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.”
Mary looked at March in much concern. She had once nursed the Wild Man through a severe illness, and knew what delirium was, and she began to suspect that her guest was beginning to give way.
“Now, lie down,” she said with an air of decision that was almost ludicrous in one so youthful. Yet March felt that he must obey. “Me will git meat ready. You sleep littil bit.”
March shut his eyes at once; but, the instant that Mary turned to attend to the iron kettle, he opened them, and continued to gaze at the busy little housewife, until she chanced to look in his direction, when he shut them again quickly, and very tight. This was done twice; but the third time Mary caught him in the act, and broke into a merry laugh. It was the first time she had laughed aloud since March met her; so he laughed too, out of sheer delight and sympathy.
When March had finished breakfast, he tried to get up, and found, to his great relief and satisfaction, that no bones were broken—a fact of which he had stood in considerable doubt—and that his muscles were less acutely pained than they had been. Still, he was very stiff, and quite unable, with any degree of comfort, to walk across the cave; so he made up his mind to lie there till he got well—a resolution which, in the pride of his heart, he deemed exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, forgetting, either deliberately or stupidly, that the presence of Mary rendered that otherwise dull cavern the most delightful of sick chambers, and that her attendance was ample compensation and reward for any amount of pain or self-denial.
“Mary,” he said, when she had cleared away the débris of the morning meal, “sit down here, and tell me a few things. You’re so terribly close that one doesn’t know what he may ask an’ what he mayn’t. But if you don’t like to speak, you can hold your tongue, you know. Now, tell me, how old are you?”
“Fifteen,” replied Mary.
“Ay! I thought ye’d been older. How long have ye bin with Dick?”
“In cave here—ten year. Before that, me live in my father’s wigwam.”
“Was yer father a trapper?” inquired March tenderly.
Mary’s face at once assumed an expression of earnest gravity, and she answered, “Yes,” in a low, sad tone.
March was going to have inquired further on this point, but fear lest he should hurt the feelings of the poor child induced him to change the subject.
“And how came ye,” said he, “first to meet with Dick?”
Mary pressed her lips.
“Oh! very well; don’t tell if it ain’t right, by no manner o’ means. Do ye think that Dick intends to keep ye here always?”
“Me not know.”
“Humph! An’ you say he’s good to ye?”
“Oh yes,” cried Mary with a sudden blaze of animation on her usually placid countenance, “him’s good, very good—gooder to me than nobody else.”
“Well, I could have guessed that, seein’ that nobody else has had anything to do with ye but him for ten years past.”
“But him’s not only good to me—good to everybody,” continued the girl with increasing animation. “You not know how good—can’t know.”
“Certainly not,” assented March; “it ain’t possible to know, not havin’ bin told; but if you’ll tell me I’ll listen.”
March Marston had at last struck a chord that vibrated intensely in the bosom of the warm-hearted child. She drew her log closer to him in her eagerness to dilate on the goodness of her adopted father, and began to pour into his willing ears such revelations of the kind and noble deeds that he had done, that March was fired with enthusiasm, and began to regard his friend Dick in the light of a demigod. Greatheart, in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” seemed most like to him, he thought, only Dick seemed grander, which was a natural feeling; for Bunyan drew his Greatheart true to nature, while Mary and March had invested Dick with a robe of romance, which glittered so much that he looked preternaturally huge.
March listened with rapt attention; but as the reader is not March, we will not give the narrative in Mary’s bad English. Suffice it to say, that she told how, on one occasion, Dick happened to be out hunting near to a river, into which he saw a little Indian child fall. It was carried swiftly by the current to a cataract fifty feet high, and in a few minutes would have been over and dashed to pieces, when Dick happily saw it, and plunging in brought it safe to shore, yet with such difficulty that he barely gained the bank, and grasped the branch of an overhanging willow, when his legs were drawn over the edge of the fall. He had to hold on for ten minutes, till men came from the other side of the stream to his assistance.
Mary also told him (and it was evening ere she finished all she had to tell him) how that, on another occasion, Dick was out after grislies with a hunter, who had somehow allowed himself to be caught by a bear, and would have been torn in pieces had not Dick come up with his great two-edged sword—having fired off his rifle without effect—and, with one mighty sweep at the monster’s neck, cut right through its jugular vein, and all its other veins, down to the very marrow of its backbone; in fact, killed it at one blow—a feat which no one had ever done, or had ever heard of as being done, from the days of the first Indian to that hour.
Many such stories did Mary relate to the poor invalid, who bore his sufferings with exemplary patience and fortitude, and listened with unflagging interest; but of all the stories she told, none seemed to afford her so much pleasure in the telling as the following:—
One day Dick went out to hunt buffaloes, on his big horse, for he had several steeds, one or other of which he rode according to fancy; but he always mounted the big black one when he went after the buffalo or to war. Mary here explained, very carefully, that Dick never went to war on his own account—that he was really a man of peace, but that, when he saw oppression and cruelty, his blood boiled within him at such a rate that he almost went mad, and often, under the excitement of hot indignation, would he dash into the midst of a band of savages and scatter them right and left like autumn leaves.
Well, as he was riding along among the mountains, near the banks of a broad stream, and not far from the edge of the great prairie, he came suddenly on an object that caused his eyes to glare and his teeth to grind; for there, under the shade of a few branches, with a pot of water by her side, sat an old Indian woman. Dick did not need to ask what she was doing there. He knew the ways of the redskins too well to remain a moment in doubt. She had grown so old and feeble that her relations had found her burdensome; so, according to custom, they left her there to die. The poor old creature knew that she was a burden to them. She knew also the customs of her tribe—it was at her own request she had been left there, a willing victim to an inevitable fate, because she felt that her beloved children would get on better without her. They made no objection. Food, to last for a few days, was put within reach of her trembling hand; a fire was kindled, and a little pile of wood placed beside it, also within reach. Then they left her. They knew that when that food was consumed, and the last stick placed upon the fire, the shrunken limbs would stand in no need of warmth—the old heart would be still. Yet that heart had once beat joyfully at the sound of those pattering feet that now retired with heavy ruthless tread for ever. What a commentary on savage life! What a contrast between the promptings of the unregenerate heart of man and the precepts of that blessed—thrice blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ, where love, unalterable, inextinguishable, glows in every lesson and sweetens every command.
When Dick came upon her suddenly, as we have said, he was not ten paces distant from the spot where she sat; but she was apparently deaf and blind, for she evinced no knowledge of his presence. She was reaching out her skinny arm to place another stick upon the sinking fire at the time, for it was a sharp and cold, though a bright and sunny autumn day. Dick stopped his horse, crushed his teeth together, and sat for a few moments regarding her intently.
Either the firewood had originally been placed too far away from the old woman’s hand, or she had shifted her position, for she could not reach it. Once and again she made the effort—she stretched out her withered arm and succeeded in just touching the end of one of the pieces of wood, but could not grasp it. She pawed it once or twice, and then gave up the attempt with a little sigh. Drawing herself slowly together, she gathered up the rabbit-skin blanket which rested on her shoulders and attempted feebly to fold it across her chest. Then she slowly drooped her white head, with an expression of calm resignation on her old wrinkled visage.
Dick’s great heart almost burst with conflicting emotions. The wrath that welled up as he thought of the deserters was met by a gush of tender pity as he gazed through blinding tears on the deserted. With a fling that caused his stout warhorse to stagger, he leaped to the ground, tore open the breast of his hunting-shirt, and, sitting down beside the old woman, placed her cold hand in his bosom.
She uttered a feeble cry and made a slight momentary effort to resist; but Dick’s act, though promptly, was, nevertheless, tenderly done, and the big hand that stroked her white head was so evidently that of a friend, that the poor creature resigned herself to the enjoyment of that warmth of which she stood so much in need. Meanwhile Dick, without shifting his position, stretched forth his long arm, collected all the wood within reach, and placed it on the fire.
After a few minutes the old woman raised her head, and looking earnestly in Dick’s face with her bleared and almost sightless eyes, said in the Indian language, with which her companion was well acquainted—
“My son, have you come back to me?”
A gush of indignant feeling had again to be violently stifled ere Dick could answer in moderate tones—
“No, mother, he’s not come back; but I’ll be a son to ye. See, sit up an’ warm yerself at the blaze. I’ll get ye some meat and sticks.”
In hot haste, and with desperate activity, for he had no other way of relieving his feelings, Dick cut down a quantity of firewood and placed it close to the hand of the old woman. Then he untied the tin kettle which he always carried at his saddle-bow, and, with a piece of dried venison, concocted a quantity of hot soup in a marvellously short space of time. This done, he sat down beside the old woman and made her partake of it.
“Is it long since they left ye, mother?” he said, after she had swallowed a little.
The old woman pondered for a few seconds. “No,” she said, “not long. Only one sun has gone down since my son left me.” Then she added in a sad tone, “I loved him. He is a great warrior—a brave chief—and he loved me, too. But he had to leave me; I am old and useless. It is my fate.”
“Describe your son to me,” said Dick abruptly. “He is tall and straight as the poplar,” began the old creature, while a look of pride played for a moment on her withered countenance. “His shoulders are broad and his limbs are supple. He can run and leap like the deer, but not so well as he once could. Grey hairs are now mingling with the black—”
“Has he any mark by which I could find him out?” interrupted Dick impatiently.
“He has a deep cut over the right eye,” returned the woman; “but stay,” she added in some alarm, “you would not harm my son; you are not an enemy?”
“No, I would not; I would do him good. Which way did they go?”
“To the prairie—to the rising sun.”
Dick at once arose, placed the kettle of soup close to the old woman’s side, and unbuckling his saddle-girth, removed the blanket that covered his saddle, and transferred it to her shoulders.
This done, without uttering another word, he vaulted into his saddle, and dashed away as if he were flying for his life. The old woman listened until the clatter of his horse’s hoofs ceased to beat upon her deadened ear, and then bent her head, as at the first, in calm resignation. Doubtless she fancied that another fellow-creature had forsaken her, and that the end would soon come.
But Dick had not forsaken her. He bounded along over the rugged ground on the mettlesome steed, striking fire from the flinty rocks, leaping creeks and rivulets, bursting through bush and brake, mile after mile, until he gained the open prairie, while the black coat of his charger was speckled with foam. Here he drew rein, and trotted hither and thither in search of the tracks of the Indians. He found them at last, and dismounted to examine them, for, save to the eye of a trapper or a redman, there were no visible tracks on that hard turf.
Remounting, he resumed his headlong course—sweeping over the springy turf of the plains as if his horse were a winged Pegasus, whose energies could not know exhaustion. All day he rode, and as evening drew on he came in sight of the tribe of Indians.
They had encamped for the night, and were preparing their evening meal; but when they saw the solitary horseman on the far-off horizon, the braves and old men went to the verge of the camp to watch him. On he came, bounding over the turf like the prong-horned antelope, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, but taking everything that intercepted him in a flying leap, and bearing down on the camp as an arrow flies from the bow.
Although a single horseman is not usually an object of terror to a band of Indians, these braves soon began to evince by their looks that they did not feel easy in regard to this one. As he drew near they recognised him; for Dick had on a former occasion given this particular tribe a taste of his prowess. Each man instantly rushed to his weapons and horse; but the horses had been turned out to graze, and could not be easily caught. Before they secured their weapons Dick was in the midst of them. With an eagle glance he singled out the chief with the cut over his right eye, and rode between him and his tent. The Indian, seeing that he was cut off from his weapons, darted swiftly out upon the plain, and made for a clump of stunted trees, hoping to find shelter until his comrades could come to his rescue. But Dick was there before him, and rode down upon him in such a way that he was compelled to take to the open plain and run for his life.
His pursuer allowed him to run, keeping just close enough to him to force him into the particular course he desired him to take. But the savage proved, indeed, to be what his mother had styled him—a brave chief. Apparently resolving rather to die than to be hunted thus like a wolf, he halted suddenly, turned sharp round, and, crossing his arms on his bare chest, looked Dick full in the face as he came up. Just as he was within ten yards of him, the Indian drew his knife, and hurled it at the breast of his enemy with such violence that it hissed in its passage through the air. Dick received it on his shield, where it stood quivering. Plucking it therefrom with a grim smile, he placed it in his own girdle, and riding up to the Indian, sternly bade him mount in front of him.
There was no refusing to obey that voice. The Indian cast one uneasy glance towards his camp, which was now far away on the plain, but there was no sign of any one coming to the rescue. His captor had got the credit of being an evil spirit, and he felt that he was left to his fate. A hasty repetition of the order compelled him to turn and seize the mane of the horse. Dick held out his toe for him to step on; the next moment he was seated in front of the pale-face, galloping towards the mountains.