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

“I’ll tell ye what’s my opinion now, boys, in regard to settlin’ down,” said Bounce, who, having filled and lighted his pipe, now found himself in a position to state his views comfortably. “Ye see, settlin’ down may, in a gin’ral way, be said to be nonsense. In pint o’ fact, there ain’t no sich a thing as settlin’ down. When a feller sits down, why, in a short bit, he’s bound to rise up agin, and when he goes to bed, he means for to get up next mornin’.” (Here Bounce paused, drew several whiffs, and rammed down the tobacco in his pipe with the end of his little finger.) “Then, when a feller locates in a place, he’s sure for to be movin’ about, more or less, as long as he’s got a leg to stand on. Now, what I say is, that when a man comes to talk o’ settlin’ down, he’s losin’ heart for a wanderin’ life among all the beautiful things o’ creation; an’ when a man loses heart for the beautiful things o’ creation, he’ll soon settle down for good and all. He’s in a bad way, he is, and oughtn’t to encourage hisself in sich feelin’s. I b’lieve that to be the feelosophy o’ the whole affair, and I don’t b’lieve that nobody o’ common edication—I don’t mean school edication, but backwoods edication—would go for to think otherwise. Wot say you, Waller?”

“Sartinly not,” replied the individual thus appealed to.

Big Waller had a deep reverence for the supposed wisdom of his friend Bounce. He listened to his lucubrations with earnest attention at all times, and, when he understood them, usually assented to all his friend said. When Bounce became too profound for him, as was not infrequently the case, he contented himself with nodding his head, as though to say, “I’m with you in heart, lad, though not quite clear in my mind; but it’s all right, I’m quite sartin.”

“Well, then,” resumed Bounce, turning to Redhand, “what do you think o’ them sentiments, old man?”

Redhand, who had been paying no attention whatever to these sentiments, but, during the delivery of them, had been gazing wistfully out upon the wide expanse of country before him, laid his hand on Bounce’s shoulder, and said in a low, earnest tone—

“It’s a grand country! D’ye see the little clear spot yonder, on the river bank, with the aspen grove behind it, an’ the run of prairie on the right, an’ the little lake not a gun-shot off on the left? That’s the spot I’ve sometimes thought of locatin’ on when my gun begins to feel too heavy. There’ll be cities there some day. Bricks and mortar and stone ’ll change its face—an’ cornfields, an’– but not in our day, lad, not in our day. The redskins and the bears ’ll hold it as long as we’re above ground. Yes, I’d like to settle down there.”

“Come, come, Redhand,” said Bounce, “this sort o’ thing ’ll never do. Why, you’re as hale and hearty as the best on us. Wot on ’arth makes you talk of settlin’ down in that there fashion?”

“Ha!” exclaimed Waller energetically, “I guess if ye goes on in that style ye’ll turn into a riglar hiplecondrik—ain’t that the word, Bounce? I heer’d the minister say as it was the wust kind o’ the blues. What’s your opinion o’ settlin’ down, Hawkswing?”

To this question the Indian gravely replied in his own language (with which the trappers were well acquainted), that, not having the remotest idea of what they were talking about, he entertained no opinion in regard to it whatever.

“Well, wotiver others may hold,” remarked Bounce emphatically, “I’m strong agin’ settlin’ down nowhar’.”

“So am I, out an’ out,” said Waller.

“Dat be plain to the naked eye,” observed Gibault, coming up at the moment. “Surement you have settle down here for ever. Do you s’pose, mes garçons, dat de canoe will carry hisself over de portage? Voilà! vat is dat?”

Gibault pointed to the footprint of the grisly bear, as he spoke.

“It’s a bar,” remarked Bounce quietly.

“Caleb,” added Waller, giving the name frequently applied to the grisly bear by western hunters. “I calc’late it’s nothin’ new to see Caleb’s fut in the mud.”

“Mais, it be new to see hims fut so big, you oogly Yankee,” cried Gibault, putting Waller’s cap over his eyes, and running into the bush to avoid the consequences.

At that moment a deer emerged from the bushes, about fifty yards from the spot on which the trappers rested, and, plunging into the river, made for the opposite bank.

“There’s our supper,” said Bounce, quietly lifting his rifle in a leisurely way, and taking aim without rising from the spot on which he sat or removing the pipe from his lips.

The sharp crack was followed by a convulsive heave on the part of the deer, which fell over on its side and floated downstream.

Big Waller gave utterance to a roar of satisfaction, and, flinging his pipe from him, bounded down the bank towards a point of rock, where he knew, from the set of the current, the deer would be certain to be stranded. Gibault, forgetting his recent piece of impertinence, darted towards the same place, and both men reached it at the same instant. Big Waller immediately lifted his little friend in his huge arms, and tossed him into the centre of a thick soft bush, out of which he scrambled in time to see his comrade catch the deer by the horns, as it floated past, and drag it on shore.

“Hoh! I vill pay you off von time,” cried Gibault, laughing, and shaking his fist at Waller. Then, seizing the last bale of goods that had not been carried across the portage, he ran away with it nimbly up the bank of the stream.

Big Waller placed the deer on his shoulders with some difficulty, and followed in the same direction.

On reaching the other end of the portage, they found the canoe reloaded and in the water, and their comrades evincing symptoms of impatience.

“Come on, lads, come on,” cried March, who seemed to be the most impatient of them all. “We’ve seen Caleb! He’s up the river, on this side. Get in! He’s sich a banger, oh!”

Before the sentence was well finished, all the men were in their places except Black Gibault, who remained on the bank to shove off the canoe.

“Now, lad, get in,” said Redhand, whose usually quiet eye appeared to gleam at the near prospect of a combat with the fierce and much-dreaded monster of the Far West.

“All right, mes garçons,” replied Gibault; “hand me mine gun; I vill valk on the bank, an’ see vich vay hims go—so, adieu!”

With a powerful push, he sent the light craft into the stream, and, turning on his heel, entered the woods.

The others at once commenced paddling up the river with energetic strokes.

“He’s a wild feller that,” remarked Bounce, after they had proceeded some distance and reached a part of the stream where the current was less powerful. “I’d bet my rifle he’s git the first shot at Caleb; I only hope he’ll not fall in with him till we git ashore, else it may go hard with him.”

“So it may,” said Waller; “if it goes as hard wi’ Gibault as it did wi’ my old comrade, Bob Swan, it’ll be no fun, I guess.”

“What happened to him?” asked March, who was ever open-eared for stories.

“Oh, it was nothing very curious, but I guess it was ‘onconvanient,’ as them coons from Ireland says. Bob Swan went—he did—away right off alone, all by hisself, to shoot a grisly with a old musket as wasn’t fit to fire powder, not to speak o’ ball. He was sich a desprit feller, Bob Swan was, that he cut after it without takin’ time to see wot wos in the gun. I follered him as fast as I could, hollerin’ for him to stop and see if he wos loaded; but I calc’late he was past stoppin’. Wall, he comes up wi’ the bar suddently, and the bar looks at him, and he looks at it. Then he runs up, claps the gun to his shoulder, and pulls the trigger; but it wos a rusty old lock, an’ no fire came. There was fire come from the bar’s eyes, though, I do guess! It ran at him, an’ he ran away. Of course Caleb soon came up, an’ Bob primed as he ran an’ wheeled about, stuck the muzzle of the old musket right into Caleb’s mouth, and fired. He swallered the whole charge, that bar did, as if it had been a glass o’ grog, and didn’t he cough some? Oh no! an’ he roared, too, jist like this—”

Big Waller, in the excitement of his narrative, was about to give a vocal illustration, when Bounce suddenly extinguished him by clapping his hand on his mouth.

“Hist! you wild buffalo,” he said, “you’ll frighten off all the bars within ten miles of us, if you raise your horrable trumpet!”

“I do believe, I forgot,” said the Yankee with a low chuckle, when his mouth was released.

“Well, but what happened to Bob Swan?” inquired March eagerly.

“Wot happened? I guess the bar cotched him by the leg, an’ smashed it in three places, before you could wink, but, by good luck, I come up at that moment, an’ put a ball right through Caleb’s brains. Bob got better, but he never got the right use o’ his leg after that. An’ we found that he’d fired a charge o’ small shot down that bar’s throat—he had!”

“Hallo! look! is yon Caleb?” inquired March in a hoarse whisper, as he pointed with his paddle to a distant point up the river, where a dark object was seen moving on the bank.

“That’s him,” said Bounce. “Now then, do your best, an’ we’ll land on the point just below him.”

“That’s sooner said than done,” remarked Redhand quietly, “for there’s another portage between us and Caleb.”

As the old man spoke, the canoe passed round a low point which had hitherto shut out the view of the bed of the river from the travellers, and the vision of a white, though not a high, waterfall burst upon their sight, at the same moment that the gushing sound of water broke upon their ears. At any other time the beauty of the scene would have drawn forth warm, though perhaps quaint and pithy, remarks of admiration. Wood and water were seen picturesquely mingled and diversified in endless variety. Little islands studded the surface of the river, which was so broad and calm at that place as to wear the appearance of a small lake. At the upper end of this lake it narrowed abruptly, and here occurred the fall, which glittered in the sun’s bright rays like a cascade of molten silver. The divers trees and shrubs, both on the islets and on the mainland, presented in some places the rich cultivated appearance of the plantations on a well-tended domain; but, in other places, the fallen timber, the rank tangled vegetation, and the beautiful wild flowers showed that man’s hand had not yet destroyed the wild beauty of the virgin wilderness. The sky above was bright and blue, with a few thin feathery clouds resting motionless upon its vast concave, and the air was so still that even the tremulous aspen leaves were but slightly agitated, while the rest of the forest’s drapery hung perfectly motionless.

Complete silence would have reigned but for the mellow sound of the distant fall and the sweet, plaintive cries of innumerable wildfowl that flew hither and thither, or revelled in the security of their sedgy homes. Flocks of wild geese passed in constant succession overhead, in the form of acute angles, giving a few trumpet notes now and then, as if to advertise their passage to the far north to the dwellers in the world below. Bustling teal rose in groups of dozens or half-dozens as the red canoe broke upon their astonished gaze, and sent them, with whistling wings, up or down the river. A solitary northern diver put up his long neck here and there to gaze for an instant inquisitively, and then sank, as if for ever, into the calm water, to reappear long after in some totally new and unexpected quarter. A napping duck or two, being wellnigh run over by the canoe, took wing with a tremendous splutter and a perfectly idiotical compound of a quack and a roar, while numerous flocks of plover, which had evidently meant to lie still among the sedges and hide while the canoe passed, sprang into the air at the unwonted hullabaloo, and made off, with diverse shriek and whistle, as fast as their wings could carry them. Besides these noisy denizens of the wilderness, there were seen, in various places, cranes, and crows, and magpies, and black terns, and turkey-buzzards, all of which were more or less garrulous in expressing surprise at the unexpected appearance of the trappers in their wild domain. And, just as the canoe drew near to the place at the foot of the fall where they meant to land and make the portage, a little cabri, or prong-horned antelope, leaped out of the woods, intending, doubtless, to drink, caught sight of the intruders, gave one short glance of unutterable amazement, and then rebounded into the bush like an electrified indiarubber ball.

“Now, then,” said Bounce as he leaped ashore, and held the canoe steady while his comrades landed, “jist be cool, an’ no hurry; make the portage, launch the canoe atop o’ the fall, sot off agin, an’ then—hurrah for that there grisly bar!”

Chapter Four

Gibault has an Adventure, and discovers a very strange Creature in the Woods—A most tremendous Bear-Hunt particularly described

Meanwhile Black Gibault, having followed the course of the river for some distance on foot, struck into the woods, sought for and found the track of the bear, and, looking carefully to the priming of his gun, and knocking the edge of the flint to sharpen it, pushed forward in pursuit with the ardour of a reckless man.

Gibault Noir was a goose! But he was an amiable goose; therefore men forgave his follies. Had Gibault not been a goose he never would have set off alone in pursuit of a grisly bear when he had comrades who might have accompanied him. Every one knows—at least, if every one does not know, every one who reads these pages may know henceforth—that the grisly bear of the western prairies and Rocky Mountains is one of the most desperate and most dreaded animals on the face of the earth; not dreaded merely by the weak and the timorous, but dreaded also by the bravest Indians and the boldest trappers. Of course we do not mean to say that by these latter the grisly bear is dreaded with anything like cowardly terror; but it is regarded with that degree of wholesome anxiety and extreme caution with which men usually regard an excessively dangerous and powerful enemy.

Unlike other bears, the grisly bear scorns to fly from before the face of man. His ferocity, when wounded, is terrible, and his tenacity of life is such that, however many mortal wounds one may give him, he will retain life and strength long enough to kill his assailant before he himself dies, unless he is shot dead at once by a ball being planted in his heart or brain, both of which are difficult to reach.

He has a grumpy sort of magnanimity of his own, however, and will usually let men alone if men will let him alone. But men are not prone to let anything alone; hence encounters are frequent; wounds, on both sides, are numerous; and death, on one or other side, is almost certain.