In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

“I was not sorry, therefore, to stretch my legs a little and gaze at the sky. The sun had set about an hour before, and the heavens in the south-west were lit up with most singular beauty of tinting. There was nothing stern or harsh about the colouring – no saturnian glare, no sulphureous glow, like what was so often seen during the winter of 1883-84. High up, the sky there was of a palish blue; in that blue shone a solitary star with wonderful brilliancy. Beneath this was pale saffron-yellow. Lower down still this pure yellow melted gradually into a soft tint of carmine, while between that and the horizon was a bar of misty steel-grey.

“‘How lovely! – how inexpressibly lovely!’ I couldn’t help saying to myself, half aloud.

“‘It is indeed beautiful!’ said a voice close by my elbow that made me start and look round. ‘But it bodes no good. You couldn’t see me coming,’ he said, smiling, ‘because I was under the shadow of the hawthorn hedge; and you couldn’t hear me, because I walked on the grass.’

“‘And what did you come for?’ I inquired. ‘But stop,’ I added, before he could answer my question; ‘I have no right to ask you. The road is free to both of us.’

“‘But I’m not on a journey,’ he replied, ‘so I will answer. My house is in here, behind that hedge, though you can’t see it, and there is not another for the next ten miles. You are seventeen miles from L – , where, I presume, you are going. Had you not better come in and rest a bit? The moon rises at eight to-night.’

“‘You are really very kind,’ I said; ‘but my being so far from home makes hurry all the more necessary. I’ll light my lamps and be off.’

“‘As you please,’ he said carelessly.

“Just then I discovered, very much to my astonishment – for I pride myself on the perfectness of my outfit while on the road – that my match-box was empty.

“‘I’ll follow you, thanks,’ I said, ‘and borrow a few matches from you.’

“‘Come on, then,’ said my would-be host pleasantly; and trundling my cycle in front of me, I followed him.

“He was a man apparently about forty – square-shouldered, tall, straight, and manly-looking. He did not look a farmer, but he evidently was, from the appearance of his place – and a farmer, too, of sporting proclivities.

“A boy was drawing water from a deep well; a fine old hunter stood by watching the boy – a dark bay horse, whose hollow temples and somewhat drooping under-lip gave proofs of age. A couple of beautiful setter dogs came careering up to meet their master, and received a fond caress. The old horse left the boy at the well and ambled up, then, laying his head on my host’s shoulder, nickered low but kindly.

“‘Bless his good old heart! Has he had his supper?’

“My heart warmed to a man who could speak thus kindly to a dumb brute.

“‘You love that horse, evidently,’ I said.

“‘I do,’ was the reply. ‘I have good cause to. Down, Doddie – down on your knees to this gentleman.’

“Doddie, as he called him, did at once what he was told to, and there remained while I smoothed his ears and caressed him on the brow.

“‘Trot off now, Doddie, and have a drink.’

“And away went Doddie.

“I was not sorry to rest awhile; the fireside was so pleasant, and the room all so cheerful. The hostess, a fragile little fair-haired body, who must have been bewitchingly pretty a few years back, and who did not look a bit like a fanner’s wife, brought in a tray laden with bread, cheese, and butter, and a mug of home-brewed beer.

“To have refused partaking of this cheer would have been most unmannerly. I did justice to it, therefore, and we soon got quite friendly. Two hours passed very quickly indeed; then I was startled to hear the wind howling in the chimney, and the rain beating against the panes.

“‘I knew it was coming,’ said my host, whose name, I found, was Morris. ‘That is one reason I asked you in; the other was,’ – here he smiled very pleasantly – ‘a selfish one – I don’t have a talk with a gentleman once in a month. Mary, fill our mugs again – it’s only home-brewed, sir – and I’ll tell the gentleman why we love old Doddie so.’

“Mary sat by the fire quietly knitting, while Mr Morris told me the following particulars of old Doddie.

“‘Been a rover all my life,’ he began, ‘till three years ago, when Mary’s father brought us home here to his native place, bought this little farm for us, then died – poor old soul! He’d been a farmer out in Mexico, but didn’t save much. Like myself, he seemed but to live to prove the truth of the proverb that a rolling stone never gathers moss. But he was never such a rolling stone as I, sir. Bless you! no. I’ve been everything – Oxford graduate, coffee-planter, actor, soldier, trapper, miner, ne’er-do-weel. Eh, Mary?’

“Mary merely smiled, but she gave him one kindly glance that spoke volumes.

“‘Well, sir, my story – and it is short enough I mean to make it – commences, anyhow, in my trapper days, and there are two things it proves: the first is, that even a redskin can be grateful; and the second is, that Tom Morris has been a lucky dog, and drawn, at all events, one trump card in his day.

“‘I was living in a log hut in one of the wildest parts of the north-west of Mexico, and had been for nearly a year. The hut didn’t belong to me. There was nobody in it but a half-starved dog when I came upon it, so I just took quiet possession; but the owner never returned, and from stains of a very suspicions colour all about the doorway, I guessed he had been killed and robbed by the Indians.

“‘I had an idea there was gold somewhere thereabout. I had this idea from the very first, and I wasn’t altogether wrong. I found enough to cause me to stay on and on. I spent most of my time prospecting among the hills, the forests, and the canons, killing enough game and enough fish to keep me alive, with the help of a few sweet potatoes that grew in a patch close by the hut.

“‘I found gold, but I didn’t make a pile. But in my wanderings I came across the cattle ranche that belonged to Mary’s poor old father here. I was surprised to find a white man so far away from civilisation. But Mr Ellis knew what he was about. There was the river not far away, and the forest adjoining, and this river was navigable all the way down to the town of C – , some sixty or seventy miles. At C – was a splendid market for skins and grain. Mr Ellis paid nothing for his cattle, and very little for the labour of farming, and he had no rent to pay, so on the whole I didn’t blame him for staying where he did. He had only one companion, and that was his little daughter Mary here, and his servants, men and women, numbered about ten in all.

“‘The farm buildings must have been a kind of an outpost at one time, when the Indians and the States were hard at it, for they were completely surrounded with a log rampart and a ditch. There had been a drawbridge and a gate, but it was now a solid affair of stone. But over his bridge, please remember, lay the only road into Fort Ellis farmhouse.

“‘Although the fort was twenty miles ’cross country, and more than forty by the regular road, I found myself very often indeed at the farm, and poor Mr Ellis – heigho! he is dead and gone – and I got very friendly indeed.

“‘And Mary and I – ah! well, sir, you cannot wonder that, thrown together thus, and in so wild a country, we got very fond of each other indeed.

“‘But to proceed. The Indians were never very friendly to the white man. They bore a grudge against him – a grudge born, sir, of many and many a broken treaty. So they were not to be depended on even when the hatchet was buried.

“‘There came to my hut, sir, one summer’s day, crawling painfully on bands and knees, an Indian of the tribe I am talking about. He had been bitten by a snake – a moccasin, if my memory served me aright. I took him in out of the sun, and gave him nearly all the aqua ardiente I had in the hut. For days he lay like a dead thing, and I was beginning to think about where I’d bury him, when he opened his eyes and spoke. I gave him the aqua ardiente now in teaspoonfuls. I nursed him almost day and night, hardly ever leaving him. But he was on his feet and well again at last, and if ever tears were in a redskin’s eyes, they were in his when he bade me good-by. I hadn’t been much at the fort during the redskin’s illness, and they were getting alarmed about me, when one forenoon Doddie and I came clattering over the drawbridge.

“‘A few months flew by so quickly, sir, because I was in love, you know; and one evening in autumn the dog barked; next moment my redskin stood before me with a finger on his lip.

“‘Hist!’ he said; and I drew him into the hut.

“‘O! sir, sir! Tom Morris was a madman when he was informed by that poor friendly redskin that at twelve that night the fort would be attacked by a wandering tribe of redskins, every one murdered save Mary, who was to be dragged off into captivity.

“‘I thanked the Indian, blessed him, then hurried to the stable and brought Doddie out. The saddle was broken; it must be a bare-back ride. There was time if we met no accident. It was now eight o’clock, and I mounted, waving adieu to the Indian, and rode away eastwards in the direction of the fort. In an hour I was at the river. Here the main road branched away round among the mountains. There was no time to take that. My way lay across the ford and through the forest, cutting off a long bend or elbow of the river, and coming out at another ford, within a mile of Ellis Fort and Farm.

“‘I headed Doddie for the stream, and we were soon over. I knew the path, and the moon was up, making everything as light as day.

“‘But look ahead! The glare was never the moon’s light. Alas! no, sir; it was fire. The forest was in flames. I think to this day it was done by the savages to intercept me. In half an hour more, sir, the flames were licking the grass within ten yards of our pathway, and running in tongues up the bark of the trees.

“‘Doddie neighed in fright, reared, and I was thrown. Next moment I was alone in the burning forest. To fly from the fire was impossible. I threw myself on my face in despair. O! the agony of those few minutes! But even then I believe I thought more of poor Mary and her father than of my own wretched end.

“‘All at once I started to my feet, for a soft nose had nudged me on the arm. It was Doddie, and in an instant we were flying again through the forest. I think we might have made the ford, but my horse now seemed to lose all control of himself, and I of the horse, for the bridle broke.

“‘Doddie made for the river above this ford, and took a desperate leap into the deep water. But he was quieter now, and it was easy to head him down the stream, and at last we were once again on terra firma, with the broad river between us and the fire.

“‘We blew up the bridge and barricaded the gate immediately on my arrival. And not a whit too soon, for half an hour afterwards the fort was surrounded by howling savages.

“‘Our relief came next evening, in the shape of mounted soldiers; and I feel sure, sir, that it was that grateful Indian who sent them.’

“I have, reader, given a mere epitome of my host’s story, which was altogether interesting and took quite an hour to tell. By the time it was finished, the squall had blown over; the moon shone out bright and clear over the hills, and bidding Mr Morris a kindly ‘good-night,’ I mounted my cycle and resumed my journey.

“But I assure you I did not go until I had patted poor old Doddie on the nose, and given him a lunch biscuit from my cyclist’s wallet.”

The stranger started up as soon as he had finished.

“I must be early on the road,” he said; “and so I suppose must you.”

“Good-night all.”