The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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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