The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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
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.
Old trappers are not fond of attacking Caleb single-handed, but young hot-blooded fellows, who have got their names to make, are less cautious, and sometimes even court the combat, as was the case in the present instance with reckless Gibault Noir.
For half an hour, Gibault went over the ground at a sort of half-walk, half-trot, stopping occasionally to examine the prints of the bear more narrowly when they passed across hard ground that did not take a good impression. At length he came to a deep gully or creek, where the bushes were so dense that he could not see far through them in any direction. Here he halted, re-examined his priming, and, peering cautiously through the underwood, advanced with much greater deliberation and care than heretofore.
In descending the gully, Gibault stumbled once or twice, and made one or two crashing bursts through bushes that would have proved quite impervious to most men. After much toil he reached the bottom, and, standing there, up to the ankles in a small rivulet, gazed upward at the bank he had now to ascend.
“Vraiment, it be uncommonly difficile,” said he, addressing himself to the task, while the perspiration began to roll down his forehead.
At last he reached the top of the bank on the other side, and, after panting for some time, began to look for the bear’s footprints; but these could not now be found. In his scramble through the gully he had lost them, and the ground on the side he had just reached was so hard and rocky that it seemed to him doubtful whether it was capable of receiving any visible impression from a bear’s paw. It was just possible, too, that the animal had found the descent of the gully as difficult as he himself had; in which case it was highly probable that it had used the course of the rivulet as a pathway.
For a moment, the little Canadian meditated a second descent into the gully for the purpose of settling this point, but, having not yet quite ceased to pant from his recent exertions, he thought better of it, and determined to make a further examination of the ground where he was. After doing so for a quarter of an hour, his exertions were rewarded by the discovery of what appeared to be a track. It was not very distinct, but it was sufficiently so to induce him to follow it up with renewed ardour.
Presently he came upon a spot where the ground was not so thickly covered with underwood, and where, in some places, it was so soft as to show an exact print of the foot of the animal he was following up. Here he received a great disappointment, and an equally great surprise—a disappointment