CHAPTER IX
THE BIRTH OF SUNRISE
After a time she came wearily, and slowly. With her left hand she dragged along the ground two great haunches of moose. In her right hand she held her club and her spear and her knife, and in the hollow of her right arm there was a downy bundle that moved a little.
Her face was ever turned toward it.
No Man called to her angrily, and reached for his stick.
“Don’t strike me, No Man,” she said, “for I have brought you a good thing.”
“What good thing have you brought?” asked No Man.
“I have brought the moose-meat,” she let it fall to the ground as also her weapons, “and I have brought this.”
“But it is alive,” said No Man, “where did you get it?”
“It is mine—mine,” said She Wolf, “see how little it is—but already it is very strong and clings with its hands.”
Then she knelt before No Man and showed him the fruit of her deep forest labor.
“So that was why—” said No Man.
“Yes, that was why, and I am very weary,” said She Wolf. “Take him in your hands, for he is yours also.”
Then No Man forgot his anger, and his breast swelled with pride, and for once he was grateful to She Wolf.
“I was not so long about it as Strong Hand,” he said, and there was a kind of strut in his voice, “and furthermore it is a man-child while his is but a girl.”
Then he took the child and held it clumsily. It was very little and covered with soft down, for all the world like a tiny monkey, and it clung to No Man’s fingers with its little hands.
“He has not cried out once,” said She Wolf. “He came to me in the morning as the sun rose, but I dared not come back without the moose-meat, and therefore all the day we have hunted together, I and the man.” Her bosom swelled with pride. “Already he has hunted the moose,” she cried, “and because he came with the sun, we will call him Sunrise, and he will be a mighty hunter. Give him back to me—give him to me.”
