Nine females of the men had been caught, Cloud and Antelope; Butterfly and Flower; Ugly Girl; Turtle; a pregnant female, whose name was Feather; and two others, who had been slow of foot, Squirrel and Awl. Several others bad escaped. Some had not been at the shelters at the time of the attack. Some had scattered and fled successfully. Nurse, and one other, Hamilton knew, had fled over the roof of the cliffs and escaped down the other side. Short Leg bad not been caught. Old Woman had been thrown down the side of the cliff. Hamilton did not know if she had lived or not. The children had broken and run and the men, intent on adult females, had not pursued them. She had seen one child struck at and bloodied before the shelters. She did not know if he had survived or not.
For a time Hamilton had hoped that they would be trailed by the men and recaptured. But, day by day, her hopes had diminished. The first night there had been a heavy rain, after which Gunther, who seemed to lead these men, turned his trail to the side. If the Men followed the trail to the rain, they would have no way of knowing, after the rain, that it had been diverted. They would follow a line which, in effect, would, after a time, have been erased. It would be rational to suppose that the line, even though erased, would have continued in the same direction. Gunther’s cunning had foreseen this reasoning, and be had diverted their trek. The Weasel People had been thorough. The hands of the female prisoners, who were herded in throat coffle, were thonged, usually to the burdens they bore. Hamilton’s hands had been tied at the sides of the squarish bundle of furs which she had been forced to carry in the common manner of primitive women, balanced on her head. Ugly Girl’s hands, differently, had been tied together before her body and fastened, by two loops, at her belly. On her back was tied a heavy sack of flint, loot from the shelters. She had walked almost bent over, her thighs red from switching. One of the men of the Weasel People, other than those who were the rear guard of the march, followed the coffle line, to see that no girl attempted to leave a trail. Another, following him, with a branch, with leaves, had obliterated footprints. On the second night of the march it had again rained, and Gunther had, again, altered the course of the march. The minds of primitives, even those of the Men, Hamilton knew, could not follow the trail, concealed by one of great experience, a master. Hamilton hated Gunther, but she could not but respect him. William had not been with the attacking party. Even at the shelters of the Men he had seemed to exert little influence over Gunther. Gunther was in his element, leading men. With his rifle be was a captain, a hero, king in this savage world. Hamilton had seen Cloud, bound, groveling at his feet in terror. Gunther had scarcely looked at her. He would make her wait. He was, she knew, saving her for later, for his leisure. At night the women of the Men, alternately, the head of one to the feet of the next, had been thrown from their feet, and bound, wrists behind their backs, and the neck and ankles of each tied to the ankles and neck of the next, each girl, thus, besides her wrists being twice secured once by ankles, once by throat. Hamilton had hoped, the first night, to attack with her teeth the bonds of the girl next to her. Then she, and the others, as they were on the following nights as well, had been gagged. Escape was impossible. Primitive thongs, tightly knotted did not slip. In the morning the girls had been released, jerked to their feet their spoor covered with dirt, and put again in coffle. On the fourth morning, the men of the Weasel People, herding the coffle, came to a river. Here to the dismay of the females, there were four rafts, already built and concealed, waiting. The captives, bound hand and foot, and the loot, were placed on the rough, vinethonged logs. With long poles these rafts were then thrust out into the current. Before she had been thonged hand and foot, and thrown to the rafts, Ugly Girl, doubtless in misery and fear, had soiled herself. Hamilton had been disgusted. Ever since Ugly Girl had attempted to rescue her on the cliffs, and she had not reciprocated, but fled, Hamilton had hated Ugly Girl. See, had thought Hamilton to herself, how simple, how stupid, how repulsive she is! She has even soiled herself! She shuddered in repulsion. To be coffled with such an animal, as though she might, too, have been human, as though she might have been of the same sort as she, was found by Hamilton to be degrading, humiliating. It insulted all the women of the Men, perhaps Hamilton most of all, for she retained something of the refined sensibilities of a modern woman.
Hamilton sat with her back against the stone, bound, imprisoned with the others. She looked up, through the grille of branches, to the roof of thatch some feet above it. Hamilton was less fastidious now than she had been.
She looked across to Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl had again, to Hamilton’s contempt, when the rafts had landed, on the other side of the river, perhaps two hundred miles from where they had entered upon the river, soiled herself. She recalled how irritated, how scornful, she had been.
But now she thought less of such matters. She tried again to free the wrists bound behind her back, weakly. The women of the Men, bound had now been long in the cell. Even she, Hamilton, had been unable to help herself. She looked up again at the grille. She hated the men of the Weasel People!
“How long will you keep us here?” she cried out in anger, looking to the grille.
The other women looked at her in puzzlement. Hamilton heard a girl’s laugh from `above. Since they had been placed in the cell, they had seen, once, only two girls, looking down upon them; one had been fair complexioned with long, bright red hair, the other had been dark-eyed, a darkhaired, short. Both had worn hide tunics, concealing their breasts. It was now these two again who, hearing Hamilton’s cry, looked again down on them. They did so furtively, and Hamilton knew that it must be that they were forbidden to do so. The red-haired girl looked down, contemptuously. She hissed something in anger down at them, and, with a switch, sharply, struck twice one of the branches of the grille. Hamilton winced, as though she might have been struck.
“You will have us all beaten,” whispered Flower to her. “Be silent!”
Hamilton heard a man’s voice warn the girls above away from the grille and, giggling, they quickly fled away.
“Will they beat me?” asked Butterfly of Hamilton.
“If the men permit it,” said Hamilton. She could well remember how it had been when she had been only a stranger, a mere captured female brought to the camp of the Men by Tree. Could not Butterfly remember? She, Butterfly, though then fed with the children, had been cruel to her. Did she now expect to be treated differently?