She did not think it would be long before the young blond girl would be told to take a new place in the feeding, among the women.
She saw the boy gnawing on the gristly meat he had been thrown.
Almost unaware of it, Hamilton discovered she had edged closer to her hunter.
Different hunters now were cutting into the meat, feeding themselves, and the women about them. The first pieces of meat had been cut by the leader, and distributed by him, for he was the leader, he was the one who gave meat.
The old woman and the nurse, too, were pulling at the meat, as though they might be hunters.
Hamilton saw the old woman take some meat and give it to one of the nursing mothers.
She also saw the heavy-bodied man, with the extended canine tooth, give a tiny piece of meat to a toddling child, who put it in his mouth and ran to his mother.
Hamilton edged closer to her hunter.
Then he faced her.
“I’m very hungry,” said Hamilton. “I know you cannot understand what I’m saying, but I trust that my need, and my condition, are sufficiently obvious. I would appreciate receiving some food.”
He turned away from her, eating.
“Please,” said Hamilton.
He paid her no attention.
She rose to her feet, and, hunter by hunter, asked to be given meat. Most looked up at her, and then looked away. She was not a woman they had elected to feed. She saw the women exchanging glances, and smiling. “Please,” said Hamilton. “Please!” She was becoming more desperate. She did not ask meat from the leader. She was too terrified of the lame, scarred woman behind him. Sometimes when she approached a hunter, the other women behind him would motion her away, angrily. But most to her consternation was the fact that the hunters did not seem much interested in her. Suddenly Hamilton was frightened. Was she not beautiful? Should they not be eager to please her? Her heart sank. She suddenly understood that she stood in a competitive situation, she against other females, even to be fed. “No!” she wept to herself. But the men had used her. But now they did not seem interested in her. “Oh, no,” she said, sinking to her knees, “oh, no, no.” She had not sufficiently pleased them. What could she do to please them? What must she do? “No, no,” she wept to herself.
Anxiously she returned, ankles thonged, to behind the tall, lean hunter, he who had brought her captive, slave, to this camp.
She knelt behind him. “Please,” she begged him. “Feed me!”
The dark-haired girl, and the blond girl, chewing, looked at her.
There was no interest in their eyes.
“Feed me!” wept Hamilton.
The hunter did not look at her.
Hamilton felt her wrists being drawn behind her back. She looked over her shoulder. It was the leader. She felt her wrists tied together, tightly, with a rawhide thong. He then untied the rawhide from her ankles and, crossing her ankles, used it to secure them. He then lifted her lightly and carried her from the fire. Before one of the small, round huts, he paused, and then, easily, threw her within. She landed in the hut pit, on her shoulder, a foot below the surface of the surrounding soil, in the dirt, in the darkness. She struggled. She could not free herself. She could not rise to her feet. For more than two hours she lay on the sunken floor of the hut, in its pit, bound. She wept, she struggled. Her body was hungry, and ached from the beatings she had been given.
Outside the hut she could hear a pounding on sticks and something like singing, and laughter.
She did not know but tomorrow, at dawn, the people would go for salt, and then to the flint, and then, when ready, return to the shelters.
When the camp was quiet Brenda Hamilton heard something coming, slowly, shuffling, animallike, toward the hut. In the darkness, she struggled to sit up. It was coming closer. Brenda shrank back against the side of the hut pit, pushing back against it.
A head appeared in the entrance to the hut.
“Stay away!” screamed Hamilton, suddenly terrified, knowing she was helpless, and could not defend herself.
The creature entered the hut, stepping down, its head low on its rounded shoulders.
“Stay away from me!” screamed Hamilton. “You’re not human! You’re hideous! Stay away!”
Ugly Girl, her ankles in their leather shackles, but otherwise free, peered down, in the darkness, looking at Hamilton.
She thrust her wide, round head toward Hamilton. Hamilton felt the greasy, stringlike hair on her shoulder.
“No! No! No!” cried Hamilton. “Help! Help!” She tried to turn away, trapped against the side of the hut pit.
The creature looked at her, quizzically.
“Stay away from me!” screamed Hamilton. “You’re a monster! You’re repulsive! You are hideous! Keep away! Keep away!”
Ugly Girl backed away, squatting down.
“You. haven’t the intelligence of a dog!” screamed Hamilton. “Keep away from me!”
Ugly Girl made no noise, squatting in the darkness, near Hamilton.
“Stay away!” hissed Hamilton. “Stay away!”
Ugly Girl did not move for some time but then, slowly, neared Hamilton. “Stay away!” screamed Hamilton.
Ugly Girl, steadily, not listening to Hamilton, disregarding her cries, her movements, thrust her mouth against Hamilton’s. Hamilton tried to twist her mouth away, terrified, hysterical, almost retching, but Ugly Girl persisted, forcing her mouth to Hamilton’s. Suddenly Hamilton realized that there was something in her mouth.
It was meat.
Hamilton suddenly took it and chewed it, and swallowed it. Ugly Girl pulled back her head.
There was a long silence.
“Thank you,” said Hamilton.
Ugly Girl’s hand reached out, tenderly, and touched Hamilton’s cheek, and then she went to the other side of the hut and lay down.
In a few moments Hamilton heard the breathing of her sleep.
During the night, at times, Ugly Girl whimpered, and twisted.
“How hideous she is,” thought Hamilton. “How hideous.”
16
Brenda Hamilton struggled tied back to back with Ugly Girl, her hands tied behind her, about Ugly Girl, fastened in front, tightly, of Ugly Girl’s belly Ugly Girl’s hands similarly in front of her own belly. The two girls knelt, their ankles tied together, Ugly Girl’s left ankle to Hamilton’s right, Hamilton’s left to Ugly Girl’s right. They could not rise. They saw the ovoid eyes gleaming in the darkness, like fiery copper.
They were in the vicinity of the shelters.
Yesterday the animal, in the morning had dragged one of the women into the brush. That same afternoon it had killed a child.
It was a lone animal, like most who would prey upon human groups, taking them as game when, being too old or too ill, it could not pursue and slay its more accustomed quarry.
But men were dangerous game.
That afternoon and morning, in a narrow place between thickset trees and brush, the women, Brenda and Ugly Girl among them, had, with stones and sticks and shells, dug the pit, lifting the dirt from it in leather sacks on rawhide ropes. In the bottom of the pit Spear and Stone had set a large number of sharpened stakes, at intervals of some six inches from one another. The pit was some sixteen feet deep, some ten by five feet wide. It had been covered with light sticks, over which leaves and grass had been spread.
Ugly Girl’s breathing seemed almost to stop. Her back felt cold against Brenda’s.
Hamilton threw back her head and screamed, and struggled. The eyes came a foot closer. By their movements Hamilton could see it turn its head from side to side. It was a large shadow, lithe and sinuous. She heard the breathing, and smelled the animal.