The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne
rather not. At this they laughed loudly, and then gave a yell, and said if I didn’t show them the direction they would roast me alive. So I pointed towards a part of the plains pretty wide o’ the spot where our camp was. ‘Now, lead us to them,’ said the big chap, givin’ me a shove with the butt of his gun; ‘an’ if you have told lies—’ he gave the handle of his scalpin’-knife a slap, as much as to say he’d tickle up my liver with it. Well, away we went in silence, me thinkin’ all the time how I was to get out o’ the scrape. I led them pretty close past our camp, hopin’ that the lads would hear us. I didn’t dare to yell out, as that would have showed them there was somebody within hearin’, and they would have made short work of me. Just as we came near the place where my companions lay, a prairie wolf sprang out from under a bush where it had been sleepin’; so I gave a loud hurrah, and shied my cap at it. Giving a loud growl, the big Injin hit me over the head with his fist, and told me to keep silence. In a few minutes I heard the low, distant howl of a wolf. I recognised the voice or one of my comrades, and knew that they had seen us, and would be on our track soon. Watchin’ my opportunity, and walkin’ for a good bit as if I was awful tired—all but done up—to throw them off their guard, I suddenly tripped up the big chap as he was stepping over a small brook, and dived in among the bushes. In a moment a dozen bullets tore up the bark on the trees about me, and an arrow passed through my hair. The clump of wood into which I had dived was about half a mile long; and as I could run well (I’ve found in my experience that white men are more than a match for redskins at their own work), I was almost out of range by the time I was forced to quit the cover and take to the plain. When the blackguard got out of the cover, too, and saw me cuttin’ ahead like a deer, they gave a yell of disappointment, and sent another shower of arrows and bullets after me, some of which came nearer than was pleasant. I then headed for our camp with the whole pack screechin’ at my heels. ‘Yell away, you stupid sinners,’ thought I; ‘some of you shall pay for your music.’ At that moment an arrow grazed my shoulder, and looking over it, I saw that the black fellow I had pitched into the water was far ahead of the rest, strainin’ after me like mad, and every now and then stopping to try an arrow on me; so I kept a look-out, and when I saw him stop to draw, I stopped too, and dodged, so the arrows passed me, and then we took to our heels again. In this way I ran for dear life till I came up to the cover. As I came close up I saw our six fellows crouchin’ in the bushes, and one o’ them takin’ aim almost straight for my face. ‘Your day’s come at last,’ thought I, looking over my shoulder at the big Injin, who was drawing his bow again. Just then there was a sharp crack heard: a bullet whistled past my ear, and the big fellow fell like a stone, while my comrade stood coolly up to reload his rifle. The Injins, on seein’ this, pulled up in a moment; and our lads stepping forward, delivered a volley that made three more o’ them bite the dust. There would have been six in that fix, but, somehow or other, three of us pitched upon the same man, who was afterwards found with a bullet in each eye and one through his heart. They didn’t wait for more, but turned about and bolted like the wind. Now, Mr Charles, if I had told the truth that time, we would have been all killed; and if I had simply said nothin’ to their questions, they would have sent out to scour the country, and have found out the camp for sartin, so that the only way to escape was by tellin’ them a heap o’ downright lies.”
Charley looked very much perplexed at this.
“You have indeed placed me in a difficulty. I know not what I would have done. I don’t know even what I ought to do under these circumstances. Difficulties may perplex me, and the force of circumstances might tempt me to do what I believed to be wrong. I am a sinner, Jacques, like other mortals, I know; but one thing I am quite sure of—namely, that when men speak it should always be truth and never falsehood.”
Jacques looked perplexed too. He was strongly impressed with the necessity of telling falsehood in the circumstances in which he had been placed, as just related, while at the same time he felt deeply the grandeur and the power of Charley’s last remark.
“I should have been under the sod now,” said he, “if I had not told a lie then. Is it better to die than to speak falsehood?”
“Some men have thought so,” replied Charley. “I acknowledge the difficulty of your case, and of all similar cases. I don’t know what should be done; but I have read of a minister of the gospel whose people were very wicked and would not attend to his instructions, although they could not but respect himself, he was so consistent and Christianlike in his conduct. Persecution arose in the country where he lived, and men and women were cruelly murdered because of their religious belief. For a long time he was left unmolested; but one day a band of soldiers came to his house, and asked him whether he was a Papist or a Protestant (Papist, Jacques, being a man who has sold his liberty in religious matters to the Pope, and a Protestant being one who protests against such an ineffably silly and unmanly state of slavery). Well, his people urged the good old man to say he was a Papist, telling him that he would then be spared to live among them, and preach the true faith for many years perhaps. Now, if there was one thing that this old man would have toiled for and died for, it was that his people should become true Christians—and he told them so; ‘but,’ he added, ‘I will not tell a lie to accomplish that end, my children—no, not even to save my life.’ So he told the soldiers that he was a Protestant, and immediately they carried him away, and he was soon afterwards burned to death.”
“Well,” said Jacques, “he didn’t gain much by sticking to the truth, I think.”
“I’m not so sure of that. The story goes on to say that he rejoiced that he had done so, and wouldn’t draw back even when he was in the flames. But the point lies here, Jacques: so deep an impression did the old man’s conduct make on his people, that from that day forward they were noted for their Christian life and conduct. They brought up their children with a deeper reverence for the truth than they would otherwise have done, always bearing in affectionate remembrance, and holding up to them as an example, the unflinching truthfulness of the good old man who was burned in the year of the terrible persecutions; and at last their influence and example had such an effect that the Protestant religion spread like wild-fire, far and wide around them, so that the very thing was accomplished for which the old pastor said he would have died—accomplished, too, very much in consequence of his death, and in a way and to an extent that very likely would not have been the case had he lived and preached among them for a hundred years.”
“I don’t understand it nohow,” said Jacques; “it seems to me right both ways and wrong both ways, and all upside down everyhow.”
Charley smiled. “Your remark is about as clear as my head on the subject, Jacques; but I still remain convinced that truth is right and that falsehood is wrong, and that we should stick to the first through thick and thin.”
“I s’pose,” remarked the hunter, who had walked along in deep cogitation for the last five minutes, and had apparently come to some conclusion of profound depth and sagacity—“I s’pose that it’s all human natur’; that some men takes to preachin’ as Injins take to huntin’, and that to understand sich things requires them to begin young, and risk their lives in it, as I would in followin’ up a grizzly she-bear with cubs.”
“Yonder is an illustration of one part of your remark. They begin young enough, anyhow,” said Charley, pointing as he spoke to an opening in the bushes, where a particularly small Indian boy stood in the act of discharging an arrow.
The two men halted to watch his movements. According to a common custom among juvenile Indians during the warm months of the year, he was dressed in nothing save a mere rag tied round his waist. His body was very brown, extremely round, fat, and wonderfully diminutive, while his little legs and arms were disproportionately small. He was so young as to be barely able to walk, and yet there he stood, his black eyes glittering with excitement, his tiny bow bent to its utmost, and a blunt-headed arrow about to be discharged at a squirrel, whose flight had been suddenly arrested by the unexpected apparition of Charley and Jacques. As he stood there for a single instant, perfectly motionless, he might have been mistaken for a grotesque statue of an Indian cupid. Taking advantage of the squirrel’s pause, the child let fly the arrow, hit it exactly on the point of the nose, and