Читать книгу The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains - Robert Michael Ballantyne - Страница 2

The Great Prairie—A Wild Chase—A Remarkable Accident and an Extraordinary Charger, all of which terminate in a Crash—Bounce talks Philosophy and tells of terrible Things—Our Hero determines to beard the Wild Man of the West in his own Den

The rising sun lifted his head above the horizon of the great western prairie, gilding the upper edges of those swelling undulations that bear so strong a resemblance to solidified billows as to have acquired the name of prairie waves.

On the sunny side of these waves the flowerets of the plains were already basking in full enjoyment of the new day; on the summits only the tips of their petals were turned to gold. On the other side of those waves, and down in the hollows, everything was clothed in deep shadow, as if the still undissipated shades of night were lingering there, unwilling or unable to depart from so beautiful a scene. This mingling of strong lights and deep shadows had the effect of rendering more apparent the tremendous magnitude of those vast solitudes.

There were no trees within the circuit of vision, but there were a few scattered bushes, so low and insignificant in appearance as to be quite unobvious to the eye, except when close to the feet of the spectator. Near to a clump of these bushes there stood two horses motionless, as if chiselled in stone, and with their heads drooping low, as if sound asleep. Directly under the noses of these horses lay two men, each wrapped in a blanket, with his head pillowed on his saddle, and his rifle close at his side. Both were also sound asleep.

About a mile distant from the spot on which those sleepers rested, there grew another small bush, and under its sheltering boughs, in the snuggest conceivable hole, nestled a grouse, or prairie hen, also sound asleep, with its head lost in feathers, and its whole rotund aspect conveying the idea of extreme comfort and good living. Now, we do not draw the reader’s attention to that bird because of its rarity, but because of the fact that it was unwittingly instrumental in influencing the fortunes of the two sleepers above referred to.

The sun in his upward march overtopped a prairie wave, and his rays, darting onward, struck the bosom of the prairie hen, and awoke it. Looking up quickly with one eye, it seemed to find the glare too strong, winked at the sun, and turned the other eye. With this it winked also, then got up, flapped its wings, ruffled its feathers, and, after a pause, sprang into the air with that violent whirr–r which is so gladdening, yet so startling, to the ear of a sportsman. It was instantly joined by the other members of the covey to which it belonged, and the united flock went sweeping past the sleeping hunters, causing their horses to awake with a snort, and themselves to spring to their feet with the alacrity of men who were accustomed to repose in the midst of alarms, and with a grunt of surprise.

“Prairie-hens,” muttered the elder of the two—a big, burly backwoodsman—as he turned towards his companion with a quiet smile. “It was very thoughtful on ’em to rouse us, lad, considerin’ the work that lies before us.”

“I wish, with all my heart, they didn’t rise quite so early,” replied the younger man, also a stout backwoodsman, who was none other than our hero March Marston himself; “I don’t approve of risin’ until one wakes in the course of nature; d’ye see, Bounce?”

“I hear; but we can’t always git things to go ’xactly as we approves of,” replied Bounce, stooping down to arrange the embers of the previous night’s fire.

Bounce’s proper name was Bob Ounce. He styled himself, and wrote himself (for he could write to the extent of scrawling his own name in angularly irregular large text), “B. Ounce.” His comrades called him “Bounce.”

“You see, March,” continued Bounce in a quiet way, thrusting his rugged countenance close to the embers occasionally, and blowing up the spark which he had kindled by means of flint, steel, and tinder—“you see, this is a cur’ous wurld; it takes a feelosopher to onderstand it c’rectly, and even he don’t make much o’t at the best. But I’ve always noticed that w’en the time for wakin’ up’s come, we’ve got to wake up whether we like it or no; d’ye see, lad?”

“I’d see better if you didn’t blow the ashes into my eyes in that way,” answered March, laughing at the depth of his companion’s philosophical remark. “But I say, old chap,” (March had no occasion to call him “old chap,” for Bounce was barely forty), “what if we don’t fall in with a herd?”

“Then we shall have to go home without meat that’s all,” replied Bounce, filling and lighting his pipe.

“But I promised my mother a buffalo-hump in less than three days, and the first day and night are gone.”

“You’d no right to promise your mother a hump,” returned the plain-spoken and matter-of-fact hunter. “Nobody shud never go to promise wot they can’t perform. I’ve lived, off an’ on, nigh forty years now, and I’ve obsarved them wot promises most always does least; so if you’ll take the advice of an oldish hunter, you’ll give it up, lad, at once.”

“Humph!” ejaculated March, “I suppose you began your obsarvations before you were a year old—eh, Bounce?”

“I began ’em afore I was a day old. The first thing I did in this life was to utter an ’orrible roar, and I obsarved that immediately I got a drink; so I roared agin, an’ got another. Leastwise I’ve bin told that I did, an’ if it wasn’t obsarvation as caused me for to roar w’en I wanted a drink, wot wos it?”

Instead of replying, March started up, and shading his eyes with his right hand, gazed intently towards the horizon.

“Wot now, lad?” said Bounce, rising quickly. “Ha! buffaloes!”

In half a minute the cords by which the two horses were fastened to pegs driven into the plain, were coiled up; in another half-minute the saddle-girths were buckled; in half a second more the men were mounted and tearing over the prairie like the wind.

“Ha, lad,” remarked Bounce with one of his quiet smiles—for he was a pre-eminently quiet man—“but for them there prairie-hens we’d ha’ slept this chance away.”

The buffaloes, or, more correctly speaking, the bisons which young Marston’s sharp eye had discovered, were still so far-distant that they appeared like crows or little black specks against the sky. In order to approach them as near as possible without attracting their attention, it was necessary that the two horsemen should make a wide circuit, so as to get well to leeward, lest the wind should carry the scent of them to the herd. Their horses, being fleet, strong, and fresh, soon carried them to the proper direction, when they wheeled to the right, and galloped straight down upon their quarry, without any further attempt at concealment. The formation of the ground favoured their approach, so that they were within a mile of the herd before being discovered.

At first the huge, hairy creatures gazed at the hunters in stupid surprise; then they turned and fled. They appeared, at the outset, to run slowly and with difficulty, and the plain seemed to thunder with their heavy tread, for there could not have been fewer than a thousand animals in the herd. But as the horsemen drew near they increased their speed and put the steeds, fleet and strong though they were, to their mettle.

On approaching the buffaloes the horsemen separated, each fixing his attention on a particularly fat young cow and pressing towards it. Bounce was successful in coming up with the one he had selected, and put a ball through its heart at the first shot. Not so Marston. Misfortune awaited him. Having come close up with the animal he meant to shoot, he cocked his rifle and held it in readiness across the pommel of his saddle, at the same time urging his horse nearer, in order to make a sure shot. When the horse had run up so close that its head was in line with the buffalo’s flank, he pointed his rifle at its shoulder. At that precise moment the horse, whose attention was entirely engrossed with the buffalo, put its left forefoot into a badger’s hole. The consequence of such an accident is, usually, a tremendous flight through the air on the part of the rider, while his steed rolls upon the plain; but on the present occasion a still more surprising result followed. March Marston not only performed the aerial flight, but he alighted with considerable violence on the back of the affrighted buffalo. Falling on his face in a sprawling manner, he chanced to grasp the hairy mane of the creature with both hands, and, with a violent half-involuntary effort, succeeded in seating himself astride its back.

The whole thing was done so instantaneously that he had scarce time to realise what had happened to him ere he felt himself sweeping comfortably over the prairie on this novel and hitherto unridden steed! A spirit of wild, ungovernable glee instantly arose within him. Seizing the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it down on his charger’s flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its heels, in a way that wellnigh unseated him.

The moment Bounce beheld this curious apparition, he uttered a short laugh, or grunt, and, turning his horse abruptly, soon ranged up alongside.

“Hallo, March!” he exclaimed, “are you mad, boy?”

“Just about it,” cried Marston, giving the buffalo another cut with the whip, as he looked round with sparkling eyes and a broad grin at the hunter.

“Come, now, that won’t do,” said Bounce gravely. “I’m ’sponsible to your mother for you. Git off now, or I’ll poke ye over.”

“Git off!” shouted the youth, “how can I?”

“Well, keep your right leg a bit to one side, an’ I’ll stop yer horse for ye,” said Bounce, coolly cocking his rifle.

“Hold hard, old fellow!” cried Marston, in some alarm; “you’ll smash my thigh-bone if you try. Stay, I’ll do the thing myself.”

Saying this, Marston drew his long hunting-knife, and plunged it into the buffalo’s side.

“Lower down, lad—lower down. Ye can’t reach the life there.”

March bent forward, and plunged his knife into the animal’s side again—up to the hilt; but it still kept on its headlong course, although the blood flowed in streams upon the plain. The remainder of the buffaloes had diverged right and left, leaving this singular group alone.

“Mind your eye,” said Bounce quickly, “she’s a-goin’ to fall.”

Unfortunately Marston had not time given him to mind either his eye or his neck. The wounded buffalo stumbled, and fell to the ground with a sudden and heavy plunge, sending its wild rider once again on an aerial journey, which terminated in his coming down on the plain so violently that he was rendered insensible.

On recovering consciousness, he found himself lying on his back, in what seemed to be a beautiful forest, through which a stream flowed with a gentle, silvery sound. The bank opposite rose considerably higher than the spot on which he lay, and he could observe, through his half-closed eyelids, that its green slope was gemmed with beautiful flowers, and gilded with patches of sunlight that struggled through the branches overhead.

Young Marston’s first impression was that he must be dreaming, and that he had got into one of the fairytale regions about which he had so often read to his mother. A shadow seemed to pass over his eyes as he thought this, and, looking up, he beheld the rugged face of Bounce gazing at him with an expression of considerable interest and anxiety.

“I say, Bounce, this is jolly!”

“Is it?” replied the hunter with a “humph!”

“If ye try to lift yer head, I guess you’ll change yer opinion.”

Marston did try to raise his head, and did change his opinion. His neck felt as if it were a complication of iron hinges, which had become exceedingly rusty, and stood much in need of oil.

“Oh dear!” groaned Marston, letting his head fall back on the saddle from which he had raised it.

“Ah, I thought so!” remarked Bounce.

“And is that all the sympathy you have got to give me, you old savage?” said the youth testily.

“By no means,” replied the other, patting his head; “here’s a drop o’ water as’ll do ye good, lad, and after you’ve drunk it, I’ll rub ye down.”

“Thank’ee for the water,” said Marston with a deep sigh, as he lay back, after drinking with difficulty; “as to the rubbin’ down, I’ll ask for that when I want it. But tell me, Bounce, what has happened to me?—oh! I remember now—the buffalo cow and that famous gallop. Ha! ha! ha!—ho—o!”

Marston’s laugh terminated in an abrupt groan as the rusty hinges again clamoured for oil.

“You’ll have to keep quiet, boy, for a few hours, and take a sleep if you can. I’ll roast a bit o’ meat and rub ye down with fat after you’ve eat as much of it as ye can. There’s nothing like beef for a sick man’s inside, an’ fat for his outside—that’s the feelosophy o’ the whole matter. You’ve a’most bin bu’sted wi’ that there fall; but you’ll be alright to-morrow. An’ you’ve killed yer buffalo, lad, so yer mother ’ll get the hump after all. Only keep yer mind easy, an’ I guess human nature ’ll do the rest.”

Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a quietly oracular manner, Bounce again patted March on the head, as if he had been a large baby or a favourite dog, and, rising up, proceeded to kindle a small fire, and to light his pipe.

Bounce smoked a tomahawk, which is a small iron hatchet used by most of the Indians of North America as a battle-axe. There is an iron pipe bowl on the top of the weapon, and the handle, which is hollow, answers the purpose of a pipe stem.

The hunter continued to smoke, and Marston continued to gaze at him till he fell asleep. When he awoke, Bounce was still smoking his tomahawk in the self-same attitude. The youth might have concluded that he had been asleep only a few minutes and that his friend had never moved; but he was of an observant nature, and noticed that there was a savoury, well-cooked buffalo-steak near the fire, and that a strong odour of marrow-bones tickled his nostrils—also, that the sun no longer rested on the green bank opposite. Hence, he concluded that he must have slept a considerable time, and that the tomahawk had been filled and emptied more than once.

“Well, lad,” said Bounce, looking round, “had a comf’rable nap?”

“How did you know I was awake?” said March. “You weren’t looking at me, and I didn’t move.”

“P’r’aps not, lad; but you winked.”

“And, pray, how did you know that?”

“’Cause ye couldn’t wink if ye wos asleep, an’ I heerd ye breathe diff’rent from afore, so I know’d ye wos awake; an’ I knows that a man always winks w’en he comes awake, d’ye see? That’s wot I calls the feelosophy of obsarvation.”

“Very good,” replied Marston, “and, that bein’ the case, I should like much to try a little of the ‘feelosophy’ of supper.”

“Right, lad, here you are; there’s nothin’ like it,” rejoined Bounce, handing a pewter plate of juicy steak and marrow-bones to his young companion.

Marston attained a sitting posture with much difficulty and pain; but when he had eaten the steak and the marrow-bones he felt much better; and when he had swallowed a cup of hot tea (for they carried a small quantity of tea and sugar with them, by way of luxury), he felt immensely better; and when he finally lay down for the night he felt perfectly well—always excepting a sensation of general batteredness about the back, and a feeling of rusty-hinges-wanting-oiliness in the region of the neck.

“Now, Bounce,” said he, as he lay down and pulled his blanket over his shoulder, “are the horses hobbled and the rifles loaded, and my mother’s hump out o’ the way of wolves?”

“All right, lad.”

“Then, Bounce, you go ahead and tell me a story till I’m off asleep. Don’t stop tellin’ till I’m safe off. Pull my nose to make sure; and if I don’t say ‘hallo!’ to that, I’m all right—in the land of Nod.”

March Marston smiled as he said this, and Bounce grinned by way of reply.

“Wot’ll I tell ye about, boy?”

“I don’t mind what—Indians, grislies, buffaloes, trappers—it’s all one to me; only begin quick and go ahead strong.”

“Well, I ain’t great at story-tellin’! P’r’aps it would be more to the p’int if I was to tell ye about what I heer’d tell of on my last trip to the Mountains. Did I ever tell ye about the feller as the trappers that goes to the far North calls the ‘Wild Man o’ the West’?”

“No; what was he?” said Marston, yawning and closing his eyes.

“I dun know ’xactly wot he was. I’m not overly sure that I even know wot he is, but I know wot the trappers says of him; an’ if only the half o’t’s true, he’s a shiner, he is.”

Having said this much, Bounce filled his tomahawk, lighted it, puffed a large cloud from it, and looked through the smoke at his companion.

March, whose curiosity was aroused, partly by the novelty of the “Wild Man’s” title, and partly by the lugubrious solemnity of Bounce, said—

“Go on, old boy.”

“Ha! it’s easy to say, ‘go on;’ but if you know’d the ’orrible things as is said about the Wild Man o’ the Mountains, p’r’aps you’d say, ‘Go off.’ It ’ll make yer blood froze.”

“Never mind.”

“An’ yer hair git up on end.”

“Don’t care.”

“An’ yer two eyes start out o’ yer head.”

“All right.”

Bounce, who was deeply superstitious, looked at his young friend with severe gravity for at least two minutes. Marston, who was not quite so superstitious, looked at his comrade for exactly the same length of time, and winked with one eye at the end of it.

“They says,” resumed Bounce in a deep tone, “the Wild Man o’ the West eats men!”

“Don’t he eat women?” inquired March sleepily.

“Yes, an’ childers too. An’ wot’s wuss, he eats ’em raw, an’ they say he once swallered one—a little one—alive, without chewin’ or chokin’!” (“Horrible!” murmured March.) “He’s a dead shot, too; he carries a double-barrelled rifle twenty foot long that takes a small cannon-ball. I forgot to tell ye he’s a giant—some o’ the trappers calls him the ‘giant o’ the hills,’ and they say he’s ’bout thirty feet high—some says forty. But there’s no gittin’ at the truth in this here wurld.”

Bounce paused here, but, as his companion made no observation, he went on in a half-soliloquising fashion, looking earnestly all the time into the heart of the fire, as if he were addressing his remarks to a salamander.

“Ay, he’s a crack shot, as I wos sayin’. One day he fell in with a grisly bar, an’ the brute rushed at him; so he up rifle an’ puts a ball up each nose,”—(“I didn’t know a grisly had two noses,” murmured March,)—“an’ loaded agin’, an’ afore it comed up he put a ball in each eye; then he drew his knife an’ split it right down the middle from nose to tail at one stroke, an’ cut it across with another stroke; an’, puttin’ one quarter on his head, he took another quarter under each arm, an’ the fourth quarter in his mouth, and so walked home to his cave in the mountains—’bout one hundred and fifty miles off, where he roasted an’ ate the whole bar at one sittin’—bones, hair, an’ all!”

This flight was too strong for March. He burst into a fit of laughter, which called the rusty hinges into violent action and produced a groan. The laugh and the groan together banished drowsiness, so he turned on his back, and said—

“Bounce, do you really believe all that?”

Thus pointedly questioned on what he felt to be a delicate point, Bounce drew a great number of whiffs from the tomahawk ere he ventured to reply. At length he said—

“Well, to say truth, an’ takin’ a feelosophical view o’ the p’int—I don’t. But I b’lieve some of it. I do b’lieve there’s some ’xtraord’nary critter in them there mountains—for I’ve lived nigh forty years, off and on, in these parts, an’ I’ve always obsarved that in this wurld w’enever ye find anythin’ ye’ve always got somethin’. Nobody never got hold o’ somethin’ an’ found afterwards that it wos nothin’. So I b’lieve there’s somethin’ in this wild man—how much I dun know.”

Bounce followed up this remark with a minute account of the reputed deeds of this mysterious creature, all of which were more or less marvellous; and at length succeeded in interesting his young companion so deeply, as to fill him with a good deal of his own belief in at least a wild something that dwelt in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

After a great deal of talk, and prolonged discussion, Bounce concluded with the assertion that “he’d give his best rifle, an’ that was his only one, to see this wild man.”

To which Marston replied—

“I’ll tell you what it is, Bounce, I will see this wild man, if it’s in the power of bones and muscles to carry me within eyeshot of him. Now, see if I don’t.”

Bounce nodded his head and looked sagacious, as he said—

“D’ye know, lad, I don’t mind if I go along with ye. It’s true, I’m not tired of them parts hereabouts—and if I wos to live till I couldn’t see, I don’t think as ever I’d git tired o’ the spot where my father larned me to shoot an’ my mother dandled me on her knee; but I’ve got a fancy to see a little more o’ the wurld—’specially the far-off parts o’ the Rocky Mountains, w’ere I’ve never bin yit; so I do b’lieve if ye wos to try an’ persuade me very hard I’d consent to go along with ye.”

“Will you, though?” cried March eagerly (again, to his cost, forgetting the rusty hinges).

“Ay, that will I, boy,” replied the hunter; “an’ now I think on it, there’s four as jolly trappers in Pine Point settlement at this here moment as ever floored a grisly or fought an Injun. They’re the real sort of metal. None o’ yer tearin’, swearin’, murderin’ chaps, as thinks the more they curse the bolder they are, an’ the more Injuns they kill the cliverer they are; but steady quiet fellers, as don’t speak much, but does a powerful quantity; boys that know a deer from a Blackfoot Injun, I guess; that goes to the mountains to trap and comes back to sell their skins, an’ w’en they’ve sold ’em, goes right off agin, an’ niver drinks.”

“I know who you mean, I think; at least I know one of them,” observed March.

“No ye don’t, do ye? Who?”

“Waller, the Yankee.”

“That’s one,” said Bounce, nodding; “Big Waller, we calls him.”

“I’m not sure that I can guess the others. Surely Tim Slater isn’t one?”

“No!” said Bounce, with an emphasis of tone and a peculiar twist of the point of his nose that went far to stamp the individual named with a character the reverse of noble. “Try agin.”

“I can’t guess.”

“One’s a French Canadian,” said Bounce; “a little chap, with a red nose an’ a pair o’ coal-black eyes, but as bold as a lion.”

“I know him,” interrupted March; “Gibault Noir—Black Gibault, as they sometimes call him. Am I right?”

“Right, lad; that’s two. Then there’s Hawkswing, the Injun whose wife and family were all murdered by a man of his own tribe, and who left his people after that an’ tuck to trappin’ with the whites; that’s three. An’ there’s Redhand, the old trapper that’s bin off and on between this place and the Rocky Mountains for nigh fifty years, I believe.”

“Oh, I know him well. He must be made of iron, I think, to go through what he does at his time of life. I wonder what his right name is?”

“Nobody knows that, lad. You know, as well as I do, that he wos called Redhand by the Injuns in consekence o’ the lot o’ grislies he’s killed in his day; but nobody never could git at his real name. P’r’aps it’s not worth gittin’ at. Now, them four ’ll be startin’ in a week or two for the mountains, an’ wot’s to hinder us a-jinin’ of them?”

To his own question Bounce, after a pause, replied with deliberate emphasis, “Nothin’ wotsomdiver;” and his young companion heartily echoed the sentiment.

Exactly thirty-six hours after the satisfactory formation of the above resolution, March Marston galloped furiously towards the door of his mother’s cottage, reined up, leaped to the ground, seized the buffalo-hump that hung at his saddle-bow, and entered with a good deal of that impetuosity that had gone far to procure for him the title of madman. Flinging the bloody mass of meat on the floor he sat down on a chair, and said—

“There, mother!”

“Well, you are a clever fellow,” said Mrs Marston, drying her hands (for she had been washing dishes), and giving her son a hearty kiss on the forehead.

“Clever or not clever, mother, I’m off to the Rocky Mountains in two days.”

Mrs Marston was neither dismayed nor surprised. She was used to that sort of thing, and didn’t mind it.

“What to do there, my boy?”

“To see the Wild Man o’ the West.”

“The what?”

“The Wild Man o’ the West, mother.”

It is needless to try our reader’s patience with the long conversation that followed. March had resolved to preach a discourse with the “Wild Man o’ the West” for his text, and he preached so eloquently that his mother (who was by no means a timid woman) at length not only agreed to let him go, but commended him for his resolution. The only restraint she laid upon her son had reference to his behaviour towards the Wild Man, if he should happen to meet with him.

“You may look at him, March (Mrs Marston spoke of him as if he were a caged wild beast!) and you may speak to him, but you must not fight with him, except in self-defence. If he lets you alone, you must let him alone. Promise me that, boy.”

“I promise, mother.”

Not long after this promise was made, a light bark canoe was launched upon the river, and into it stepped our hero, with his friend Bounce, and Big Waller, Black Gibault, Hawkswing, and Redhand, the trappers. A cheer rang from the end of the little wharf at Pine Point, as the frail craft shot out into the stream. The wild woods echoed back the cheer, which mingled with the lusty answering shout of the trappers as they waved their caps to the friends they left behind them. Then, dipping their paddles with strong rapid strokes, they headed the canoe towards the Rocky Mountains, and soon disappeared up one of those numerous tributary streams that constitute the head waters of the Missouri river.