Young Ben Logan.
Pow-wow was still performing, Sprigg still laughing, the rest of the
company still in a maze of delighted bewilderment, when, home from the
forest, in came rolling young Ben Logan. He had heard the good news at
the gate, and now, as if feeling there was no further need of his being
tender-footed, he came lumbering through the house, making every loose
board he trod on a speaking witness to the joy of his heart. "Actions
speak louder than words," so they say; and yet it does so happen
sometimes, but very rarely, mind you, that what they say is a good deal
louder than what they do. At sight of the young hunter, Pow-wow had cut
short his antics, or, rather, was made to cut them short--the Manitou
inspiration, to which they had been due, departing from him as suddenly
as it had entered; and subsiding to his haunches, he became in an
instant as quiet and solemn as a tumbler between cues. In the joy of the
moment, Ben had forgotten to leave his rifle at the door, and now, with
it in his left hand rested on the floor, he stood by the bedside of his
strangely fated little friend, a heroic smell of gunpowder and buckskin
boisterous in the air about him, and on his face a look of benignant
wonderment, as he gazed down into the newly reopened eyes, whose light
had so well nigh been lost in the shadows of death. Bright and clear as
were the eyes turned up to his own, they were still hardly capable of
more than a dreamy perception of what they looked on. Taking the little
hand, so white and wan, in his own huge, powder-begrimed paw, and
shaking it gently from side to side, in a wag-tail way, Ben, after some
moments of silence, said:
"Howd'y do, Sprigg?"
"My name is Sprigg, then, sure enough?"
"If it isn't I don't know the man I'm talking to; never did--stranger to
me."
"And is your name Ben Logan?"
"If it isn't I don't know the man that's talking to you; never
did--stranger to me."
"And these two pretty people here, are they my father and mother,
really, now?"
"If they ain't so now, they never were so and never will be so, in this
world." Delivered with much solemnity and some stress on "now" and
"this."
"And this place, where we all are, is it really grandpap's house, and no
mistake?"
"If it isn't you can't prove it by me. It's just where I left just such
a house this morning, though it doesn't look much like the same place,
either, with you wide awake in it, and old Pow-wow on his hind legs in
it, and both so jolly."
"And that little girl there, at the foot of my bed, is her name
Bertha?"
Here Ben paused before answering, regarding the person referred to with
a look of some perplexity. "Well, she used to answer to that name, but
here lately she don't answer to any when I call her; goes about like one
in a traveling dream. There she stands, a-gazing at you with a far-off
look in her eyes, as though you were on the other side of the Kentucky
river, and not a living thing anear you. Bertha!" Here Ben elevated his
voice a little. Bertha turned her eyes toward the speaker, though
apparently with as little perception of his actual presence as though he
were lying at the bottom of the river he had named. "There, you see how
she does, and that's the way she's doing all the time. When she wakes up
she won't know any more for a minute where she is than you did, before I
told you. She's either in love, or fixing to be a ghost."
What young Ben Logan meant by this concluding remark were hard to
imagine; unless, indeed, he had in his mind the idea of a little angel,
when he said "ghost." After receiving each answer, Sprigg would pause
for a few moments to consider what he had heard and assure himself of
its meaning before proceeding further. Now, after a somewhat longer
pause than before, he put the startling question:
"Ben, did you ever see Nick of the Woods?" To which he received the
equally startling answer:
"Well, if I didn't see him to-day, it wasn't because I didn't stare
with all the eyes I had. I never saw the woods behave so in all my life
before. There a tree, just one tree, would fall to waving its limbs and
shaking its leaves, making the liveliest flutter, and all the rest of
the trees as still as mice when the cat's about. And there went smoke
a-rolling up in puffs as big as feather beds, and not a sign of fire to
show for it, that I could see. And there went fire a-shooting up in
flames higher than my head, and not the sign of a stick of wood to show
for it, that I could see. And here went shadows, skipping and dodging
about, and not the sign of a living thing to do the skipping and
dodging, that I could see. And there were voices all about me--some on
this side, others on that; some close at my ear, and others far
away--all talking the strangest gibberish, and not the sign of a living
thing to do the talking, that I could see."
"Weren't you terribly frightened, Ben?"
"Well, at first I did feel queer--just a little queer, up and down the
back and about the roots of my hair--but just as I had cocked my gun,
and was looking about me for something to let fly at--plump! It was all
gone as quick as the blowing out of a candle. Then I felt a little
better, and after a short while a great deal better--real good and easy.
I don't know why, but it's just so."
Each time, after giving his answer, and while Sprigg would be pausing to
consider it, Ben would fill up the interval with another wag-tail shake
of the hand he still held in his own, thereby lengthening out his answer
with something he had omitted to express in words. Now, after two or
three of the supplementary shakes, he did bethink him to put the
something else in words.
"But, Sprigg, you are looking a great deal better than I expected to
find you. Though I needn't wonder so much at that, either, for they
wanted to feed you on trash--squirrels and birds, and I wouldn't let
'em. Tell us--me and Pow-wow--how you liked the buffalo we brought
home for you yesterday?"
"Oh, very much, I am sure."
"And the fat, young bear we brought you the day before yesterday?"
"Better still, I am certain."
"And the fat, young buck we brought you the day before that?"
"Best of all; and if I didn't tell you so at the time it was because I
was asleep and thinking about something else. And now I am beginning to
find out what my heart has been trying to tell me all this while. I see
it in Bertha's face. I see it in Ben's face--in the face of every one
here--how good and kind you have been to me since I have been lying
here; and I so undeserving. I should be thankful you had kept me alive,
were it but to tell you how I love you all as I have never loved any one
before."
Now were the tears in his eyes, which, up to this moment, had been so
bright and clear--tears that went on telling the gratitude and love
which the lips had left but half expressed. Ben had already had some two
or three little spells of filling up and choking down; of feeling soft
and breathing hard, so touching was it, so touching is it always to
witness the gratitude of the poor human heart to poor human love for
poor human life; and this was just more than the good fellow could bear
without some noise. Abruptly checking himself in the midst of another
wag-tail shake, he laid the little hand on the bed as carefully as you
would a glass of water on the table, right side up, and hurried out of
the house like one who had overstayed his time and must rush to make
ends meet. He went no farther, however, than just out of doors, where,
finding room for his heart to expand in, roared out in a voice perfectly
tremendous for one of his age:
"Hurrah for General Washington! Hurrah for Colonel Boone! Hurrah for
Sprigg!" And bang! went his gun.