The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne
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Название: The Best Ballantyne Westerns
Автор: R. M. Ballantyne
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066385699
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It was really quite interesting to watch this unblushing, and disinterested, and utterly reckless display of affection on the part of Grumps, and the amiable way in which Crusoe put up with it—we say put up with it, advisedly, because it must have been a very great inconvenience to him, seeing that if he attempted to move, his satellite moved in front of him, so that his only way of escaping, temporarily, was by jumping over Grumps’s head.
Grumps was everywhere all day. Nobody, almost, escaped trampling on part of him. He tumbled over everything, into everything, and against everything. He knocked himself, singed himself, and scalded himself, and in fact forgot himself altogether; and when, late that night, Crusoe went with Dick into his mother’s cottage, and the door was shut, Grumps stretched his ruffled, battered, ill-used, and dishevelled little body down on the doorstep, thrust his nose against the opening below the door, and lay in humble contentment all night, for he knew that Crusoe was there.
Of course such an occasion could not pass without a shooting match. Rifles were brought out after the feast was over, just before the sun went down into its bed on the western prairies, and “the nail” was soon surrounded by bullets, tipped by Joe Blunt and Jim Scraggs, and, of course, driven home by Dick Varley, whose silver rifle had now become, in its owner’s hand, a never-failing weapon. Races, too, were started, and here again Dick stood pre-eminent, and when night spread her dark mantle over the scene, the two best fiddlers in the settlement were placed on empty beer-casks, and some danced by the light of the monster fires, while others listened to Joe Blunt as he recounted their adventures on the prairies and among the Rocky Mountains.
There were sweethearts, and wives, and lovers at the feast, but we question whether any heart there was so full of love, and admiration, and gratitude as that of the Widow Varley as she watched her son Dick, throughout that merry evening.
* * * * *
Years rolled by, and the Mustang Valley prospered. Missionaries went there, and a little church was built, and to the blessings of a fertile land were added the far greater blessings of Christian light and knowledge. One sad blow fell on the Widow Varley’s heart. Her only brother, Daniel Hood, was murdered by the Indians. Deeply and long she mourned, and it required all Dick’s efforts and those of the pastor of the settlement to comfort her. But from the first the widow’s heart was sustained by the loving hand that dealt the blow, and when time blunted the keen edge of her feelings, her face became as sweet and mild, though not so lightsome, as before.
Joe Blunt and Henri became leading men in the councils of the Mustang Valley, but Dick Varley preferred the woods, although, as long as his mother lived, he hovered round her cottage—going off sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week, but never longer. After her head was laid in the dust, Dick took altogether to the woods with Crusoe and Charlie the wild horse as his only companions, and his mother’s Bible in the breast of his hunting shirt. And soon Dick, the bold hunter, and his dog Crusoe, became renowned in the frontier settlements from the banks of the Yellow Stone River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Many a grizzly bear did the famous “silver rifle” lay low, and many a wild exciting chase and adventure did Dick go through, but during his occasional visits to the Mustang Valley, he was wont to say to Joe Blunt and Henri—with whom he always sojourned—that “nothin’ he ever felt or saw came up to his first grand dash over the Western Prairies into the heart of the Rocky Mountains.” And in saying this, with enthusiasm in his eye and voice, Dick invariably appealed to, and received a ready affirmative glance from, his early companion, and his faithful loving friend—the dog Crusoe.
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