'Her!' said Bloketu, returning to the tribally prescrived feminine gender of Cuwignaka.
'What did she say?' asked Hci.
'SShe said that I was lazy and slow!' said Bloketu.
'Oh?' said Hci.
'And that he could work me in his lodge, and well!' she said.
'Yes?' asked Hci.
'Too, he said that I might make an excellent slave, and that it might be pleasant to put me in a collar!'
Hci looked Bloketu over, slowly. She shrank back, abashed. Cuwignaka's assessment, it seemed clear, was one for which he thought there was much to be said.
'Please, Hci,' she said.
He then turned his attention to the lovely Iwoso. 'She should not be wearing leggings,' he said to Bloketu. 'Too, her dress is too long. It should come high on her thighs.'
'She is only my maiden,' said Bloketu.
'Where is her collar?' asked Hci.
'I do not put her in one,' said Bloketu.
'She is no longer a child,' said Hci. 'She is a grown woman now. She is old enough, now, for the garb and collar of a slave. She is old enough, now, for a warrior.'
Iwoso looked down, angrily.
'Yellow-Knife woman,' said Hci, bitterly.
She looked up at him, angrily.
'A Yellow Knife did this to me,' said hci, pointing to the long, jagged scar at his chin, on the left side.
'He struck you well!' said Iwoso, angrily.
'I slew him,' said Hci.
Hci then again, turned his attention to Bloketu.
'Punish him!' said Bloketu, pointing to Cuwignaka.
'Her?' said Hci.
'Her!' said Bloketu.
'I am a warrior,' said Hci. 'I do not mix in the squabbles of females.'
'Oh,' cried Bloketu, angrily.
I smiled to myself. It seemed to me that Hci had handled this business well. Surely it would have been beneath his dignity to meddle in such a business. Too, as a Sleen Soldier, on the day of a hunt, during their tenure of power, he had matters much more important to attend to than the assuagement of a female's offended vanity.
'The herd is too close,' said Hci. 'You are all to withdraw from this place.'
We prepared to turn about.
'Separately,' said Hci.
The hair rose again on the back of my neck.
'There,' said Hci, pointing to the southwest, 'is a fallen bull, a Cracked-Horns, of thirty winters.'
'That is not good meat, or good hide,' said Bloketu, puzzled.
'Attend to it, Bloketu,' said Hci.
'Yes, Hci,' she said. The two women, then, Bloketu and Iwoso, the travois poles making the grass behind their kaiila, took their way away. I watched the grass springing up behind them. In a few minutes it would be difficult for anyone but a skilled tracker, looking for broken stems, to determine that they had gone that way.
'Over there,' said Hci, to us, pointing east by southeast, 'there is a draw. In the draw there is a fallen bull, a Smooth Horns, no more than some six winters in age. Attend to it.'
'Yes, Hci,' said Cuwignaka, obediently. A Smooth Horns is a young, prime bull. Its horns are not yet cracked from fighting and age. The smoothness of the horns, incidentally, is not a purely natural phenomenon. The bulls polish them, themselves, rubbing them against sloping banks and trees. Sometimes they will even paw down earth from the upper sides of washouts and then use the harder, exposed material beneath, dust scattering about, as a polishing surface. This polishing apparently has the function of both cleaning and sharpening the horns, two precesses useful in intraspecific aggression, the latter process imporving their capacity as fighting instruments, in slashing and goring, and the former process tending to reduce the amount of infection in a herd resulting from such combats. Polishing behavior in males thus appears to be selected for. It has consequences, at any rate, which seem to be in the best intrests of the kailiauk as a species.
'There,' said Hci, 'your kaiila will be tired. Unharness them from the travois. Let them gaze. Picket them close to where you are working.'
'Yes,' said Cuwignaka, angrily.
'Go now,' said Hci, pointing.
'Yes, Hci,' said Cuwignaka.
I was sweating, as the young Sleen Soldier rode away. 'What was that all about?' I asked.
'This meat on our travois,' said Cuwignaka, 'is to be destroyed.'
'I do not understand,' I said.
'We will go to the draw,' said Cuwignaka.
'Very well,' I said.
Chapter 6
WHAT OCCURRED IN THE DRAW
It was nearly dusk.
'This will be our fifth load of meat.' I said.
'Oh, yes,' said Cuwignaka, bitterly.
'Wait,' I said.
Cuwignaka, too, lifted his head. We were in a long, narrow, generally shallow draw. Tey, where we worked, where the Smooth Horns had been felled, the sides were reletively steep, some twenty feet or so on our left, some thirty feet on our right.
I could feel tremors in the earth now beneath our feet.
'They are coming,' said Cuwignaka. He bent swiftly to the twisted leather hobbles, almost like slave hobbles, on the forelegs, almost at the paws, of our kaiila. He thrust the paws free of the twisted, encircling leather. We had already, as Hci had commanded, freed the kaiila of the two travois.
'How many are there?' I asked.
'Two, maybe three hundred,' said Cuwignaka, climbing lightly to the silken back of his kaiila.
I could not hear the sound, clearly. It carried through the draw, the deep thudding, magnified by, intisified by, that narrow corridor, open to the sky, of dirt and rock.
'Mount up,' said Cuwignaka. 'Hurry.'
I looked at the meat.
Almost at the same time, suddenly, about a bend in the draw, turning, lurching, its shoulder striking the side of the draw, its feet almost slipping out from under it, in its turn, in the soft footing, covered with dust, its eyes wild and red, foam at its nostrils and mouth, some twenty-five hundred pounds or better in weight, snorting, kicking duse behind it, hurtled a kailiauk bull.
I leaped to the side and it rushed past me. I could almost have touched it. My kaiila squealed and, as I headed it off, it tried to climb the side of the draw, scrambling at it, then slipping back, falling, rolling, to the side.
Another bull, then, bellowing, hurtled past.
I seized the reins of the kaiila. The draw was now filled with dust. The ground shook under our feet. The thudding now became thunderous, striking about the walls, seeming all about us. The kaiila of Cuwignaka squealed and reared. He held it in his place, mercilessly. As my beast scrambled up, regaining its feet, I mounted it, and turned it away, down the draw. Cuwignaka and I, then, not more than a few yards ahead of the animals,
