“I declare, I almost wish I was going with him!” It was our old friend Oscar Preston who said this. He was standing on the platform in front of the station at Julesburg, gazing after the stage-coach in which Leon Parker, the disgusted and repentant runaway, whose adventures and mishaps have already been described, had taken passage for Atchison.
Oscar, as we know, had stumbled upon Leon by the merest chance, and fortunately 2he was in a position to render him the assistance of which he stood so much in need.
By advancing him money out of his own pocket he had put it in Leon’s power to return to the home he had so recklessly deserted, and those who have read “Two Ways of Becoming a Hunter” know how glad the runaway was to accept his proffered aid.
Up to this time Oscar had been all enthusiasm. There was no employment in the world that he could think of that so accorded with his taste as the mission on which he had been sent—that of procuring specimens for the museum that was to be added to the other attractions connected with the university at Yarmouth.
His head was full of plans. So anxious was he to make his expedition successful, and to win the approbation of the committee who employed him, that he had been able to think of nothing else; but when he saw the coach moving away from the station he began to have some faint idea of the agony Leon must have suffered when he found himself alone in 3that wilderness, with no friend to whom he could go for sympathy or advice.
In short Oscar was very homesick. In a few days, if nothing unforeseen happened, Leon would be in Eaton, surrounded by familiar scenes and familiar faces, while Oscar himself would, in a short time, disappear as completely from the gaze of the civilized world as though he had suddenly ceased to exist.
Even with his inexperienced eye he could see that bad weather was close at hand. Perhaps before he reached the foot-hills the winter’s storms would burst forth in all their fury, blocking the trail with drifts, and effectually shutting him off from all communication with those he had left behind.
He had never been so far away from his mother before, and neither had she ever seemed so dear and so necessary to him as she did now.
And then there was Sam—impulsive, good-natured, kind-hearted Sam Hynes—who had so long been his chosen friend and almost constant companion!
4Oscar would have given much if he could have looked into his honest face and felt the cordial grasp of his hand once more.
Some such thoughts as these passed through the mind of the young hunter as he stood there on the platform with his hands in his pockets, gazing after the rapidly receding stage-coach, and for a moment he looked and felt very unlike the happy, ambitious boy who had left Eaton but a short time before with such bright anticipations of the future.
Then he dashed away the mist that seemed to be gathering before his eyes, pushed back his hat, which he had drawn low over his forehead, and took himself to task for his weakness.
“A pretty hunter I shall make if this is the way I am to feel!” was his mental exclamation. “I talked very glibly to Sam Hynes about going on a three or four years’ expedition to Africa to collect specimens, and here I am, homesick already, although I have been away from Eaton scarcely two weeks. This will never do. I must get to work at once.”
Just at that moment the stage-coach reached 5the top of a high ridge over which the road ran, and Leon turned in his seat to wave his farewell to the boy who had befriended him.
Oscar waved his handkerchief in reply, and, having seen the coach disappear over the brow of the hill, he sprang off the platform and bent his steps toward the fort.
As he passed through the gate, the sentry respectfully brought his musket to a “carry.” He had seen Oscar in familiar conversation with all the high officers belonging to the post, and that made him believe that the visitor, young as he was in years, must be a person of some importance.
He was well enough acquainted with the men who commanded him to know that they did not associate on terms of intimacy with everyone who came to the post on business.
Oscar walked straight to the colonel’s head-quarters, and the orderly who was standing in the hall opened the door for him.
The room in which he now found himself was not just such a room as he had expected to see in that wilderness. The open piano, the 6expensive pictures, the papered walls, and the richly upholstered easy-chairs that were arranged in order about the table made it look almost too civilized.
And yet there were a good many things in it to remind one of the plains. There was no carpet on the floor, but there were rugs in abundance, although they were not such rugs as we have in our houses. They were made of the skins of the wild animals that had fallen to the colonel’s breech loader.
The commandant was not only a brave soldier, a successful Indian fighter, and a daring horseman, but he was also an enthusiastic sportsman and a crack shot with the rifle.
The walls of his room were adorned with numerous trophies of his skill as a hunter and marksman in the shape of antlers, skins, and deer heads (the latter not quite so well mounted as they ought to be, Oscar thought); and the brace of magnificent Scotch greyhounds, which were lying at their ease on an elk skin in front of the blazing logs that were piled in the huge, old-fashioned fireplace, were 7fair specimens of the pack the colonel had imported for the purpose of coursing the antelope that were so abundant on the prairie.
The weapons the colonel used in war and in the chase were conspicuously displayed, and beside them hung Indian relics of all descriptions.
There was the shield that had once belonged to the hostile chief Yellow Bear, who had given the soldiers and settlers a world of trouble, and who was almost as celebrated in his day as Sitting Bull was a few years ago.
It was ornamented with the scalps the chief had taken during his numerous raids, and exactly in the centre of it was the hole made by a bullet from the colonel’s rifle, which had put an end to one raid and terminated the career of Yellow Bear at the same time.
Hanging on one side the portrait of a distinguished army officer was the strong bow, made of elk horn, and braced with deer sinews, which the colonel used when he went out to hunt coyotes; and on the other was the tomahawk he had wrested from the hands of the warrior who had rushed up to secure his 8scalp when his (the colonel’s) horse was shot under him.
It was by no means the terrible-looking weapon that Oscar had supposed an Indian tomahawk to be. It was simply a plasterer’s hatchet, which the former owner had purchased of a trader.
The colonel, who was sitting in an easy-chair, reading one of the papers which Oscar had laid on his table the day before, looked up as the boy entered and pointed to a seat on the opposite side of the fireplace.
“Well, you have seen your friend off, I suppose?” said he. “You arrived in the nick of time, didn’t you? The doctor says he honestly believes that Leon would have died of homesickness if you had not come just as you did. He has told me the lad’s story, and I must say that, although I have often read of such things, I never really believed that any living boy could entertain notions so utterly ridiculous. Why, just look at it for a moment! You will begin your life on the plains under the most favorable circumstances. You will have the benefit of the experience of 9every hunter about the post, both professional and amateur, be provided with all the necessaries that money can buy, be looked after by a competent guide, and yet before the winter is over you will wish a thousand times that you were safe back in Eaton again. Leon could not hope for the aid and comfort that will be so cheerfully extended to you. He intended to go in on his own hook, using as a guide some trashy novel, written by a man who probably knows no more about life on the plains than you do, and the consequence was that his want of experience got him into trouble at the very outset. That was a most fortunate thing for him, for if one of our Western ‘blizzards’ had overtaken him he never would have been heard of again. I hope his experience will be a lesson to him.”
“I hope so, from the bottom of my heart,” said Oscar as he took the chair pointed out to him, and patted the head of one of the greyhounds, which arose from his comfortable couch, and, after lazily stretching himself, came up and laid his black muzzle on the boy’s knee.