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

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      “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.”

      To which Marston replied—

      “I’ll tell you what it is, Bounce, I will see this wild man, if it’s in the power of bones and muscles to carry me within eyeshot of him. Now, see if I don’t.”

      Bounce nodded his head and looked sagacious, as he said—

      “D’ye know, lad, I don’t mind if I go along with ye. It’s true, I’m not tired of them parts hereabouts—and if I wos to live till I couldn’t see, I don’t think as ever I’d git tired o’ the spot where my father larned me to shoot an’ my mother dandled me on her knee; but I’ve got a fancy to see a little more o’ the wurld—’specially the far-off parts o’ the Rocky Mountains, w’ere I’ve never bin yit; so I do b’lieve if ye wos to try an’ persuade me very hard I’d consent to go along with ye.”

      “Will you, though?” cried March eagerly (again, to his cost, forgetting the rusty hinges).

      “Ay, that will I, boy,” replied the hunter; “an’ now I think on it, there’s four as jolly trappers in Pine Point settlement at this here moment as ever floored a grisly or fought an Injun. They’re the real sort of metal. None o’ yer tearin’, swearin’, murderin’ chaps, as thinks the more they curse the bolder they are, an’ the more Injuns they kill the cliverer they are; but steady quiet fellers, as don’t speak much, but does a powerful quantity; boys that know a deer from a Blackfoot Injun, I guess; that goes to the mountains to trap and comes back to sell their skins, an’ w’en they’ve sold ’em, goes right off agin, an’ niver drinks.”

      “I know who you mean, I think; at least I know one of them,” observed March.

      “No ye don’t, do ye? Who?”

      “Waller, the Yankee.”

      “That’s one,” said Bounce, nodding; “Big Waller, we calls him.”

      “I’m not sure that I can guess the others. Surely Tim Slater isn’t one?”

      “No!” said Bounce, with an emphasis of tone and a peculiar twist of the point of his nose that went far to stamp the individual named with a character the reverse of noble. “Try agin.”

      “I can’t guess.”

      “One’s a French Canadian,” said Bounce; “a little chap, with a red nose an’ a pair o’ coal-black eyes, but as bold as a lion.”

      “I know him,” interrupted March; “Gibault Noir—Black Gibault, as they sometimes call him. Am I right?”

      “Right, lad; that’s two. Then there’s Hawkswing, the Injun whose wife and family were all murdered by a man of his own tribe, and who left his people after that an’ tuck to trappin’ with the whites; that’s three. An’ there’s Redhand, the old trapper that’s bin off and on between this place and the Rocky Mountains for nigh fifty years, I believe.”

      “Oh, I know him well. He must be made of iron, I think, to go through what he does at his time of life. I wonder what his right name is?”

      “Nobody knows that, lad. You know, as well as I do, that he wos called Redhand by the Injuns in consekence o’ the lot o’ grislies he’s killed in his day; but nobody never could git at his real name. P’r’aps it’s not worth gittin’ at. Now, them four ’ll be startin’ in a week or two for the mountains, an’ wot’s to hinder us a-jinin’ of them?”

      To his own question Bounce, after a pause, replied with deliberate emphasis, “Nothin’ wotsomdiver;” and his young companion heartily echoed the sentiment.

      Exactly thirty-six hours after the satisfactory formation of the above resolution, March Marston galloped furiously towards СКАЧАТЬ