CHAPTER XX
SUNRISE DIGS A CAVE
Sunrise went to the cave of Fish Catch—a young man a few years older than himself, who was so ugly that no woman would have him, and who therefore lived alone. Fish Catch was busy with a net.
“Fish Catch,” said Sunrise, “may I live with you until spring? I will see that you do not lack for food.”
Now in winter when the rivers were frozen people did not have very much use for nets, and Fish Catch consequently was often hard put to it for food. Therefor this proposal met with his entire approval, and he said so.
“But what,” he said, “is the matter with your own cave?”
“It is a small cave at best,” said Sunrise, “and we were crowded.”
Fish Catch laughed cynically. He thought it not unlikely that Dawn had taken a club to Sunrise and driven him away from her. But he was afraid to say so openly.
One day Sunrise killed a bear and he hastened to She Wolf and Dawn, taking the four feet with him. Usually he did not return from the hunting till dark, but on this occasion he had killed early and was back by noon.
Squatting in the snow in front of the cave, he saw two young bachelors with bright feathers stuck in their hair. They were waiting for Dawn to come out. Sunrise strode up to them in a fury.
“Be off!” he cried, “I will have none of this. Let me catch you making eyes at Dawn and I will strike to kill. Let this be clearly understood.”
They saw the fury in his eye and scuttled off.
“Do not come within shouting distance of this cave,” he shouted after them, “for the sound or sight of you is not to be borne.”
She Wolf, sitting in the mouth of the cave, chuckled and grinned.
“They are always here,” she said.
Sunrise turned on her fiercely.
“Are you, too, against me?” he cried. “Faugh—you have a bow and arrows. Use them.”
“The next time they come,” said his mother in a conciliating voice, “I will use the bow and the arrows.”
But she did not. Nor the next time—nor the next time—nor the next.
But Sunrise went away appeased.
And when the frost went out of the ground he selected the side of a hill where the sun smote from early morning till late afternoon and fell to burrowing and digging a splendid cave, which was to be the very largest and most splendid cave of which there was any record up to that time.
But the work progressed slowly, for he was obliged to hunt betimes, and the cave was to be of splendid proportions. It was not finished until the spring was well advanced.
Tall violets stood by the brooks, flowers crowded between stones, and grew over the open places, trees, bushes, hills, valleys and forests were misty with new green.
Sunrise arose in the sparkling dawn and took up his bow and his arrows. Birds were trilling in the forest.
“To-day,” he said, “I will hunt, and to-night—to-night—.”
Then he ran into the forest laughing and singing.
The sun was going down when Sunrise presented himself joyously before the cave where She Wolf and Dawn lived. But when he called to them, they did not answer, and when he went into the cave, he found that She Wolf had been shot unto death, and that Dawn had vanished away.
Sunrise knelt by his mother and called her by name and felt of her. And presently by the coldness of her body he knew she had been dead a long time.
He went out of the cave and ran in a great circle. After a little he came upon the trail of Dawn and a man, and it pointed away from the caves of the tribe and was straight, like the flight of an arrow.
But Sunrise flung himself along the trail, and all night he ran like a wolf.
“They will not dare stop,” he said, “and it may be that I shall not be too late.”
With the first light he came to a flowery, grassy glade in the forest. But the grass was greatly trampled and many of the flowers were broken, for there had been a terrible struggle in that place. And Sunrise read the signs of it as we read printed words in a book.
“She fought against him,” he cried, “she fought against him!”
He smiled a little then and looked upward, but after that in his life he was to smile but once more.
He lay face downward, digging and tearing at the ground until the nails of his fingers were broken and bloody.
Birds sang and the sun rose.
