THE GREAT PRAIRIE--A WILD CHASE--A REMARKABLE ACCIDENT AND AN
EXTRAORDINARY CHARGER, ALL OF WHICH TERMINATE IN A CRASH--BOUNCE TALKS
PHILOSOPHY AND TELLS OF TERRIBLE THINGS--OUR HERO DETERMINES TO BEARD
THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST IN HIS OWN DEN.
The rising sun lifted his head above the horizon of the great western
prairie, gilding the upper edges of those swelling undulations that bear
so strong a resemblance to solidified billows as to have acquired the
name of prairie waves.
On the sunny side of these waves the flowerets of the plains were
already basking in full enjoyment of the new day; on the summits only
the tips of their petals were turned to gold. On the other side of
those waves, and down in the hollows, everything was clothed in deep
shadow, as if the still undissipated shades of night were lingering
there, unwilling or unable to depart from so beautiful a scene. This
mingling of strong lights and deep shadows had the effect of rendering
more apparent the tremendous magnitude of those vast solitudes.
There were no trees within the circuit of vision, but there were a few
scattered bushes, so low and insignificant in appearance as to be quite
unobvious to the eye, except when close to the feet of the spectator.
Near to a clump of these bushes there stood two horses motionless, as if
chiselled in stone, and with their heads drooping low, as if sound
asleep. Directly under the noses of these horses lay two men, each
wrapped in a blanket, with his head pillowed on his saddle, and his
rifle close at his side. Both were also sound asleep.
About a mile distant from the spot on which those sleepers rested, there
grew another small bush, and under its sheltering boughs, in the
snuggest conceivable hole, nestled a grouse, or prairie hen, also sound
asleep, with its head lost in feathers, and its whole rotund aspect
conveying the idea of extreme comfort and good living. Now, we do not
draw the reader's attention to that bird because of its rarity, but
because of the fact that it was unwittingly instrumental in influencing
the fortunes of the two sleepers above referred to.
The sun in his upward march overtopped a prairie wave, and his rays,
darting onward, struck the bosom of the prairie hen, and awoke it.
Looking up quickly with one eye, it seemed to find the glare too strong,
winked at the sun, and turned the other eye. With this it winked also,
then got up, flapped its wings, ruffled its feathers, and, after a
pause, sprang into the air with that violent _whirr-r_ which is so
gladdening, yet so startling, to the ear of a sportsman. It was
instantly joined by the other members of the covey to which it belonged,
and the united flock went sweeping past the sleeping hunters, causing
their horses to awake with a snort, and themselves to spring to their
feet with the alacrity of men who were accustomed to repose in the midst
of alarms, and with a grunt of surprise.
"Prairie-hens," muttered the elder of the two--a big, burly
backwoodsman--as he turned towards his companion with a quiet smile.
"It was very thoughtful on 'em to rouse us, lad, considerin' the work
that lies before us."
"I wish, with all my heart, they didn't rise quite so early," replied
the younger man, also a stout backwoodsman, who was none other than our
hero March Marston himself; "I don't approve of risin' until one wakes
in the course of nature; d'ye see, Bounce?"
"I _hear_; but we can't always git things to go 'xactly as we approves
of," replied Bounce, stooping down to arrange the embers of the previous
night's fire.
Bounce's proper name was Bob Ounce. He styled himself, and wrote
himself (for he could write to the extent of scrawling his own name in
angularly irregular large text), "B. Ounce." His comrades called him
"Bounce."
"You see, March," continued Bounce in a quiet way, thrusting his rugged
countenance close to the embers occasionally, and blowing up the spark
which he had kindled by means of flint, steel, and tinder--"you see,
this is a cur'ous wurld; it takes a feelosopher to onderstand it
c'rectly, and even he don't make much o't at the best. But I've always
noticed that w'en the time for wakin' up's come, we've got to wake up
whether we like it or no; d'ye see, lad?"
"I'd see better if you didn't blow the ashes into my eyes in that way,"
answered March, laughing at the depth of his companion's philosophical
remark. "But I say, old chap," (March had no occasion to call him "old
chap," for Bounce was barely forty), "what if we don't fall in with a
herd?"
"Then we shall have to go home without meat that's all," replied Bounce,
filling and lighting his pipe.
"But I promised my mother a buffalo-hump in less than three days, and
the first day and night are gone."
"You'd no right to promise your mother a hump," returned the
plain-spoken and matter-of-fact hunter. "Nobody shud never go to
promise wot they can't perform. I've lived, off an' on, nigh forty
years now, and I've obsarved them wot promises most always does least;
so if you'll take the advice of an oldish hunter, you'll give it up,
lad, at once."
"Humph!" ejaculated March, "I suppose you began your _obsarvations_
before you were a year old--eh, Bounce?"
"I began 'em afore I was a day old. The first thing I did in this life
was to utter an 'orrible roar, and I obsarved that immediately I got a
drink; so I roared agin, an' got another. Leastwise I've bin told that
I did, an' if it wasn't obsarvation as caused me for to roar w'en I
wanted a drink, wot wos it?"
Instead of replying, March started up, and shading his eyes with his
right hand, gazed intently towards the horizon.
"Wot now, lad?" said Bounce, rising quickly. "Ha! buffaloes!"
In half a minute the cords by which the two horses were fastened to pegs
driven into the plain, were coiled up; in another half-minute the
saddle-girths were buckled; in half a second more the men were mounted
and tearing over the prairie like the wind.
"Ha, lad," remarked Bounce with one of his quiet smiles--for he was a
pre-eminently quiet man--"but for them there prairie-hens we'd ha' slept
this chance away."
The buffaloes, or, more correctly speaking, the bisons which young
Marston's sharp eye had discovered, were still so far-distant that they
appeared like crows or little black specks against the sky. In order to
approach them as near as possible without attracting their attention, it
was necessary that the two horsemen should make a wide circuit, so as to
get well to leeward, lest the wind should carry the scent of them to the
herd. Their horses, being fleet, strong, and fresh, soon carried them
to the proper direction, when they wheeled to the right, and galloped
straight down upon their quarry, without any further attempt at
concealment. The formation of the ground favoured their approach, so
that they were within a mile of the herd before being discovered.
At first the huge, hairy creatures gazed at the hunters in stupid
surprise; then they turned and fled. They appeared, at the outset, to
run slowly and with difficulty, and the plain seemed to thunder with
their heavy tread, for there could not have been fewer than a thousand
animals in the herd. But as the horsemen drew near they increased their
speed and put the steeds, fleet and strong though they were, to their
mettle.
On approaching the buffaloes the horsemen separated, each fixing his
attention on a particularly fat young cow and pressing towards it.
Bounce was successful in coming up with the one he had selected, and put
a ball through its heart at the first shot. Not so Marston. Misfortune
awaited him. Having come close up with the animal he meant to shoot, he
cocked his rifle and held it in readiness across the pommel of his
saddle, at the same time urging his horse nearer, in order to make a
sure shot. When the horse had run up so close that its head was in line
with the buffalo's flank, he pointed his rifle at its shoulder. At that
precise moment the horse, whose attention was entirely engrossed with
the buffalo, put its left forefoot into a badger's hole. The
consequence of such an accident is, usually, a tremendous flight through
the air on the part of the rider, while his steed rolls upon the plain;
but on the present occasion a still more surprising result followed.
March Marston not only performed the aerial flight, but he alighted with
considerable violence on the back of the affrighted buffalo. Falling on
his face in a sprawling manner, he chanced to grasp the hairy mane of
the creature with both hands, and, with a violent half-involuntary
effort, succeeded in seating himself astride its back.
The whole thing was done so instantaneously that he had scarce time to
realise what had happened to him ere he felt himself sweeping
comfortably over the prairie on this novel and hitherto unridden steed!
A spirit of wild, ungovernable glee instantly arose within him. Seizing
the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right
wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it
down on his charger's flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the
animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its
heels, in a way that wellnigh unseated him.
The moment Bounce beheld this curious apparition, he uttered a short
laugh, or grunt, and, turning his horse abruptly, soon ranged up
alongside.
"Hallo, March!" he exclaimed, "are you mad, boy?"
"Just about it," cried Marston, giving the buffalo another cut with the
whip, as he looked round with sparkling eyes and a broad grin at the
hunter.
"Come, now, that won't do," said Bounce gravely. "I'm 'sponsible to
your mother for you. Git off now, or I'll poke ye over."
"Git off!" shouted the youth, "how can I?"
"Well, keep your right leg a bit to one side, an' I'll stop yer horse
for ye," said Bounce, coolly cocking his rifle.
"Hold hard, old fellow!" cried Marston, in some alarm; "you'll smash my
thigh-bone if you try. Stay, I'll do the thing myself."
Saying this, Marston drew his long hunting-knife, and plunged it into
the buffalo's side.
"Lower down, lad--lower down. Ye can't reach the life there."
March bent forward, and plunged his knife into the animal's side again--
up to the hilt; but it still kept on its headlong course, although the
blood flowed in streams upon the plain. The remainder of the buffaloes
had diverged right and left, leaving this singular group alone.
"Mind your eye," said Bounce quickly, "she's a-goin' to fall."
Unfortunately Marston had not time given him to mind either his eye or
his neck. The wounded buffalo stumbled, and fell to the ground with a
sudden and heavy plunge, sending its wild rider once again on an aerial
journey, which terminated in his coming down on the plain so violently
that he was rendered insensible.
On recovering consciousness, he found himself lying on his back, in what
seemed to be a beautiful forest, through which a stream flowed with a
gentle, silvery sound. The bank opposite rose considerably higher than
the spot on which he lay, and he could observe, through his half-closed
eyelids, that its green slope was gemmed with beautiful flowers, and
gilded with patches of sunlight that struggled through the branches
overhead.
Young Marston's first impression was that he must be dreaming, and that
he had got into one of the fairytale regions about which he had so often
read to his mother. A shadow seemed to pass over his eyes as he thought
this, and, looking up, he beheld the rugged face of Bounce gazing at him
with an expression of considerable interest and anxiety.
"I say, Bounce, this is jolly!"
"Is it?" replied the hunter with a "humph!"
"If ye try to lift yer head, I guess you'll change yer opinion."
Marston 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 one hundred and fifty miles off, where he roasted
an' ate the whole bar at one sittin'--bones, hair, an' all!"
This flight was too strong for March. He burst into a fit of laughter,
which called the rusty hinges into violent action and produced a groan.
The laugh and the groan together banished drowsiness, so he turned on
his back, and said--
"Bounce, do you really believe all that?"
Thus pointedly questioned on what he felt to be a delicate point, Bounce
drew a great number of whiffs from the tomahawk ere he ventured to
reply. At length he said--
"Well, to say truth, an' takin' a feelosophical view o' the p'int--I
_don't_. But I b'lieve _some_ of it. I do b'lieve there's some
'xtraord'nary critter in them there mountains--for I've lived nigh forty
years, off and on, in these parts, an' I've always obsarved that in this
wurld w'enever ye find _anythin'_ ye've always got _somethin'_. Nobody
never got hold o' somethin' an' found afterwards that it wos nothin'.
So I b'lieve there's somethin' in this wild man--how much I dun know."
Bounce followed up this remark with a minute account of the reputed
deeds of this mysterious creature, all of which were more or less
marvellous; and at length succeeded in interesting his young companion
so deeply, as to fill him with a good deal of his own belief in at least
a wild _something_ that dwelt in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
After a great deal of talk, and prolonged discussion, Bounce concluded
with the assertion that "he'd give his best rifle, an' that was his only
one, to see this wild man."