Hulbert Footner

The Huntress

Warsaw 2022

Contents

I. THE FISH-EATERS' VILLAGE

II. MUSQ'OOSIS ADVISES

III. AT NINE-MILE POINT

IV. THE VISITOR

V. THE DICE DECIDE

VI. A FRESH SURPRISE

VII. THE SUITORS

VIII. THE LITTLE MEADOW

IX. BELA'S ANSWER

X. ON THE LAKE

XI. THE ISLAND

XII. THE NEXT DAY

XIII. ON THE RIVER

XIV. AT JOHNNY GAGNON'S

XV. THE NORTH SHORE

XVI. AT THE SETTLEMENT

XVII. AN APPARITION

XVIII. THE "RESTERAW"

XIX. THE NEW BOARDER

XX. MALICIOUS ACTIVITY

XXI. SAM IS LATE

XXII. MUSCLE AND NERVE

XXIII. MAHOOLEY'S INNINGS

XXIV. ON THE SPIRIT RIVER

XXV. CONCLUSION

I. THE FISH-EATERS’ VILLAGE

FROM within the teepee of Charley Whitefish issued the sounds of a family brawl. It was of frequent occurrence in this teepee. Men at the doors of other lodges, engaged in cleaning their guns, or in other light occupations suitable to the manly dignity, shrugged with strong scorn for the man who could not keep his women in order. With the shrugs went warning glances toward their own laborious spouses.

Each man’s scorn might well have been mitigated with thankfulness that he was not cursed with a daughter like Charley’s Bela. Bela was a firebrand in the village, a scandal to the whole tribe. Some said she was possessed of a devil; according to others she was a girl born with the heart of a man.

This phenomenon was unique in their experience, and being a simple folk they resented it. Bela refused to accept the common lot of women. It was not enough for her that such and such a thing had always been so in the tribe.

She would not do a woman’s tasks (unless she happened to feel like it); she would not hold her tongue in the presence of men. Indeed, she had been known to talk back to the head man himself, and she had had the last word into the bargain.

Not content with her own misbehaviour, Bela lost no opportunity of gibing at the other women, the hard-working girls, the silent, patient squaws, for submitting to their fathers, brothers, and husbands. This naturally enraged all the men.

Charley Whitefish was violently objurgated on the subject, but he was a poor-spirited creature who dared not take a stick to Bela. It must be said that Bela did not get much sympathy from the women. Most of them hated her with an astonishing bitterness.

As Neenah, Hooliam’s wife, explained it to Eelip Moosa, a visitor in camp: “That girl Bela, she is weh-ti-go, crazy, I think. She got a bad eye. Her eye dry you up when she look. You can’t say nothing at all. Her tongue is like a dog-whip. I hate her. I scare for my children when she come around. I think maybe she steal my baby. Because they say weh-ti-gosgot drink a baby’s blood to melt the ice in their brains. I wish she go way. We have no peace here till she go.”

“Down the river they say Bela a very pretty girl,” remarked Eelip.

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