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

When he was gone March, for the first time since his accident, bethought him of his comrades. Since recovering from the state of insensibility into which his fall had thrown him, his mind had been so absorbed by the strange events that had been presented to him in such rapid succession, as well as with the pain that racked his head and limbs, that he had had no time to think about them. But, now that he was left in that quiet place alone, the whole circumstances of the recent pursuit and flight rushed suddenly upon him, and his mind was filled with anxious forebodings as to the fate of his comrades.

“Oh! I’m glad you’ve come back,” he cried, as Dick re-entered the cave; “I quite forgot my comrades—shame on me! but my miserable head has got such a smash, that a’most everything’s bin drove out of it.”

“Time enough to speak o’ them after we’ve seen to your bones,” said Dick.

“Nay, but—”

“After,” said Dick in a tone that was not to be gainsaid.

March submitted with a sigh, and his eccentric host proceeded to manipulate and punch him in a way that might perhaps have been highly necessary, but was by no means agreeable. After a few minutes he pronounced his patient all right, only a little bruised! Having said which, he proceeded to prepare some food, and said to March that he might now speak about his comrades.

At first he seemed to pay little attention to the youth’s hasty narrative; but on hearing that the Indians were hastening to attack the Mountain Fort, he sprang up, and asked a few questions eagerly. It was evident that the news troubled him deeply.

Taking one or two hasty strides up and down the cavern, and paying no attention to the roasting meat, which he seemed to have utterly forgotten, the Wild Man of the West muttered angrily to himself, and a slight dash of that tiger-like flash, which had gone so far to earn him his title, lighted up his blue eyes, insomuch that March Marston looked at him in amazement not unmingled with awe. Thoughts of the Wild Man of the West once more occurred to him; but in his former cogitations on that subject he had so thoroughly discarded the idea of this kind, blue-eyed hunter being that far-famed and ferocious individual, that his thoughts only took the form of the mental question, “I wonder if the Wild Man o’ the West could beat such a fellow as that at a fair stand-up fight?” So powerfully did this thought affect him, that he could not refrain from exclaiming—

“I say, Dick, did you ever hear of the Wild Man of the West?”

Dick was so much tickled by the question that his angry mood vanished, and, turning towards his guest with a smile, while his blue eyes seemed milder than they ever had appeared before, he said—

“Yes, lad, I’ve heard of him.”

“Have you seen him?” continued March eagerly.

“I have, many a time.”

“What is he like?”

“He’s like me,” replied Dick with another smile, the softness of which would have driven March to an immeasurable distance from the truth, had he ever been near it.

“Like you! Oh, I suppose you mean he’s something about your size. Well, I don’t wonder at that, for you’re an uncommonly big fellow, Dick; but I fancy his appearance is very different.”

“Well, no. He’s got light hair and blue eyes, like me.”

This was a poser to March. It was so totally subversive of all his preconceived ideas, that it reduced him for some moments to silence.

“Isn’t he hairy all over, like a fox, and very ugly?” inquired March, recovering from his surprise.

This was a poser, in turn, to the Wild Man. To be called upon suddenly to pronounce an opinion on his own looks was embarrassing, to say the least of it.

“He’s not exactly hairy all over,” said Dick after a moment’s thought, “though it can’t be denied he’s got plenty of hair on his head and chin—like me. As for his looks, lad, it ain’t easy to say whether he’s ugly or pritty, for men don’t agree on sich pints, d’ye see?”

“Do sit down beside me, Dick, and tell me about this Wild Man,” said March earnestly. “You can’t fancy how anxious I am to see him. I’ve come here for that very purpose. No doubt I’ve come to shoot and trap, too, but chiefly to see the Wild Man o’ the West. An’ isn’t it provokin’? I might have seen him some weeks agone, if I hadn’t bin stunned with a fall jist as he came jumpin’ into the middle o’ us like a clap o’ thunder—”

“What, lad,” interrupted Dick, “was it you that I—”

Just at this moment Dick was seized with a very violent fit of coughing, which, coming as it did from such a capacious chest and so powerful a pair of lungs, caused the roof of the cavern to reverberate with what might have been mistaken, outside, for a species of miniature artillery.

“You’ve caught cold,” suggested March, who gazed in unspeakable admiration at the magnificent locks and beard of this remarkable man, as they shook with the violence of his exertion.

“I never had a cold,” replied Dick, becoming quiet again; “there’s other things as cause a man for to cough, now and agin’, besides colds.”

“True,” rejoined March; “but you were sayin’ somethin’—do you know of the fight I was speakin’ of?”

“Know of it—ay, that do I.”

“Why, how did you happen to hear of it?”

“It’s wonderful, lad, how I comes to know about things in this part o’ the country. I know everything the Wild Man does. He can’t move without my bein’ on his track d’rectly. In fact, I follers him like his shadow—leastwise, his shadow follers me.”

“Indeed,” exclaimed March, whose interest in Dick became suddenly tenfold more deep on learning this. “But why do you follow him about in this fashion? Does he like your company, or do you only follow him on the sly, and keep out of sight? Explain yourself, Dick—you puzzle me.”

“I can’t explain just now, lad,” said Dick, rising abruptly. “You forget that your comrades may be in a fix before now wi’ them blackguard redskins. I must go an’ help them. It’s but right that white men should lend one another a helpin’ hand in these regions, where the Injuns have it almost all their own way.”

“But the Mountain Fort is far away from this, an’ I’m afraid you’ll never be able to get there in time,” said March with an anxious expression of countenance.

“I’ll try,” returned Dick. “Anyhow, I’ll send the Wild Man o’ the West to help them,” he added with a peculiar smile. “Now, boy, listen, I must not waste more time in idle talk. I shall leave you here under the charge of my little girl—”

“Your little girl!” echoed March in surprise.

“Ay, she ought to have been in before now,” continued Dick, without noticing the interruption, “an’ I would like to ha’ told her who ye are, and how I come by ye, an’ what to do till I come back. But I can’t wait; time’s precious as gold just now; so I’ll tell ye what to say to her when she—”

At that moment a light footstep was heard in the outer cavern. The Wild Man sprang up on hearing it, and strode hastily through the natural doorway, leaving March to listen, in a state of the utmost bewilderment, to a silvery musical voice, which held rapid converse with his strange host.

Presently Dick returned, followed by a—vision in leather! the sight of which struck March Marston dumb, and rendered him for a few moments as totally incapable of moving hand, tongue, or foot, as if he had been bewitched—which, in a sense, he was.

“This is the little girl I spoke of t’ye,” said Dick looking at March, and patting the girl on her soft cheek with a hand that might have passed for a small shoulder of mutton. “She’ll take good care of ye, March. I’ve told her what to do; but she don’t need to be told. Now, see ye don’t do yerself a mischief, lad, till I come back. It won’t be long—a day or two, mayhap, more or less; but ye’ll take that time to mend; you’re worse battered than ye think of—so, good-day.”

While the Wild Man was ejaculating these sentences abruptly, he was striding about the cave with what may be styled enormous vigour, picking up and buckling on his weapons of war. He seized a double-edged sword of gigantic proportions, and buckled it to his waist; but March saw it not. He pulled on the scalp-fringed coat of a Blackfoot chief, with leggings to match; but March knew it not. He slung a powder-horn and bullet-pouch round his shoulders, stuck a knife and tomahawk into his belt, and grasped a long rifle which stood in a corner; and, in doing all this, he made such a tremendous clatter, and displayed such wonderful activity, and grew so much fiercer to look at in every stage of the process, that March would certainly have recurred to the idea of the Wild Man, had he been in his ordinary state of mind; but he was not in that happy condition. March knew nothing about it whatever!

Before going, Dick stooped and kissed the “vision” on the cheek. March saw that! It recalled him for a moment and made him aware of the disappearance of his host, and of the loud clattering sounds of his charger’s hoofs, as he led him at a rapid walk across the outer cave. March even heard the general clatter of all his accoutrements, as he vaulted into the saddle at one bound, and went down that terrible rocky way at a breakneck gallop that would have caused him (March) in other circumstances to shudder. But he did not shudder. He was but faintly aware of these things. His intellect was overturned; his whole soul was captivated; his imagination, his perceptions, his conceptions—all his faculties and capacities were utterly overwhelmed and absorbed by that wonderful vision in leather!

Chapter Seventeen

The Vision in Leather

It is all very well for men of the world, men of fashion, men who pride themselves on being highly civilised and peculiarly refined, to fancy that there are no other visions in this world than “visions in silk,” “visions in white,” and the like. Those who think thus labour under an egregious, though a civilised, mistake.

Happily there are kind, loving, pretty faces in this world, the possessors of which know nothing about pink gauze or white muslin—faces that have never felt the hot air of a drawing-room, but are much used to present themselves, unveiled, to the fresh breezes of the prairie and the mountain; faces that possess the rare quality of universal attraction, and that cause men to fancy, when they see them for the first time, that they have beheld a vision!

The fact is that some faces are visions, whether the forms that support them appear to us in muslin or in deerskin. The only requisite needful to constitute a face a vision to any particular person, is that it should have in it that peculiar something which everybody wants, but which nobody can define; which is ineffably charming, though utterly incomprehensible; and which, when once seen by any one, constitutes the countenance that possesses it a vision evermore!

It is quite immaterial what material composes the dress in which the vision appears. No doubt, the first time it bursts upon the smitten victim, dress may be a powerful auxiliary; but, after the first time, dress goes for little or nothing. March Marston’s vision appeared, as we have said in leather.

After the Wild Man had vanished, March continued to gaze at his new companion with all kinds of feelings and emotions, but without being able to move or speak. The vision returned the compliment, also without speaking or taking any further notice of him.

She was a wonderful creature, that vision in leather! That she was of Indian extraction was evident from the hue of her skin, yet she was not nearly so dark as the lightest complexioned Indian. In fact her clear soft forehead was whiter than those of many so-called pale-faces; but her ruddy cheeks, her light-brown hair, and, above all, her bright brown eye showed that white blood ran in her veins. She was what men term a half-caste. She was young, almost girlish in her figure and deportment; but the earnest gravity of her pretty face caused her to appear older than she really was. March, unconsciously and without an effort, guessed her to be sixteen. He was wrong. She had only seen fifteen summers.

Her dress was a beautifully dressed deerskin gown, reaching below the knees, as soft as chamois leather, and ornamented with beads and quill work. It was girded round her small waist by a leather belt, from which depended a small hunting-knife. A pair of ornamental leggings of the same material as the gown covered her limbs, and moccasins her feet, which latter, as well as her hands, were small and beautifully formed. Over her shoulders were slung the masculine appendages of a powder-horn and bullet-pouch, proving that this creature was, so to speak, a Dianic vision.

Her staring so hard and so long at March without speaking or smiling, or taking any more notice of him than if he had been an effigy on a tombstone, seemed unaccountable to that youth. Had he been able to look at himself from her point of view he would not have been so much surprised.

In his late accident he had received so severe a blow on the left eye that that orb was altogether shut up. As he did not move, and as the other eye, with which he gazed in supreme astonishment at the sweet face before him, happened to be farthest from the fire, besides being hid in the shadow of his own nose—which was not a small one by nature, and was a peculiarly large one by force of recent circumstances—the vision very naturally thought that he was fast asleep. As she stood there gazing wonderingly and somewhat sadly at the poor youth, with the red flickering flame of the fire lighting up her yellow garments, deepening the red on her round cheeks, glinting on the loose masses of her rich tresses, and sparkling in the depths of her bright brown eyes, March thought he had never in all his life before beheld such an exquisite creature.

Supposing that he was asleep, the vision sat down quietly on a log beside the fire, still keeping her eyes, however, fixed on her guest. The action took her out of “the direct line of fire” of March’s sound eye, therefore he turned his head abruptly, and so brought his staring orb into the light of the fire, and revealed the fact that he was wide-awake; whereupon the vision uttered an exclamation of surprise, rose hastily, and went to his side.

“You is woke,” she said. “Me tink you was be sleep.”

“Asleep!” cried March with enthusiasm, “no, I wasn’t asleep. More than that, I’ll never go to sleep any more.”

This bold assertion naturally filled the vision with surprise.

“Why for not?” she asked, sitting down on a log beside March in such a position that she could see him easily.

“For thinkin’ o’ you!” replied the bold youth firmly.

The vision looked at him in still greater astonishment, opening her eyes slowly until they seemed like two pellucid lakelets of unfathomable depth into which March felt inclined to fling himself, clothes and all, and be drowned comfortably. She then looked at the fire, then at March again. It was evident that she had not been accustomed to hold intercourse with jocular minds. Perceiving this, March at once changed his tone, and, with a feeling of respect which he could not well account for, said rather bluntly—

“What’s your name?”

“Mary.”

“Ay! did your father give you that name?”

“My father?” echoed the girl, looking hastily up.

“Ay, did Dick give it you?”

“Did him tell you him’s name be Dick?” asked Mary.

“Oh! he’s known by another name to you, then, it would seem. But, Mary, what is his name?”

The girl pursed her mouth and laid her finger on it. Then, with a little sad smile, said—

“Him tell you Dick, that be good name. But Dick not my father. My father dead.”

The poor thing said this so slowly and in such a low pathetic tone that March felt sorry for having unwittingly touched a tender chord. He hastened to change the subject by saying—

“Is Dick kind to you, Mary?”

“Kind,” she cried, looking up with a flashing eye and flushed face, while with one of her little hands she tossed back her luxuriant tresses. “Kind! Him be my father now. No have got nobody to love me now but him.”

“Yes, you have, Mary,” said March stoutly.

Mary looked at him in surprise, and said, “Who?”

“Me!” replied March.

Mary said nothing to this. It was quite clear that the Wild Man must have neglected her education sadly. She did not even smile; she merely shook her head, and gazed abstractedly at the embers of the fire.

“Dick is not your father, Mary,” continued March energetically, “but he has become your father. I am not your brother, but I’ll become your brother—if you’ll let me.”

March in his enthusiasm tried to raise himself; consequently he fell back and drowned Mary’s answer in a groan of anguish. But he was not to be baulked.

“What said you?” he inquired after a moment’s pause.

“Me say you be very good.”

She said this so calmly that March felt severely disappointed. In the height of his enthusiasm he forgot that the poor girl had as yet seen nothing to draw out her feelings towards him as his had been drawn out towards her. She had seen no “vision,” except, indeed, the vision of a wretched, dishevelled youth, of an abrupt, excitable temperament, with one side of his countenance scratched in a most disreputable manner, and the other side swelled and mottled to such an extent that it resembled a cheap plum-pudding with the fruit unequally and sparsely distributed over its yellow surface.

March was mollified, however, when the girl suggested that his pillow seemed uncomfortable, and rose to adjust it with tender care. Then she said: “Now me bring blankit. You go sleep. Me sit here till you sleep, after that me go away. If ye wants me, holler out. Me sleep in next room.”

So saying, this wonderful creature flitted across the cavern and vanished, thereby revealing to March the fact that there was a third cavern in that place. Presently she returned with a green blanket, and spread it over him, after which she sat down by the fire and seemed absorbed in her private meditations while March tried to sleep.

But what a night March had of it! Whichever way he turned, that vision was ever before his eyes. When he awoke with a start, there she was, bending over the fire. When he dreamed, there she was, floating in an atmosphere of blue stars. Sometimes she was smiling on him, sometimes gazing sadly, but never otherwise than sweetly. Presently he saw her sitting on Dick’s knee, twisting his great moustache with her delicate hand, and he was about to ask Dick how he had managed to get back so soon, when he (the Wild Man) suddenly changed into March’s own mother, who clasped the vision fervently to her breast and called her her own darling son! There was no end to it. She never left him. Sometimes she appeared in curious forms and in odd aspects—though always pleasant and sweet to look upon. Sometimes she was dancing gracefully like an embodied zephyr on the floor; frequently walking in mid-air; occasionally perambulating the ceiling of the cave. She often changed her place, but she never went away. There was no escape. And March was glad of it. He didn’t want to escape. He was only too happy to court the phantom. But it did not require courting. It hovered over him, walked round him, sat beside him, beckoned to him, and smiled at him. Never,—no, never since the world began was any scratched and battered youth so thoroughly badgered and bewitched, as was poor March Marston on that memorable night, by that naughty vision in leather!

Chapter Eighteen

The Cave of the Wild Man of the West—March and Mary hold pleasant Intercourse—Dick’s good Qualities enlarged on—The Wild Man gives a Redskin a strange Lesson—A startling Interruption to pleasant Converse

When March Marston awoke the following morning, and found himself lying on a low couch in the mysterious cavern of the Wild Man of the West, he experienced the curious sensation, with which every one is more or less familiar, of not knowing where he was.

The vision in leather, which had worried him to such an extent during the night, had left him in peace—as most visions usually do—an hour or so before daybreak, and as the real vision had not yet issued from the inner chamber of the cave, there was nothing familiar near him when he awoke to recall his scattered senses. His first effort to rise, however, quickened his memory amazingly. Pains shot through all his limbs: the chase, the fall, Dick, the cavern, recurred to him; and last—but not least, for it obliterated and swallowed up all the rest—the vision broke upon his beclouded brain and cleared his faculties.

Looking curiously round the cavern, he observed for the first time—what he might have observed the night before had he not been preoccupied with sudden, numerous, and powerful surprises—that the walls were hung with arms and trophies of the chase. Just opposite to him hung the skin of an enormous grisly bear, with the head and skull entire, and the mouth and teeth grinning at him in an awful manner. Near to this were the skin and horns of several buffaloes. In other places there were more horns, and heads, and hides of bears of various kinds, as well as of deer, and, conspicuous above the entrance, hung the ungainly skull and ponderous horns of an elk.

Mingled with these, and arranged in such a manner as to prove that Dick, or the vision—one or other, or both—were by no means destitute of taste, hung various spears, and bows, and quivers, and shields of Indian manufacture, with spears and bows whose form seemed to indicate that Dick himself was their fabricator. There was much of tasteful ornament on the sheaths and handles of many of these weapons.

The floor of the apartment in which he lay was of solid rock, cleanly washed and swept, but there was no furniture of any kind—only a pile of fresh-cut pine-branches, with which the place was perfumed, and two or three rough logs which had been used as seats the night before by the host and hostess of this—to March—enchanted castle.

March was staring earnestly at one of these logs which lay close to the ashes of the fire, trying to recall the form that had last occupied it, when a rustle at the inner passage attracted his attention, and next moment the vision again stood before him. It was, if possible, more innocent and young and sweet than on the previous night.

“Good mornin’. You very good sleep, me hope?”

“Ay, that had I, a capital sleep,” cried March heartily, holding out his hand, which the vision grasped unhesitatingly, and shook with manly vigour.

“Bees you hongray?”

“No, not a bit,” said March.

The girl looked sad at this. “You muss heat,” she said quickly, at the same time raking together the embers of the fire, and blowing them up into a flame, over which she placed a large iron pot. “Dick hims always heat well an’ keep well. Once me was be sick. Dick him say to me, ‘Heat.’ Me say, ‘No want heat.’ Hims say, ‘You muss heat.’ So me try; an’ sure ’nuff, get well to-morrow.”

March laughed at this prompt and effectual remedy for disease, and said, “Well, I’ll try. Perhaps it will cure me, especially if you feed me.”

Poor March saw, by the simplicity of his companion’s looks, that gallantry and compliments were alike thrown away on her; so he resolved to try them no more. Having come to this conclusion, he said—

“I say, Mary, come and sit by me while I talk with you. I want to know how you came to be in this wild, out-o’-the-way place, and who Dick is, and what brought him here, an’ in short, all about it.”

The girl drew her log near as he desired, but said, “What Dick no tell, me no tell.”

“But, surely,” urged March in a somewhat testy tone, “you may tell me something about ye.”

Mary shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Dick say, ‘No tell.’”

“Oh! Dick’s an ass!”

Had Mary known the meaning of her companion’s rude speech, she might possibly have surprised him with a decided opinion in regard to himself. But, never having heard of nor seen such a creature in all her life, she only looked up with a quiet expression of curiosity, and said—

“What bees an ass?”

“Ha! ha!—ho! he! a—” roared our hero, with a mingled feeling of exasperation and savage glee—“an ass? Why, it’s a lovely slender creature, with short pretty ears and taper limbs, and a sleek, glossy coat, like—like me, Mary, dear; why, I’m an ass myself. Pray, do get me somethin’ to eat. I really believe my appetite’s comin’ back agin.”