Hamilton had to walk bent over, at her side. Pulling Hamilton, half choking, beside her, Ugly Girl then returned to the mouth of the cave of the Ugly People. There was a fire there now, rather near the mouth, and various branches and rocks had been brought and put before the opening, to close it somewhat. But the opening had not been yet completely closed. Ugly Girl had not yet returned.
The male of the Ugly People,, and his woman, and the child, emerged from the cave.
Hamilton stood neat to Ugly Girl, bent over, her hands bound behind her back, in her simple choke collar and leash, helpless, a prisoner of Ugly Girl.
The child looked at her, and laughed.
He said the word she had heard before, and he laughed again, as did the male and the female.
“Please don’t eat me, or kill me,” she whispered.
The male and the woman, and the child returned to the cave. Then, to Hamilton’s astonishment, Ugly Girl removed the leash from her throat, and untying its ends, refastened it as her own belt. Then, to her greater astonishment, Ugly Girl untied her hands. Hamilton dared not run. Ugly Girl tied the belt about Hamilton, as it had been before. Then she stepped toward the mouth of the cave. Hamilton turned to face her. She was free. Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. She made a clucking noise.
Behind Hamilton, in the forest, she heard the roar of a leopard. She shuddered. Well did she recall the leopard which, long ago, had stalked her, which, to her good fortune, had been slain by Tree.
Again Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. Again, from the forest, closer this time, she heard the roar of the leopard. Swiftly, gratefully, she entered the cave.
Ugly Girl gestured that she should kneel beside the fire, where some of the meat from the slain deer was roasting on a stick. Hamilton would have knelt behind the male, but Ugly Girl shook her head and placed Hamilton by the fire. She knelt to the left of the woman; the child was on the woman’s right; the male squatted diagonally across from Hamilton; when Ugly Girl had closed the entrance to the cave with thick branches, she came and knelt between the child and the male. The male, with a sharp piece of flint, and a stick, separated pieces of meat from the roast. He gave a piece first to the child; he then gave a piece to the woman; then he gave a piece to Ugly Girl. Then he handed Hamilton a piece of meat. “Thank you,” she whispered. He then cut himself a piece of meat, a large one, and, holding it in two hands, squatting, grease running between his fingers, began to eat it.
That night Hamilton lay down beside Ugly Girl, in the cave of the Ugly People. She looked at the glowing redness of the embers of the fire.
“Can you understand me?” asked Hamilton of Ugly Girl, in the language of the Men.
Ugly Girl, her head illuminated by the redness, signified her assent, nodding her head. Ugly Girl, as Hamilton had suspected, understood much of the speech of the Men, but it was difficult for her to repeat the sounds. Hamilton, too, of course, would have found it difficult to imitate, with adequate exactness, the phonemes of the Ugly People. There was, she suspected, subtle differences in the anatomy of the throat, a thicker, less nimble tongue, a different oral cavity, and, too, of course, a somewhat differently formed brain, with a speech center wrought through an evolution divergent for generations from that of the human.
“What is the word by which they address me?” asked Hamilton. “What is it they call me?”
Ugly Girl repeated the word.
“Yes,” said Hamilton. “What does it mean?”
Ugly Girl crawled over to the fire. She knelt by it. Hamilton joined her there.
Ugly Girl repeated the word. She made, in the sign language common to many of the groups of humans, the name sign, pointing to Hamilton. Tooth, and Fox, at the behest of Tooth, had taught her several signs.
“That is the name they have given me?” asked Hamilton. “It is my name here?”
Ugly Girl nodded.
“What does it mean?” asked Hamilton. She remembered how they had laughed at her, even the child.
Ugly Girl, with a twig, beside the fire, scratched an animal. Hamilton could not make it out. Then Ugly Girl made the sign in the, hand talk of the human groups. Hamilton then looked down. She then understood the drawing.
It was a drawing, primitive, simple, an outline drawing, but one now unmistakable. It was the drawing of a small, female bush pig. Hamilton leaned back on her heels, and smiled. “You are so ugly,”. signed Ugly Girl to her, and then, smiling, kissed her. Hamilton, among the people of Ugly Girl, was no longer the beauty, a casual, inadvertent movement of whose body might lead one of the hunters, to whom she and the other women belonged, to throw her on her back and, without ceremony or courtesy, rape her. Here, among the people of Ugly Girl, it was she, not Ugly Girl, who was the ugly girl. Ugly Girl, of course, among the men, had been used. They were fierce sometimes indiscriminatory breeders. Hamilton did not feel the male of the Ugly People would bother her. To her he seemed large, kind, and sexually sluggish. If he did wish to use her, of course, she would have to serve him, for she was a female. As a primitive woman she would have no choice but to obey the male, and do what he wished. Hamilton smiled to herself. Among the Ugly People, her name was “Sow.”
“What is your name?” asked Hamilton.
Ugly Girl laughed, an almost human laugh. She made the sign for “Flower.” Hamilton smiled.
“What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton. She had thought only of them, in the habitual manner of the Men, as the Ugly People. She knew, of course, of the Horse People, who hunted horse on the prairies; she knew of the Bear People, with whom the Men sometimes exchanged women; of the Shell People, who traded shells; and of the Weasel People, enemies of the men; and of the Dirt People, vanished now, save for some of their females in the thongs of the Weasel People. “What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton again of Ugly Girl.
Ugly Girl grinned, not responding.
Her people, this family, had taken her in, she, Hamilton, a female of an enemy kind, different even biologically from them, one displeasing to their senses. They had protected her, fed her, sheltered her.
“What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton.
Swiftly Ugly Girl made the signs. “The Love People,” she said, in the hand talk of certain of the human groups.
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