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

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"We shall see," he cried with a sudden impulse, pressing his lips again to her forehead. "May the Great Spirit bless and keep you! Good-bye, Mary--till next spring."

March burst away from her, rushed out of the cave in a tumult of conflicting feelings and great resolves, and despite a little stiffness that still remained to remind him of his late accident, flung himself into the saddle with a bound that would have done credit to the Wild Man himself, and galloped down the rocky gorge at a pace that threatened a sudden and total smash to horse and man. Had any of his old comrades or friends witnessed that burst, they would certainly have said that March Marston was mad--madder, perhaps, than the most obstreperous March hare that ever marched madly through the wild regions of insanity.


CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.


MARCH MARSTON AT HOME--HIS ASTONISHING BEHAVIOUR--NARRATION OF HIS EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES--WIDOW MARSTON'S BOWER--THE RENDEZVOUS OF THE TRAPPERS--A STRANGE INTERRUPTION TO MARCH'S NARRATIVE--A WILD SURPRISE AND RECOVERY OF A LOST LOVER--GREAT DESTRUCTION OF HOUSEHOLD GOODS--A DOUBLE WEDDING AND TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT--THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST THE WISEST MAN IN PINE POINT SETTLEMENT.

Three months passed away, and at the end of that period March Marston found himself back again in Pine Point settlement, sitting on a low stool at that fireside where the yelling and kicking days of his infancy had been spent, and looking up in the face of that buxom, blue-eyed mother, with whom he had been wont to hold philosophical converse in regard to fighting and other knotty--not to say naughty--questions, in those bright but stormy days of childhood when he stood exactly "two-foot-ten," and when he looked and felt as if he stood upwards of ten feet two!

Three months passed away, and during the passage of that period March Marston's bosom became a theatre in which, unseen by the naked eye, were a legion of spirits, good, middling, and bad, among whom were hope, fear, despair, joy, fun, delight, interest, surprise, mischief, exasperation, and a military demon named General Jollity, who overbore and browbeat all the rest by turns. These scampered through his brain and tore up his heart and tumbled about in his throat and lungs, and maintained a furious harlequinade, and in short behaved in a way that was quite disgraceful, and that caused the poor young man alternately to amuse, annoy, astonish, and stun his comrades, who beheld the exterior results of those private theatricals, but had no conception of the terrific combats that took place so frequently on the stage within.

During those three months, March saw many things. He saw his old friends the prairie dogs, and the prong-horned antelopes, and the grisly bears, and the wolves; more than that, he chased, and shot, and ate many of them. He also saw clouds of locusts flying high in the air, so thick that they sometimes darkened the very sky, and herds of buffaloes so large that they often darkened the whole plain.

During those three months March learned a good deal. He learned that there was much more of every sort of thing in this world than he had had any idea of--that there was much, very much, to be thankful for--that there were many, very many, things to be grieved for, and many also to be glad about--that the fields of knowledge were inimitably large, and that his own individual acquirements were preposterously, humblingly small!

He thought much, too. He thought of the past, present, and future in quite a surprising way. He thought of his mother and her loneliness, of Dick and his obstinacy, of Mary and her sweetness, of the Wild Man of the West and his invisibility. When this latter thought arose, it had the effect invariably of rousing within him demon Despair; also General Jollity, for the general had a particular spite against that demon, and, whenever he showed symptoms of vitality, attacked him with a species of frenzy that was quite dreadful to feel, and the outward manifestations of which were such as to cause the trappers to fear seriously that the poor youth had "gone out of his mind," as they expressed it. But they were wrong--quite wrong--it was only the natural consequence of those demons and sprites having gone into his mind, where they were behaving themselves--as Bounce, when March made him his confidant, said--with "horrible obstropolosity."

Well, as we have said, March was seated on a low stool, looking up in his mother's face. He had already been three days at home, and, during every spare minute he had he sat himself down on the same stool, and went on with his interminable narrations of the extraordinary adventures through which he had passed while among the Rocky Mountains and out upon the great prairies.

Widow Marston--for she knew that she was a widow now, though the knowledge added but little to the feeling of widowhood to which she had been doomed for so many years--widow Marston, we say, listened to this interminable narration with untiring patience and unmitigated pleasure. There was as yet no symptom of the narrative drawing to a close, neither was there the slightest evidence of the widow Marston becoming wearied. We have seen a cat worried and pulled and poked by its kitten almost beyond endurance, and we have observed that the cat endured it meekly-- nay, evidently rejoiced in the annoyance: it was pleasurable pain. As it is with feline, so is it with human mothers. Their love overbears and outweighs _everything_. Ah! good cause have the rugged males of this world to rejoice that such is the fact; and although they know it well, we hold that it is calculated to improve the health and refresh the spirit of men to have that fact brought prominently and pointedly to their remembrance!

Had March Marston talked the most unutterable balderdash, widow Marston would have listened with unwearied delight as long, we believe, as her eyes and ears could do their duty. But March did _not_ talk balderdash. For a madman, he spoke a great deal of common, besides a considerable amount of uncommon sense, and his mother listened with intelligent interest: commenting on what he said in her quiet way, as she found opportunity--we say this advisedly, for opportunities were not so frequent as one might suppose. March had always been possessed of a glib tongue, and he seemed, as Bounce remarked, to have oiled the hinges since his return to Pine Point settlement.

"Mother," said March, after a short pause that had succeeded an unusually long burst, "do you know it's only a few months since I left you to go to this trip to the mountains?"

"I know it well, my son," replied the widow, smiling at the question.

"And do you know," he continued, "that it seems to me more like five years? When I think of all that I've heard and all that I've done, and all that I've seen, it seems to me as if it had took--as if it _must_ have took--five years to have heard and done and seen it all in?"

"And yet," said the widow musingly, "you failed to see the Wild Man o' the West after all."

"Mother, I'll be angry with you if you say that again."

"Well, I won't," she replied, taking his hand in hers and stroking it. "Tell me again, March, about Dick of the Cave and his little girl. I like to hear about them; they were so kind to you, and that Dick, from your account, seems to be such a fine fellow: tell me all about them over again."

"I will, mother," said March, clearing his throat, and commencing in a tone that showed clearly his intention of going on indefinitely.

Widow Marston's cottage had a pretty, comfortable-looking flower garden behind it. In front the windows looked out upon a portion of the native woods which had been left standing when the spot for the settlement was cleared. In the back garden there was a bower which the widow's brother, the blacksmith, had erected, and the creepers on which had been planted by the widow's own hand when she was Mary West, the belle of the settlement. In this bower, which was a capacious one, sat a number of sedate, quiet, jolly, conversable fellows, nearly all of whom smoked, and one of whom sketched. They were our friends Redhand, Bounce, Big Waller, Gibault, Hawkswing, and Bertram.

It is observable among men who travel long in company together in a wild country, that, when they return again to civilised, or to semi-civilised life, they feel a strong inclination to draw closer together, either from the force of habit, or sympathy, or both. On reaching Pine Point the trappers, after visiting their friends and old chums, drew together again as if by a species of electrical attraction. In whatever manner they chanced to spend their days, they--for the first week at least-- found themselves trending gradually each evening a little before sunset to a common centre.

Widow Marston was always at home. March Marston was always with his mother--deep in his long-winded yarns. The bower was always invitingly open in the back garden; hence the bower was the regular rendezvous of the trappers. It was a splendid evening that on which we now see them assembled there. The sun was just about to set in a flood of golden clouds. Birds, wildfowl, and frogs held an uproarious concert in wood and swamp, and the autumnal foliage glowed richly in the slanting beams as it hung motionless in the still atmosphere.

"D'ye know," said Redhand, removing his pipe for a few minutes and blowing aside the heavy wreaths of tobacco smoke that seemed unwilling to ascend and dissipate themselves--"d'ye know, now that this trip's over, I'm inclined to think it's about the roughest one I've had for many a year? An' it's a cur'ous fact, that the rougher a trip is the more I like it."

Bertram, who was (as a matter of course) sketching, turned over a few leaves and made a note of the observation.

"I guess it was pretty much of a meddlin' jolly one," said Big Waller, smoking enthusiastically, and with an expression of intense satisfaction on his weather-beaten countenance.

"An' profitable," observed Bounce gravely.

"Ah! oui, ver' prof'table," echoed Gibault. "Dat is de main ting. We have git plenty skins, an' have bring hom' our own skins, w'ich I was not moche sure of one or two times."

"True," said Bounce; "that's wot we've got for to be thankful for. Skins is skins; but the skin of a human ain't to be put in the balance wi' the skin o' a beaver, d'ye see?"

Bounce glanced at Hawkswing as he spoke, but the Indian only looked stolid and smoked solemnly.

"Yes," he continued, "a whole skin's better nor a broken one, an' it's well to bring back a whole one, though I'm not a-goin' for to deny that there's some advantage in bringing back other sorts o' skins too, d'ye see? w'ich goes for to prove the true feelosophy of the fact, d'ye see?--"

Bounce paused, in the midst of his mental energy, to take a parenthetic whiff. His thoughts, however, seemed too deep for utterance, for he subsided quietly into a state of silent fumigation.

"What a splendidly picturesque scene!" exclaimed Bertram, pushing back his brigandish hat in order the better to get a view, at arm's length, of his sketch and compare it with the original.