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

care of Mary, and he would advance alone.

March returned, very much humbled, excessively pained in all his joints, and feeling as if he had reason to be ashamed of himself.

"Oh! you com back?" cried Mary as he entered the cavern with a crestfallen air. "Me so glad! Me know very well you no was poss'ble for travel."

Mary was perfectly artless. She made no attempt whatever to conceal her satisfaction at the youth's return, so he felt amazingly comforted, and even began to recover his self-esteem.

"Yes, Mary, I've come back, 'cause I can't go forward. It's o' no use tryin'; I'd just have knocked up on the way, which would have been awkward for Dick, you know, as well as for me. Besides, I couldn't fight just now to save my life."

"Well, you is right. You stop here an' git strong an' well. Me tell you stories 'bout Dick, or other mans if you likes. We'll have no fightin' to do. If there is, me take care of you. Me can doos a littil in that way."

March opened his eyes very wide at this, and stared at the pretty little vision in leather, but there was no smile or sly wrinkle on her countenance. She was looking quite gravely and sedately into the iron pot, which she happened to be stirring at that moment.

"Mary," he said, sitting down beside her, "Dick tells me you can read."

"Yis, me can read littil. But me only got one book." She sighed slightly as she said this.

"Would you like to have another book?"

"Oh yis, very very much. Have you got one?"

"Ay, one; the only one I have in the world, Mary; an' you're the only person in the world I'd give it to. But I'll give it to you, 'cause you've no chance of gettin' one like it here. It's a Bible--the one my mother gave me when I left home."

March pulled the little volume out of the breast of his coat as he spoke, and handed it to the girl, who received it eagerly, and looked at it with mingled feelings of awe and curiosity for some time before she ventured to open it.

"The Bibil. Dick have oftin speak to me 'bout it, an' try to 'member some of it. But he no can 'member much. He tell me it speak about the great good Spirit. Injins call him Manitow."

"So it does, Mary. I'll leave it with you when I go away. You say Dick couldn't remember much of it; neither can I, Mary. More shame to me, for many an' many a time has my poor mother tried to make me learn it off by heart."

"You mother?" repeated Mary earnestly. "Is you mother livin'?"

"That is she. At least, I left her well an' hearty in Pine Point settlement not many weeks agone."

"Me wish me had mother," said Mary with a sigh.

March gazed at the sad face of his fair companion with a perplexed yet sympathetic look. This was a new idea to him. Never having been without a mother, it had never entered into his head to think of such a thing as wishing for one.

"What you mother called?" said the girl, looking up quickly.

"Her name is Mary."

"Yis! that very strange. Call same as me."

"Not very strange, after all. There are a good number of Marys in the world," replied March with a laugh. "See, here is her name on the flyleaf of the Bible, written with her own hand, too: `To my dear March, from his loving mother, Mary Marston, Pine Point settlement.' Isn't it a good round hand o' write?"

"Very pritty," replied Mary. But she had now begun to spell out the words of the book which had at last fallen into her hands, and March could not again draw her into general talk; so he was fain to sit down and help her to read the Bible.

Leaving them thus occupied, we will now return to the trappers, three of whom, it will be remembered--Bounce, Redhand, and Gibault--had reached the Mountain Fort and given the alarm. Soon afterwards the Indians arrived there; but finding everything in readiness to give them a warm reception, they retired at once, preferring to wait their opportunity rather than have a fair stand-up fight with the white men. About an hour after they had retired, Big Waller, Hawkswing, and the artist, came tearing towards the fort, and were at once admitted.

They had nothing new to tell. They had met together by accident, as the others had done, on nearing the fort, and would have been in sooner, had not Big Waller been obliged to take charge of poor Bertram, who, owing to the suddenness and violence of all these recent events in savage life, had got into a muddled condition of mind that rendered him peculiarly helpless. But they knew nothing of March Marston--they had expected to find him there before them.

As March was well mounted, and known to be well qualified to take care of himself, his non-arrival threw his friends into a state of the utmost anxiety and suspense. They waited a couple of hours, in order to give him a chance of coming in, hoping that he might have merely been detained by some trifling accident, such as having lost his way for a time. But when, at the end of that period, there was still no sign of him, they gave up all hope of his arriving, and at once set out to sweep the whole country round in search of him, vowing in their hearts that they would never return to Pine Point settlement without him if he were alive.

McLeod tried to persuade them to remain at the fort for a few days, but, feeling sympathy with them, he soon ceased to press the matter. As for the wretched chief of the fort, Macgregor--the excitement of the recent transactions being over--he had returned to his bosom friend, and bitterest enemy, the bottle, and was at that time lying in a state of drivelling idiocy in his private chamber.

A few days after quitting the fort, Bounce and Gibault, who chanced to be riding considerably in advance of their companions, halted on the top of a ridge and began to scan the country before them. In the midst of their observations, Bounce broke the silence with a grunt.

"Fat now?" inquired his companion.

"What now?" replied Bounce contemptuously. "Use yer eyes now; d'ye see nothin'?"

"Non, no ting."

"That comes o' the want of obsarvation, now," said Bounce in a grave, reproachful tone. "Ye shouldn't ought to be so light-headed, lad. If ye wos left to yer lone in them sort o' places, ye'd soon lose yer scalp. It's _obsarvation_ as does it all, an' in yer partikler case it's the want o' that same as doesn't do it, d'ye see?"

"Non, vraiment, me shockable blind dis day; mais, p'r'aps, git more cliver de morrow," replied the good-humoured Canadian with a grin. "Fat you see?"

"I see fut-prints," replied Bounce, dismounting; "an' as fut-prints implies feet, an' feet indicates critters, human or otherwise, it becomes men wot be lookin' for a lost comrade to examine 'em with more nor or'nary care."

"Hah!" shouted Gibault with unwonted energy. "Look! voila! behold! Bounce, you hab great want of `obsarvation.' See!"

Now it chanced that, while Bounce was on his knees, carefully turning over every leaf and blade of grass, his comrade, who remained on horseback, and kept gazing at the horizon, without any particular object in view, did suddenly behold an object coming towards them at full gallop. Hence the sudden outburst, and the succeeding exclamation from Bounce--"It's a hoss!"

"A hoss!" repeated Gibault. "Him be one buffalo I see hims bump."

"The bumps that ye see is neither more nor less than a man leanin' forard--it is."

At this moment the rest of the party rode up, and Redhand confirmed Bounce's opinion.

"There's only one, I guess, an' he's in a powerful hurry," observed Big Waller. "But we may as well be ready to fix his flint if he means to cut up rough."

He brought forward his gun as he spoke, and examined the priming.

"I b'lieve he's an evil spirit, I do," said Bounce; "wot a pace!"

"More like to de Wild Man of de Vest," observed Gibault.

"Think you so?" whispered Bertram in an anxious tone, with an involuntary motion of his hand to the pouch in which lay that marvellous sketch-book of his.

"Think it's him?" said Redhand to Hawkswing.

The Indian gave a slight grunt of assent.

But the strange horseman soon put all doubt on the point at rest by bearing down upon them like a whirlwind, his long hair and tags and scalp-locks streaming in the wind as usual. Dick had a distinct purpose in thus acting. He wished to terrify men, or, at least, to impress them with a wholesome dread of him, in order that he might simply be _let alone_!

He did not check his slashing pace until within four or five bounds of the party. Reining up so violently that he tore up the turf for a couple of yards under his horse's heels, he looked at the trappers with a grave, almost fierce expression, for a second or two.

"You come from the Mountain Fort?" he said.

"Yes," replied Redhand.

"All right there?"

"All right. The redskins threatened an attack, but we were too quick for 'em."

A gleam of satisfaction passed across Dick's face as he added, "You've lost a comrade, han't ye?"

"We jist have," cried Big Waller in surprise. "If you've seed him, I guess ye'd as well take us to his whereabouts."

"See you yonder pine?" said Dick, pointing back in the direction whence he had come. "One day's journey beyond that, as the crow flies, will bring you to a valley, level and well watered, with plenty o' beaver in it. You'll find him there."

Without waiting a reply Dick turned to ride away.

"I say, stranger," cried Waller (Dick paused), "air you, or air you not, the Wild Man o' the West?"

"Wild fools of the West call me so," replied Dick with a ferocious frown, that went far to corroborate the propriety of the cognomen in the opinion of the trappers.

"Wall, I tell 'ee wot it is, stranger, Wild Man or not, I guess you'll ha' to take us to our comrade yourself, for I'm inclined to opine that you know more about him than's good for ye; so if ye try to ride off, I'll see whether a ball--sixteen to the pound--'ll not stop ye, for all yer bigness."

A grim smile curled Dick's moustache as he replied, "If ye think that a trapper's word ain't to be trusted, or that committin' murder 'll do yer comrade a service, here's your chance--fire away!"

Dick wheeled about and cantered coolly away into the thickest part of the forest, leaving the trappers gazing at each other in amazement. Bertram was the first to speak.

"Oh, why did you not delay him a few seconds longer? See, I