new. To have tried and failed is to incur
some opprobrious by name that may stick to a villager
through life. Rustic wit is cruel and drearily long lived,
and of footnote within the week the girl having such
a head upon her brown shoulders as is conceded to

(01:19:57):
a savage, but once in a thousand generations, so, after
much watching and brooding, made for herself a bigger drill
from a bow of her own height, and seating herself
opposite to her, man drove the bow rapidly, whilst he
steadied the bit and watched the holes deepen at a
pace quite new to his experience. It was no longer needles,

(01:20:20):
but hunting whistles, it was. Whilst thus at work, he seated,
with his face to the mouth of the cave, beheld
the broad, five clawed forepaw of a bear thrust up
from below, feeling for foothold upon the smooth sill of
the dwelling. The woman saw the living fear in his eyes,

(01:20:42):
sprang for an axe, and was hacking hard at the
protruding toes before they found their purchase. Thrice she beat
them down, And when the great wrinkled, snarling muzzle and
fanged cavern of her mouth came up within reach, she
was too urgent, and too so to be faced the

(01:21:02):
enemy withdrew deliberately beneath a pelting storm of stones, not
ill directed. It was all over a brief struggle of
wills between a girl and an ogre. But how intolerably
long had it seemed to the foot fast convalescent it
was over and pull Yune, listening to the final slide

(01:21:24):
and scratching upon the rock and crash among the bushes beneath,
drew deep breaths and looked upon this woman of his
with a new and huge admiration, For not once had
she cried for help, but thrice and four times had
she bidden him keep still and respect his injured limb.
There are people who give vent to the surplus excitement

(01:21:47):
generated by an adventure in chatter and exclamation. There are
others who take it quietly. Pullyun was one of the latter.
He felt the imperative need of silence in which to
review the thing and see whether he had played the game.
Had de Yan fallen into tears or gigglings, he would
have been hard put to it to have borne with her.

(01:22:09):
But it appeared that she was of his own way
of taking things. And when for some while neither had
spoken one word, their mutual respects had deepened.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Woman.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
That was well done, said the man at length, and
the girl nodded with a proud humility. She had played
a great innings and knew it. But having an intuitive
understanding of man, she wisely forebore to celebrate her achievements
with vaunts, as a brave of her tribe would certainly
have done under like circumstances. We were near the end

(01:22:43):
of our stones, remarked poullyun looking about him. We had
only one left, this, replied the girl. I kept it
to the last. That was lucky, admitted her husband, meaning
more than he said. But it was a maxim in
old days that a woman was little the better for praise.

(01:23:03):
He will come again, he added, doubtfully. Next time I
we will kill him, said Diane, a little above herself.
I will get more stones and bigger for his entertainment. Yes,
he will be back again, not to morrow, perhaps, but
within a while, when he has turned it over in
his mind and thinks we have forgotten him, resumed the man,

(01:23:26):
ignoring the woman's brag. Dyan was sensible of her master's
silent censure and of a sex superiority, too secure of
itself to need assertion, and shrunk back, half meekly, half resentfully,
But within a little found herself rising quietly and resolutely
against its injustice. It must be so at present, no doubt,

(01:23:50):
but it should not always be so. Meanwhile, her husband,
satisfied with the effects of the snubbing was speaking again.
We shall certainly be looked up before long. But there
is something I do not understand about that bear diyan.
In my country south of the rangers, a brown bear
ambushes and waylays, but rarely attacks by day and in

(01:24:13):
the open. Is it more usual here, aby, people's weapons
so weak that a bear has no fear of them?
Or is this a ghost bear? Thinkest thou? This beast
should either have followed your tribe down or have laid
up for the winter. What is he doing abroad in snow?
Is he a bear at all? Did any warrior of

(01:24:35):
your tribe died during the past summer? This was no
brown bear, but a grizzly of the big kind. Footnote
she meant cave bear Ursus pilius, now extinct, and a footnote.
But I think she.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Paused her hand over her mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
So Chemo, the old chief son died was found dead?
She muttered, Really, act for death is a very mysterious
thing to your savage, And to speak of the recently
deceased is unlucky. They may be about anywhere at your
elbow and may take offense. Who can say was found dead?

(01:25:15):
Questioned the man, Yes, no one saw how it happened.
Stone was thought to have fallen, so said Gaulo, who
found him. Oh, Gaulo, was not that one of the
three who came a hunting thee. Now tell me Dian
and speak the thing that is I always do, exclaimed

(01:25:35):
the girl. I believe thee. I shall always believe thee.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
So tell me.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Was not this Sauchimo one of the young braves who
had asked for thee yes and had not this? Gaulu
asked for thee too. The girl nodded. I was to
have been given to Saukemo, but he died. It is
very unlucky when stones fall in that manner. Gauloo painted

(01:26:01):
his face for his friend, no doubt, and made great lamentation,
as I should expect.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
Was it not so?

Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
But is there no witch doctor in your tribe? Was
there no smelling out for blood? The girl shook her head.
There was talk of it in the old chief's teepee.
But Guloose people are strong, and he and his two
friends Lao Mar and Pongu, who always hunt with him.
It was they who came upon the winter hunting. They

(01:26:28):
were thought to have made gifts to the medicine man
and put him off the line, if indeed there was
a line, I do not know how should I. I
am only a woman. I did not like Sauchimo much,
but with sudden heat, I hate Gaulu and the others.
Humph grunted Paullyune. It is curious that three braves who

(01:26:52):
were tied up in a knot of this sort, and
who are keen enough to go upon a winter hunting together,
should have run from a bear, as they ran from
the right away downstream and out of the valley too.
It is strange. But if they had reason to think
he was their old friend Saorchmo, that would explain a
good deal. Perhaps he was very fierce. They had touched him,

(01:27:15):
I think, argued the girl, willing to believe anything, rather
than that she and her crippled husband were beleaguered by
her dead lover in the form of a ghost bear
touched What makes he think so? He seemed to climb clumsily.
He had but one forepaw to which he could fully trust,
As it seemed to me. I watched him go, and

(01:27:38):
he went lame in the shoulder. And it was not
my stones that did that. No, there was something there
a stump of a spear, as I think, and that
is why he has lost some of his fat and
cannot lay up for the winter, and being too slow
to catch bison calf. He comes for us. My dream
was a true sending. He is certainly thy soul chemo,

(01:28:00):
and will assuredly come back for thee dayan. And so
will they muttered the girl. They must know that they
have left a spearhead in him, and that he must
be getting weaker. They will give the wound time to ripen,
and then it's time. I was about again, growled the
crippled hunter, and set to work upon his drilling with

(01:28:22):
a grim face. De Yan was kneeling upon his right hand,
her left resting loosely upon the cave floor within his reach.
Upon the impulse of the moment, and without word or
luke pull yun struck swift and hard at the brown
wrist with the elder bits that he was holding. The stick,

(01:28:43):
encountered the rock and split for the slim brown wrist
had been withdrawn with nimble rapidity. The eyes of the
young people met and smiled. It was their first attempt
at play. My husband sees that I can take care
of myself, remarked the girl sedately, that is well Dayan,

(01:29:03):
For with a ghost bear and a hunting party of
three in this glen, a woman has need of eyes
in the back of her head, was the comment of
her lover, end of chapter three, Chapter four of The
Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers. This Libery Fox

(01:29:27):
recording is in the public domain. Hard Need Mother of
invention the Day's War. Day Yan went about her hunting
with extreme precaution, cultivated eyes all over her brown body,
pricked her small hairy ears perpetually, and moved through the
most tangled coverts of trailing pine as silently as a fox.

(01:29:52):
Acting upon her husband's suggestion, she laid a trail about
the main glen, and, having completed the circuit, Saturday out
ambushed beside her tracks to wit if any creature, whether lynx, wolf,
ghost bear, or man, should be following up her spore.
None showed, and she grew uplifted of heart again, and

(01:30:14):
as luck would have it, her hunting prospered. For once
beyond reason, a roebuck met her face to face in
a pass between two rocks. The small fellow was more
than full headed. He bore eight three inch tines, any
one of which was death to a naked woman, and
for a moment meant battle. But after a startled grunt

(01:30:37):
tossed his head and doubled him panic, Dayan's throwing stick
broke his off hind leg below the hock, and she
finished him after a fight in which the odds were
still about even for the charges of a roebuck at bay,
even when upon three legs as sudden and very difficult
to avoid in deep snow. If he had once got

(01:30:58):
the girl down, she would never have rid and again.
But the affair went well, and Deyan, toiling mightily, won
home with a load of meat and a deep piled
mossy skin for her man to sit upon. She had
restocked the cave with missiles. Scores of stones as heavy

(01:31:18):
as she could manage, were piled against the rocksides of
the dwelling ready at need. This was a three days labour,
and it was whilst resting after her last load and
discussing the arrangement of their stores of artillery, that the
singular incident occurred, which resulted in But I will not
anticipate the element of luck mingles in the best laid

(01:31:40):
schemes of human intelligence. Chances lie thick about us, and
genius consists in the recognition and utilization of chance. These
strong drills were common form to pull Yun, who had
known them all his life and expected nothing more from
them than they were made to yield, and had long

(01:32:01):
since disclosed of use as for playing with them. It
had no more occurred to him to amuse himself by
playing tricks with a strong drill than it occurs to
your harvestman to use his side handle as a vaulting pole,
or to your gardener to practice throwing with his fork
at a target, or to toss and catch his spade.

(01:32:22):
The implements of labor are invested with the seriousness due
to maturity. Respects should be paid to them. If one
gets larking, something is sure to be broken. They are tools,
not toys. But to the girl, a strong drill was
a novelty, a thing beautiful and astonishing, an inexhaustible source

(01:32:43):
of wonder and amusement, fraught with all manner of latent possibilities.
To pull Yun, a good conservative, it was unimprovable. The
girl's audacious innovation had already outpaced him. There was much
that was interesting, But no, that was sacred in the thing.
To her, she had amazed her husband by one improvement,

(01:33:05):
and was about to astonish him yet more. Not that
she was aware of what was coming. No, she was
simply uneasy as yet in the presence of a tricky
piece of mechanism with unexplored capacities of use and delight
in it. She did not sit down to invent. She
simply started to play, and in this her sex and

(01:33:27):
temperament gave her a pull over her comrade. A man
loses much of his zeal four if not the power
of playing soon after sixteen, that is to say, for
anything that is not a contest or a gamble. The
so called sports of manhood cricket, footter, rowing, hunting, and
what not, are usually very exhausting and frequently outrageously expensive

(01:33:51):
forms of business from which the primary idea and essential
qualities of play have disappeared. For it is of the
very quidity of play that it should be gay, irresponsible,
jolly in a word. And who will be hardy enough
to claim gayety for croquet or irresponsibility for bridge? But

(01:34:12):
most girls and many women can play at any time
as naturally and spontaneously as a child or a kitten.
De Yan, fortunately for herself and for poulliun and for
you and me, de Yan, I say, possessed this happy
faculty of amusing herself with whatever scrap of stones, stick,
or string came within her reach. These strung drills, for example,

(01:34:37):
she was forever stretching, releasing, twanging the things, studying their
actions and reactions, wondering at the difference in their notes,
and had come within a little of discovering the germ
of the liar, when well, what she did discover was
of more importance than music to mankind. In the making

(01:34:59):
pull Yune had been for a month and more carving
a tom linx out of a piece of bone. It
was a spirited performance. For the man, like many of
his race, was an artist at this work. De Yan,
whose faculty lay in another direction, could not assist him,
and thus while he bent over his work, she was

(01:35:20):
trifling with one of the strong drills, temporarily out of use.
She had been trimming the hide of the roebuck, and
was still holding a sharp edged shard of chirt in
her left hand, the hand which also held the taut
bent wood she was plucking and releasing the string, listening
to the twang of it. And by chance, by the

(01:35:41):
veriest chance, the shard pricked her palm. She transferred it
to her right the string hand, and plucked again. The
loosened cord caught the stone, which flew across the cave
and struck pullyune above the ear, drawing blood. Wah, what
was that act, he asked, without temper, and would be

(01:36:02):
shown how she had done the trick. It was amazing
de Yan, whilst amusing herself, had stumbled upon a property
of the bent stick and cord which had escaped the
dull eyes of countless generations of routine ridden on imaginative men.
The new play diverted the girl and her husband through her,

(01:36:23):
albeit neither as yet had caught a glimpse of its significance. Indeed,
it was three days before dayan de Yan again discovered
that a stick could be propelled enlong by the same
agency they had hit upon the root idea of the
bow and arrow without knowing it, and like a thousand

(01:36:43):
other excellent ideas, this might have perished without bearing fruit,
but for the occasion which revealed its importance. Lifting the
fortuitous combination of two sticks and a string, from the
status of a toy to the dignity of a lethal
weapon of the first rank. The luck of inventions is
very various. We know a crabbed octogenarian who in boyhood

(01:37:06):
invented a certain tool, but could find no one to
take it up, nor had means to patent and push
it himself. He broke his model in chagrin, and sixty
years later saw another man rediscover his idea and win
wealth and fame by his discovery. It will be understood
that since the ghost bears attempted escalade, the youthful householders

(01:37:30):
had never felt safe, but suspense and fear did not
break them down as a modern couple, and a similar
conditions might have been broken down. Early man was a
hunting animal, hunted in turn by beasts stronger but less
cunning than himself. Among the first recollections of our ancestors
would be that thrilling cry of wolf and the scurry

(01:37:53):
for shelter of tiny bare feet up rock faces too
steep for the blunt claws of the secular enemy of childhood.
When the shadows lengthened, the fear of bears grew urgent,
as it does to those cave children's far removed descendants
today in nurseries lit by electric lights, a fear sedulously

(01:38:13):
instilled by the careful cave mother for the shaggy urchin
who didn't care, and who had ventured one step too
far beyond the circle of firelight never came back and
left no progeny. We are the lineal heirs of a
race of creatures who had the very best reasons for
dreading the dark. Hence you shall find among your acquaintance

(01:38:35):
tall men of fine physique and cultivated women whose almost
complete emancipation does not include the liberty of walking around
their own suburban tennis courts alone after nightfall. Pullyun and
Dyan had had their warning. Thenceforth their fire was never
let out, nor at night did they both sleep at

(01:38:57):
the same time. Meanwhile, the lynx was turning out well.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
There were no.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
Flaws in the bone, It worked kindly, and the tedious
process of scraping and undercutting went on steadily. Give me
but ten more days to get out of these splints,
and yet another ten to supple the stiff limb, Dyan,
And then let thy ghost bear lover come if you will,
I will meet him at the cave sill and stop
him there. Then he would expatiate, after the manner of men,

(01:39:27):
upon the extraordinary virtues of his tribal totem the Sun God. Oh,
a good totem, A great totem, the best of totems,
Yet not so good as mine, reposted the woman with conviction,
thou shalt see my totem. The little moon will have
the better of it. Yet she knew not what she meant.

(01:39:47):
But for the fun of opposition, she argued pertinaciously and
had the last word whilst testing the capacities of her
new toy at a mark. Yes, it would send a
big skewer the whole length of their dwelling and make
it stick firmly into anything softish. Moreover, and this was
a thing to take note of. You must shoot from

(01:40:10):
the level of the eye and aim point blank, no
throwing high as with an assa guy. She was learning
more than she knew. She played at this childish game
at intervals for some days, gradually lengthening the skewers, had
attaining a pretty creditable proficiency, watched with a good humored

(01:40:30):
tolerance by her husband, and might in the end have
played her game out and wearied of her toy without
getting to the bottom of it. Had not the thing
happened that I am about to tell. There came a
bitter night, with the wind edging in and out of
the cave mouth and compelling the youngsters to shift the
fire and the bedskins to the far end if they

(01:40:53):
would keep a light or sleep at all. Paul Yun
had taken his spell off, shuddering and muttering in sleep,
and Dan, shivering in her bison robe, had kept watch.
The last silver shard of a waning moon hung low
over the forest spires southeastward. The cave woman made silent

(01:41:15):
obeisance to the god of her private orisons, bending low
and striking the rock floor with her forehead. Little Moon,
be good to my man and to me. She groveled prone,
and as she did so, something snapped beneath her. It
was one of her asseguies. She raised it and examined

(01:41:37):
it in the dim light. Good enough for a woman
of a race which still saw well enough in the dark.
The mischief was done. The thin tapering shaft had parted
at a knothole a floor in the woods, selected by
its maker, the loutish Gauloo. The keen leaf shaped shirt
head of the weapon had less than an arm's length

(01:41:59):
of shaft behind it, and until remounted, was useless as
a throwing spear. Paulliune sat up at the sound, asked
and was told its cause, and scolded his wife for
her carelessness. She excused herself, and even as they spoke
querulously as sleepy folk may be excused for speaking who

(01:42:20):
are miserably cold, and are talking down a blustrous wind,
and perhaps too loudly for hunted folk. The terror was
upon them there upon the sill platform beyond the cave's mouth, and,
disregarding the dull ash of a dying fire let down
because the night was over stood the great ghost bear,

(01:42:42):
huge and hairy, terrible black, against the first pallor of
the dawn, obliterating Dean's totem, nullifying and intercepting the answer
to her prayer. Escape was none, nor was resistance reasonably possible.
The enemy was already within their defenses, had made good

(01:43:03):
his footing. Yet Pullyon, without a word of reproach to
the woman whose ear had for once been at fault,
gripped his axe and sat square with clenched teeth and
narrowed nostrils. No moan escaped him. His time had come.
He would show his squaw how a sundisk brave could
take his death. The girl's heart seemed to swell upwards

(01:43:27):
until it filled her body and thrust against her throat.
She did not cower or shriek or cover her eyes,
but crouched for a spring. If such might be possible,
she would give away no fraction of a chance. Her
man was doomed. Nothing that she could do, nothing that
ten men in her place could have done, would save him.

(01:43:48):
But life is very, very sweet. What of herself? Could
she or could she not slip past and escape? Yes,
it was possible. She was wearing kilt and cross. She
slipped out of both and stood nude and slippery, agile
as and eel her garments. She proposed to toss in

(01:44:10):
the bear's face, then to throw her bison robe over
his head, and to dart past him whilst momentarily entangled,
and leave your man the loveliest, kindest, cleverest wisest, best
creature that ever lived, to this ghost of the silly
sore chemo, to be chored and mumbled alive, to have

(01:44:31):
the bone that is almost knit, cracked and sucked whilst
you run away. Something within the woman, not recognizably herself,
puts this very pertinent question. Who was the speaker? Unquestionably
it was the Totem, the little moon of her prayers.
So she persisted to her dying day the innate womanhood

(01:44:55):
of the master girl, that passionate self devotion, self immol
of which the sex, in every land and under every
manner of garb and rights, has proved itself capable. Arose
and strove. No, she would not go forth safe alone
and humbled. She would die with her man, for her man, indeed,

(01:45:17):
for this matter should be taken fighting. Tossing her clothing
behind her, she stooped and groped right and left, snatching
for spears, axes, anything in the darkness. Then when she
looked again, the huge beast had shuffled sidelong past the
hot ashes and was standing over her husband. Paullyun had

(01:45:41):
thrown back the hand that held the axe for one
last stroke. The bear, just beyond reach, certain of his meal,
perhaps not particularly hungry, or it may be disposed as
an all beasts of prey to play with his victim,
snarled joyously and half a rose upon his broad hornches,

(01:46:03):
hanging a vast bestial head over the seated man, his
pestiferous darkness imperfectly lit by the green glitter of an eye,
exactly over the brute's head and between his round ears.
Deyan caught sight of that pale, thin sickle of Moon,
her Moon, her people's God and hers. Her right hand

(01:46:28):
held the broken asseguy, her left the longest strung drill.
She had snatched it from the floor in mistake for
a spear. There was no time to seek another weapon.
The spears, as she now remembered, lay between Pullion and
the ghost bear. If there was to be fighting, she
must fight with this toy nought else. With an almost

(01:46:51):
bursting heart, she fitted the stump of that broken asseguy
to the string. I have said it had parted at
a knot the not whole. I did a natural and
quite effective knock. The girl drew suddenly, hugely and with
the strength of her despair, until the church head lay
upon her thumb. She aimed at that green eye and

(01:47:12):
loosed with a cry, Moon, help me the cave hum
to the twang of the cord, the green light of
the eye went out. There was a reverberating, snarling roar.
The enemy, instead of charging, backed, shaking his head in
a horrid agony, And as he reached the sill, having

(01:47:34):
lost his marks, reared and clawing his mask with both paws,
fell over the edge, backwards, down and down, open mouthed, incredulous,
the youngsters listened for the rasp of claws and the
sounds of reassent. Instead, after a perceptible interval, came a dull,

(01:47:56):
pounding crash. He had gone to the bottom, taken the
full fall a hundred feet or more. There was moaning,
fainter and more faint silence came before daylight showed them
the extent of their deliverance and their abounding, enormous wealth.

(01:48:17):
There at the foot of the cliff lay the dead monster,
huddled and broken and burst incredible but true. Pullyun had
held Diane in his arms for a minute, which seemed
an hour. Neither had spoken whilst the ghost bears dying
was going on, and those gruesome sounds came up from below.

(01:48:41):
For once Diane's nerve had failed, she had clung to
her husband, dumbly, shuddering, conscious of what she still possessed
and had so nearly lost of her own escape, she
was thinking not at all, nor of her amazing feet.
At present. Pullion was the first to pull himself together.

(01:49:04):
As a conservative, he felt that the hour might not
pass without the ritual property the occasion, the Hallalai, sanctioned
by custom and use. So he sang the Bare Song,
an ancient chanty which had come down from the youth
of his tribe, full of absurd boasting, insults to the
slain and gastronomic anticipations. But even whilst trolling it out

(01:49:29):
upon the frosty air, and watching his hot breath smoke
in the red dawn, he felt less than himself, and
knew well who by right should have been celebrating the victory.
Only who ever heard of a squaw singing the bear song?
He had not borne himself ill as he knew, but
had not another interposed. This ogre had been cracking his

(01:49:53):
marrow bones by this time. Meanwhile, de Yan, being intensely practical,
was hardly giving her husband's music the applause and critical
attention which he might have thought due to it. Hungry
and cold as she was, she must set to work
ere the great, unwieldy carcass should have stiffened and laboring,

(01:50:14):
as she had never labored in her life. Heaved, thrust, wrenched,
and tugged until the hide came away. During this meanadic
spasm of toil, I am bound to confess that my
heroine worked stark, naked despite the cold, and neither ate
nor drank, save for the morsels of raw bear meat

(01:50:35):
with which she filled a distended cheek at intervals for dayan.
Though a savage was no fool, she knew none better
that the smell of so much spilt blood would bring
upon the scene eagle and lammageia, buzzard and raven, and
what she feared more wolverine, lynx wolf, And she knew

(01:50:57):
not what beside possibly man. Whilst it lay there. It
was a menace to herself and to her husband, But
promptly and properly dealt with it was warmth and food
and safety for the remainder of the winter. The hide,
when off, proved an unhandy burden, made still more massive
by its accumulations of frozen blood and snow. Two whole

(01:51:21):
deer skins went in thongs before a cord was knotted,
by which she pullyun assisting, drew the load up the
cliff to the cave. Nor was the girl even then
content with her day's work. But ere the short winter's
day closed, had lit fires on three sides of the
carcass and began to strip the bones. The salving of

(01:51:43):
that bear's meat was a four days poem. By the
fifth evening, the youngsters were victualled for the rest of
the winter, and Dian had not one thumb nail's breadth
of cutting edge upon the last of her church flakes.
She was also dead beat. The whole of the sixth
day and the following night, the girl slept the deep,

(01:52:05):
dreamless sleep of a healthy organism, wear it out, watched
by Pullyun, who had seen to it that she had
gorged herself to repletion before lying down, and who had
himself rubbed her swollen joints vigorously with fat, and who
watched over her whilst she slept beneath the vast, hairy
spoil of her twice dead lover. Saw Chimo cheered the

(01:52:29):
young brave during the long chilly night watches this is
the third time thou hast bid for my woman. She
was not for thee nor thy little moons. She is mine, mine,
I tell THEE, was there ever such a woman.

Speaker 2 (01:52:44):
Never?

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
I have seen two bears die in my time on
the other side of the rangers. But they were brown bears,
and young bears of that. Yet they died within a
ring of as many braves as they ort. Thou had
claws upon their feet. It took the whole strength of
a war party to bring either of them to bay
and keep them there. We brought two braves who did

(01:53:07):
not go home with us. One be buried to each bear.
And look thou at thy business, o sau chimou, if
that be thy name, and whimper, for shame thou who
died at one's stroke, And that from the hand of
a squaw of a girl, a stroke in the eye
of thee, in the brain of thee, such a stroke,
And thou a cave grizzly? Was there ever such a

(01:53:31):
woman so pullyun for the glory of the feat had
got upon his imagination. The more he sang of it,
the less he understood it. You must remember that his
knowledge of how the thing had been done was all
by hearsay. The bolt had been discharged from behind him,
and owing to the darkness of the cave, he had

(01:53:51):
not watched its home. Da Yan's description of the wound,
and of the church's Assagai head still enfixed in the
eye socket, was unsatisfying. He must see for himself some
day soon. Yes, at once the great stripped skull, which
lay a hundred feet beneath him, And whilst he pondered,

(01:54:12):
a certain familiar sound reached his ears from the foot
of the cliff. It was the cracking of a bone.
Some furry scavenger of the forest had been drawn to
the carcass, and would not be long without competitors. The
man must risk something. He cast loose his bandages and splints,
and crawled to the sill and hurled stone after stone

(01:54:35):
upon the marauder. Nor did his legs suffer the bone
had knit. The scraping, greasing and suppling of that immense
hide was a laborious business, but a labor of love
for Daan, whose heart was both big and high within her.
There was no tribal record, no legend even of any

(01:54:57):
woman having killed a bear in single fight. Yet she
held her tongue and silently grew in moral stature. Paulliun
might sing about his wife's prowess, but he was not
to be convinced of the superiority or even of the
use of her new weapon. He was a spearman. As
a spearman, an expert with the asseguy, he had won

(01:55:19):
the deputy chieftainship, the war chieftainship of his tribe. What
was possible with the spear he could do. But this
fiddling with a strong drill was too novel, too womanish,
too uncertain. As yet he would have none of it.
The girl, already convinced and sanguine, wisely desisted from argument.

(01:55:42):
By the help of the cord, the massive skull was
hauled up from below to tell its tale to deaf
ears to be admired, turned over, its death wound marveled at,
and its lesson ignored. The man set himself to dig
out the enormous white fangs. He also detached those twenty
black curving claws, arranged, studied, and poured over them. Watched

(01:56:06):
by de Yan. She knew by intuition what was passing
in his mind, and waited. This was the critical, the
dangerous point of their married life. Who was to wear
those teeth, those claws? He put the question from him.
She had not raised it. It would wait the trophies

(01:56:26):
were not ready for wearing as yet, they must be
drilled before they could be strung. De Yan saw that
her husband needed something, but was too sulky to ask,
and by a real intuition fetched him the lengths of
elder which he required for this new drilling, and left
him to his work, setting herself to study the properties

(01:56:48):
of her new weapon. There was nothing to take her afield.
Stacks of frozen bear meat blocked the cave. She could
experiment at her leisure, and had conquered some of the
initial difficulties before her man, glumly busy up above, knew
anything about them. Thus the girl found that Assagai heads
were too heavy and Assaguy shafts too stout for successful shooting.

(01:57:12):
Terrible at point blank range, at anything over twenty strides,
they wobbled and swerved and fell short. And Deyan the
practical argued, and argued rightly. But unless her shafts flew
farther and straighter and a bit deeper than a thrown Assegui,
she had better keep to the orthodox weapon. She needed
chirt or flint to make for her arrows smaller and

(01:57:35):
lighter heads, but neither churt nor flint was to be
found in that valley, nor was it possible for her
to adventure the week's journeyed downstream to the chalk Cliff,
which was the only source known to her of the
tribe's cutting tools. But womanlike she remembered her needles, and,
in default of churt, fell to experimenting with bone tips

(01:57:58):
attached to lighter shae by rosin and sinew, the hafting
method of the little moons. She succeeded from the first attempt,
settling after many trials, to a shaft as long as
her own arm, made herself ten upon this pattern, and
practiced sedulously. Skill came apace far more quickly to this

(01:58:20):
tense sinewed one ideared savage woman than it would come
to a modern and at the end of three days
constant archery, she found herself able to put all ten
arrows into a small circle marked out upon a snow
bank at full Assagai range. Beyond this range, her missiles
disappointed her. They still wobbled. As a practical spear thrower,

(01:58:44):
she knew what was lacking. There was no spin upon them.
How could this be remedied? This question lay down with
her at night and arose with her in the morning.
She besought her totem for wisdom, but got never a
sign a sacrifice was needed. She vowed to the Moon
the first fruits of her bow, and greatly daring, had

(01:59:08):
ventured out into the wintry forest, armed with her new
weapon and naught else. What would the god send the
moon is a man to the savage fur or feather?
Her little hazel grouse trotted out into the glade. The
shots was a difficult one, impossible with spear or throwing stick,
owing to overhanging boughs, But the girl prayed as she

(01:59:31):
drew and brought it off, her heart filled with gratitude.
Her totem was still watching over her for good. This
should be a whole burn's offering. A few feathers alone,
would she retain as her own share of the spoils
the first that ever fell to her bow, the ghost
bear always accepted. Whilst walking caveward, these curving flight feathers

(01:59:56):
in hand, something in their curvature their shapes aroused her superstition,
moon feather. She whispered and attached one of them to
one of her shafts. The feather was narrow, stiff, and
strongly curved. It refused to lie along the shaft, but
must needs curl somewhat around it when bound thereto by

(02:00:18):
small sinews at either end. Dyan's first shot with it,
at a snowbank target, flooded her bosom with a door
in gratitude, for here was the thing she had sought
and prayed for. The shaft spun as it flew.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
Again and again.

Speaker 1 (02:00:35):
She essayed shots at increasing ranges, and still the wonder persisted.
At fifty yes, and at sixty paces, the shaft flew straight,
swerving neither to left nor right. All her shafts were
presently feathered. And since the principal eluded her, and some
behaved better than others, she must practice daily, watch, consider,

(02:00:58):
and think, and within a while came to a practical
conclusion to closely imitate the feathering of those which span
the best end of chapter four chapter five of The
Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers. This LibriVox recording

(02:01:24):
is in the public domain. The testing of the new thing,
and now there was gloom in the household. Pulliun was
gaining strength daily, and as irritable as your convalescence is
permitted to be his leg was not yet sound enough
or supple enough to attempt the descent of the face,

(02:01:45):
for the knee joint creaked from its six weeks of disuse.
On the other hand, it could not get enough of
play within the limits of the cave. His nerves excited him,
his temper was less even than when he was helpless,
and worst of all, his conscience would not let him be.
Thus came Idos down to men. De Yan put up

(02:02:09):
with her man's petulant outbreaks and slaved for him harder
than ever. A diet of dark bear meat solid bear
meat daily and twice a day, although admirably suited to
keep up the bodily warmth, is hard upon the liver
unless regulated by abundant exercise, which in the case of

(02:02:30):
her husband, was out of the question. She cast about
for something lighter, but game was getting scarce in the
immediate neighborhood of the cave, and indeed in the glen itself.
She had hunted it too closely and too long. It
was the depth of winter in the mountains, Migratory life
had long since left for the lower levels. Resident life

(02:02:53):
was scanty. De Yan betook herself to trapping a bird
of some kind should have. Pullyun Peering moodily from his
cave platform, watched her bending over a trap far below,
and a long way off. The cackle of a chuff
came up clearly through the cold air, a danger signal,

(02:03:15):
And it struck him as singular that the bird should
be calling so far from the woman, For as a
rule they ignored her movements unless she were within say,
a hundred paces. Yet he put the matter from him.
No dream had given him prescience of impending danger. The
girl busied at her work, crouched beside her gin, the

(02:03:39):
deer skin quiver upon her shoulder, her bow laid beside
her hand. The man was annoyed at the sight. He
distrusted this new fangled plaything of hers. Why could she
not carry spears as he would have done, as he
was going to do in a week or so. Everything
she did or failed to do had power to annoy

(02:04:00):
the poor fellow. Now that she bore with him so
quietly was an offense in itself. Had she answered him back,
had she met him halfway in the quarrel which he
had been provoking for a week past, he would have
taken such an attitude in good part that is to say,
he would have found it natural and treated it naturally,

(02:04:21):
beaten her to wit, as every savage man has ever
done since the male subjugated the female. But Dyan's gentle,
unselfish reserve and perpetual activities on his behalf gave him
never an opening. So he watched her moodily jealously.

Speaker 2 (02:04:40):
Come. The secret is out.

Speaker 1 (02:04:41):
At last we have a name for the complaints. This
is of the primitive passions. It is one which we
share with or inherit from the brutes. A cat, a
lap dog, a parrot will sicken of jealousy, children, savages,
uneducated people, our semi educated fellow citizens, our new masters,

(02:05:04):
a subject to severe and protracted fits of this torturing disease.
We have known a working man, middle aged, of failing health,
and with a sickly wife and young family to support,
throw up a foreman's post of twenty eight shillings the week,
and begin life again upon seventeen as a common laborer,

(02:05:24):
from sheer jealousy of one of the gang under him,
whom he could not induce his firm to discharge without
a reason. Women are more liable to the malady than men,
because they have upon the whole less distractions for their minds.
A man can escape from the proximity of his enemy,
once possibly his friend. He can steep his mind in business,

(02:05:47):
in politics, in literature, in sport. A woman has her rival,
ever at her elbow, in her kitchen, in the nursery,
in the schoolroom, or next door. In the case of
poor pol Union, the position was reversed. It was he who,
with hardening muscles and strengthening passion, was debarred from healthy

(02:06:07):
and adequate physical exercise, and was fain to eat his
heart in bitterness of spirit, with an accusing conscience, ever
at his elbow, a housemate for which he had no name.
For the thing, like many other things, rheumatism, gravity, panic, terror, malaria,
et cetera, although Maleficent had not yet been separated, personified

(02:06:32):
and named. Picture him overlooking with the beady, deep set,
far sighted eyes of the savage, like an eagle, from
his eerie the doings of his jealously loved squaw A
half mile away and three hundred feet below. There she
had set that gin and half arose, her chirt knife

(02:06:52):
in one hand, her bow in the other, sudden as
the pounce of a lynx, and nothing in nature save
the stroke of ake, can be swifter. A man leapt
upon her from the scrub, Pullyun caught his breath, for
the enemy had her by the caross and must have
borne her down, had not his foot caught in a
trailing bower. Pumulus as it was, it was the nearest

(02:07:16):
thing in the world. For as he stumbled still fast
to her, the skewer at her throat snapped. He reeled
back with the cross. The woman was free. He was
at her again, but she doubled under his tossed up arm,
striking back and up as she did so, and getting
him in the armpit. As her husband thought, by some means,

(02:07:38):
she was at liberty, off and away, not along the glade,
but winding, swift and puzzlingly amid the tangling scrub of
which he knew every game track by heart. This was
the saving of her, as Pullyun saw and breathed again,
for two other hunters now up sprang from beside the
path which they had anticipated her flying feet would fall. Oh,

(02:08:01):
these seemed for a moment somewhat out of it, for
their quarry had doubled back and secured a lead but
they were hardened braves in the pink of condition, winter
hunters who seemed to know the valley. And once clear
of that patch of scrub, what would happen? There is
but one thing that can happen when an unarmed woman
is set upon by three armed men, unless indeed she

(02:08:24):
be helped. But how was dean to be helped? And
by whom by himself only? He smote his stiff knee
and yelped a short and very bitter laugh. Yes, the
girl must come to him for help at the last. Meanwhile,
she was playing the game, running her ring about the

(02:08:45):
thickets as a vixen does when roused. There was just
the off chance that she might throw her pursuers out
and get back to her earth unviewed. But with three men,
and such men, it was the poorest of chances, and
she was incurring the most outrageous risks. She had boasted
to him somewhat of her speed, and he had believed

(02:09:07):
that she was fleet for a woman. But what woman,
or what man, for the matter of that, could stand
up before three? She was heading down glen when he
lost sight of the chase, and every step would have
to be retraced and the double made in face of
a runner up, pressing for her all he was worth,
and flankers running wide to cut her off. When she turned,

(02:09:32):
he threw himself upon the cave floor and gnawed his
knuckles in impotent chagrin. She should not have turned, She
should have headed straight for him at once. They would
have stood out the siege together and died together. For
that was what it would have come to, as he
saw too clearly. As for his wife making a successful

(02:09:56):
stand anywhere, or under any circumstances, fighting it out with
that new thing of hers, the idea never occurred to
him once. During the long hours of his lonely vigil,
the shadows of the winter's day lengthened. The imprisoned man
had given up hope. His wife did not come, would

(02:10:17):
never come to him again. The husband's heart grew heavy
with the sorrow which settles down upon the watcher, whose
anxieties are over at last, whom the worst has befallen.
For himself, he did not particularly care. He had no
fear that she would give him away under torture. Dyan
would be staunched to the last of that, he was

(02:10:39):
assured doing her justice. Now that she was gone. He
had stores enough for another four months, and long before
that would be as sound a man again as ever
he was. But this cave would be a hateful place
without his squaw. Nor could he face the thought of
returning to his tribe without her, empty handed, with nothing

(02:11:02):
to show for his winter hunting. This was a humiliation
not to be borne, the sneering enquiries of his cousin
and rival, the wonder of his fellow braves, the eyes
of the women, no wife and no scalps, whether besieged
or no pullyune would stay back and avenge her? What

(02:11:24):
was she worth in little moon lives? He held up
all his ten fingers and solemnly gloomed upon them. Ten
should die for her if he lived not less so.

Speaker 2 (02:11:37):
The night wore.

Speaker 1 (02:11:40):
Then a stick cracked below in the darkness, and her signal,
the shrill whistle of the marmot, rang out. His heart leapt.
He gripped his axe and a stone for a downthrow.
She would be hard pressed to a surety, But why
did the fool creature make such a noise? Twas madness?

(02:12:02):
He hurpled to the lip of the rock platform and
craned over, peering down into the impenetrable dusk below, ready
for action, listening, eye, ear, and nostrilite stretch for news
of the whereabouts of his foes. But the only sounds
were the scrape of his squaw's moccasins and her hardly

(02:12:22):
taken breaths. How heavily she climbed, but she wounded. She
did not reply to his low spoken questions. She was
coming nearer, nearer. His eyes, accustomed to seeing in the
worst of lights, could make out her bare, unbandaged head
and shoulders. Her arms too, There seemed little the matter

(02:12:45):
with what of her he could see. Her cross was gone,
he had seen it go. She was still encumbered with
that silly bag of arrows, and the big bow drill
hampered her climbing, drawing her breath in gasps. She reached
the sill of the cave, crawled in, and sat mutely, panting,
her eyes shining glassily in her head. She seemed unharmed.

(02:13:10):
She was unharmed. It was wonderful, amazing now what had happened?
Why could not the creature speak? What of the chase?
Dayan still mute and with an open mouth drawn up
from the teeth, with the muscular contraction of extreme toil.
She unrolled and laid out before him in the dusk,

(02:13:32):
one two, three bloody scalps, each with the top knot
of a brave, raw, fresh stripped. Paulliun caught his breath
in with a harsh cry, whah, what, how where? But
the woman, squatting over her spoils, did not answer. She
had reached her farthest. She swayed, she leaned, she collapsed.

(02:13:57):
She tumbled forward, almost into his arms. The man drew
the bare skin over her. As she lay shuddering, whimpering.
He marveled to hear her long drawn sobbing in the darkness.
This was new, indeed, never had he known her to weep.
Presently she relaxed and slept. He watched her slumber, gnawing

(02:14:21):
a tortured lip, incredulous and convinced, exulting and humiliated, adoring
and furiously jealous by fits, what would come out of this?
Twas glorious, but twas absurdly disconcerting, wonderful, no doubt, past whooping,

(02:14:41):
but not to be put up with. At midnight, she
awoke with a start, sighed, once, rubbed her eyes, put
back her hair, pulled herself together and was a new creature.
Ashamed of her weakness, she silently got to her feet,
made up the The fire had.

Speaker 2 (02:15:00):
Cooked food for both.

Speaker 1 (02:15:03):
Pullyun watched her, would give her time when she had eaten.
Forth it came. She had led her pursuers over a
long and difficult line, hoping to throw them out, but Gawloo,
though less fleet than she, was, not to be shaken off.
In fact, he had pressed her hard and fired thrice

(02:15:26):
as the leading greyhound fires at his hair, whilst the
others running to point had headed off her attempts at doubling.
The men were in training, knew the country and thought
to wear her down by sprinting in succession. Again and
yet again had her turn of speed been the saving
of her. But she was getting a long way down

(02:15:49):
the glen, and the daylight held it would see her out.
Unless she changed her tactics in a little while, she
would be out of her country and for aught that
she knew in theirs. Then the game would be up.
So tightening her throat, she had made up her mind
and doubled right handedly, close across the line of Lomar,

(02:16:11):
whom she believed she had hurt. Taking the risk of
his asseguy at short range. Her judgment justified itself when
the hunter threw short with a gasp, and she slipped
past him and made her point a salient rock face
that she knew steep narrow, where she could neither be
overlooked nor outflanked. There as more than a very tall

(02:16:36):
spruce tree's height from the last stones of the screen
below her. She had chosen her ledge and stood at bay,
regulating her breath and schooling her swimming head for the
final tussle. I think those rocks were not wholly new
ground to thee, suggested the listener.

Speaker 2 (02:16:54):
I had been up.

Speaker 1 (02:16:54):
There before, three years back, when I was a girl.
Our old men called them the two Fangs, but the
tribe has renamed them they are the Hungry Boys, since
since something happened there which is not good to speak about.
She shot a glance over her shoulder to make sure
that the dead were not listening. Three of our unproved lads,

(02:17:16):
two half groans and a child, whilst burying, were driven
up that cleft by a wolf. They were not found
in time. The two boys must have eaten the little one, then,
who knows. Perhaps they fought with knives. They were found
up there dead with the bones, not a clean place
after dark. Surely your children went wide of it in

(02:17:39):
all lights. How then the boys I played with deared me.
Not one of them would do it. There was a
gnawed finger bone still in a crevice, so I knew
my footholds to day. Pullyun laid his hand upon his
mouth and perused this wife of his in the flicker
of the brands. There nothing in this by incident to

(02:18:01):
excite surprise a piteous tragedy. The coarse woof of savage
life is occasionally shot by such a crimson warp. His
mental vision was busy with this woman's adventure, picturing the tall,
splintered Egui springing sheer from its screen, left by its
one narrow chemine, leading to its one broad platform ledge

(02:18:26):
so far aloft there. Yes, he had realized the misson saying,
and could follow the woman's weary voice carrying on her story,
and could accompany her point by point. The pursuers had
seen that she was at the top of a blind
koolwar from which was no escape upward, saw too that

(02:18:47):
the overhang protected her from anything sent down from above,
saw too that the rock was absolutely sound. And that
she had nothing to throw a point in their favor. Then,
since daylight was waning, they determined to put the thing through.
The camp dogs, good wolves, carrosses and sleeping robes were

(02:19:09):
hours away. There was neither fuel nor water upon that
screen beneath the cliff. After all, strong runner as she was,
this was only a girl, unarmed and probably spent.

Speaker 2 (02:19:25):
Up.

Speaker 1 (02:19:25):
Came the leading couple boldly and close together, and only
when fully committed to the business, recognized the trap. The girl,
who by this time recovered her wind, held her fire
until the leading climbers topknot showed twenty feet below her ledge.

Speaker 2 (02:19:42):
She knew him for gauloo.

Speaker 1 (02:19:45):
He turned his head, saw her leaning above him, handling
the absurd bent stick which she had carried throughout the run,
and getting his breath made her a mock offer of marriage,
the same bitter little jeer that he had cast after
her thrice during the chase. As he made it, he
laid his head back upon his shoulder, the better at

(02:20:07):
the lea at his helpless victim now safely under his hand,
And even as he bared his dog tooth, a little
short light asse guy was sticking deeply beneath his ear.
The stricken man plucked hard at the shaft with one hand.
The bone head was barbed and he could not draw it.

(02:20:29):
He uttered no cry, possibly from shame, but probably from
inability to articulate, and his fellow climber, Pungu, just below
him in the cheminee, getting no reply from him, and
craning out to learn why his leader had stopped, knew
not what had happened before a second shaft was driven

(02:20:50):
hard and deep between collar bone and shoulder blade into
his own lung, which brought him too to a stand,
with his mouth and nose full of blood. Each man
knew that he was hard hit, but knew not of
the other's hurt. Each felt the immediate need of getting down,
but neither could speak nor warn the man below him

(02:21:13):
to vacate the footholds, to give ground to a young squaw.
Was despicable. Both held on grimly, doggedly, and too long
lo mar the lowest came up the cleft, haltingly, crippled
by that stab in the armpits that we know of,
and which he had known for hours past, to his

(02:21:34):
bitter cost point of the master Girl's knife, whilst making
a quite inconsiderable puncture had touched one of the nerves
of the brachial plexus. His right arm felt heavy and numb,
and was giving him exquisite agony, which he was bearing
as mutely as a wolf. He knew by trial that

(02:21:55):
he could not throw, but thought he could climb. His
honor was engaged to be known henceforth as the warrior
who was lamed by a squaw. Not he He saw
that the leaders had stopped, and without visible cause. Although
Pongou two spear's lens above him was coughing fast and hard,

(02:22:18):
he could not see their wounds, nor the weapons which
had caused them. But the patter of falling blood from
the severed artery in Gawloo's throat warned him of something amiss.
Then an assa guy clipped past his own ear very close. Phew,
What was this? Whence had this shielingx weapons? Was this

(02:22:40):
and old horns of hers? And had she led them
up this cleft to spear them with javelins stored for
the occasion. His position, almost exactly beneath his leaders, had
its advantages. Their bodies screened him. He offered the smallest
of marks, but a fear suddenly gripped him, bred by

(02:23:01):
the silence and immobility of those leaders. What if one
of them should fall? He hailed them by name, but
elicited no reply. I must get from under them, while
I may thought he had attempted a traverse, a ticklish
piece of work for a man so hampered. If he
could but escape from this cheminee, this death trap and

(02:23:25):
win around the buttress to the left, he would, as
he reckoned, be under cover. He made the move, and
not a.

Speaker 2 (02:23:32):
Moment too soon. Why oh why had.

Speaker 1 (02:23:36):
Not one or the other of his mates fought his
way up within swing of a tomahawk. There is no
throwing to be done while scaling a vertical fissure tomahawk. Indeed, Gauloo,
being by this time in exceeding evil case and growing
blind and weak, dropped his hatchet, and a moment later,

(02:23:57):
with never a cry of warning, let to go all together.
His knees buckled, his body bent and down. He came
upon Pongou and took him to the bottom with him.
There they lay their life's business, accomplished, the matter disposed
of so far as they were concerned. Then Lomar, for

(02:24:22):
almost the first time in his life new fear. Yet
it no more unnerved him than the proximity of the
leading hound relaxes the sinews of a failing fox. Desperately
yet cautiously, he wrought to put that salient overhang of
cliff between him and the Master Girl. It was but

(02:24:43):
a matter of a spear's length. If he gained it,
he was safe. He had paused in his climb, as
who would not, when the bodies of his friends rushed
down past him. Quickly he withdrew his eyes from them
where they lay. Luke too long upon such a sight
does a climber no good, And in another step he

(02:25:05):
had won shelter and comparative safety. When, how say it,
his left arm, the one upon which he chiefly depended,
was pinned down to its shoulder by a small but
astonishingly hard thrown assa guy. Oh, the pang of it
and the ignominy of its being twice maimed and held

(02:25:25):
up by a squaw. He gnashed his teeth, hearing the clear,
triumphant laugh of the Master Girl above him, and then
in a wink that laugh had changed to a thrilling,
brief scream, and something light came bounding down the fissure
the bent stick the girl had held in hand when

(02:25:46):
she crossed him. He must glance up, knowing his wound,
but not yet understanding his luck, nor perceiving that his
enemy was already disarmed, and saw that enemy in a
very close place. For she, whilst laughing, had been overcome
by one of those revulsions which lie in wait for
the overstrung. Her desperate exertions, her desperate risk followed by

(02:26:12):
such unimaginable success, had shaken her. She had leaned too
far over watching the effects of her shaft, and had
almost followed it. And oh, husband, let the master Girl
tell the adventure in her own words. Then, for the
second time I so nearly gave up. The first time

(02:26:34):
was when Gauloo made his last sprint for me. My
heart seemed bursting, My legs shook as I raced he
got to within throw, I felt all up my back.

Speaker 2 (02:26:45):
What was coming? This is the end?

Speaker 1 (02:26:48):
I thought, But his hatchet struck my quiver. Then I
took fresh heart. I remembered thee my man shall not
starve like a sick badger in his earth. Moon. Help
my man, I prayed, and new strength came to my
legs and Gaulo dropped back blown. It was after that

(02:27:10):
that I doubled, and all came right. But now for
the second time, I thought all was over. I had overbalanced.
I stumbled. I let fall my bow and my last arrow,
and came down twice my height, scrambling and clutching hard.
When I stopped and my eyes cleared, I was in

(02:27:31):
a bad place and could find no footholds for ever
so long. But again I thought of thee, and again
I cried to my totem and lo at. Once my
right foot was on something, and I was safe, safe,
echoed paullyon, hoarsely, catching his breath, with all my weapons

(02:27:51):
at the foot of the cliff, and that half crippled
wolf between thee and them, was there no scraping past him.
It was not to be done. He was well placed
astride the outer angle of the buttress with both feet firm.
But the only holds for getting down that chemine lay
close under his hand, and he knew it. I worked

(02:28:14):
down to within my length of him, but it would
not do. I had to return to my ledge and wait,
and he he made mouths at me and said all
the worse that he knew. No, I will not tell
you what he said. This is his scalp.

Speaker 2 (02:28:29):
Is not that enough?

Speaker 1 (02:28:31):
Nay? But I will hear what said he. First he
fixed his eyes upon mine and would have charmed me down.
And when that would not serve, he must show me
point by point what must be the end, this hold
and that hold, and then the one next to him,
and that as I must needs come down feet foremost

(02:28:54):
he would set his hand or his teeth in me,
for he was too badly hurt to get down himself.
And it was all come down to me, my little love,
And thou and I will go gently to the bottom together,
and thou shalt sleep long, oh long, and soundly, very
soundly in my arms. Hey, but he said that blurted

(02:29:18):
the husband, which did say, was his scalp?

Speaker 2 (02:29:22):
What matter?

Speaker 1 (02:29:23):
Nay? That must not spoil it. It was almost the
last thing he did say. Oh, but we were thirsty,
he and I I sucked the rock and cold we
were cold. I could see him shaking. Is he cold now?
Dost you think? I hope he is very very cold?

(02:29:43):
And then asked the husband, recovering himself and prosaically detached
from the possible sensations, of a dead enemy. But Deyan paused, Yes,
what then, for there seemed no way out of this stalemate.
The man might pulling on there until the woman above
him perished of the night's wind, frost, of exhaustion or thirst,

(02:30:07):
or made some despairing attempt and met her death. So
but what of the other the brute denizens of the glen?
The rapid movement of a chase had the stimulating influence
upon whatever is within sight or hearing. Have we not
seen the apparition of a pack of hounds in full cry,

(02:30:27):
set a whole countryside in motion, horses at grass, calves, colts, sows,
pigs of all sizes breaking bounds. Yea, the heavy footed
Wessex laborer, school children, the curate upon his rounds, and
the village postman upon his swept out of their several

(02:30:47):
orbits and drawn into the tale of the passing comet. Yes,
these four racing figures had been seen, and noted, and
followed as far as appetites prompted or means of progression allowed.
A lean, lone wolf with a festering forepad struck the
trail and limped on at a steady, questing three legged

(02:31:10):
trot in hopes that the end of the matter might
provide something toothsome. The rapid movements of parties of men
had been known to have such an effect even at
that time as since, but the chief watchers and followers
had been the fowls of the air. Every mountain peak
had then, and many have still a planetary system of

(02:31:34):
birds of prey. In clear weather, these swing in circles
at unimaginable heights, scrutinizing in every turn every radiating glen,
and remarking all that moves Therein Yes, man and beast,
each flight tormented mule, new Ye, ned ibex kid and

(02:31:55):
German botanist climbing economically without a guide is marked, scrutinized,
summed up, and kept under day long observation, and his
probabilities of life assessed upon certain grim actuarial tables known
only to the tribes who seek their meat from God.
You had not thought it, you scarce credit it, have

(02:32:19):
never seen them, But they have seen you, And in
the oat, Pyrenee or the atlas, your every step has
been marked, from your rising up to your lying down.
Without counting the buzzards, which are chiefly concerned with mice.
There are at least three kinds of watchers of the
world below. First, and most in evidence is the griffon,

(02:32:44):
a lordly creature to the eye, with vast, square cut
wings and a small, wooly head sunk into a snow
white ruff.

Speaker 2 (02:32:53):
A vulture.

Speaker 1 (02:32:54):
He with a vultures appetite for carrion and for nothing else.
His interest in a man begins when that man is
in the act of falling, and becomes urgent only in
the case of the fall proving fatal. The eagle is
smaller but more powerful. He too is a carrion feeder,
but will carry off grouse, marmot and red deer calf

(02:33:18):
In hard weather. Scottish eagles will pack and destroy a
full grown hind, whilst the larger race of Tibet is
credited with killing wolf in fair fight. But the fear
of man is on him. He learned it long ago,
and there is no record of this bird attacking even
a small boy. Sooth to say he is both cowardly

(02:33:39):
and stupid, though all glorious to see. Last, and most formidable,
because incalculable, is the great bearded vulture or lamagaya, the
jipayete of the gavangny iiard hunters a sly ruffian who
makes up in brains what he lacks in weapons. This

(02:34:00):
sort is as fond of carrying as the others, and
has ways of his own for providing it. The master
girl and her pursuers had not run three bow shots
before the eye of a watcher was upon them. By
the time they had gone a mile, the whole planetary
system of the nearest peak was disturbed, and before the

(02:34:21):
girl had taken sanctuary, a ring of big birds was
circling half a mile above her. This might mean business.
Her climbing was watched by the Griffins without excitement. Their
turn might come later, but had not come yet. It
was the bearded vulture which dropped out of the blue

(02:34:42):
in bold spirals and marked the four humans disappear into
that cheminee. Then if a bird of prey, ever swears
he swore from a man climbing between the straight walls
of a cleft, is of no use to him. When
the two bodies fell, there was commotion. The Griffins shut

(02:35:03):
their wings and plunged two thousand feet in a few seconds,
but clapped on the brakes and bought up again with
the wind rattling in their great trab quills, for the
bodies had not rebounded upon the scree, but lay close
under the rock, where something else might fall. Patience, brothers. Moreover,

(02:35:25):
there were two living figures yet upon that rock, and
these the Griffins held in fear. They climbed the sky
again and waited on, wheeling narrowly and near. Not so
the bearded vulture, playing a lone hand and pursuing the
traditional tactics of his race, he skimmed the summit of

(02:35:45):
that egui and took stock of its capabilities. Two humans
were still within the cleft. The upper was well sheltered
from above and on both sides. He turned short to
keep her in his eye, a wicked crimson eye. It
was at that moment she faltered, slipped, and was almost gone.

(02:36:08):
Instantly he dipped and edged in, but she recovered herself
out he went again. Whilst turning, he once more caught
sight of the lower figure. He had lost it for
a while. It had shifted, had emerged from the cleft,
and was clinging to an unexposed projecting buttress overhung from above,

(02:36:30):
safe from a downright stroke, but from a side flick
eh the human moved slowly. It went short upon one
of its fore legs, it seemed, and was very lame,
very tired, and unsure of its footing. Meanwhile, the two
humans in question knew nothing of the scrutiny of which

(02:36:51):
they were the subjects, being otherwise and fully engaged. Besides,
griffins may guide a hunter to a kill, but dignify
naught else. The presence of the real danger had clean
escaped them. For the bearded vulture is less given to
soaring than to gliding along a cliff face, close in,

(02:37:12):
ready for the emergencies of anything that moves. Thereon, the
light had begun to go, it was abominably cold. A
flurry of small snow found its way into the cleft
and ran in little round dry pellets upon the naked
back of the master girl, crouching for warmth, like a

(02:37:33):
hare in her form, and hugging herself against the strong
shudders which ran through her. To have fought her battle,
and to have so nearly won, and to lose life
and all from such a childish blunder. If she had
but the smallest of weapons, a skinning knife, a bodkin,
she would take her chance. But the bodkin had gone

(02:37:56):
when the cross went, and her knife had been wrenched
from her hand when she struck. There was not one
little wee loose stone within reach. She had tried them all,
even to breaking her nails, and that wretch Lomar down there,
not six bowslengths away, lamed as he was, would be

(02:38:17):
girding at her all the time, breaking off at wiles
to work desperately at that crippling arrow. It was certainly
loosening one barb held, But such was the fellow's courage
that he would tear it out yet, and then until
it drew. He could not get back into the cleft,

(02:38:37):
for his pinned up hand was upon that side. When
he rested from his bouts of self torture, he indemnified
himself by assailing her with insults and taunts, governing his voice,
lest she should guess how far he was gone. She
did guess, and with chattering teeth, gave him fully as

(02:38:58):
good as she took. It was very pitiful, inexpressibly vulgar,
This nose to nose pitched battle for primeval billings. Gait Lo,
did ye think that passionate hate first found expression in
our time? He played upon her shaken nerves. Could she

(02:39:18):
not see those child eating boys sitting at her either elbow,
their reddened teeth a work click click to which Sally
de Yan, stroking her own hair and pointing down to
his rejoined that his scalp should hang from her belt.
Ere the night with the top knots of the other
two and army. I have no knife, lomar, Shall I

(02:39:41):
find it under thine arm Or am I to borrow
thine for our little business? With other like endearments? Pity
them both. In the middle of one of her reposts,
the girl choked for the last barb had given. His
arm was free, nodding to her mutely. He was well
nigh sick with agony. The man brought his hand down.

(02:40:04):
He stripped the feathers, biting, the gut, whipping, and took
the barbs in his teeth. He had but to draw
the knock through his forearm and would be not only free,
but weaponed. He drew inch by inch it came he
had it in his hand. Now, my hearts, I begin

(02:40:25):
wait for me, my dove, my love, I am.

Speaker 2 (02:40:28):
Coming for thee.

Speaker 1 (02:40:30):
He shook the new snow from his ears, shifted his
hold lifted a foot, still grimly nodding his unspoken threat,
and next moment was reeling out into empty air, whilst
a huge bird, which had dealt the buffet, staggered past
and plunged. Then, opening wide wings, regained its balance and

(02:40:54):
swept short zigzags down down in pursuit of its falling booty.
But the master girl beat her little fists upon the
stone and wept. I would have killed him, Yet she
wailed in that bitterness of spirit which overcomes the bravest
when the ideal perfection of some all but achieved success

(02:41:16):
has been marred at the ultimate moment.

Speaker 2 (02:41:21):
It is always so in life.

Speaker 1 (02:41:23):
Napoleon, instead of yielding his sword to the conquering Britain,
rattles off from his last battlefield in a well horsed
calech Nor did every friendship strike her colors at Trafalgar,
Nor did the Allies enter Sevastopol on the night of
the Alma, as they might have done so easily. Nor

(02:41:44):
did kitchen A catch the gallant and adroit de vet.
Her chaplet lacks the full foliage that is accorded to
the victor in fiction. Only bear not too hardly upon
her ye who are proudly and perfectly straight forward in
all speech and action, if I confess upon her behalf

(02:42:05):
that in after life the Master Girl made not quite
so much of the bearded Vulture's intervention as you might
have done. She had achieved an unheard of and almost
incredible feet, and knew it, but now came that deadly
reaction the shape strength was ebbing from her. Would her

(02:42:26):
luck hold? She had no fear of her feathered ally him.
She craning far over, had watched take season of his kill,
and then, as the light went suddenly spread vast wings
and racket tail, and sail forth across the darkening scree
and black of forest spires to some roosting cranny of

(02:42:48):
his own. Her knees gave way beneath her, her wrists
jerked as she let herself down from the ledge to Jut,
and from Jut to cranny of that cheminee of death.
Her eyes were set in her head, and her jaws
cramped with a tongue drying agu of fear and falling
in a word, she was as nearly forespent as a

(02:43:11):
girl of sixteen may be, and has a right to be,
who has run as she had run, fought as she
had fought, and fasted as she had fasted, and was
still fasting. At last, after what agonies of apprehension and endurance,
the tension upon her fingers might be relaxed. For one

(02:43:32):
foot was upon the first loose stone of the scree
its fellow found something soft and chilly beneath it. At
the touch of a dead enemy, the master Girl's eyes
were enlightened, as if with food the rights of victory
must be observed. She fell to panting thickly as she

(02:43:53):
cut and tugged, not for the horror of her task,
but from sheer exhaustion, and whilst rising to her feet
to utter the three whoops which the occasion demanded, still
given at the breaking up of a fox, and more
ceremoniously with winded horn as the hallaw lie at the
death of the German Stag, found her legs bending and

(02:44:16):
dropped to sleep upon the stones between her silent foes.
So have men fallen asleep upon the rack when the
screws were eased. But the porter's soul, which seldom sleeps,
would allow her no longer respite. Much remained to do,
and was she not still in peril before long, she

(02:44:39):
suddenly threw the gathering snow off her and glanced around keenly.
The night wind blowing up the crevice was tainted with
what four green shining eyes were watching her. She sniffed
fox and contemptuously drew a stone, and ere its rattle
had ceased, felt her scalp crawl.

Speaker 2 (02:45:02):
For over the.

Speaker 1 (02:45:02):
Spruce spires traveled the drear anti human menace of the wolf.
Her totem was obscured, and for once seemed far. But
there was another resource near at hand and familiar, if
only only it were propitious. Those malignant boy ghosts whose

(02:45:23):
gibbering squeaks and rustlings had added untold horrors to the
last hour of her darkling vigil upon the ledge. These,
for some cause, had spared her. Might she not entreat
their continued goodwill. She had known and played with all
three before her promotion to the tribal governorship. There was

(02:45:45):
nothing between herself and the elder two. The Eton child
did not count. Doubtless they would be hungry. Oh how
her own vitals pinched quick then an offering savagely desperately,
she hacked the hands from Lomar, and it had been
impossible before her sleep bestowed them upon a ledge. Some

(02:46:09):
five bows lens up that dark ascent. Pennu labgornie, Here
is meat. See I bring you food. I bring it
in peril of my life. Ye who kept yourselves from
the gray wolf, keep me this night? She was down
again and tore herself from the place. Partake she would not,

(02:46:33):
though nature cried out for food. The brave of her
race would have had no qualms but a squaw, no feebly,
and with her spirit riding her reluctant flesh as a
ruthless rider urges a falling horse, did Deyan set her
face upon that ghost guarded journey up the valley, Nor

(02:46:56):
did wolf Lynx or worse molest her. Her foes were
the tormenting thoughts which vulturelike wheeled closely around a spirit
encumbered by a weakened body. Was it worth it? Her
man had grown cold and silent and strange to her twice.
The agony of wounded affection, super added to crushing bodily fatigue,

(02:47:20):
brought her to a stand beneath dark boughs at some
rougher gradients. Then, with shut eyes and chin, driven hard
against a laboring bosom she fought it out. The nurse
spirit triumphed. If I lie down and sleep here, I
shall not awake again, and he will die, or at

(02:47:41):
best be a lame man for his life. Then, lifting
her face again, she would draw a deep breath and
set her jaw to endure the anguish of walking. And so,
by a series of shortening spurts, reeling and rocking, she
reached the foot of the face. But it was a

(02:48:02):
dog weary girl without one spark of the pride of
victory alight within her, who crawled in over the cave
sill end of chapter five, chapter six of The Master Girl,
a romance by Ashton Hilliers. This LibriVox recording is in

(02:48:27):
the public domain. Renunciations after the recital, the woman flagged
again and presently could hardly keep her eyes open. At
a sign from her man, she lay down and was
dead asleep, almost before she had drawn up her knees,
in the posture assumed by the sleeping savage all the

(02:48:49):
world over, the anti natal position in which the predynastic
Egyptians buried their dead. But Pullyune could not sleep. He
had passed through every phase of mental agony, had spent
a long day at the torture stake of suspense and anticipation,
and had been released from it to find himself confronted

(02:49:09):
by a crisis in his domestic relations. He understood only
too well what had happened since the world and wiving began,
was that ever such a woman was there, ever such
a predicament for the husband of a woman. Use and want,
and the immemorial practice of his own and all other
tribes had fixed the relative positions of the sexes. This

(02:49:34):
man believed, as firmly as did the apostle Paul, that
the man was made first, and was the head of
the woman, who was provided for him for his comfort
and use by his goddess, the son, and over whom
he the man was bound to exercise the rights of
mastery and lordship to the very fullest extent. Whilst young

(02:49:55):
and comely, the wife was a valuable possession. But when
stringy and past work and child bearing, it had n't
till recently been a question, in times of scarcity whether
she might not be eaten. That the sun disc men
had recently decided against the older use is a point
in favor of the sun disc men which we their

(02:50:17):
descendants may score to their credit, the Fuegians, at the
time of Charles Darwin's visit still occasionally dined upon their grandmother's.
As you may read in the Voyage of the Beagle,
as to conceding to one of the subject sex equal rights.
The thing was extra revolutionary. It was indeed inconceivable. It

(02:50:39):
was outside the region of discussion. But what was this
that had happened here? In this chance begun housekeeping? The
whole matter had been turned topsy turvy. The moccasins were
on contrary feet, The hatchets was in the wrong hand.
He had come out to capture a wife, and a
wife had captured him. He had broken his leg, and

(02:51:01):
she had mended it.

Speaker 2 (02:51:03):
Twice.

Speaker 1 (02:51:04):
He had been attacked by a bear, and twice she not.
He had beaten it off, killing it, actually killing the monster.
Had the second encounter think of it? Who ever heard
the like on that occasion, He the man had borne
himself stoutly and as a brave. He had faced his

(02:51:26):
foe axe in hand, without hope, and had made no moan,
and would have taken his mauling and his death without
a whimper. Thus, had he preserved his self respect, had
participated in the fight, and had, in some roundabout fashion
come to persuade himself that the skin was his, and

(02:51:46):
that the necklace of claws and teeth which was now
around his neck had a right to be there. He
did not sit comfortably as yet, but comfort and assurance
would have come in time. Never fear, did not the
Prince Regent assert so frequently that as Major Brown he
had fought at Mont Saint Jean, that at length, as
George the Fourth, His gracious majesty related the story with

(02:52:09):
embellishments at the Waterloo banquet, and appealed to Wellington himself
for substantiation twas I gave the order up guards an
atom you heard me, Arthur. Such a lack is poor
human nature in these latter days, nor was it more
voracious in the days of ignorance. Yes, Paullune had begun

(02:52:32):
to believe that he had killed the bear, But who
killed the three braves whose raw scalps lay upon the
cave floor? Those three scalps were another guess matter, a
different story altogether. There was no straight or even plausible
manner of accounting for them. He saw no way of

(02:52:53):
persuading himself now or in the future that he had
had any hand in the taking of them. In a word,
they were his wife's, every single hair of them, not his,
alas not his in a word, this poor, ignorant, savage
man was all to seek in the law of modern officialism.

(02:53:16):
The whole art of assumption was hid from him, by
which I mean the mental and spiritual capacity to appropriate
to one's own peculiar credit not only the results of
another man's courage, luck, or capacity, but the actual performance itself.
This is the recognized modern practice. The pupil paints or plans,

(02:53:38):
the master signs the drawings and takes the commission. The
devil devils. The leader wins the case. The c iv
storms Baviann's kloof the alderman of his ward receives the
wall medal. The stunt Sahib, squattering through bottomless mud, organizes
the new annexation. His chief down the base under a punker,

(02:54:01):
gets the thanks of the governor general. This is how
we do it today. They did it otherwise, in days
when the all seeing sun was believed to shine with
approval upon the sayer of the thing, that is, but
to hide her face from the lyre and the sneak
and the tribesman who stole the axe, or the honor
of another. So poor, foolish Pullyuon gnawed his knuckles for

(02:54:26):
long dark hours, wishing that his wife and he were dead,
And but for a soul of goodness in things evil,
a red savage for one, might e'en have brought his
wish to the birth by braining the woman as she slept,
and subsequently pitching himself.

Speaker 2 (02:54:42):
Off the crag.

Speaker 1 (02:54:44):
He dreed his weird for the lee lang watches of
the coldest and blackest night that ever he had known,
colder and blacker than those which he had worn through
after the breaking of his leg, and before the master
girl had found and taken possession of him. He would
say in the after years, and did plainly believe that

(02:55:06):
during that night watch there were strange visitants to the cave,
that two birds flew in and out of the darkness
and sat with him. The one upon his right hand
was a ptarmigan of the scree winter, white and soft,
plucking sweet things, gentle things about the sleeping girl. The
one upon his left hand a raven of the cliff,

(02:55:28):
blacker than the midnight or the shadows of the cave
croaking evil things, showing the poor, hardly bestead savage, all
the shame and the ignominy, and the laughing scorn of
the homecoming to his tribe. But the longest and blackest
of nights wares at last, and the dawn streak shot aloft,

(02:55:51):
and the gold gray peaks took fire and glowed like
rosy brands amid the ash of a hearth. Then, while
thus the dawn brightened, and the upper ranges were dyed
a color that had no name to the watcher, nor
has gained one yet, for it is not the heart
of a rose, nor saffron, nor salmon, nor hath it

(02:56:12):
an earthly counterpart. It was whilst the heavens above him
were declaring the glory of God, and the firmament showing
his handiwork, that the last struggle took place. The tender
clucking mastered the dull croaking. The raven stalked forth to
the cave sill and took winger down.

Speaker 2 (02:56:33):
The gulf of air.

Speaker 1 (02:56:34):
But thrice the little snow white Ptarmigan tossed himself aloft
into the keen clear morning, and thrice he came circling
down again to the cave sill, with stiffly bent wing
and inflated throat, singing his song of praise to the
Lord who had made and warmed him. And then he

(02:56:55):
too was gone, and the watcher was alone. Then, pulling
under the stirring of a new impulse, did a very
strange and wonderful thing. Taking the trophy from his own neck,
he laid it across the throat of the sleeping woman.
Her eyes opened, her hand went up. She felt sore

(02:57:16):
and understood. She arose to her knees. A new and
beautiful light was in her eyes. A great and pathetic
awe had fallen upon her. No thou shalt not do it. No,
how shall my husband go home to his people bare necked,

(02:57:36):
whilst his wife walks behind him wearing these?

Speaker 2 (02:57:41):
I will?

Speaker 1 (02:57:42):
Groaned the man. You shall not, You dare not. You
cannot be silent, I say I will, He groaned more harshly,
Catching up scalps and necklace, She cast everything at his
feet and bent, groveling before him.

Speaker 2 (02:58:00):
What are these to me?

Speaker 1 (02:58:02):
I want but thee. But to a brave they are
more than father, mother, wife, or life itself. She did
not speak in scorn, but from what she had seen
and known.

Speaker 2 (02:58:13):
Yet it hurt.

Speaker 1 (02:58:16):
Stop cease, be still, he cried abruptly, and very fiercely.
For how shall a man fight himself if his wife
take sides with his lower nature against the higher. The
woman did not understand. She thought him enraged. She knew
not why. But the jealousy which had poisoned their life

(02:58:37):
for weeks past, was cause he No, plainly, he must
be humored.

Speaker 2 (02:58:43):
That is right, Be master. What am I thy.

Speaker 1 (02:58:47):
Slave and a little moon girl?

Speaker 2 (02:58:49):
No more?

Speaker 1 (02:58:50):
Thou hast never beaten me? Yet beat me? Now take
the things, let us be as we were. Yes, with
a dead lift of self renancyation, I will break my boat.
She reached for the weapon where it lay. What it's
meant for her? Only an inventor, and a successful inventor
can tell to allay the unreasoning jealousy the rooted conservatism

(02:59:16):
of her husband. This red girl would have put out
of her life the new thing that she had thought out,
brought to the birth, perfected and tested, at the risk
of her very heart's blood. As her hand closed upon
the wood, a larger and stronger hand closed over both.
Her lover silently drew her to himself. End of Chapter

(02:59:41):
six chapter seven of The Master Girl, a romance by
Ashton Hilliers. This sliprivox recording is in the public domain. Short,
somewhat dry, but importance. We must compress into three or

(03:00:05):
four pages the labors and results of four busy months,
during which, by frequent experiment and incessant practice, these two
young creatures worked at and worked out the mechanics of
their discovery. It was an opportunity of almost incalculable infrequency.
Consider I beseech you, your savage. A man of a

(03:00:28):
hunting tribe lives normally from hand to mouth, his game
abundant and his hunting successful. He gorges to repletion, and
sleeps long and heavily, his food scarce. He hunts the harder,
sleeps lightly, eats sparingly, and has in prosperity no incentive,

(03:00:48):
and in adversity, no leisure, pro protracted and systematic experiment.
Even if he should find the impulse within himself and
be upheld by the applause and cooperation of his tribe,
it is doubtful if the combination of rare and delicate
qualities which go to the making of an inventor present

(03:01:08):
themselves once in a thousand generations of savage men, and
how much rare a still must be that general recognition
from his fellows, without which a savage can effect nothing permanent.
Even the privacy, which is hardly less essential than sympathy
for a tentative effort is wanting. For a savage lives

(03:01:29):
in public, and the initial failures of the inventor, not
seldom in our own times, expose him to the pitiless
raillery of his contemporaries, a blighting, sterilizing ridicule to which
the child nature of primitive man was certainly not less
sensitive than are the natures of monkeys, dogs and children.

(03:01:51):
The steadfast mind that can ignore and outstay the jibes
of neighbours is not too common today, and was probably
very rare in indeed, in that remote and ancient world
of which my tale tells that an armorer should work
behind locked doors, and that is his folly. To show
unfinished work to a bairn are excellent adages, but savages

(03:02:15):
are all burns. Indeed, among primitive peoples, the environment is
so unfavorable for invention that one might almost say as
a savage never invents anything, and even in the case
of his stumbling upon a promising novelty. Its unfamiliarity condemns
it in the eyes of his comrades, if not in

(03:02:36):
his own. Only in the excessively rare event of a
reforming chief can any advance be registered. And how seldom
does such a prodigy arise. The stars in their courses
fight against such an avatar. We, the English of the
twentieth century, are take us all round as open to

(03:02:58):
reason and as receptive to the new idea there's any
folk upon this earth, or any that's ever trod it.
What is more, we are accustomed to reforms. We await
them with expectancy, if not with equanimity. We know full
well that certain of our venerable institutions stand in need
of tinkering. But we never dream that the impulse shall

(03:03:22):
come from above. Codifying or land transfer, Simplifying Lord Chancellor,
or reforming or unifying archbishop is incredible. The processes by
which such men climb to their posts disable their minds
from criticizing a system which has justified itself in their persons.

(03:03:43):
Nor is it likely that a satum will be impatient
of a state of affairs which has landed him at
the summit of his ambitions.

Speaker 2 (03:03:51):
Peter the Great.

Speaker 1 (03:03:52):
Comes but once in an eon. Here, however, in this
snowbound glen, we're just that assemblage of condition which stimulate
and protect the inventor whilst perfecting his invention. The store
of frozen bear meat secured leisure. There had been sufficient
initial success to encourage continued experiments. The companionship of two

(03:04:16):
united Hearts provided the needful sympathy, Nor was the touch
of emulation wanting. The August mountains kept the ring their
snowy silence, excluding the hehores of jealous ignorance. Heavens, how
these children worked, size, material, method of use, the best

(03:04:38):
position trajectories. Everything was an open question. Everything had to
be mastered by trial, by competition, by comparison. Observed there
was absolutely no past, no tribal law to handicap or guide.
How they chattered as to arrows now, should they head

(03:04:59):
them with bone, with stone? How fledged, how straightened? Of
what length this brought on the bow, its size, its weight,
its parent tree, which elm ash or Cornell pullyun leaned
to something small and short handy for woodwork, but after
being consistently outshot by longer weapons of the master girls, choosing,

(03:05:23):
propelled by a longer bow, gave way after some sulking.
He was by way of learning, and so was she,
For never again during those four months did she shoot
her best in his presence or to his knowledge. Thenceforward
she would essay her longest flights in private, and found

(03:05:46):
that the extreme range which contented her man was far
from being the limit of her own bow. But this
knowledge she kept to herself. Pullyun was as yet a
poor walker, but his infirmity in no way wise hindered
his archery. Rather did it help, in that it tied
him to the butts his industry. His zeal to excel

(03:06:09):
were tremendous, and there was reason that he should toil
terribly to perfect himself in this novel art, before presenting
himself again to his tribe. He had by now determined
that Deyan's earnest intercession, and as the reasoned results of
a couple of months watching of his shafts, to discard

(03:06:29):
his spears. It was a momentous decision. Who shall say
what it meant to the war chief of a small tribe,
hard pressed by stronger and better armed neighbors. Conceive then
this human pair mere youngsters, according to our reckoning, cut
off from the world, applying every faculty which they possessed

(03:06:52):
to the study of their art. Doubt not that when
once they had come to an agreement as to details,
progress was consistent and rapid. And as week by week
their smaller and yet smaller marks were stricken at lengthened ranges,
their exultation rose and hardened a solid confidence. So wore

(03:07:15):
the days and the months of winter. End of chapter
seven Chapter eight of The Master Girl, a romance by
Ashton Hilliers. This libriyvox recording is in the public domain.

(03:07:38):
The flitting and the forerunner, Deyan, we must be going,
and thy leg ah, yes, but stronger or weaker we
must go, or there will be no legs of mine
or of thine to go upon dreams. Again, that's hair.
The man nodded sagely and swept to the white waist
below the cave with apprehensive eyes. There was nothing to

(03:08:01):
be seen. A delaying spring had hardly made itself evident.

Speaker 2 (03:08:05):
At their height.

Speaker 1 (03:08:07):
The Lamagayas, in a cleft high overhead, were feeding a
single clamorous youngster, a fat, downy chick. But the Lamagueya
lays its egg. In the last days of the old year,
the ravens were harder to work upon their nest. The
wool was in winter coat of stone buck. The first
green egg would be laid within the weak, for March

(03:08:30):
was wearing. According to our modern calendar. The stream had
begun to trickle. The water oosels were at work, but
the larch was still untasseled, and not a flower had
yet broken the snow crust, not even the fringed purple
soldanella or the small pale crocuses. At the edges of
the drifts. The passes would still be piled deep with

(03:08:53):
soft new falls. The crossing would be a desperate business.
As Pullyune knew very well, such a feat had never
been a sayed so early within human memory. All crossings
and such were rare events, had ever been made in
the late autumn, when the snows were hard. Yet he
was in a fever to be gone, And the woman knew, why,

(03:09:17):
Thy little moons will make an early start of it.
Some of them at least will be up here presently
looking for their lost braves. I buried them deeply, many
stones did I roll down over them, said the girl, gravely,
thinking her own thoughts. But their dogs good wolves will
find them. Never doubt, remarked Poullion. It was bad luck

(03:09:40):
thy not killing their dogs the same night. Nay, I
do not blame thee Thou hadst run far and fast
and fought bravely wonderfully. It makes my heart laugh to
think of one woman fighting three braves and bringing away
their scalps. Yes, I own thou wast tired out all

(03:10:01):
the same. It was against us, and is against us
still that those three dogs were left to gnaw through
their leashes and get away down to the tribe Masterless,
they will be brought up again and laid on and followed.
And if they do not own to the trails of
their dead masters, they will own to ours, which is
as bad for us. No, we cannot fight the whole

(03:10:24):
of thy tribe. We must be moving, and at once
this was final. De Yan, who had put in three
whole days at arrowmaking, arose with the last and finest
specimen of her art in her hands. It was fledged
with the white and black quills of Ptarmigan and pointed

(03:10:45):
with a keen splinter of bone, Holding the venomous looking
thing between her hands by point and knock. She straightened
a weary back and lifted it towards the young moon.
Oh totem of my people and of me, and of
my new thing, grants that this one, at least of
all my arrows, may serve me at my need. They

(03:11:09):
began their packing a serious affair. Their outfits must be
cut down to the least last ounce. It must consist
of just food, raw meat, Their weapons, the bear skin
to sleep in, and the trophies no more double moccasined.
They set forth, clothed with deer skin leggings to the body,

(03:11:32):
dividing the loads between them. An event significant and of
the first importance in human history. We must march light,
said poulliun and paused. Deyan frowned, set her mouth, and
tossed from the cave sill the horde of rock crystals, amethysts,
and caring on as dear to a girl of the

(03:11:53):
Magdalenian age, as her diamonds to a bride of our own.
This I will not leave, continued the man, nodding approval
of the accomplished sacrifice of vanities. The thing reserved was
the shoulder blade of the dead bear, upon which he
no mean draftsman had etched the story of the fight, Yet,

(03:12:16):
watching the resolution of his wife to disencumber herself, he
presently cast down his achievement and turned his back to
it where it lay. Yet, as we know, it was
not lost. Did not the drip and the roof glaze
it over and preserve it, did not the wet floor
upon which it lay and clasp and seal it down.

(03:12:39):
Did not a sheet of incrustation fall from the roof
and cover it. And finally, in the fullness of time,
did not the professor come fumbling along and find it?
And is it not to day the especial glory and
pride of a certain case in a certain university museum.

(03:13:00):
Pullion was minded to work up as high as his
leg would carry him, and then, after a heavy meal,
to make a night of it, coiled up with his
wife in that thick, warm, capacious bear skin in a
hole in a drift.

Speaker 2 (03:13:14):
Walk while the.

Speaker 1 (03:13:15):
Light lasts and you can see your marks, was his reed.
Who knows what the weather upon the pass may be
to morrow? It might well be that a fern from
the south would be blowing on the coal, And then
they must just lie snug and sleep. It out yes
to the last strip of their meat. If needs were

(03:13:37):
but a face, it would be death. Up they trudged,
and up, and still up, bowed double beneath their burdens,
occasionally stopping to straighten weary backs, always choosing the outcrops
of bare rock where such trended upward. But for an
hour on end, sinking mid thigh deep at every toilsome

(03:13:59):
set in a soft new snow, the last of the
trees was far below them. Even the trailing pine and
juniper had given out. They were working up into their
first cloud, below the ragged coldness of its moving edge.
The yan turned and took her last look upon the
country of her childhood and her folk. There was no

(03:14:23):
regret in her heart, nor any love for any human
creature whom she was leaving. Her father she had never known.
He had perished young. Most savages die young. Hard is
the life, and heavy the mortality. The hunter tribes barely
keep up their stocks despite early marriage. Her mother, whom

(03:14:45):
she could just remember, was also dead. Her child life
had been made bitter to her by blows and grinding
service rendered to gruff masters and shrewish mistresses. The small
girl child had struckuggled up. Other children died. She survived,
being one of the indestructibles, sharpened, hardened, toughened exceedingly by

(03:15:09):
her environment. Such an upbringing, whatever else it may do,
does not cultivate the affections. How jealous she had been
of the boys, How she had despised the girls, her
inferiors in speed and daring, when promoted to the post
of governess, how she had bullied her small charges. No,

(03:15:33):
she gazed with unshaken bosom and clear eye upon the
valleys of her home, the last peep, And there, miles
and miles away, and oh so far beneath was a
something strung out across a snowfield, A something which would
have escaped the best eye in a regiment of modern Alpini,
A something which moved slowly and was withal so faint

(03:15:57):
and so far that a strand of cobweb seen across
a pane, that the breadth of a wide room would
be cable broad compared with it. Bah we started none
too soon, was Pullyn's comment, And leg weary as he
found himself, he kept at it, butting away upward into

(03:16:17):
cloud and falling snow, so long as he was sure
of his line. Then, confident that the advanced party of
the little Moons, supposing they had got upon the spore
and meant sticking to it, would not have daylight to
make it good, he bored into the lee side of
a big drift, throwing out the loose snow behind him

(03:16:38):
like a dog, and invited da Yan to accept it
as a camp. Dayan disliked the idea of camping in
the presence of pursuit, but she saw that her man
had marched as far as he was able. Moreover, he
was now in his element. A brave who had been
a member of four war parties, had a right to

(03:17:00):
his opinion as to what other braves would or would
not do. They will follow on to the edge of
the cloud, said he above, that the new fall will
cover our signe, not wholly, but enough to make them
call off the dogs when the sun sets, and we
we will be up and off before she rises to morrow.

(03:17:21):
And I say, Dean, I do not like those good
wolves of thy people, nor I And if they follow on,
they won't they are wholly out of their country. And
I am nearing mine, and I have traveled this road before,
which none of them have as I think at least
none that returned. That is so assented Diane. When I

(03:17:44):
was quite little, two of our young men tried this pass.
They never came back. Tell me, she went on, snuggling
down into the bear skin and feeling the blood begin
to move again in her toes. What's brought the over
this awful road?

Speaker 2 (03:18:00):
I was out for a wife.

Speaker 1 (03:18:02):
But were there no girls in the tribe south of
you that thou took this high white path?

Speaker 2 (03:18:08):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (03:18:08):
Yes, there are girls everywhere. But the tribes to the
south of the sun Men, the hawks and the white
wolf people are so much stronger than we that we
have had to give up going to them for wives.
It was our braves who never came back from those journeys. Oh,
those tribes would not be braver. I think then, how

(03:18:29):
they have an all year round camp close to the
best quarry of weapon stone. There are many slaves at
work doing nothing else but axe making, and so are
better armed than we. Also, they stockaded their camps. There
is no getting in or getting out of their villagers.
I think our bows will surprise them, he added. And

(03:18:51):
now if thou hast eaten all, thou canst go to sleep?
I shall watch, or rather lie awake and listen. Pullion
had outmarched his pursuers, but he had overmarched himself. The
pride of man had kept him going. The same pride
forbade him to acknowledge his terrible weariness. But his wife

(03:19:14):
was not deceived. I will watch first, she had said,
and had insisted upon taking a last look round their
hiding place before turning in. Upon her return, she found,
as she had anticipated, that her man was sunk in
the deepest sleep that nature knows. The master girl nodded,

(03:19:35):
built herself a line of marks, slight but sufficient, and
glided off into the snowlit night, silent as an owl.
At midnight, Pullion turned himself and woke with the sense
of something lost. He was alone for some moments. His
locality and his very individuality escaped him. So deeply had

(03:19:58):
he plunged. Then both returned. Dey yan, come in here,
it is my watch, he whispered, but there was no reply.
The man peered forth into the darkness and got to
his feet. Armed.

Speaker 2 (03:20:13):
His wife was gone.

Speaker 1 (03:20:15):
He listened. The night was thick and still what wind
was blowing came up the pass from the glen which
they had left. It was bitter cold. Suddenly, from down
the pass came one small sound, slight and keen, as
the squeak.

Speaker 2 (03:20:33):
Of a bat.

Speaker 1 (03:20:33):
But it was not the squeak of a bat, and
Pullyun felt the hairs creep upon his neck, for it
was the shrieking yelp.

Speaker 2 (03:20:41):
Of a wolf.

Speaker 1 (03:20:43):
Now, a wolf is an animal which hanson lives in
a society of its own, a society which has common
needs and co operates in its enterprises. Hence, wolves have
a multiplicity of cries with which to express their wants
and intentions, and many of these were known to Pullyun
from childhood. But a wolf, though a villain, is no coward,

(03:21:06):
and rarely, most rarely expresses pain. As a rule, when trapped,
he dies mute. What meant that single piercing yelt to
the ear and trained imagination of the woodlander, It signified
a spasm of surprise, despair, disappointment and grief. It was

(03:21:27):
a call to the pack, to me, my comrades, harrow,
I am betrayed That his wife's hand was in it,
Pullyune never doubted. But how deep was her hand in it?
And could she withdraw that hand? To have left him?
Asleep and gone off upon a lone hunting at midnight.
Was it was like her, but it was hard upon him,

(03:21:51):
very hard. He took his weapons axe and knife, for
of what service are arrows in a midnight, and moved
in the direction of the cry. Within a few strides
he stumbled upon the first of her marks, then upon
a second, later upon a third. This then was no
unpremeditated escapade. No, like everything else which she did, this

(03:22:16):
forehead towards the camp of the pursuing enemy was a
thought out business. The snow creaked something was coming, a
quick light breathing. The swift foot that Yan was upon
him had caught him silently by the arm, had turned
him and was urging him to his top speed. He

(03:22:37):
raced beside her obediently, in blind faith. She smelt of
wolf and of blood. There was a cry of wolves
behind them as they ran, but Deyan was laughing. The
cry mingled with the shouts of hunters, rose to a crash.
That is the last of it. They have come upon
my kill, and a baying upon the blood. They can

(03:22:59):
carry the line. No, Father, she was right. The fierce
wild clamor rose and fell, and rose again, but was stationary,
But we must be upon the trail. There is no
room here for thee and for me. The master girl
was speaking with quick decision. Her husband listened, guessing wildly.

(03:23:21):
They had picked up the marks, had found the snow camp.
She was refolding the bear skin. He gathered his own
affairs and followed her.

Speaker 2 (03:23:30):
Whither Thou hast.

Speaker 1 (03:23:32):
Never been this way before, and even I am unsure
of our road in this thickness and murk. Anywhere is good.
It is sheer death to loiter. We must risk everything
upon speed and the chance of a father snowfall. Run
thy best now, I will tell thee more tomorrow. Hours later,

(03:23:53):
in the first gray of a wintry dawn, they had
halted and dug themselves a second cave. This time they
both snuggled within it and sat, panting and weak, listening
for sounds of pursuit, and hearing only the ghostlike cackle
of the mountain chuffs at play amid cloud and falling

(03:24:13):
snow overhead. They had got to their farthest if followed
up and found. Now they must die. Rest and sleep
and food were imperative claims which would take no denials.
Snow was falling, they still had a chance that they
ate and slept and were not interrupted.

Speaker 2 (03:24:36):
They awoke in.

Speaker 1 (03:24:37):
An unknown world. Small flakes fell steadily and straight. No
wind breathed. There was no sun or sign of sun.
It was one whiteness of diffused light, in which the
sense of direction was defeated. They sat close as snow
bound hares and munaged bear meat. Dey Yan telling her

(03:24:59):
story between the mouthfuls.

Speaker 2 (03:25:02):
After I mounted.

Speaker 1 (03:25:03):
Guard, it came to me that my people, I mean
the little moons, would never have come up so high
so early in the season for game. It is no
winter hunting that we saw below us at the edge
of the cloud. It is a war party, and they
mean scalps. Also, it seemed to me, even at that distance,

(03:25:23):
I could make out good wolf with them, good eyes
thou must have. But go on now. It came to
me that with good wolf they could not very well
lose our trail. And being on the war path all
braves too, and marching light, we should not be able
to outmarch them. Burdened as we are, and and and

(03:25:46):
and mimic the husband. My wife did not wish to
leave her skin behind.

Speaker 2 (03:25:51):
Eh.

Speaker 1 (03:25:52):
We find it useful, thou and high warm too, murmured
the wife, drawing the deep piled pelts around her lover,
and bearrrying her own nose in the soft fur. But
it was not for this skin only, but for two
others for which I was taking thought. They are not
so furry, those two chuckled pullyon pinching her. It seemed

(03:26:14):
to me, resumed the master girl sedately that if it
were a war party of braves with good wolf too,
how a chance was bad, unless unless someone somehow foiled
our line, whispered the man, ponderingly. But how that was
the question. I went down to their camp and made
friends with the first good wolf that came up to me.

(03:26:37):
There were others, but they were curled up, each with
his master. This one was the only watch they had set.
I listened. I saw then I was for coming away,
for ten braves and as many good wolf a bad
company for one girl. But the getting away again was
not easy. Gouloose good wolf, I knew him, and he

(03:27:00):
was suspicious.

Speaker 2 (03:27:02):
He walked around.

Speaker 1 (03:27:03):
My knees so closely I could hardly move my feet.
I could not speak to him for fear of.

Speaker 2 (03:27:09):
Rousing the camp.

Speaker 1 (03:27:10):
At last, when he had licked my hands. I got
him to let me out and to follow. When I
had led him a good way, and he was upon
my hatchet hand and a little in front of me,
I killed him. I had not meant him to have spoken,
but the light was bad and he was very quick.
It cost me two strokes. The rest thou Knowst. Bull

(03:27:34):
Yune did know that his wife had run a frightful risk,
and that once again her foresight and cool courage had
brought her through. What he did not know was that
she owed her life to the facts that her dead
enemy's wolf or wolf dog was still ignorant of the
art of barking, and had met the night comer to
his master's camp in the silent fashion of his wild parents.

(03:27:59):
But under of it, his inmost heart told him that
this adventure would have been beyond him. He would not
have risked the certainty of being pulled down by wolves
good or bad, and taken from them by their masters
to dree a crueler ending at the stake. Meanwhile, snow

(03:28:20):
fell steadily for a day and night. The fugitives sat
close and contrived to keep themselves warm, but their stock
of food, howsoever well husbanded, was running out. Their position
was already critical. Presently it might be desperate, but they
were spared the pangs of indecision or divided counsels. Both

(03:28:45):
recognized that their very lives depended upon doing nothing to
exhaust their bodily heat. By struggling in deep new drift
would be madness, and whither their last mark was lost.
They knew you not north from south whilst the snow
continued falling. No, they must sit it out, even if

(03:29:07):
they starved where they sat. By the evening of the
third day, the last of the meat was gone. They
were huddling in silence, having discussed the question of eating
their leggings and mccasins on the morrow, and agreed to refrain.
For said pullyon, we could never get away from this

(03:29:27):
snow camp without our leg gear, so we may as
well starve, clothed and with a hope in our hearts,
as starved two days later, half naked with none. And
to this the master girl had agreed. But the situation
was far from cheerful, and did not conduce to much conversation.

Speaker 2 (03:29:49):
Hark, what is that?

Speaker 1 (03:29:50):
Hush on thy life?

Speaker 2 (03:29:52):
Hush?

Speaker 1 (03:29:52):
We are well hidden. During their headlong flight from their
first halt, and in the course of the various doublings
subterfuges by which the fugitives had hoped to break the
continuity of their trail and baffle their pursuers, these youngsters
had most effectually lost their bearings. This their second and

(03:30:13):
which threatened to prove itself their final camp, was excavated
in the side of one among many round top drifts
which studied a level plain, or what seemed such, for
its limits were hidden. It was probably the frozen surface
of some small lake or such other expanse as. The
Andermatt Valley a green and pleasant place in the summer months,

(03:30:36):
upon which several lateral glens converged, a haunt of the
mountain bison and the tall, wide antlered stag, but in
winter a dreary waste, avoided by man and beast. Yet
something was approaching. For the snow, frozen crisply by the
evening's chill, crunched beneath heavy feet, there was the deep,

(03:30:59):
real ythmical panting of a huge body laboring hugely. What
on earth might this be? Four thoroughly frightened human eyes
peered forth from the spy hole left at the mouth
of the snow cave, and beheld what think ye? A
great bald, black block of a head, maned at the

(03:31:22):
temples and nape, and hung with a pair of shield
shaped hairy ears, was butting through the drifts. A coil
of bristly trunk was snowed away between a pair of
prodigious tusks, which showed yellow amid the whiter snows around them.
They were as stout as young beeches, and curled upon

(03:31:42):
themselves in such wise that their points were useless to
the monster who bore them. This had probably been his downfall.
Some younger rival, with shorter weapons, shorter and lighter, but
with points which could be brought to bear, had ousted
this patriarch from them. Heard here was a rogue mammoth,

(03:32:03):
upon his travels, setting the height and width of a
mountain range between himself and the scene of his disgrace.
A Napoleon on his way to Saint Helena deswithed descrowned
a tragedy of brute existence. The great heart was hot
within him. He was boiling to avenge his wrongs upon

(03:32:24):
the first creature that he might meet, and meantime was
working off his fury in tempestuous exertions. What was a
fifty or sixty mile march to the enormous sinews of
limbs seasoned by migrations and combats of one hundred and
fifty years. His breath smoked around him as he forged

(03:32:46):
his way along, now pawing the snow under him, now
wallowing over it, using his huge belly as a raft.
Evidently he had fought his fight to a finish, had
been load butted and thrust at some more adroit or
better armed youngster, some youth of seventy or eighty summers maybe,

(03:33:08):
who had worn him down and worsted him. And now
with such holes and rents in his shaggy sides as
would have been death to any smaller beast, and were
gruesome to see, he had relinquished the partners and pastures
of his lusty prime and was a wanderer upon the
face of the earth until death, death which would from

(03:33:29):
henceforth ambush his path and his lying down. For no
keenly interested wives would henceforth watch over his safety. No
with yearly waning powers. He must stave off doom as
he might, but come it would at length a grizzly
onslaught of a horde of lions, a staked pitfall, a

(03:33:52):
snow hidden morass. Dean shuddered at the sight of his small, red,
wicked eye. If he gets our wind, she whispered in
the ghost of a pixe's whisper, and was well pinched
for the indiscretion. The giant did not get their wind.
He had something else to think of when he paused

(03:34:14):
for breath. Close to their cave, they could see the
great wall of hairy Side, twitching with the smart of
the raw gashes with which it was scored. The records
of that desperate and final conflict, for it is the
lore of the elephants heard that a dethroned master bull
shall never retry the issue. Once down, he is an

(03:34:35):
outcast for the rest of his life, and a terror
to the twentieth century jungle. As his collateral ancestor, the
rogue mammoth was to the bleak tundras and mountain forests
which were his home in the Age of Ice. It
was their first sight of a mammoth. The great beasts
were already a dwindling race in the times we tell

(03:34:56):
of the days of the Magdalenian Men. Presently the silent
watchers beheld the great panting hero, get his breath and
resume his travels, plowing, heaving, wading through the snow. He
faded from sight, and silence returned. This may just be

(03:35:17):
the luckiest thing in the world for us, said Pullion,
Or on the other hand, the unluckiest hum yes, assented
the master girl, thoughtfully peering forth upon the trail which
the passing monster had left. If he is marching by himself,
we can take that same line. There is no losing

(03:35:37):
that spore. He knows the way, be sure of that,
and where he can go weak and follow. But he
leaves a blood sign behind him. See if a party
of tigers or of grizzlies strike that trail, they will
follow it up on the chance of finding the bull
in some drift, or those little moon braves might happen

(03:35:57):
upon it.

Speaker 2 (03:35:58):
Eh.

Speaker 1 (03:35:59):
In any case, we must lie close for to night
no more dark marches for me. And if the morning
shows that the bull is traveling unattended, we will use
his trail. I begin to think we shall do it
after all, smiled Diane, a little grimly, perhaps, for though
she had kept a stiff mouth all day, the prospects
was not encouraging, and she at least had no local

(03:36:21):
knowledge to fall back upon. Even if the weather should
take up and let them through. Fortune smiled upon the youngsters.
Morning light showed them the mammoth track, skinned over with
a film of new snow, unprinted by the spoor of
beast or man. The fall had ceased, The drifts, plowed

(03:36:42):
through and pressed down by the bulk and weight of
their forerunner, gave easy passage. Something in the contours of
the ground seemed familiar to Pullyune, who silently took the lead,
striding ahead with confidence, and presently, suddenly the change came.
The slope eased off, and the glory of the prospects

(03:37:03):
before her rushed to the eyes of the girl, who
had been toiling up the last ascent bent beneath her load.
She had never been so high before, nor overlooked such
an extent of country. It caught her breath. Oh what
wide place is this? And all the hunting grounds of
our people not the twentieth part of it, growled Pullyune

(03:37:26):
with a frown. Have I not told you how narrow
our ground is? That it grows narrower. The master girl
sucked in her lips and re shouldered her pack. Let
us be getting down to them, she said shortly, then
half to herself. Narrow or broad, there shall be room
enough for one little moon woman and her bow. But

(03:37:46):
ho pullyune. When thou hast found thy folk, do not
quite forget poor da Yan. The man fell back astride
and went beside his wife for a while in silence.
Albeit the going was so good that speech had become easy.
Whilst in Indian file. It came home to him, how
bitter is the lot of the newly caught slave wife

(03:38:08):
among the older women of the tribe, to whom her ignorance, youth,
and foreignness are subjects for ill natured merriment and opportunities
for spite. There shall be no breaking in for my wife,
he said. Listen, tomorrow night, thou shalt sit upon that
bear skin in my chief's presence. I have said it,

(03:38:29):
And all this fuss about crossing one of the lower calls, wait,
my friend. These young people had neither guides, nor porters,
nor maps, compass, nor rope, nor ice axes, nor well
nailed watertight boots. Appointments which make a fairly simple thing
of what were otherwise a perilous feat Moreover, this was

(03:38:52):
very early in the season, a time of year when
every week makes a difference. The writer of this voracious
history of the Old Time has himself seen the farm
folk in a pyrene and glen leave their hay to run,
shouting at the first tourist of the season, who had
news of their friends on the other side of the pass.
And that was in May. Nor were the Alps of

(03:39:15):
that old time just as we see them to day.
I grant you they had come down in the world
since their first glorious Himalayan youth. They no longer towered
thirty thirty five thousand feet above the subtropical Terrae, interspersed
with its chain of salt lakes, which we now know
as the Mediterranean. The worst of the Great Ice Age

(03:39:36):
was over that grievous time when half the waters of
the oceans were piled in a solid cap around the
northern Pole, a cap which extended southward in such sort
that in Britain everything north of the Thames and upon
the mainland, all that is now Germany and Austria was
sealed down beneath a solid sheet which was not melted

(03:39:57):
for twenty thousand years on end. During this time, and
for long after the worst of it was over, the
Alps and the Tyrol were in process of being ground
down to something approaching what we see to day. Their
soaring peaks had arrested the cloud systems of central Europe
and turned France into an arid step, the grazing ground

(03:40:17):
of countless herds of wild horse and gazelle. The clouds
had deposited themselves in snow. The hoarded snows had ground
down the sides of the giants, pared away their summits,
and crawled out half across Lombardy in glaciers, which, when
they finally receded, left trails of rubbish thirty miles long,

(03:40:38):
spoils filched from the heights behind them. The worst of
this was over. The Rhone Glacier had dwindled somewhat, but
still blocked the Wallis. For many generations, the shores of
the Mediterranean had been peopled in winter by tribes which
had each its summer hunting quarters in this or that
glen of the hinterland, tribes which had but little knowledge

(03:41:01):
of and no intercourse with the people on the other
side of the chain. In the glens which feed the
headwaters of the po how should they have had? I
am telling a tale of the long ago. Much water
has run under the bridges since both those of Avignon
and those of Padua, and every gallon of it brought
down something from the southern Alps. Hence as nothing rolls uphill.

(03:41:27):
Century by century, the passes have been growing lower than
they were when our two youngsters essayed their adventure. End
of chapter eight Chapter nine of The Master Girl, a
romance by Ashton Hilliers. This libriyvox recording is in the

(03:41:50):
public domain. The Homecoming. It was evening. The men of
the Sundist clan had returned from their hunting and fishing.
The women and children were squatted about the fires. A
clear peculiar outcry broke from the girl in the tree top,
the watchwoman. Just such a cry comes from the sentinel

(03:42:14):
bird of a flock of feeding wild fowl. The whole
community was upon its feet in a moment, peering under
arched hands. Afar off against the yellow side of a
dry gully. Of the foothills which arose between the last
of the chestnut forest and the first of the spruce
were to be descried a couple of moving specks. They

(03:42:38):
whoever they might be, were miles away, made visible for
a moment by the chance of their crossing a bare
rock face which had caught the last of the sunlight,
thrown up distinctly against this ruddy yellow background, and defined
by the magical clearness of an open sunset following a
day of rain. The braves handled their assgar eyes, awaiting

(03:43:01):
the word of the old chief, a ringman who had
taken his first scalp forty years before and wore the
necklace of five bear's claws, which testified to participation in
a later and yet sterner fight. He gave no order
and kept his eyes upon the moving specks. These had
dipped into a hollow. They have seen our smokes, said he.

(03:43:26):
If they are friends, they will come right on. If
they are unfriends, they will not show again. And that
young men must deal with them tonight. Who but unfriends
would come from that side, asked a very tall, young brave.
There was a touch of covert insolence in the tone,
although the question was natural enough. The speaker was a

(03:43:47):
person of some consideration, for when he spoke, others held
their peace and listened, watching still be sure he was
one honk Har, a great nephew of the old Chief,
a man of notable activity and more ambition, one who
aspired to the deputy chieftainship, an aspiration which had been

(03:44:08):
kept in check for two years past by the presence
of his cousin Pullyune, a brave, equally active and more popular,
less subject to fits of disfiguring passion, a man marked
out for leadership as well by his birth, being grandson
to the Chief regnant, as also by his qualities. But

(03:44:29):
Pullyun had been absent more than six moons, and during
the past winter, as the old Chief grew stiffer with rheumatism,
which is the worst evil of the northern Savage, more
dreaded than most forms of death, this youngster had waxed
insolent at times. Each recurring attack of lambago might be
the last, the one which would tie the old leader

(03:44:52):
into his final knot, reducing him to a helpless, querulous cripple,
and leaving the chieftainship open to the bravest and strongest
man of his race. The Chief ignored the question. He
was at gaze. Yes, the strangers had come into view again,
were holding a right line towards the camp smokes. There

(03:45:15):
was no affectation of concealment, no ruse. Who might they be,
said the sentinel girl at length. These are two braves,
for they go side by side at times. One is
shorter than the other by a head. Both are carrying
something spears, I think, and other things robes, said the

(03:45:36):
old chief's head wife, in the spirit of prophecy. It
is my grandson, and the small one the other, asked Hongkha,
raising a doubt which no one was as yet in
a position to allay. There is but little twilight south
of the Alps. It was in a thick green dusk

(03:45:58):
that the all but given up pull Yun strode back
into camp, with his shorter companion, going beside him as
an equal and a friend, goes no man of their tribe.
This who then a slave?

Speaker 2 (03:46:12):
No a squaw?

Speaker 1 (03:46:14):
The two stepping out strongly. They had kept a trot
for the avenue, made straight for the teepee of the
old chief, and saluted the father of the tribe. Before
exchanging a word with any They also saluted the head wife.
Some word of petition and consent passed in dumb show.
The skin that hung over the entrance was shifted in

(03:46:37):
they went, and the show was over, but not the talk.
It has been said that the old English manorial system
assumed that every person in the village was intimately acquainted
with the habits, business, and doings of every other person
in the village. One might assume the same of villagers
to day, with but little injustice. This rule held among

(03:47:01):
those earlier communities from which the medieval Englishman was remotely descended.
Everybody was enormously and unblushingly inquisitive. Why should he not
be when his body was satisfied, he had nothing else
to think about save the goings on of his comrades.
Hence he and she knew to a nicety the precise

(03:47:24):
distance which so and so could jump, or swim or throw.
Knew the last least intimate fact about the bodies and minds,
the personal peculiarities and habits of each and of all
the tribe. For and bear this in mind, ye who
travel in tubes and have the day mapped out and
guarded for you, Ignorance of some small particular might at

(03:47:48):
any moment cost life itself. Your savage is incessantly hunting
and being hunted at any moment in his day, His
dinner may jump up in front of him and run away.
At any moment. A huge, tawny cat may claim him
for her meal. At any moment, he may find a
spear sticking in the calf of his leg. Such possibilities

(03:48:13):
are calculated to develop the faculty of attention. From his
childhood up. He is trained by the hard facts of
his life to be as observant as a magpie and
as pertinaciously inquisitive as a dog. And this, methinks, is
the place to introduce and I durst and excursus. Upon

(03:48:33):
the decay of curiosity a fine and tempting subject, there
can be no sort of doubt that this is one
of the vanishing instincts. The senses of locality and smell
are others. The adult male European has very little curiosity,
if of a fairly good stock and breeding none at all.

(03:48:55):
His wife, her maid, and the children of both sexes
have true faces of the faculty, more or less pronounced
as being some degrees nearer to the savage. I prithee, madam,
thump me not I speak but the naked truth. If
the antique instinct reappears at intervals, as in spy Mania's

(03:49:17):
drafous obsessions and what not. In modern France, it is
less terrible that in that recent past, which saw their
law of suspects and our popish plot and earlier witch
baitings across the Atlantic, the defect is less noticeable. Indeed,
one of the less endearing characteristics of cousin Jonathan is

(03:49:39):
that insatiable and unabashed curiosity, which, whether it make for
righteousness or no, is the making of the yellow Press.
With us English, the primeval safeguard has almost lapsed. We
pride ourselves upon an incurious optimism, the outcome of urban
surroundings and long internal peace. Are they yelling murder next door?

(03:50:04):
Let them yell? Tis no affair of ours. It doesn't
do to interfere. Leave it to the police. We have
fifty little apithems to excuse our cowardice or sloth. It
has come to this that every time we find ourselves
at war, we are still somewhat pugnacious.

Speaker 2 (03:50:23):
It takes the.

Speaker 1 (03:50:24):
Average man of us from six to twelve months to
get himself back into the sensitively apprehensive, warily cautious skin
of his forefather, to whom a condition of warfare was normal,
who carried a weapon as we carry an umbrella and
distrusted every bush. Some of His Majesty's forces never do

(03:50:45):
regain a reasonable and saving curiosity. Middle aged general officers,
especially those who have hung about windsor and done much reviewing.
Practically never this sort go into action wearing white looms
and insist upon being followed by a mounted orderly with
a red and white giedon upon his lance. These are

(03:51:08):
they who throw six shells at a wooded height at
five miles range and pronounce it unoccupied. Who excuse outpost
duty on Christmas Eve as a treat to the men
who reduce their superiors to despair, their subordinates to stupor
the operations to a standstill, and who, when sent home

(03:51:28):
as incapable, arouse society in the houses upon their noble
behalves and assure the smoking rooms of the clubs that
the service is going to the deuce. Many a town
bred private is, in his own way as deficient. He
makes haste to lose his regiment upon the march, also himself. Then,

(03:51:51):
if it's be night, in place of effacing himself and
using his wits and his ears, he will strike a match,
and the better to advertise his present sings for company,
being a secret believer in things in the dark, but
an arrant agnostic as the enemy being anywheers about. Thus,
poor Tommy knows not that doom hath gone forth until

(03:52:14):
he finds himself being held down and vivisected by the
Afridi knife, or, with better luck, stripped of every rag
that covers him by a Dutchman, all of which makes
most unpleasant reading. But I put it to you, is
it not true?

Speaker 2 (03:52:32):
Agreed?

Speaker 1 (03:52:32):
Then we have pretty well parted with the acute and
rational curiosity, which was the first armor of our race.
But the sun dispoke had it in a highly specialized form,
and by the time that that dear skinned Portier had
ceased swinging behind, the newcomers had noticed much, and had

(03:52:53):
actually deduced a good deal of the recent histories of
Pullyun and his companion. From a stick here, and a
bundle there, a limp, and a side glance, momentary impressions
in the dusk. He goes short upon his left leg,
and it is no strain, said Honkar. He has not
gone short of meat. See how heavy he is. Who

(03:53:15):
ever saw a brave come home from a winter hunting
or a wife hunting in such case, Lah, we were
worn away to sinew and bone at our last war party.
But he said, an older man, a man of experience,
with appropriate gesture. But his squaw said the women to
let the thing walk beside him and to hold her

(03:53:37):
head up. So why when my man brought me into camp,
my hands were tied behind my back and mine said another.
And my head was broken too, For my man stands
no nonsense, I tell you, a broken head, laughed Third,
it was nigh a broken back in my case, I

(03:53:57):
mind me.

Speaker 2 (03:53:58):
He laid me down with.

Speaker 1 (03:53:59):
Every single thing he owned, and strutted before me like
a black cock in lecking time. Oh, but twasn't I
proud of him? Fine a mannish he looked when I
could get a peep at him. For my head was
bent to my knees with my load, and the sweat
was running into my eyes, I tell you ah. The
speaker laughed at the remembrance, just as a prefect chuckles

(03:54:22):
over the lambings he took when a fag. Hey, but
what in the world will this mean? Cried altogether. He
has divided the loads, and she was carrying what it
can never be a bear skin. The thing is plainly impossible.
And look at those silly bags of little feather ended sticks,
and the long ash sticks. What foolishness is this? The

(03:54:46):
young chief is no fool. They walked well anyhow, pride
mere pride, they were ready to drop. Could not ye
see as much? Think that they are in full winter dress,
heavy dear his skin, leggings and crosses, and all tis plain.
They have come from high up somewhere, not over the pass.
That is impossible for another three moons. Yet they will

(03:55:10):
have felt the heat cruelly all day. A likely looking girl,
a little moon girl by her gait and color. But
where can he have picked her up? And where has
he been all this?

Speaker 2 (03:55:21):
While?

Speaker 1 (03:55:22):
A brave can't live upon snow, and he has lived
well and upon an enemy's ground. Wah pull Yun is
a wise man in some ways, but a fool in others.
He must be mad to set so much by an
unproved squaw. He has had six months of her, in
my view, said an old woman. And right or wrong,

(03:55:42):
Pullyune ever knew his own mind. She has bewitched him.
He is mad, mad, muttered honkh morosely, who saw his
deputy chieftainship slipping through his fingers after seeming safely in hand.
The man was not a politic man from the modern standpoint.

Speaker 2 (03:56:01):
He was but a youth.

Speaker 1 (03:56:03):
He was a jealous fellow, and once to strike first,
it seemed to him that this was his opportunity. He
loafed around, talking to those whom he believed to be
in his interest in undertones at first, then more loudly,
who is she a little moon? But that story will

(03:56:24):
not do, for there are none of that tribe on
this side of the ranges. He cannot have passed the
ranges this spring. Where has pullyun been? This was mystery,
the first, an offense in itself in a community which
has the right to know the most intimate facts of
the life of each of its members. Mystery breaths suspicion,

(03:56:46):
and suspicion leads up to distrust.

Speaker 2 (03:56:48):
And to hate.

Speaker 1 (03:56:49):
But in the heart of Honkhar hate was already full grown.
There is something here that the tribe should know. He
spoke aloud, and his voice carried far. It seems to
us that the sun folk should be told and told
this night where a brave has been harboring? Who has
been away? And on an enemy's grounds for six moons.

(03:57:12):
Also said a young blood who was of Honkar's hunting party.
We would see more of this squaw whom he brings
into camp, or who brings him a laugh. How a
brother Pullyun went forth for a wife. The word had
the secondary meaning of female's slave, but has come back
with a master more laughter. The silence within the old

(03:57:36):
Chief's teepee was unbroken for a while, and when the
hanging portier moved, it was shifted. With the utmost deliberation.
The old Chief himself came forth, followed by Pullyun. The
elder spoke, My young men are noisy tonight.

Speaker 2 (03:57:54):
It is not good.

Speaker 1 (03:57:56):
My grandson has brought home a wife. He has done well.
Say it is my nephew's heart's black, because he has
no wife. The passes were open last autumn for him.
As for my grandson, let him make his heart white,
or go forth upon his wife hunting, so soon as
he chooses.

Speaker 2 (03:58:16):
The passes are.

Speaker 1 (03:58:17):
Not open, interposed Honkh insolently, The passes are open to
a brave with a big heart, or for the matter
of that, to a brave with a squaw's heart. Reposted
the old Chief severely. My grandson crossed yesterday. His wife
crossed with him. There was silence and astounded silence. Honkhar

(03:58:40):
felt himself slipping. He must make a push for it.
He spoke.

Speaker 2 (03:58:46):
We do not believe.

Speaker 1 (03:58:47):
He began, But the old chief cut him short. I believe,
and that is enough for my people. And listen to me,
honkh and you who sided with him, for I know
what is in your heart. This thing shall come to
a head, It shall cease, and at once. My grandson
Pullyun was war chief when he went forth. Is he

(03:59:10):
weaker or less brave or less cunning? Since he has returned.
There were mutterings in the darkness. Pullyun stepped to the
front and spoke very gently. He spoke, but they knew him.
It is two years since I beat my cousin at
the spear throwing. It has always been the law that
one trial is enough. The tribe cannot be always changing

(03:59:33):
its war chief. But I will put the law out
of the question for once, For it is not well
that the sun folks should be under a war chief
who is weak of hand, or whom they think is
weak of hand. The matter shall be retried at sunrise
tomorrow as soon as there is full light. Let Honkhar
be ready with his spears, and I will be ready

(03:59:56):
with mine. And the man of us two, who can
throw farthest and make his point go deepest, he shall
be war chief.

Speaker 2 (04:00:04):
I have said.

Speaker 1 (04:00:05):
It is good, assented hon Khar, who had got what
he was playing up for an early trial. The deer
skin shook the old Chief and Pullyune had returned to
the teepee. The knot of mutineers moved slowly off, conversing
in muttered undertones. That is a point to me, said Honkar.

(04:00:28):
He is fat, he is slow. He was sweating as
he marched in. I saw it, and he carried no spears.
I know every assa guy of mine by name, and
they know me.

Speaker 2 (04:00:41):
Tomorrow I win.

Speaker 1 (04:00:44):
End of chapter nine, chapter ten of The Master Girl,
a romance by Ashton Hilliers. This liberyvox recording is in
the public domain. The spear throwing, the scene with which

(04:01:05):
the last chapter closed, had come as a not unwelcome
interruption to a family explanation which had been in progress
within the dear skin hangings of the Old Chief's teepee.
A mother in law may be a delightful person or
the reverse. The difficulties and temptations which beset her position
are of no modern creation. Are there not ancient wheezes

(04:01:29):
upon this topic in Greek anthologies? I doubt not that
these hoary japes were, in their day and generation rehashes
of my Keenean gibes, still more venerable, for undergiven circumstances,
we humans act alike all the world over, and there
is no valid reason for assuming that our behaviours and

(04:01:49):
misbehaviours have varied to any great extent during the past
one hundred thousand years. Listen to a case in point.
A friend of mine, with the faculty for getting into
and out of places the most tight and remote, once
found himself for a whole month dependent upon the hospitality
of an African tribe so degraded as to have lost

(04:02:12):
if it had ever possessed the art of huts building.
These simple aborigines erected little shelters of small brushwood to
windward and slept thereunder. They wore no garments, not even
the most exiguous A rough man a coarse man in
such company would have discerned nothing but the brutality which

(04:02:35):
he brought with him. He would have mishandled the situation
from the first, and, having presently reduced his position to
an impossibility, would have taken himself off and returned with
luck to civilization, with a story of beastly savages, less
than half human, no better than the dog faced baboons

(04:02:55):
of the cliffs. Not so my friend, who, being an
Englislish gentlemen of the best type, had no difficulty in
adapting himself to the necessities of a novel situation. He
took to his hosts. They reciprocated, and he enjoyed the
unique opportunity of being admitted to the inner life of

(04:03:15):
a singular and interesting community. He watched and remembered, among
other matters, he observed that the ladies of this little
people had several of the habits, mannerisms, and small personal
traits of their sisters in good society. Back to my tale.

(04:03:36):
One of the little ways of mothers in law, even
of mothers in law of family, is to assume a
large degree of ignorance upon the part of the bride,
and too gently but firmly initiate her into the right
ways of doing things and the relative positions and status
of the persons of her new circle. I put it diplomatically,

(04:03:57):
I have not used the word in cro vouch. I
have known a bride returned from her honeymoon to find
all her bridecake cut up and distributed, but conceived the
claims of a grandmother in law who was also head
wife of the chief regnance. A woman of advanced years,
of the firmest character, and not unaccustomed to implicit obedience,

(04:04:22):
This old lady was a rather terrible old lady, and
no fool. She detected a little moonwoman at a glance,
as she was likely to do, being a little moonwoman herself,
who had come over the past forty years before with
her elbows shackled and a bruise upon the top of
her head as big as a fresh water muscle. Hence,

(04:04:45):
a woman of the clan into which she had been
born was a quite unmisterious creature about which she had,
as she conceived, nothing to learn. She was for undertaking
the usual breaking in forthwith but her her grandson, pullyun
would have none of it. Mildly, but with absolute decision,

(04:05:06):
he postponed the business. No, my wife shall sit in
my presence, Yes, that's my desire. Also, she shall eat
with me It is unusual, I admit, but such is
our rule. You do not understand that too, I admit.
I am hoping to make things plain presently. But we

(04:05:28):
must start fair, start as we mean to go on.
In one word, my wife is a very great medicine.
I have brought her a long way through deep snow.

Speaker 2 (04:05:39):
She is tired.

Speaker 1 (04:05:40):
I do not wish her to stand anymore tonight, nor
to answer questions tomorrow, perhaps in the meantime. Feel this
the man extended his leg. It was broken, as thou
canst feel. She, my wife, there mended it. I lay
more than a moon in her hands. She found me,

(04:06:03):
so she left her tribe to come to me. She
made me a sound man. As thou canst see, it
was great medicine. It was great medicine, murmured the old chief,
critically fingering the reunited bone. The eyes of the head
wife snapped. Seldom did a broken leg come so straight

(04:06:23):
as this. But she would admit nothing but Yun was speaking.
That was once, But she has saved my life three
times since in battle. I say it, do not ask
how tonight. Yes, this is a bear skin, the pelts
of a very great man. Bear a cave grizzly. I

(04:06:46):
have never seen a greater but I have seen but few.
Possibly my chief, who has seen and handled several bears,
has seen a greater man bear than this. The old
chief watched the unrolling of the huge skin and shook
his head. No, he had never seen one as wide
or so long. It was immense a winter coat too.

(04:07:10):
It was the finest skin he had ever handled. I
did not kill this bear, said his grandson, after a
dramatic pause. It was at this juncture that the challenge
from without brought these explanations temporarily to a close, and
when the men re entered the teepee, both felt that

(04:07:32):
they had more momentous spatter in hand than the relative
positions of the ladies. Said the old Chief, thou art
in for it.

Speaker 2 (04:07:40):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:07:41):
I would have worn thee hadst thou not spoken so fast.
My nephew has a bad heart, while thou wast absent.
He has been sucking away from me the hearts of
my young men. Some he has beaten, and some he
has bought, and some he has talked over. But I
have kept the place worn for thee. I still dreamed

(04:08:02):
of thy homecoming. Never camest thou to me in sleep,
as thou wouldst have come hadst thou been dead. But
this challenge and thy taking up of it is a
heavy matter. Honk Hahr has come on in his spear,
throwing that he has a great store of excellent weapons,
well handled, well headed, well balanced, And where a line

(04:08:25):
thou hast come home empty handed?

Speaker 2 (04:08:27):
It is not well.

Speaker 1 (04:08:28):
But since thou hast spoken, I see no way out
of a retrial, nor I chief, said Pullyon, making low
and dutiful obeisance for the old man's grave. Slow tones
failed to hide a heart shaken by the presence of
long expected and now imminent calamity. His grandson would show

(04:08:51):
courage enough for both, Nor would I put it off
for a day, leave my wife and me to look
over our weapons. All will go as tho I must wish.
And to this the old chief listened with a grunt,
and a somewhat weak grunt, as his grandson thought. The
head wife was harder to satisfy, a matter which Pullyun

(04:09:13):
must take upon himself, as he presently discovered for her
husband sat mute, letting her nagin question whilst Deyan worked
in silence and with dispatch. What had come to the
old chief. He had not used to be so acquiescent.
His grandson turned it over in his mind, nor found
any solution. Being unacquainted with the premonitory symptoms of age,

(04:09:38):
the indisposition to take a strong line, because inward warnings
forbid its being followed up effectively. There were few old
men among the some folk. The whole generation between the
old chief and the youth of the tribe had perished
in a disastrous fight with their southern neighboors some years before,

(04:09:59):
a blow which had necessitated a prompt removal from the
disputed hunting grounds and the stone quarry, the object of
the battle. It was there that the fathers of Pullyun
and his cousin had fallen. The sun Men, in fact,
had been a dwindling clan for nearly two generations, always
liable to be cut off from their supplies of two

(04:10:21):
necessities weapon stone and wives, neither of which could they
obtain save at undue risks. Now with savages, to dwindle
is the precursory process of death. The Braves knew this
and were restless. So during the hard weather of the
past winter. The feeling among the young warriors of the

(04:10:44):
tribe that a younger and more active chief was needed,
had been gathering to a head. There is small reverence
for age amongst the lowest savages, the Esquimaux, nearest of
existing races, to the old stonemen, of whom we asked seeking,
give little deference to the gray head and the weak hand.

(04:11:05):
Here among the sun men, the process of supersession was beginning.
The new leaf was pushing off the old. It seems
to me, murmured Dayan to her husband. It seems to
me that on this side of the ranges also the
young bulls are making ready to drive an old tusca
from the herd. Pull Yon grunted, testing the point of

(04:11:29):
an arrow with his thumb. But although he had said nothing,
Pullyon's eyes and mind were at work, and the impression
of instability, of a new spirit among his people since
he had last been with them, and of impending and
far reaching changes, lay down with him, and arose with
him next morning, and was promptly confirmed. For his rival

(04:11:52):
and his rival's backers had been up and out betimes.
The lists were already set, and the mark fixed a
matter which was the business of the chief alone. The
old chief saw what had been done and nodded acquiescence.
It might be that the sceptor was passing from him.

(04:12:13):
He would have one more fight for it, but the
fight should be upon ground of his own choosing. He
was too great minded to quibble over trifles, and in
truth the lists were well set and the mark as
truly and fairly fixed as he could have desired. None
disputed his position as referee. The contest would be quite

(04:12:37):
the most solemn and momentous, as well as the most
sporting event that had occurred within the memories.

Speaker 2 (04:12:43):
Of the tribe.

Speaker 1 (04:12:45):
Honkhar, who had been runner up for the war chieftainship
for two years past, as the old chief had said,
had come on in his spear throwing during the winter
and was believed to have overcast his cousin's best records.
If he should succeed to day, it was possible that
he would kill two birds with one stone, make a

(04:13:07):
sudden snatch at the head chieftaincy of the tribe, and
that his backing of young braves might support him if
this occurred. If it came to blows, how would the
matter go? The old chief asked himself the question, but
got no answer of one thing only he was assured

(04:13:28):
winning or losing, he.

Speaker 2 (04:13:30):
Would die a chief.

Speaker 1 (04:13:33):
The mark was a badger skinned cross, fixed upon a
wicker fish trap, and set upon a stake as high
as a man. The distance was extreme, as Pullyune saw
at a glance, forty five strides is a big a
very big throw with.

Speaker 2 (04:13:49):
An ass guy.

Speaker 1 (04:13:50):
If the mark is to be hit and penetrated as
a mere cast an exhibition of distance throwing, a man
might do more. But this was no fancy work. By
the terms of the wager, the mark was to be
not merely hit, but pierced. A badgers pelt is long
in the hair. The skin is of the thickest and

(04:14:11):
toughest of forest trophies. Pullyune nodded, My cousin has set
himself a difficult mark. It is small, and it is
not easy to pierce. My cousin has plainly improved in
his spear practice since I have been away. Let him
begin the play. The man addressed Honkh, a lithe, tall, brave,

(04:14:33):
naked except for his breech clout, arose from his heels,
carrying three spears. Shall it be a matter of three
spears at this range? He asked, three will be sufficient,
replied Poullyune. And he whose points go furthest through the
peltry shall be a judged winner. I am judge, grunted

(04:14:56):
the old chief. Without doubt, my father has sent pullyun
Honkhard said nothing. He was balancing a spear as he
walked to the throwing crease. Five paces he passed beyond it,
turned upon his heel paused, measured his distance with his
eye from old habit arose upon his toes, pranced up

(04:15:18):
to his crease with hand and arm at their utmost stretch,
shook and flung his asseguie. All eyes followed the weapon.
Its gray chirt head traveled steady as a stone, its
five feet of shaft rotating as it flew in such
wise that its extremity traversed a small circle. This was

(04:15:41):
how a spear should be thrown, perfect form. How about
the aim? The weapon completed its curve, pitched, struck, but
did not satisfy the demands of the competition so completely
as the thrower's friends could have wished. The direction was
better than good, but the elevation was ever so little

(04:16:01):
too high. The weapon had struck the upper edge of
the mark. The shaft swung over and drew the points.
The spear lay upon the ground beyond its head towards
the thrower. Yet it was a great throw, as every
watcher knew. Had the mark been a man, that man

(04:16:22):
would have taken a nasty wound. The thrower, you may
be sure, had followed the flight of his asser guide,
no less critically, without once taking his eye from the mark.
He took and weighed in hand the spear which he
was to throw. Next, stepped lightly back, took distance, shook, ran,

(04:16:43):
and threw. Nor was he below himself. This was better,
as good as to direction and as to elevation, somewhat
lower than the former. The head penetrated the nether edge
of the skin and held, albeit the sh shaft drooped
thus much. Only it lacks of perfection. Yet there was

(04:17:05):
not another man in the silent circle of spectators who
could have done as well. The third and last was
a truly fine performance, a center well driven home. It
would have been impossible to better it. The spearman, his
hands hanging by his sides, surveyed his work, frowning slightly,
as an expert does, who had done well, but whose

(04:17:27):
ambition was to have done better than well. Then he
slowly raised his chin, folded his arms across his chest,
and turned to his cousin with the superb and natural
scorn of the savage who has no tradition of restraints
behind him. Is that Hunkhar's best, asked Pullian quietly, without

(04:17:48):
rising from his heels. Lets my cousin take his time.
The day is still young. Try three more throws, and
again three more. It may be that two of thy
spears balanced ill, or thy arm was yet stiff from
being laid upon.

Speaker 2 (04:18:05):
What thou art satisfied?

Speaker 1 (04:18:07):
Wilt stand by these, not ask for more? However the
matter goes. He ceased at a touch of the old
chief's hand, and none too soon. Honkhah, a passionate and
hasty fellow, was shaking with anger. He detested his cousin
with a bitterness which surprised even himself. He had hated

(04:18:29):
him when he thought him dead, and now that he
had returned from the underworld, as it seemed to snatch
the prize from his grasp, his aversion went near to
choking him. Whether pullyun spoke or was silent, sat or stood,
he hated him. His least movement or the absence of

(04:18:49):
movement fed the hate which had been smoldering within him
for a year, which had glowed in his bosom all night,
and now had all but burst into a flame. It
was a full blown flower the primitive jealousy. The old
chief recognized the growth, and inwardly shivered. Things might yet

(04:19:11):
go ill. Let there be no talk. Let Bullyoun betake
himself to his weapons. If it must be, it must be,
remarks Bullyune, without enthusiasm. But look you, my brothers and friends,
I am but a night and day from the snows
of the pass three or was it not four days

(04:19:32):
and as many nights did I sit in a snow
cave waiting for the fall to stop? I have traveled
through drifts as deep as my chin at this upon
the top of a broken leg. Yes, I lay for
nigh two moons in a cave with a broken leg. Hence, Bullyoune,
who has approved your war Chief two years ago, is
not at his best this day. He has forgot his

(04:19:55):
spear throwing somewhat. It is four nay, it is six
moons since he threw a spear. A shiver of astonishment
ran around the circle, for this was giving the contest away.
Before it was begun. Spear throwing is an art which
calls for constant and unremitting practice. The assa guy thrower

(04:20:18):
no more than the violinist, can lay aside his instruments
for weeks and months at a time, and resume it
at will with his old facility. The listening tribesmen covered
their mouths with their hands and smiled behind them. Each
man's eyes rolled on his fellows, seeking and finding comprehension.

(04:20:38):
The thing was as good as settled. But Paullyune had
arisen to his feet and was still speaking.

Speaker 2 (04:20:46):
I have brought back to.

Speaker 1 (04:20:47):
Camp no spears of our sort, for my arm is
very fat and weak, much weaker than the arm of
my wife here who will throw. Presently A laugh broke out,
but fell, for he was grave and was still speaking.
He had none of the marks of a madman about him.
He was just the pullion whom they had all known

(04:21:09):
and loved, Gentle of speech exceedingly. Yet his words, or
some of them, but strange, ludicrous. So I have made
for myself little asser guise, boy's asser guise. Whilst speaking,
he drew one from the long skin pouch which hung
at his back, and handed it to the old chief,

(04:21:30):
who turned its end for end in his hand and
looked it over very critically, and passed it on to
the elder nearest to him, with an impassive face but
a very shaken heart. The absurd little thing went slowly
around the circle. None above the age of an uninitiated
boy had ever handled its like. It reached Honkhar, who

(04:21:54):
disdained to touch it, smiling insolently, his game already won.
Yet it seems I must do what I can, said pullyun,
sighing again. And if by good luck, I can make
these little boy's spears fly straighter and stick deeper than
my cousin's, what will ye say, said the gray chief,

(04:22:15):
my son's son. Whilst thou hast been away, we have
had omens of change and of trouble. Our enemies, the
white wolves and the men of the Lynx Totem, have
begun to encroach yet more upon our hunting grounds. They
have taken game from our traps. They waylay and wound
our young men hunting singly. We have given up lone hunting,

(04:22:39):
be hunting couples or threesomes. They or we must move on,
But it needs fighting to clear the matter, and I
am grown better at council than at the chase. Strong
am I still? But I stiffen and have slower foot
than I want. The sun men have always had a
war chief who could lead them the tribe. The young

(04:23:03):
men are asking for one. My cousin, claims the post.
What can I say to thy question? To Pullyune's thinking,
there was more than physical weakness in this appeal. He
faced the old man silently, but with a steady confidence
in his eye, which went some way to restore the
seniors shaken courage, who took fresh breath and went on

(04:23:27):
the spear. My son is the only weapon. And the
farther it is cast, and the deeper it is driven,
the better the warrior. Yonder is the mark. Get thee
to thy spears. I have spoken. The little dart was
still traveling its round, exciting amazement, amusement, and curiosity. As
it went it returned to Pullyun. He examined its point

(04:23:51):
and feather, the absurd little feather, fingered by so many,
understood by him alone, all with an exasperating deliberation and
gentle cheerfulness, as of a man regaining his spirits. The
tent folds behind him shook, and forth came the foreign woman,
his wife Dayan, as he had been heard to address her,

(04:24:13):
bringing in hand what surely not more spears, for there
were others in the skim pouch upon his back. Yet
she bore to him a staff stouter, heavier, and longer
than any assegai. And whereas a well made assegai is
thickest three hands breadths behind the head, and thence tapers

(04:24:33):
both ways, this clumsy shaft was thickest in the middle,
an impossible headless weapon, thought the tribe, craning to see Pullion,
took the staff, tossed and caught it, shook it a little,
whilst the little moon woman unwound a stout cord of
twisted sinew, looped at either end. Watched intently by the tribe,

(04:24:58):
the man threaded bow loops upon the staff, fitted the
last to a notch at one end of it, which
end he turned under and set his left foot upon. Then,
holding the staff erect and close to his left side,
he gripping its upper end with his right, swiftly and
strongly bent it over his knee and hip, whilst with

(04:25:20):
his left hand sliding the second loop to its resting
place in the second notch, which was now close beside
his chin. Twas done in a moment, and the things
stood confessed no weapon at all, but just a drilling bow,
an outsized, clumsy tool. Honk Ah led the laugh, but Pullyouon,

(04:25:42):
unmoved and passively grave was emptying at his feet the
skim pouch aforesaid, and lo there lay more boy's asserguise,
weak light, and decked with feathers where no feathers should be.
The laughter did not cease when the man chose three
and approached the scratch, thus armed for the bow drill,

(04:26:03):
which he carried his critics regarded as a mere encumbrance,
a thing as foreign to the business in hand as
a fishing line. Taking his stand upon the crease itself,
and making no preparation for the usual run before throwing,
the young chief gripped the bent bow drill left handedly
by its midmost stoutest part, laid a dart across the wood,

(04:26:27):
and his left forefinger over that dart. Then fitting a
hitherto unnoticed notch in the end of that dart to
the string, he gripped both dart and sinew and drew
both away from the bending wood, whilst raising the whole
apparatus with his extended left hand. Back and back went

(04:26:48):
his right hand, stiffly and most stiffly extended his left arm,
until the chirt head of the dart stuck out beyond
the left thumb, whilst the knot and feathered tail, still
fast against the sinew cord, was level with the man's ear.
Thus he stood poised, tense, and silent. For a breath,

(04:27:11):
the last cackle of derisive laughter died.

Speaker 2 (04:27:15):
What did all this mean? Twang?

Speaker 1 (04:27:19):
Something hummed, like the wings of the great fawn colored
mountain swift when he sweeps a beetle from a grass
blade close to one's knee, and is a hundred strides away.
Before one knows what he had done. Pullyune was standing
exactly as he had stood before the sound, save that

(04:27:39):
the string had escaped from his hand, and the bow
drill had gone straight again. What had become of the
dart twas gone, Yet none had seen it go at
such close range and from such.

Speaker 2 (04:27:54):
A powerful bow.

Speaker 1 (04:27:55):
An arrow travels nearly level and exceedingly fast. The eyes
of the tribe fixed upon the man and awaiting the
vehement action of the spear thrower had failed altogether to
pursue the flight of the missile. Wah, when is he
going to throw? Where is it gone? When did he cast?

(04:28:16):
How came it there? But lo in the targets beside
the best spear of honk Aar stood the dart of pullion,
quite as well, centered and more deeply fixed. A buzz
of subnued clamor arose and was instantly hushed for the
marksman's second dart was in his hand, and again that queer,

(04:28:39):
clumsy domestic implement hitherto reserved for the girl who made
fire or the eye of a needle was bending again.
Twang again that new keen sound, and all eyes jumped
and again failed to follow the unnaturally low, swift flight.
They looked above it, looked where a spear would have been,

(04:29:02):
And whilst they stared thuck a second dart were standing
in the target, not a hands bread the way from
the first, and as deeply embedded. Honkhar crammed his mouth
full of his own fingers and bit them. No one spoke,
all edged a step nearer, And when the string hummed

(04:29:24):
for the third time, and the final dart driven straight
and hard, stood between the other two, there was a
deep gasp of half incredulous surprise. Savages are deeply and
religiously conservative, and easily persuade themselves that their own way,

(04:29:44):
though demonstrably the worse, is the right way. Did the
landowners of England effusively fold Stevenson to their noble bosoms.
His trains would interfere with their fox hunting so much
they could see lay. They saw money in the thing,
and came into it with a rush. Now the sun

(04:30:05):
Men were almost as conservative as the House of Peers
in the day when the rockets was the last new thing,
and there was nothing of Luca with which to commend
this invention to their unwilling admiration. Alack, our racers moved
with a pitiful slowness, and still moves locally and by jerks,

(04:30:26):
and with much intermediate marking of time and retrogressions elsewhere. Hence,
it is not to be supposed that the sun Men
acclaimed the first performances of the new thing with shouts
of joy. To the braves of the tribe. It signified
the success of a piece of woman's gear. Their first
impulse was to have none of it, to shout it

(04:30:48):
down as foreign magic certainly novel, probably impious, and no
doubt offensive to their deity. Even the old chief, with
all to gain by his grandson's victory, was an enthusiastic
Were they more stupid than their descendants of a later day?
I try not let the reader judge. Once, during England's

(04:31:12):
struggles with Napoleon, was the chance offered to each antagonist
to end the matter at a stroke? How did they
take it? Joseph Manton laid his designs for rifled artillery
before the Master of the Ordnance, and was refused leave
to manufacture guns capable of demolishing the ships, forts and

(04:31:33):
forces of France at long range. A few years later,
young Fulton explained to Buonaparte his plans for towing the
wind bound Bologna fleet across the Channel by steam. The hard,
shallow gray eyes of the Corsican stared him down, idalist
and England was safe for another century. Pulliun had won,

(04:31:56):
but the successful competitors ree astonishing shot aroused suspicion in
some anger and jealousy in others. There were men present
capable of surlily or passionately repudiating the fact. Honkhard did
he arose from his heels, flung out his hands, strutted,

(04:32:18):
laughed derisively, indulged in gestures offensive and provocative, and walked
towards the target. Stop, cried the old chief. Let no
man draw those spears himself. Detaching the skin, he wore
it around the circle of watching braves. There was no

(04:32:38):
denying the evidence. Those three small bow driven darts were
in over their heads. A man so struck would hardly
have lived out the day. Bullyun, without vaunts, took the
fact of his victory for granted, and, noting his backer's reserve,
came to the front. I have just one small thing

(04:33:01):
to ask, said he, raising his hand, A very little thing.
It is that my cousin will now throw spears with
my wife. The listening tribe stared with open mouthed amazement.
The challenged man fairly bristled to a brave Such a
proposal was an indelible insult. Yet Pullyun's manner was not insulting.

(04:33:27):
Nothing could be less provocative than the gentle and smiling
simplicity of his mien. A brave place only with braves,
said the old chief, interpreting the challenged man's rigid silence.
Then at a nod from her husband de Yan came
from the curtained doorway of the Wigwam. She was wearing

(04:33:49):
the full spring month's working dress of a woman of
the tribe, to wit, her own supple beauty, hidden only
from the waist to the knee by an apron of skins.
There was nothing to remark in this. But what drew
a murmur of amazement from the circle, a murmur which
presently turned to scoffs and incredulous laughter, was the bare

(04:34:12):
skin which she bore upon her arm, and the collar
of teeth and claws which encircled the ruddy symmetry of
her throat. Sedately, she spread the skin and took her
stand upon it. She knew none better that this hour
would be the making or breaking of her man and herself.
But she bore herself superbly, if her heart fluttered within

(04:34:36):
her breast, her mouth was hard, and her eyes steady. Silently,
she fingered the necklace, and luke to question to her husband,
who raised his hand, Do you ask why my wife
stands upon that bare skin, whilst I stand upon bare earth?
Do you ask why she and not I wears that necklace?

(04:34:58):
Those are fair questions which I will like answer presently.
But first I too have a question to ask of you.
If two go to the woods to hunt, and a
bear is killed by one of the two, who shall
wear the spoils he who did the killing.

Speaker 2 (04:35:14):
Or he who looked on.

Speaker 1 (04:35:16):
That is our case, my wife's and mine. Whilst I
lay with a broken legbone, that bear came like a
lynx upon a wood hen in a gin, and thought
to have made a meal of me.

Speaker 2 (04:35:29):
My wife was there.

Speaker 1 (04:35:31):
She might have run for it, but she took spear
in hand and killed that bear. He stooped and lifted
one of the three enormous paws of the hide. At
one thrust. She killed that bear. He was very near
to me, nearer than my cousin is now. He was
upreared for the stroke. He was not a young bear,

(04:35:54):
nor a brown bear, but a grizzly of the rocks,
an old man grizzly. So, my chief says, who knows
more of bear than any of us? For myself, I
have never had much to do with bear of any sort.

Speaker 2 (04:36:07):
Too.

Speaker 1 (04:36:07):
Perchance, brown bears both they fought well, did not they honkar?
But this was my first grizzly. He came near to
being my last. We were in a cave, the three
of us. I was sitting with my legs stiff and weak.
So he was now upon the ground at Diane's feet,

(04:36:28):
acting the scene. The grizzly came. Thus he bounded from
the earth, crawled, reared, poured the air, impersonating the monster.
She she here, my wife, who was not attacked, who
might have saved herself?

Speaker 2 (04:36:46):
What did she? What did she? I ask?

Speaker 1 (04:36:50):
His voice rose to a shout, What would my cousin
have done? It fell to a soft, penetrating tone. He
spread his hands and bent towards hon Khar, as though
genuinely seeking an answer to his question, a question put
with an air of suave simplicity which it was impossible

(04:37:11):
to effectively resent. My cousin would have done what my
wife did? Yes, he would have killed that grizzly. I
see it in his eye. Thou wouldst have done just that, honkh.
A stifled titter ran around the circle. That this was
a home thrust. Hon Kha had, indeed, as Pullyun had

(04:37:34):
reminded him, been present at the hunting of one of
the two bears which had been slain by the sun
men during the past four years, but by overcaution or maladroitness,
or sheer ill luck, it had not fallen to him
to distinguish himself in that fight. All braves cannot be
at their best upon all occasions, and that had not

(04:37:58):
been one of Honkhar's days. The emergency which had found
his cousin wanting had been one which had set the
seal to Pullyon's courage and address rivals before the cousins
had been rivals since Pullyun leading. The elders present perceived
that their young war chief, not content with re establishing

(04:38:21):
his precedence, was bent on inflicting a public humiliation upon
his would be Supplanter perceived too, that he was probably
aware of the plot which his timely return to his
tribe had barely forestalled, and were wondering how the Honkar
party were taking it. These, as it happened, were taking

(04:38:41):
the matter extremely well. They had fallen under the influence
of hon Kar, not but any love which they bore him,
but because a leader of some sort was needful for
the tribe at a critical juncture, and he, in default
of Pullyun, was the only possible man their former war
chief had dropped upon them from the skies and albeits.

(04:39:04):
They had wavered in their allegiance, and some of them
had talked big over night with the instability of the savage, who,
like a boy, is merely a man in the making,
fickle and easily moved to good or evil. They were
ready to return to duty. The results of the spear
throwing had shaken them, but this exhibition of Puliun's adroit

(04:39:26):
eloquence had completed their reconversion, not to the new weapon,
but to the old. Comrade. Phunkhar was upon his feet.
He had heard the titter of the women behind him.
He had looked towards one and another of his chosen
friends and followers, but had failed in finding an answering eye.

(04:39:48):
He felt himself slipping. The situation called for instant action.
He took it with a rush. There was no finesse
about Honkhar. He struck his hardest his opponent's weakest spot.
This tale was too wonderful for belief. He appealed to
the experience of the old chief and the half dozen elders.

(04:40:11):
He claimed as a brave to know something. He and
his contemporaries had seen a bear or two die, but
they had died hard, had charged home a dozen times,
had run when it came to running for a long way,
had stood at bay under a storm of spears for
half a day. It had taken every man of the

(04:40:31):
hunting party all that he knew to finish the fight
with a whole skin. Yet this foreign woman, forsooth had
killed her bear an old man grizzly. There was no
getting over that skin with a casual poke, with one
one of her people's stupid little darts. Absurd. That the

(04:40:53):
bear had died was evident. Even bears cannot live forever.
But how had he died in a pit, or under
a downfall, or by a chance fallen rock. Perhaps such
things did happen to bears as to men, he supposed,
And doubtless this had befallen Whilst Pullyune lay sick and well,

(04:41:13):
it was only too plain that his cousin had been
very sick, indeed, both in his feet and in his head.
For in a word, this foreign woman had fooled him.
Pullyune heard him to an end with grave patience. Then,
turning to Dan, who was now quivering with hard pent excitement,
he nodded. The girl retired to the wigwam and was

(04:41:37):
presently back again, no longer wearing the bear's trophies, but
rearrayed in a triple necklace of human teeth, which encircled
her brown throat in shining rows, whilst three scalps swung
and dangled from her waistband. A low cry of utter
wonder broke from the circle of spectators and rose louder

(04:42:00):
as in obedience to her husband's eye. She made the
circuits of the ring, exhibiting these undreamed of wonders to
the astonished braves with a sort of shy bravado.

Speaker 2 (04:42:14):
Scalps.

Speaker 1 (04:42:15):
These were not the scalps of old men or of women,
but of top knotted braves. The teeth, too, were not
milk teeth, but the unworn, fully fanged grinders of men.
She returned to her place upon the bear skin, pursued
by admiring glances. All kept silence. Not even Hunkha had

(04:42:39):
any remarks to offer, or explanations to suggest. Pull yun
arose again. My cousin is hard to satisfy. A brave
who has killed his bear in single fight is still
unworthy to meet my cousin. I ask my chief, I
ask myself and you nay. I will ask my cousin

(04:43:00):
who is worthy to meet so great a warrior as
hon Kar, And here is my answer. He turned to
his wife. Behold my squaw, de Yan is her name.
She is wearing the scalps of three braves. They were
strong braves and great runners that winter war party. Gaoloo, Pongou,

(04:43:21):
and Lomar were their names. They were well armed. Behold
their axes and knives. They ambushed My wife set upon
her as she bends over a trap. So much did
I see of the fight with these eyes looking from
the cave where I lay foot fast? Did she fly
screaming to me? No, she thought for me. She led

(04:43:45):
them away from our cave. A long chase, oh, a
hard chase, one whole day. But this I cannot speak of, particularly,
for I did not see it. Late that night she
returned to me with these scalps. They were fresh, then
new stripped. Does my cousin, who speaks of downfalls and pits,

(04:44:07):
think that my squawk took all three braves in a
pit at one, running in a hobo, say, like a
drove of horse? Does he think in his heart that
these young warriors gave their hair and their teeth to.

Speaker 2 (04:44:21):
A girl for love.

Speaker 1 (04:44:23):
The speaker laughed merrily at the idea, and save Honkha,
everyone within hearing laughed with him. He stilled the merriments
with upraised hand and turned to his antagonist once again.
I ask him whether he will play at the spear
throwing with this brave my squaw. The speaker paused for

(04:44:47):
a reply, and in the silence which followed, braves and
women alike craned for a better view of the face
of the man whom he challenged, who was squatting upon
his heels, glowering upon his rival, the fingers of his
throwing hand tightening, slackening, and again tightening around the shaft
of his Assegai an answer of some sort he must make,

(04:45:12):
But what answer would pass? Whilst he debated, the foreign
woman stooped, took her husband's bow from the ground, chose
her a single dart, and approached the crease. She turned
and scrutinized the mark. The creole, now denuded of the
badger's skin. The stake upon which it hung protruded through

(04:45:34):
the wicker for the length of half an arm. Watched
by all, she stood serenely at gaze then threw up
her chin and called to a woman at the other
end of the lists. O woman, there thou with a papoose,
I want a mark. Wilt haang something small, say a
moccasin upon the top of that steak. I thank thee sister.

(04:45:58):
A gust of astonish wish laughter arose, what foolery, what
bravado was this? There, hunger child's mitten? An impossible mark,
such as no brave had ever set for himself or
for his rival. Again arose the clear, mellow woman's voice,
using their own tongue, with just a touch or two

(04:46:20):
a foreignness in its intonations. Oh, my father and chief,
may I throw at this mark? I will throw? But
once the old chief turned first to Honkar, but the
man sat mute and glam as though the business was
no concern of his. To the woman, he turned and

(04:46:41):
nodded assent, doubting, as did the rest. Pullyun accepted. Da
Yan fitted arrow to string and half bentce the great bow,
still keeping her eye upon the tiny mark. Then, with
a small, sweet laugh, she tripped back from the throwing
five full strides, drew swiftly and to the ear, and

(04:47:05):
as swiftly loosed twang, the chord sang shrill in the
morning air. The arrow sped, and a whoop of shady
light broke from the watching tribe. For the shaft had struck,
the mitten full, had pierced and transfixed it. The archer

(04:47:25):
had watched the flight of her shaft with a hard
bright eye. Now she turned and tripped back to her
husband's side, without a side glance, as if such marksmanship
was all in her day's work, a thing of naught.
Doubt not that her little heart was high within her bosom,
But an overvaunting word escaped her lips. De yan was great,

(04:47:52):
The old chief was upon his feet. Would his nephew
throw twas a fair challenge on some other day? Perhaps muttered,
honk are confusedly today and now my cousin are not
at all, and never retorted pullyun And we think thee.
It is not now for the war chieftaincy that thou

(04:48:13):
art bidden to throw, that is lost to thee.

Speaker 2 (04:48:17):
But for its.

Speaker 1 (04:48:17):
Reversion wilt thou stand third in the tribe by outs
throwing my wife, No, that thou art not just a
brave among my braves, no more whilst she leads the
war parties in my absence. That is so, I say, it,
said the old chief, stilling the clamor that was arising

(04:48:38):
among the braves. Here stands my daughter, no foreign woman,
but a full member of the tribe. No squaw, but
a brave and a very great spearman, which screamed the cousin,
bounding to his feet and whirling back his spear. In
the twinkling of an eye, he had quivered and had

(04:49:00):
hurled it at the shapely bosom of Dayan. But the
gray Chief stepped before her, with upraised hands and lips
opening in rebuke that was never to be uttered. Straight
betwixt those upraised hands sped the spear and drove its
keen chirt head deep through the neck cordage and into

(04:49:21):
the great throat artery of the father of the tribe.
The bright life blood spouted high and wide. The stricken
man staggered, but kept his feet composedly, folded his arms,
and stood awaiting his death. A bit a cry of
horror burst from the circle of braves, a shrill, a

(04:49:44):
wail from the outer ring of women, And as the
uproar grew, the tall figure of the ancient leader was
seen to totter sway and fall. Pullyun had leaped to
his feet, snatching right and left for axe and knife
in the blind imput wrath, Honka horror, struck at his impiety,

(04:50:05):
stood for some breaths, covering his wide open mouth with
his hand, a petrifaction of remorse, whilst his friends fell
away from him, as from an infected thing. Then, seeing
his enemy and master, the new chief in whose hand
lay his life and his limbs, to torture at his will,

(04:50:27):
bounding across the open circle towards him, he turned and
fled with winged feet. He had yet a chance, not
only for life alone, but for far more than life,
for the chieftaincy of the tribe. If he could reach
covert and maintain himself alive for ten days and ten nights,

(04:50:49):
the headship of the sun Men was his. Such was
the custom of the tribe. Such was the rule of
succession of the priests of Nemi, kings of the Grove,
to the times of the Antonines. Such within living memory
was the lore of the red Skins of the Middle States.
The timber was near. With such a start and on

(04:51:11):
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 naught but an axe. He

(04:51:35):
ran desperately, but haltingly, for his leg failed him. Suddenly
he stopped through and missed pnkhard drew away, and then
all was momentary. Whence came it what was happening? It
was done. A cry moon helped me, had shrilled, a

(04:51:55):
tense string had hummed behind the backs of the gazing crowd.
A light fledged ASSA guy 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

(04:52:18):
his head went forward and he pitched upon his face,
struggled to his knees and strove to rise. But Ballyun
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

(04:52:38):
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 Dan last night, the
foreign woman and now the just admitted brave, her black

(04:53:03):
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, and
avenging fury, she knelt upon her fallen foe and tore

(04:53:25):
away his scalp as the falcon strips the breastbone of
a partridge. Her shriek of triumph ended in a peal
of elvish laughter. Shall we blame her no, nor praise?

Speaker 2 (04:53:39):
Why should we?

Speaker 1 (04:53:41):
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 civilized nor residual,
No nor an abnormality, but something above, a typical woman

(04:54:01):
of the Old Stone Age, A fine specimen, if you will,
of woman as we know her. In the shaping halfway
up from the ridge, browed, spidery, armed dog toothed forrunner,
who some hundred thousand years or so earlier had dropped
from her tree at the cry of her fallen picaninny

(04:54:22):
and greatly daring, had beaten off a hyena with a club.
There indeed stood the first parent whom we need recognize
four 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

(04:54:46):
with a tool in hand. The difference betwixt that far
away pursuite 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,

(04:55:08):
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

(04:55:28):
another one hundred thousand years more or less would have
to elapse air, 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

(04:55:51):
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 be concern and her weapons
to her husband, Deyan strode back to the lists, swinging
the dripping scalp around her head, singing the chance of
triumph transfigured her six feet of supple bronze, seeming to

(04:56:15):
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. The priestess confessed. Meanwhile, the
widowed head wife rent the air with her, wailing to her.

(04:56:36):
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 new come foreign
woman laid in her hands the wet scalp of the murderer.

(04:56:57):
The braves, returning from stepping out full distance of that
still only just credible caste, found the head wife of
their dead chief, groveling at the feet of the new leader.
Dean said her husband tremulously himself, half afraid of this
prodigy to whom he found himself mated. Will it please

(04:57:19):
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,

(04:57:40):
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?

Speaker 2 (04:57:50):
Yes, and I too hail.

Speaker 1 (04:57:52):
Thee came near, very near to prostrating himself, but something
in her eye, some movement of her lip, deprecated forbade
from that hour the master Girl's influence was paramounts. That

(04:58:12):
shot converted the braves of the Suntotem from spear throwers
to bowmen. In time, and as it seemed, but just
in time, an archer force, equipped and trained by their chieftainess,
encountered the long anticipated raid of the Lynx Men. The
route of the invaders was signal and complete. Timely warning

(04:58:34):
of their presence was given by the young good wolves,
which the Master Girl had taught her people to domesticate.
These warders of the dimness before the dawn held up
the advance gard of the foe with bristling backs and
shining teeth, until Dayan had set her battle in array.
A born general, one of the first, she had silently

(04:58:57):
thought out her strategy, piously attributing its inspiration and success
to her totem, the horned Moon, whose very form she
imitated in the marshaling of her little force. The Naked
woman Savage had evolved from her own clear brain the
most consistently successful tactic of all subsequent warfare, that deceptive movement,

(04:59:21):
which consists in refusing battle by the attacked center whilst
delivering counterstrokes from the converging flanks. The lynx Men are
very stout hearted, she said. They have carried matters their
own way for many years. You tell me it is
well o'pullun, for I would have them charge us as

(04:59:41):
an old boar chargers, without thought of turning or looking
to left or right. She laughed low in her throat,
but her eye was hard and bright. Her braves watched
her as growing boys watch a man. Now we have them,
she cried, as battle was John, Remember if one of

(05:00:02):
them falls by a spear, of hours, I shall want
to know whose spear it was that transgressed. A minute
later and the Sunmen center, a special force of spear
men trained to practice the ruse. After wasting their Assaguis
at Idle Range, were in full retreat upon the stockade

(05:00:24):
and their bows, whilst ambuscaded archery was closing in upon
both flanks. The enemy, stubborn, haughty, and with an unbeaten record,
saw nothing, knew nothing until clambering one upon another at
the stockade, like bees that swarm their backs, felt the

(05:00:44):
dreadfully piercing small javelins of their despised foes, whilst the
bowmen behind the stockade struck them down faster than they
could climb. They died there to a man not escaped.
It was a war party of sun Men disguised in

(05:01:04):
Link's trappings which took the news of the defeats to
the quarry camp. This was the Master Girl's counterstroke. She
led it as the song that was sung for many generations.

Speaker 2 (05:01:16):
Told led it.

Speaker 1 (05:01:18):
In the weed of a captive woman, one of a
crowd of women and of braves, decked out as women
who marched with disheveled hair and downcast heads, and with
hoppled hands, but with their bows borne for them by
their supposed captors, ready at need. The surprise was absolute

(05:01:39):
and final. The Lynx Totem was blotted out. Only the young,
unproved girls and the smallest of the toddling boys were
reserved to be incorporated in the Sun and Moon clan,
the first of many similar acts of adoption. End of
chapter ten, chapter eleven of The Master Girl, a romance

(05:02:09):
by Ashton Hilliers. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
The passing of the Master Girl, and of the rest
of the deeds of the Master Girl, and of her
extreme wisdom, foresight and daring. What shall I say? Time
would fail me to tell? Of her dealings with the

(05:02:31):
White Wolves and the Beaver Totem, the Elks and the
Red Clouds, and twenty tribes more yea, and how she
moved thereto by memories of early humiliations, crossed the ranges
in force, and wiped out her old people, the little moons,
As to which grim Deed I desire to express no opinion.

(05:02:56):
Human nature even nowadays is queer, Nor was it less
queer in the days of ignorance. Let us admit that
a warfare begun in self defense, was carried on for
conquest her new weapon, her generalship carried all before her,
and in her day the Sun and Moon Totem waxed,

(05:03:16):
great throve and multiplied, became a dominant clan, pushing back
the hunting and war parties of all other names for
a month's.

Speaker 2 (05:03:26):
Journey and more.

Speaker 1 (05:03:28):
Nor is it a brief episode for this woman, The
great Chieftainess, as men called her, during her life and
for long after, ruled her tribe for so many seasons,
as if a man were asked to tell how long
that man must hold up his two full hands six times,
and yet show three fingers beyond three whole men and

(05:03:51):
three toes by Esquimaux counts, so many times did the
Black Cook go a lekking During the reign of the
Master Girl in her day, every man of her tribe
had not less than two wives, yea even her husband,
for being childless herself. She, loving her Pullyun with an

(05:04:14):
exigent and emulous love, was minded to see him with
a larger family of young braves and girls to his
name than any other man of the totem, and to
this end supplied him with wives whom she picked and trained.
Conjugal arrangements distressing to us moderns, but still existing among
the primitives of the Odez Mountains in southern Algeria, and which,

(05:04:38):
in the case of Pullyun and Dayan, in no wise
lessen the reverence which the husband paid to the wife
of his youth, nor the more exacting and jealous love
with which she returned his affection. Moreover, did she not
arm and train an especial force of women archers, women
who hunted by moonlight. These and the good wolves of

(05:05:01):
their training with the camp guard, both of the home
stockade at the quarries, whether the tribe removed, and of
the flying camps in wartime. Sorely dreaded were they by
the foemen of other totems, as well for their close
and accurate shooting, as for their midnight raids, for the
men of the Old Stone Age, dreaded to go among

(05:05:23):
dark woods for good and sufficient reasons, and having this
fear ingrained in their beings, had imagined and come to
believe in a many strange and dismal things which haunted
the dark, beside those upon which an acts good bite,
which beliefs are held, or at least acted upon by
not a few of their descendants to this hour orbit

(05:05:47):
by daylight. They will in no wise allow that they
feel any nervousness at all, nor will admit that anything
whatsoever exists to warrant it. This Amazon force was re
recruited from among the fleetest and hardiest of the unmarried girls.
Admission to its ranks was jealously restricted and hedged about

(05:06:09):
according to the manner of savages, by secret and severe
initiatory ceremonies celebrated by virgin priestesses under the light of
the new moon in forest retreats to which no man
was ever admitted. And to this pullyun war chief and
archpriest of the rival Sundist cult was brought to consent

(05:06:33):
an admission of the moral ascendancy of the Master Girl,
which will not be lost upon the discerning reader, she
would seem to have had a great time of it.
But of her many campaigns, as of those of Kai Kosru,
and of Genghis Khan, and other conquerors whose exploits were
too complete to be recorded, no faintest hollow whisper has

(05:06:57):
come down to us the chronicles of the first woman Chief.
But a wealth of richly embroidered incident is lost to mankind,
were writ in that earliest Cuneiform script, the Arrowhead, upon
that most perishable of materials, the bodies of her foemen.
It may be surmised that the movements of the tribes

(05:07:19):
whom her conquests dispossessed may account for some of the
otherwise inexplicable migrations and settlements of people's ignorant of the Bow,
the Australian to Wit, and the still lower Tasmanian. Proudly
she lived, ruling her household vigorously and strictly. Nor did
her masterfulness decrease with advancing age.

Speaker 2 (05:07:45):
And what of the end?

Speaker 1 (05:07:47):
What of the final scene which closes in and rounds
off the longest and most eventful of lives to them?
It came suddenly Pullyune gray Hale and ben had grown
somewhat silent, husbanding breath, and powers which he had private
reasons to suspect were failing. Albeit no man of his

(05:08:10):
bodyguard had yet seen his doubt reflected in the silent
side glancing face of a fellow. The summer heats were
upon the land a great draught. The tall and stalwart
elder had overtaxed himself in the noonday sun at a
game driving. When the evening meal was cooked, he did

(05:08:30):
not eat, dian urged uselessly.

Speaker 2 (05:08:35):
All that night.

Speaker 1 (05:08:36):
He was restless, dreaming, speaking in his sleep, but not
of enemies.

Speaker 2 (05:08:42):
No.

Speaker 1 (05:08:42):
For this, the keenest solicitous wife, holding her breath, listened
in vain to whom might she lay this sickness a
bewitching or be work doubtless, But for ten days march
in any direction was there a man who dared think
in his inmost heart evil of the great chief. No,

(05:09:05):
there was none in all that region that peeped or
moved the wing who in her household. Then she brooded vainly,
pondering all the next day a man lay silent, refusing
the various foods which she prepared with her own hands.
At sunset she summoned the clan, her subject, wives, their handmaidens,

(05:09:29):
daughters and slaves. Sat around the silent hut. Beyond the
royal enclosure. In a wider ring, squatted the body guard,
his sons and grandsons, and the staunchest of the braves
of the tribe. Grizzled ring men, upon whose scarred brown
chests shifted and glittered the trophies of forty battles. The

(05:09:51):
squatted mute, hand over mouth, knowing well what was a
doing inside, jealous, remorseful, anxious someone should die for this. Yes,
so the fire with her though she were the beauty
of the tribe, or with him if he were the
best archer of them all. Deyan came forth and perambulated

(05:10:16):
the concourse, a V shaped sprig of the witch hazel
in her hands. Seven times she went through them and
about them, but the twig turned to none. Rabdomansey had
failed her silently. She had come silently. She went still
and hungered for vengeance, and, still unsatisfied, re entered the

(05:10:39):
dark hut. It is not of our people, she said,
But there was no reply from the sick man. Her
breath came short. She approached, touched, felt him he was dead,
dead of the broken heart which kills silently and swiftly,

(05:11:00):
so many gallant savages when stricken with one of the
mysterious sicknesses for which they know no remedies, and for
which they cannot account. Going forth, she dismissed the assembly,
bade the women of the royal household still their tongues
and their children, and returning to the dark, Wigwam squatted

(05:11:21):
all night beside her dead, revolving many things. Once her
courage wavered, and her faith in herself husband chief, is
this my doing? But for the man of her vigil
The heart within the woman was insurgents. She had ruled
too long without the physical or spiritual touch of restraint

(05:11:45):
to brook an injury, even from death, himself, too proud
to weep and to self contained to give vent to
the passion of pent wrath which burnt her bosom. She crouched,
dumb and suffering, whilst the constellations wheeled across the black
vault overhead, her whole nature yearning desperately for her lost mate,

(05:12:09):
Give me back, my man. Just before the dawn streak,
she must have slept, for a voice and a presence
were in the hut her husband's, But not as she
had hoped to see and to hear him with a
clear doom word as to whom she was to hold
to account for his death. No, nor as she had

(05:12:31):
known him these many years. A gray, massive, familiar figure,
he returned to her, smiling and blind, youthful, exquisitely beautiful
and young, the happy bridegroom of her youth, who had
been the first to hail her as chieftainess of the tribe.
She exclaimed with rapture, spread her arms for him, and

(05:12:55):
he was gone. She was alone with the corpse. He
needs me, she said, Wait for me, pullyune, I will
not be long. In one moment, her resolve was taken.
All her life had been a series of swiftly taken,
intuitive decisions. This was the last. The drowsing watchers without

(05:13:20):
found her standing in the rift of the hanging skins
before the doorway. Wood was her word. Bring wood, much wood.
Let every man, woman and child bring a faggot dry
and fit. Your lord is a cold and I am
minded to warm him. There was something terrible in the

(05:13:41):
calmness and intensity of her face, Although the words were
wild enough, for what shall a man need with a
stack of dry kindling at midsummer. This will surely be
a very great and sore burning, muttered this one, and that,
as they went their ways to the forest, hardly dared
man or woman looke upon one another, so heavily lay

(05:14:04):
upon all the dread of an accusation of witchcraft, of
having commerced with the unseen powers of darkness, to the
hurt of their chief. This is the canker of savage life,
the haunting, still impending, secret terror that walketh in darkness,
from which few uncivilized communities are long free of this.

(05:14:29):
The Sun and moonmen had known little or nothing for
the space of four generations. The dominant personality of the
Master Girl had brooked no interference from self chosen mysterymongers.
Sixty years of splendid health, unshaken by wound or accident,
had afforded scant openings for the medicine man. As high

(05:14:52):
Priestess of the Moon right, she had been a law
unto herself and to her people. Nor had her unbroken
sequence of s success in war provided occasions for witch
smellings or human sacrifices. Yet, as in the Southern Europe
of our day. The habit of dilation has survived the inquisition,

(05:15:13):
so among the people of her tribe the oral tradition
of the dread ritual persisted. The rusted and long disused
machinery for exorcism and inquest for necromancy lay ready to hand,
and might be put together and set a working at
any juncture, should authority but crook its little finger in signal, yes,

(05:15:36):
now was the time, and before night a score of
their best warriors and handsomest women might be expiating the
crime of overlooking the dying chief. Deep rooted, indeed, must
be this antique belief, since it died out in our
England only within human memory, if it be truly dead

(05:15:57):
and still survives in the Celtic fringe. The sensitive, the impressionable,
poetical Welshman is a thousand years nearer to his past
than his fellow subject of King Edward across off as Dyke.
In broad daylight, nay by gas and candlelight, the man
is as we, and in one or two of the arts,

(05:16:19):
is more than we. He professes and truly believes some
evangelical creed and glances askance at the superstitious mummeries of
the detested establishment. But let sickness, sorrow, or misfortune strike him,
and in the deep overhung country lanes, or by the
hearth whilst mounting winds rumble in the stone chimney, he

(05:16:43):
begins to doubt the old faith, the doggerel charms, the
scraps of nurse law. May there not be something in them?

Speaker 2 (05:16:52):
After all?

Speaker 1 (05:16:54):
He can whisper his misgivings to his brother celt in
their native speech. It seems natural, possible, probable. But to
a question put to him in the English, he stiffens,
or more probably puts on that impenetrable air of simplicity
which has baffled the keenest seeker for folklore. As for

(05:17:16):
his cousin across Saint George's channel, Is it yet ten
years since a poor epileptic woman was held down and
burned to death upon her own hearthstone by her husband,
family and neighbors, with atrocious circumstances, and according to some
immemorial right which might have been lifted straight from Mashona

(05:17:38):
Land or the days of the cavemen. Heavy of heart,
the wood collectors departed upon their quests heavy of heart,
but light of heal. Woe to the laggard, who hung
back to the woman whose bundle was small, or who
seemed to fear and to avoid the eye of the

(05:17:59):
great chieftainess. Before midday every faggot was ready. Where should
the pile be built? Where were the stakes? Deyan, hollow
eyed and of an ominous mien, paced the circle. Took
note of the burdens. Then, whilst all throats grew tight

(05:18:21):
and dry, and all breaths thickened, their ruler, with regal
wave of arm, bade bear the wood to the inner stockade,
and pilot round the royal wigwam. There was a general
movement to carry out her orders. This was no time
for questioning. Whilst this black mood of their chieftainess held,

(05:18:44):
and whilst her mate lay silent within, sick, possessed, overlooked
for spoken, Not dead, oh, surely not dead. At such
a juncture, with the air thick with doubt and suspicion,
prompt blind implicit obedience was safest. What this last order meant?

(05:19:06):
Who could guess? Many were guessing what might come next?
Who dare surmise? Yet all were surmising. De Yan had
withdrawn within the wigwam, crouched there in the gloom, she
heard the crackle and snap of piled brush. The small

(05:19:27):
place was dominated by the presence of mortality and dissolution.
Her mind was divided, half with her dead half turned
jealously towards the workers without. She felt that they were listening,
knew their minds and the workings of them, knew that
hopes of respites were dawning, glancings forward, previsions of a

(05:19:51):
possible sequel other than the one which each feared. One
event was coming home to them. The super sensitive faculties
of the savage, at full strain, could get no tidings
of the chief, who had withdrawn himself from his braves
for two days. This absence, this silence, spoke but one

(05:20:14):
word death. Then, as she mused, something moved in the
darkness behind her. With the quiet, some breathing, soft sinuosity
of a snake turning swiftly, she pounced and caught a
slim ankle. Her captive lay mute, panting thickly, shuddering strongly.

(05:20:37):
The yan, without speaking, ran an open hand over the features,
followed out the limbs, and beside the relaxed hand lay
something which she had not handled for many a year.
Reminiscent of her far away youth, her own personal fire
sticks long disused. This is little fallow dough, she said,

(05:21:01):
softly and without anger, naming her dead lord's favorite granddaughter.
But what does young fellow do here unbidden in the
place of death? Oh, mother, whimpered the girl. I knew
I could not help it, I thought, Yes, I have
eyes too, Thou art leaving us?

Speaker 2 (05:21:23):
Oh, do not forsake thy children?

Speaker 1 (05:21:26):
What shall we do? To whom shall we look? Yes,
he there is dead, we know, but how we know?
Not all must die? How time's come? Maybe his time came.
I do not think that any of the tribe wore
a black heart towards him. But O, my mother, if

(05:21:46):
it is obi, and thou knowest best, charge whom thou
wilt charge me.

Speaker 2 (05:21:52):
I will die for him, though.

Speaker 1 (05:21:54):
My heart is as white as a full moon.

Speaker 2 (05:21:57):
But oh, do not leave us.

Speaker 1 (05:22:00):
The morning widow withheld her answer, and when the word came,
it was breathed softly and motherly, little girl, Thy heart
is white, I know it, but no whiter than the
hearts of the rest. Get thee gone now by the
way thou camest, and say nothing of thy coming hither

(05:22:22):
until the third day, at evening, the child slipped eel
like under the tent skirts and into the loosely piled fagots.
Dyan patted the space left vacant and smiled, for the
fire sticks were gone too. She arose gravely, smiling, and
took from a skin wallet that hung high a pair

(05:22:46):
of round stones, dense and very heavy, and struck them softly,
one against the other, and lo the darkness was lightened
with pale green sparks.

Speaker 2 (05:22:59):
For these were not.

Speaker 1 (05:23:00):
Duels of pyrites, her latest discovery, and one which would
die with her, to be rediscovered in later times. You
will not fail me, I think, she murmured, and began
to arrange the tinder, crooning the first notes of her
death song to herself. As she worked, wave after wave

(05:23:22):
of memory flowed in upon her out of the long
forgotten past, and with each some trait of her dead
husband traveled towards her towered and subsided battle touches, his
shield before her himself exposed. His shout of triumph rang
in her ears as her shaft went home. Or a

(05:23:46):
hot breath catching moment in the life of a big
game huntress, A lioness with ears lay to her skull,
and with head, neck, back and tail in one level,
tawny line broke covert and made for her snarling. And
again it was Pullion who had stridden between her and

(05:24:06):
the wrinkled black lips.

Speaker 2 (05:24:09):
She saw him leap.

Speaker 1 (05:24:10):
The fence of the enclosure and throw himself in the
path of the stampeding herd of buck. When the leaders
of the driven mob swerved in the very jaws of
the hoopo and were breaking back. What a man he
had been. Yes, they had lived, they too, And about

(05:24:30):
the time that the heat of the day began to wane,
the watching tribe heard her voice raised in song within
the royal Wigwam, and certain duller sounds, as of soft
stones pounded, And whilst all strained iron ear, fearing the
approach of the unknown, with hearts high in their throats,

(05:24:52):
the afternoon sunshine was dimmed by a thin smoke, and
above the ridge of the Wigwam, where the poles crossed,
the air grew glassy like troubled water. Then whilst the
dry sticks crackled, and here and there a green one spat.
The pale flame that is invisible in the sunlight turned

(05:25:14):
the wood gray and shriveled the skin hangings. The death
chance pealed intermittently from within, interrupted by coughing, but ever resumed.
Soon the whole pile was alight, and on every side
the crowd, though pressed upon from outside, was driven back

(05:25:35):
by the heat. And no I did steal these, and
I did pray her not to leave us. Wept fallowed,
dough strong shudders shook the throng of watchers, wild men,
whose grandsires this woman think a woman had brought to heel,

(05:25:56):
whose father she had trained to the bow and schooled
in her battle tactics. Wept, actually wept for the chieftainess,
whose death song arose fitfully and faintly above the roar
of the flame, had been more than a great warrior.
The dead chief had been that a giant in fight,

(05:26:17):
terrible at the axe, with a rush and a shout
like the charge and the roar of a rutting stag.
But she, how put it at once desperate and cautious, patient,
as awaiting heron sudden in attack, as the same bird
when its uncoiled neck drives home the daggerbeak. Other leaders

(05:26:38):
were pricked to hot decisions by the approach of unsuspected peril.
She for so long their pride and marvel had planned
her battle ere the Tassels hung upon the hazel and
won it. After the nuts were ripe, yea, and ever
upon ground of her own choice, did the Lynxes pounce

(05:26:59):
at no or the sitting bulls await her coming. It
was all one. The events fell as she had foretold,
wail ye women. Other tribes swarmed disorderly to the onset
and closed with clamor and confusion. She had taught her
braves the true method of advancing silently and in line.

(05:27:23):
She too had drilled them at what pains and with
what sternness to a battle formation already described, subsequently reinvented
by a later savage genius shaker, compelling her center to
mark time until her convergent horns had enveloped the headlong foe,
and the killing began to a general shout of oh Moon.

(05:27:47):
Each of her battles had been an anti dated canny
tribe after tribe names now to the young draft. Scornful
of woman led warriors had charged cheering into her traps
and perished. For no quarter was given in the stone age,
nor had the master girl a use for a living

(05:28:08):
enemy grown, ye, men, nor spare your tears for once,
though the children and women see that your cheeks are wet.
The groaning of the braves deepened, the keening of the
women grew shrill. But from the core of the heat,
where the naked Wigwam poles stripped now of their gear

(05:28:30):
were blazing above the pire like torches, came never a sound.
All through that afternoon, the tribe watched and waited. The
sun sank to her couch, blood red and laying her
broad face upon a hill shoulder for war, as minded

(05:28:50):
to see the last of her priest. The fire was
burning itself out, but was still too hot to approach.
A circular ramp. Part of glistering whiteness lay there, with
the air shuddering above it. Some of the ash retained
the shape of Babin and Faggot. More was flaky and

(05:29:11):
formless as snow, but pulsing through it came rosy flushes
from the glowing hearts within. But ah in the center
space where the Wigwam had stood the great father and
the great mother of their people, They who but two
days since had stood for authority, strength, courage, and wisdom,

(05:29:34):
were now white calcined bones. It was then that a
wonder and a portent appeared for the tribe. Raising scorched
faces from the dreary place of burning, beheld one half
of the sky, steeped as it were, with blood and
the sun, their goddess wading therein, Whilst near to her

(05:29:58):
and within that ensanguined field, stood the first presence of
the young moon, a bow of palest green. Then did
the eldest son of the dead arise, and with solemnly
uplifted hands salutes the twin totems. Ye are there, he cried,
We hail ye both heavenly watch us over your children.

(05:30:24):
End of chapter eleven, epilogue to the Master Girl, a
romance by Ashton Hilliers. This liberyvox recording is in the
public domain. Darkness enwrapped him comfortably, soft, thick, and warm.

(05:30:47):
He neither knew nor cared how long he had lain
in it, nor if at any time he had ever
known other conditions. He was just a motionless atom or
conjuries of atom, without ambitions, care or resentments, yet withal
a modicum of self knowledge. For instance, certain black marks

(05:31:08):
outstanding from a dull luminosity over against him connoted definite
ideas of origin and locality item fishers. Such were the
marks thick, heavy distinct lettering in brownish black output of
a small hand press used for printing museum labels. Oh,

(05:31:29):
it was all known to him. The oddness consisted in
his knowing so much and no more, nor feeling any
especial curiosity for information unexpressed by these symbols. Then, by
gradual but sensible degrees, the intensity of the darkness yielded,
And as layer after layer was lifted from him or

(05:31:50):
washed off, he recognized himself more fully. He was a
calcareous secretion. More black typing showed he was being treated
with weak acid baths. There were hopes entertained of the results.
He overheard someone say, so he began to be interested
in his own case. These accretions were little granular nodules

(05:32:13):
found among the old dead earth of the clefts and
fissures of the item chalk, dead earth which had slipped
down these rifts in the dead and gone long ago,
when they were natural pitfalls in the surface of an
Arctic tundra in winter. Their dangers would have been hidden
by the sheet of drifted snow through which an unwary

(05:32:34):
raindeer calf had fallen to its doom. He remembered that
raindeer calf also the Arctic fox, which was tempted down
by the meat, and the lemming which was chased down
by the stoat, And how neither fox, lemming nor stoats
ever got out again. In summer, insects fell in, and
his own case filled him with mild speculative hopes. The

(05:32:57):
acid was finding him down. His chalky envelopes were leaving
him coat after coat. Oh, there was something inside as
something which was probably interesting, possibly a new fact here.
Anticipation awoke in him. Suppose now the kitanous core of him,

(05:33:17):
when washed clean and dissolved out, should be recognizably bombous, hyperboreous,
the big bumblebee of the Arctic, the one so rare
in collections, the insect which seems almost immunes a frost
and goes booming from one little frozen flower bells to
another during the brief northern summer, while snowflakes heady around it.

(05:33:41):
Such a find would be valuable and new conformatory as
to climactic conditions too. Yes, someone was speaking above him.
Someone's finger pressed his wrist, he distinguished the ticking of
a watch. He opened his eyes, what is all this?

(05:34:02):
And behold that underbred, uninteresting young doctor was looking down
upon him with the subdued pride which a medical man
regards a case which will do him credit. He had
put a solid fortnight of holiday into it, for which,
as he knew well, he could not legally recover a
soup the Professor.

Speaker 2 (05:34:23):
He was now the professor.

Speaker 1 (05:34:24):
Again, and all the black marks, labels and item fisher
business were gone, found himself bursting with a huge novel experience,
which it behooved him to get into writing if he
died for it. But pencil and paper please, And eventually
he was allowed to have his way. End of epilog.

(05:34:47):
End of The Master Girl, a romance by Ashton Hilliers,
read by Phil Benson in Sydney, Australia,