Chapter IX: The Home-Coming

It was evening, the men of the Sun-Disc 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 watch-woman; just such a cry comes from the sentinel 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 foot-hills 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, 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 assegais awaiting the word of the old chief, a ring-man who had taken his first scalp forty years before and wore the necklace of five bears'-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. "If they are friends they will come right on, if they are unfriends they will not show again and the young men must deal with them to-night."

"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 person of some consideration, for when he spoke others held their peace and listened (watching still, be sure).--He was one Honk-Ah, 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 kept in check for two years past by the presence of his cousin Pŭl-Yūn, 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 by his qualities.

But Pŭl-Yūn had been absent more than six moons, and during the past winter, as the old chief grew stiffer with the 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 lumbago might be the last, the one which would tie the old leader 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 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 old chief's head-wife in the spirit of prophecy, "It is my grandson!"

"And the small one, the other?" asked Honk-Ah, 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 that the all-but-given-up Pŭl-Yūn 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? No.--_A squaw!_

The two, stepping out strongly (they had kept a trot for the avenue) made straight for the tee-pee 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 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 those earlier communities from which the mediæval 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 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 of 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 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 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, an I durst, an excursus upon 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. His wife, her maid, and the children of both sexes have traces 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-manias, Dreyfus-obsessions and what-not, in modern France, it is less terrible than 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 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? Let them yell, 'tis no affair of ours; it don't do to interfere--leave it to the police. We have fifty little apothegms to excuse our cowardice or sloth. It has come to this that every time we find ourselves at war (we are still somewhat pugnacious)--it takes the 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 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 plumes, and insist upon being followed by a mounted orderly with a red-and-white guidon upon his lance. These are 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 as incapable, arouse Society and 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, if it 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 presence, sings for company, being a secret believer in "things in the dark," but an arrant agnostic as to the "hen'my bein' hanywheres abart." Thus poor Tommy knows not that doom hath gone forth until 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 which makes most unpleasant reading, but, I put it to you, is it not true?

Agreed then, we have pretty well parted with the acute and rational curiosity which was the first armour of our race.

But, the Sun-Disc folk had it in a highly specialised form, and by the time that that deer-skin _portière_ had ceased swinging behind the newcomers, had noticed much, and had actually deduced a good deal of the recent histories of Pŭl-Yūn 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 Honk-Ah.

"He has not gone short of meat--see how heavy he is!--Whoever saw a brave come home from a winter-hunting, or a wife-hunting in such case? La, 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 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 a third. "It was nigh a broken back in my case. I mind me he laded me down with every single thing he owned and strutted before me like a black-cock in lekking-time! Oh, but wasn't I proud of him!--Fine and 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! Ha!" The speaker laughed at the remembrance, just as a prefect chuckles over the lammings he took when a fag.

"Eh, but, what in the world will this mean?" cried all together. "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 young chief is no fool."

"They walked well, anyhow."

"Pride, mere pride--they were ready to drop. Could not ye see as much? Think, they are in full winter dress: heavy deer-skin leggings and karosses 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 have felt the heat cruelly all day."

"A likely-looking girl--a Little Moon girl by her gait and colour;--but where can he have picked her up--and where has he been all this while? A brave can't live upon snow, and he has lived well, and upon an enemy's ground. Wah, Pŭl-Yūn 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, Pŭl-Yūn ever knew his own mind."

"She has bewitched him--he is mad--mad!" muttered Honk-Ah 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 he was but a youth), he was a jealous fellow and wont 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 not do, for there are none of that tribe on this side of the ranges, and he cannot have passed the ranges this spring. Where has Pŭl-Yūn been?"

This was Mystery the First, an offence in itself in a community which has the right to know the most intimate facts of the life of each of its members. Mystery breeds suspicion and suspicion leads up to distrust and to hate. But in the heart of Honk-Ah 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 harbouring who has been away, and on an enemy's grounds, for six moons."

"Also," said a young blood who was of Honk-Ah's hunting-party, "we would see more of this squaw whom he brings into camp--or who brings him." A laugh. "Our brother Pŭl-Yūn went forth for a wife" (the word had the secondary meaning of female slave), "but has come back with a master." More laughter.

The silence within the old chief's tee-pee was unbroken for a while, and when the hanging _portière_ moved it was shifted with the utmost deliberation. The old chief himself came forth followed by Pŭl-Yūn. The elder spoke.

"My young men are noisy to-night. It is not good. My grandson has brought home a wife. He has done well. I say it. Is my nephew's heart 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."

"The passes are not open--" interposed Honk-Ah 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," riposted the old chief severely. "My grandson crossed yesterday; his wife crossed with him."

There was silence, an astounded silence. Honk-Ah felt himself slipping: he must make a push for it. He spoke.

"We do not believe--" he began, but the old chief cut him short,--

"_I_ believe, and that is enough for my people. And, listen to me, Honk-Ah, and you who side with him, for I know what is in your hearts,--this thing shall come to a head, it shall cease, and at once. My grandson Pŭl-Yūn was war-chief when he went forth. Is he weaker, or less brave, or less cunning since he has returned?"

There were mutterings in the darkness. Pŭl-Yūn 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 its war-chief. But I will put the law out of the question for once, for it is not well that the Sun-Folk 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 to-morrow, as soon as there is full light, let Honk-Ah be ready with his spears and I will be ready with mine. And the man of us two who can throw farthest, and make his point go deepest, he shall be war-chief. I have said."

"It is good," assented Honk-Ah, who had got what he was playing up for, an early trial.

The deer-skin shook, the old chief and Pŭl-Yūn had returned to the tee-pee. The knot of mutineers moved slowly off conversing in muttered undertones.

"That is a point to me," said Honk-Ah. "He is fat, he is slow. He was sweating as he marched in, I saw it. And, _he carried no spears_. I know every assegai of mine by name, and they know me. To-morrow I win!"