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

rest-- the vision broke upon his beclouded brain and cleared his faculties.

Looking curiously round the cavern, he observed for the first time--what he might have observed the night before had he not been preoccupied with sudden, numerous, and powerful surprises--that the walls were hung with arms and trophies of the chase. Just opposite to him hung the skin of an enormous grisly bear, with the head and skull entire, and the mouth and teeth grinning at him in an awful manner. Near to this were the skin and horns of several buffaloes. In other places there were more horns, and heads, and hides of bears of various kinds, as well as of deer, and, conspicuous above the entrance, hung the ungainly skull and ponderous horns of an elk.

Mingled with these, and arranged in such a manner as to prove that Dick, or the vision--one or other, or both--were by no means destitute of taste, hung various spears, and bows, and quivers, and shields of Indian manufacture, with spears and bows whose form seemed to indicate that Dick himself was their fabricator. There was much of tasteful ornament on the sheaths and handles of many of these weapons.

The floor of the apartment in which he lay was of solid rock, cleanly washed and swept, but there was no furniture of any kind--only a pile of fresh-cut pine-branches, with which the place was perfumed, and two or three rough logs which had been used as seats the night before by the host and hostess of this--to March--enchanted castle.

March was staring earnestly at one of these logs which lay close to the ashes of the fire, trying to recall the form that had last occupied it, when a rustle at the inner passage attracted his attention, and next moment the vision again stood before him. It was, if possible, more innocent and young and sweet than on the previous night.

"Good mornin'. You very good sleep, me hope?"

"Ay, that had I, a capital sleep," cried March heartily, holding out his hand, which the vision grasped unhesitatingly, and shook with manly vigour.

"Bees you hongray?"

"No, not a bit," said March.

The girl looked sad at this. "You muss heat," she said quickly, at the same time raking together the embers of the fire, and blowing them up into a flame, over which she placed a large iron pot. "Dick hims always heat well an' keep well. Once me was be sick. Dick him say to me, `Heat.' Me say, `No want heat.' Hims say, `You _muss_ heat.' So me try; an' sure 'nuff, get well to-morrow."

March laughed at this prompt and effectual remedy for disease, and said, "Well, I'll try. Perhaps it will cure me, especially if you feed me."

Poor March saw, by the simplicity of his companion's looks, that gallantry and compliments were alike thrown away on her; so he resolved to try them no more. Having come to this conclusion, he said--

"I say, Mary, come and sit by me while I talk with you. I want to know how you came to be in this wild, out-o'-the-way place, and who Dick is, and what brought him here, an' in short, all about it."

The girl drew her log near as he desired, but said, "What Dick no tell, me no tell."

"But, surely," urged March in a somewhat testy tone, "you may tell me _something_ about ye."

Mary shook her head.

"Why not?"

"Dick say, `No tell.'"

"Oh! Dick's an ass!"

Had Mary known the meaning of her companion's rude speech, she might possibly have surprised him with a decided opinion in regard to himself. But, never having heard of nor seen such a creature in all her life, she only looked up with a quiet expression of curiosity, and said--

"What bees an ass?"

"Ha! ha!--ho! he! a--" roared our hero, with a mingled feeling of exasperation and savage glee--"an ass? Why, it's a lovely slender creature, with short pretty ears and taper limbs, and a sleek, glossy coat, like--like _me_, Mary, dear; why, I'm an ass myself. Pray, do get me somethin' to eat. I really believe my appetite's comin' back agin."

Mary looked at March in much concern. She had once nursed the Wild Man through a severe illness, and knew what delirium was, and she began to suspect that her guest was beginning to give way.

"Now, lie down," she said with an air of decision that was almost ludicrous in one so youthful. Yet March felt that he must obey. "Me will git meat ready. You sleep littil bit."

March shut his eyes at once; but, the instant that Mary turned to attend to the iron kettle, he opened them, and continued to gaze at the busy little housewife, until she chanced to look in his direction, when he shut them again quickly, and very tight. This was done twice; but the third time Mary caught him in the act, and broke into a merry laugh. It was the first time she had laughed aloud since March met her; so he laughed too, out of sheer delight and sympathy.

When March had finished breakfast, he tried to get up, and found, to his great relief and satisfaction, that no bones were broken--a fact of which he had stood in considerable doubt--and that his muscles were less acutely pained than they had been. Still, he was very stiff, and quite unable, with any degree of comfort, to walk across the cave; so he made up his mind to lie there till he got well--a resolution which, in the pride of his heart, he deemed exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, forgetting, either deliberately or stupidly, that the presence of Mary rendered that otherwise dull cavern the most delightful of sick chambers, and that her attendance was ample compensation and reward for any amount of pain or self-denial.

"Mary," he said, when she had cleared away the debris of the morning meal, "sit down here, and tell me a few things. You're so terribly close that one doesn't know what he may ask an' what he mayn't. But if you don't like to speak, you can hold your tongue, you know. Now, tell me, how old are you?"

"Fifteen," replied Mary.

"Ay! I thought ye'd been older. How long have ye bin with Dick?"

"In cave here--ten year. Before that, me live in my father's wigwam."

"Was yer father a trapper?" inquired March tenderly.

Mary's face at once assumed an expression of earnest gravity, and she answered, "Yes," in a low, sad tone.

March was going to have inquired further on this point, but fear lest he should hurt the feelings of the poor child induced him to change the subject.

"And how came ye," said he, "first to meet with Dick?"

Mary pressed her lips.

"Oh! very well; don't tell if it ain't right, by no manner o' means. Do ye think that Dick intends to keep ye here always?"

"Me not know."

"Humph! An' you say he's good to ye?"

"Oh yes," cried Mary with a sudden blaze of animation on her usually placid countenance, "him's good, very good--gooder to me than nobody else."

"Well, I could have guessed that, seein' that nobody else has had anything to do with ye but him for ten years past."

"But him's not only good to me--good to everybody," continued the girl with increasing animation. "You not know _how_ good--can't know."

"Certainly not," assented March; "it ain't possible to know, not havin' bin told; but if you'll tell me I'll listen."

March Marston had at last struck a chord that vibrated intensely in the bosom of the warm-hearted child. She drew her log closer to him in her eagerness to dilate on the goodness of her adopted father, and began to pour into his willing ears such revelations of the kind and noble deeds that he had done, that March was fired with enthusiasm, and began to regard his friend Dick in the light of a demigod. Greatheart, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," seemed most like to him, he thought, only Dick seemed grander, which was a natural feeling; for Bunyan drew his Greatheart true to nature, while Mary and March had invested Dick with a robe of romance, which glittered so much that he looked preternaturally huge.

March listened with rapt attention; but as the reader is not March, we will not give the narrative in Mary's bad English. Suffice it to say, that she told how, on one occasion, Dick happened to be out hunting near to a river, into which he saw a little Indian child fall. It was carried swiftly by the current to a cataract fifty feet high, and in a few minutes would have been over and dashed to pieces, when Dick happily saw it, and plunging in brought it safe to shore, yet with such difficulty that he barely gained the bank, and grasped the branch of an overhanging willow, when his legs were drawn over the edge of the fall. He had to hold on for ten minutes, till men came from the other side of the stream to his assistance.

Mary also told him (and it was evening ere she finished all she had to tell him) how that, on another occasion, Dick was out after grislies with a hunter, who had somehow allowed himself to be caught by a bear, and would have been torn in pieces had not Dick come up with his great two-edged sword--having fired off his rifle without effect--and, with one mighty sweep at the monster's neck, cut right through its jugular vein, and all its other veins, down to the very marrow of its backbone; in fact, killed it at one blow--a feat which no one had ever done, or had ever heard of as being done, from the days of the first Indian to that hour.

Many such stories did Mary relate to the poor invalid, who bore his sufferings with exemplary patience and fortitude, and listened with unflagging interest; but of all the stories she told, none seemed to afford her so much pleasure in the telling as the following:--

One day Dick went out to hunt buffaloes, on his big horse, for he had several steeds, one or other of which he rode according to fancy; but he always mounted the big black one when he went after the buffalo or to war. Mary here explained, very carefully, that Dick never went to war on his own account--that he was really a man of peace, but that, when he saw oppression and cruelty, his blood boiled within him at such a rate that he almost went mad, and often, under the excitement of hot indignation, would he dash into the midst of a band of savages and scatter them right and left like autumn leaves.

Well, as he was riding along among the mountains, near the banks of a broad stream, and not far from the edge of the great prairie, he came suddenly on an object that caused his eyes to glare and his teeth to grind; for there, under the shade of a few branches, with a pot of water by her side, sat an old Indian woman. Dick did not need to ask what she was doing there. He knew the ways of the redskins too well to remain a moment in doubt.