The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains

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.