The Wild Man of the West by Robert Michael Ballantyne (epub e ink reader TXT) 📕

there are no other visions in this world than "visions in silk," "visions in white," and the like. Those who think thus labour under an egregious, though a civilised, mistake.

Happily there are kind, loving, pretty faces in this world, the possessors of which know nothing about pink gauze or white muslin--faces that have never felt the hot air of a drawing-room, but are much used to present themselves, unveiled, to the fresh breezes of the prairie and the mountain; faces that possess the rare quality of universal attraction, and that cause men to fancy, when they see them for the first time, that they have beheld a vision!

The fact is that some faces are visions, whether the forms that support them appear to us in muslin or in deerskin. The only requisite needful to constitute a face a vision to any particular person, is that it should have in it that peculiar _something_ which everybody wants, but which nobody can define; which is ineffably charming, though utterly incomprehensible; and which, when once seen by any one, constitutes the countenance that possesses it a vision evermore!

It is quite immaterial what material composes the dress in which the vision appears. No doubt, the first time it bursts upon the smitten victim, dress may be a powerful auxiliary; but, after the first time, dress goes for little or nothing. March Marston's vision appeared, as we have said in leather.

After the Wild Man had vanished, March continued to gaze at his new companion with all kinds of feelings and emotions, but without being able to move or speak. The vision returned the compliment, also without speaking or taking any further notice of him.

She was a wonderful creature, that vision in leather! That she was of Indian extraction was evident from the hue of her skin, yet she was not nearly so dark as the lightest complexioned Indian. In fact her clear soft forehead was whiter than those of many so-called pale-faces; but her ruddy cheeks, her light-brown hair, and, above all, her bright brown eye showed that white blood ran in her veins. She was what men term a half-caste. She was young, almost girlish in her figure and deportment; but the earnest gravity of her pretty face caused her to appear older than she really was. March, unconsciously and without an effort, guessed her to be sixteen. He was wrong. She had only seen fifteen summers.

Her dress was a beautifully dressed deerskin gown, reaching below the knees, as soft as chamois leather, and ornamented with beads and quill work. It was girded round her small waist by a leather belt, from which depended a small hunting-knife. A pair of ornamental leggings of the same material as the gown covered her limbs, and moccasins her feet, which latter, as well as her hands, were small and beautifully formed. Over her shoulders were slung the masculine appendages of a powder-horn and bullet-pouch, proving that this creature was, so to speak, a Dianic vision.

Her staring so hard and so long at March without speaking or smiling, or taking any more notice of him than if he had been an effigy on a tombstone, seemed unaccountable to that youth. Had he been able to look at himself from her point of view he would not have been so much surprised.

In his late accident he had received so severe a blow on the left eye that that orb was altogether shut up. As he did not move, and as the other eye, with which he gazed in supreme astonishment at the sweet face before him, happened to be farthest from the fire, besides being hid in the shadow of his own nose--which was not a small one by nature, and was a peculiarly large one by force of recent circumstances--the vision very naturally thought that he was fast asleep. As she stood there gazing wonderingly and somewhat sadly at the poor youth, with the red flickering flame of the fire lighting up her yellow garments, deepening the red on her round cheeks, glinting on the loose masses of her rich tresses, and sparkling in the depths of her bright brown eyes, March thought he had never in all his life before beheld such an exquisite creature.

Supposing that he was asleep, the vision sat down quietly on a log beside the fire, still keeping her eyes, however, fixed on her guest. The action took her out of "the direct line of fire" of March's sound eye, therefore he turned his head abruptly, and so brought his staring orb into the light of the fire, and revealed the fact that he was wide-awake; whereupon the vision uttered an exclamation of surprise, rose hastily, and went to his side.

"You is woke," she said. "Me tink you was be sleep."

"Asleep!" cried March with enthusiasm, "no, I wasn't asleep. More than that, I'll never go to sleep any more."

This bold assertion naturally filled the vision with surprise.

"Why for not?" she asked, sitting down on a log beside March in such a position that she could see him easily.

"For thinkin' o' _you_!" replied the bold youth firmly.

The vision looked at him in still greater astonishment, opening her eyes slowly until they seemed like two pellucid lakelets of unfathomable depth into which March felt inclined to fling himself, clothes and all, and be drowned comfortably. She then looked at the fire, then at March again. It was evident that she had not been accustomed to hold intercourse with jocular minds. Perceiving this, March at once changed his tone, and, with a feeling of respect which he could not well account for, said rather bluntly--

"What's your name?"

"Mary."

"Ay! did your father give you that name?"

"My father?" echoed the girl, looking hastily up.

"Ay, did Dick give it you?"

"Did him tell you him's name be Dick?" asked Mary.

"Oh! he's known by another name to you, then, it would seem. But, Mary, what _is_ his name?"

The girl pursed her mouth and laid her finger on it. Then, with a little sad smile, said--

"Him tell you Dick, that be good name. But Dick not my father. My father dead."

The poor thing said this so slowly and in such a low pathetic tone that March felt sorry for having unwittingly touched a tender chord. He hastened to change the subject by saying--

"Is Dick kind to you, Mary?"

"Kind," she cried, looking up with a flashing eye and flushed face, while with one of her little hands she tossed back her luxuriant tresses. "Kind! Him be my father _now_. No have got nobody to love me now but him."

"Yes, you have, Mary," said March stoutly.

Mary looked at him in surprise, and said, "Who?"

"Me!" replied March.

Mary said nothing to this. It was quite clear that the Wild Man must have neglected her education sadly. She did not even smile; she merely shook her head, and gazed abstractedly at the embers of the fire.

"Dick is not your father, Mary," continued March energetically, "but he has become your father. I am not your brother, but I'll become your brother--if you'll let me."

March in his enthusiasm tried to raise himself; consequently he fell back and drowned Mary's answer in a groan of anguish. But he was not to be baulked.

"What said you?" he inquired after a moment's pause.

"Me say you be very good."

She said this so calmly that March felt severely disappointed. In the height of his enthusiasm he forgot that the poor girl had as yet seen nothing to draw out her feelings towards him as his had been drawn out towards her. She had seen no "vision," except, indeed, the vision of a wretched, dishevelled youth, of an abrupt, excitable temperament, with one side of his countenance scratched in a most disreputable manner, and the other side swelled and mottled to such an extent that it resembled a cheap plum-pudding with the fruit unequally and sparsely distributed over its yellow surface.

March was mollified, however, when the girl suggested that his pillow seemed uncomfortable, and rose to adjust it with tender care. Then she said: "Now me bring blankit. You go sleep. Me sit here till you sleep, after that me go away. If ye wants me, holler out. Me sleep in next room."

So saying, this wonderful creature flitted across the cavern and vanished, thereby revealing to March the fact that there was a third cavern in that place. Presently she returned with a green blanket, and spread it over him, after which she sat down by the fire and seemed absorbed in her private meditations while March tried to sleep.

But what a night March had of it! Whichever way he turned, that vision was ever before his eyes. When he awoke with a start, there she was, bending over the fire. When he dreamed, there she was, floating in an atmosphere of blue stars. Sometimes she was smiling on him, sometimes gazing sadly, but never otherwise than sweetly. Presently he saw her sitting on Dick's knee, twisting his great moustache with her delicate hand, and he was about to ask Dick how he had managed to get back so soon, when he (the Wild Man) suddenly changed into March's own mother, who clasped the vision fervently to her breast and called her her own darling son! There was no end to it. She never left him. Sometimes she appeared in curious forms and in odd aspects--though always pleasant and sweet to look upon. Sometimes she was dancing gracefully like an embodied zephyr on the floor; frequently walking in mid-air; occasionally perambulating the ceiling of the cave. She often changed her place, but she never went away. There was no escape. And March was glad of it. He didn't want to escape. He was only too happy to court the phantom. But it did not require courting. It hovered over him, walked round him, sat beside him, beckoned to him, and smiled at him. Never,--no, never since the world began was any scratched and battered youth so thoroughly badgered and bewitched, as was poor March Marston on that memorable night, by that naughty vision in leather!


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.


THE CAVE OF THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST--MARCH AND MARY HOLD PLEASANT INTERCOURSE--DICK'S GOOD QUALITIES ENLARGED ON--THE WILD MAN GIVES A REDSKIN A STRANGE LESSON--A STARTLING INTERRUPTION TO PLEASANT CONVERSE.

When March Marston awoke the following morning, and found himself lying on a low couch in the mysterious cavern of the Wild Man of the West, he experienced the curious sensation, with which every one is more or less familiar, of not knowing where he was.

The vision in leather, which had worried him to such an extent during the night, had left him in peace--as most visions usually do--an hour or so before daybreak, and as the real vision had not yet issued from the inner chamber of the cave, there was nothing familiar near him when he awoke to recall his scattered senses. His first effort to rise, however, quickened his memory amazingly. Pains shot through all his limbs: the chase, the fall, Dick, the cavern, recurred to him; and last--but not least, for it obliterated and swallowed up all the