She seemed to come toward Jees Uck as
a ripple of music across still water; her sweeping garment itself a
song, her body playing rhythmically beneath. Jees Uck herself was
a man compeller. There were Oche Ish and Imego and Hah Yo and Wy
Nooch, to say nothing of Neil Bonner and John Thompson and other
white men that had looked upon her and felt her power. But she
gazed upon the wide blue eyes and rose-white skin of this woman
that advanced to meet her, and she measured her with woman's eyes
looking through man's eyes; and as a man compeller she felt herself
diminish and grow insignificant before this radiant and flashing
creature.
"You wish to see my husband?" the woman asked; and Jees Uck gasped
at the liquid silver of a voice that had never sounded harsh cries
at snarling wolf-dogs, nor moulded itself to a guttural speech, nor
toughened in storm and frost and camp smoke.
"No," Jees Uck answered slowly and gropingly, in order that she
might do justice to her English. "I come to see Neil Bonner."
"He is my husband," the woman laughed.
Then it was true! John Thompson had not lied that bleak February
day, when she laughed pridefully and shut the door in his face. As
once she had thrown Amos Pentley across her knee and ripped her
knife into the air, so now she felt impelled to spring upon this
woman and bear her back and down, and tear the life out of her fair
body.
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