Nothing further worth mentioning occurred to the hunters that day, save that little Tolly Trevor was amazed—we might almost say petrified—by the splendour and precision of the trapper’s shooting, besides which he was deeply impressed with the undercurrent of what we may style grave fun, coupled with calm enthusiasm, which characterised the man, and the utter absence of self-assertion or boastfulness.
But if the remainder of the day was uneventful, the stories round the camp-fire more than compensated him and his friend Leaping Buck. The latter was intimately acquainted with the trapper, and seemed to derive more pleasure from watching the effect of his anecdotes on his new friend than in listening to them himself. Probably this was in part owing to the fact that he had heard them all before more than once.
The spot they had selected for their encampment was the summit of a projecting crag, which was crowned with a little thicket, and surrounded on three sides by sheer precipices. The neck of rock by which it was reached was free from shrubs, besides being split across by a deep chasm of several feet in width, so that it formed a natural fortress, and the marks of old encampments seemed to indicate that it had been used as a camping-place by the red man long before his white brother—too often his white foe—had appeared in that western wilderness to disturb him. The Indians had no special name for the spot, but the roving trappers who first came to it had named it the Outlook, because from its summit a magnificent view of nearly the whole region could be obtained. The great chasm or fissure already mentioned descended sheer down, like the neighbouring precipices, to an immense depth, so that the Outlook, being a species of aerial island, was usually reached by a narrow plank which bridged the chasm. It had stood many a siege in times past, and when used as a fortress, whether by white hunters or savages, the plank bridge was withdrawn, and the place rendered—at least esteemed—impregnable.
When Mahoghany Drake and his young friends came up to the chasm a little before sunset Leaping Buck took a short run and bounded clear over it.
“Ha! I knowed he couldn’t resist the temptation,” said Mahoghany, with a quiet chuckle, “an’ it’s not many boys—no, nor yet men—who could jump that. I wouldn’t try it myself for a noo rifle—no, though ye was to throw in a silver-mounted powder-horn to the bargain.”
“But you have jumped it?” cried the Indian boy, turning round with a gleeful face.
“Ay, lad, long ago, and then I was forced to, when runnin’ for my life. A man’ll do many a deed when so sitooate that he couldn’t do in cold blood. Come, come, young feller,” he added, suddenly laying his heavy hand on little Trevor’s collar and arresting him, “you wasn’t thinkin’ o’ tryin’ it was ye?”
“Indeed I was, and I think I could manage it,” said the foolishly ambitious Tolly.
“Thinkin’ is not enough, boy,” returned the trapper, with a grave shake of the head. “You should always make sure. Suppose you was wrong in your thinkin’, now, who d’ee think would go down there to pick up the bits of ’ee an’ carry them home to your mother.”
“But I haven’t got a mother,” said Tolly.
“Well, your father, then.”
“But I haven’t got a father.”
“So much the more reason,” returned the trapper, in a softened tone, “that you should take care o’ yourself, lest you should turn out to be the last o’ your race. Come, help me to carry this plank. After we’re over I’ll see you jump on safe ground, and if you can clear enough, mayhap I’ll let ’ee try the gap. Have you a steady head?”
“Ay, like a rock,” returned Tolly, with a grin.
“See that you’re sure, lad, for if you ain’t I’ll carry you over.”
In reply to this Tolly ran nimbly over the plank bridge like a tight-rope dancer. Drake followed, and they were all soon busily engaged clearing a space on which to encamp, and collecting firewood.
“Tell me about your adventure at the time you jumped the gap, Mahoghany,” begged little Trevor, when the first volume of smoke arose from their fire and went straight up like a pillar into the calm air.
“Not now, lad. Work first, talk afterwards. That’s my motto.”
“But work is over now—the fire lighted and the kettle on,” objected Tolly.
“Nay, lad, when you come to be an old hunter you’ll look on supper as about the most serious work o’ the day. When that’s over, an’ the pipe a-goin’, an’ maybe a little stick-whittlin’ for variety, a man may let his tongue wag to some extent.”
Our small hero was fain to content himself with this reply, and for the next half-hour or more the trio gave their undivided attention to steaks from the loin of the fat buck and slices from the breast of the wild duck which had fallen to Tolly’s gun. When the pipe-and-stick-whittling period arrived, however, the trapper disposed his bulky length in front of the fire, while his young admirers lay down beside him.
The stick-whittling, it may be remarked, devolved upon the boys, while the smoking was confined to the man.
“I can’t see why it is,” observed Tolly, when the first whiffs curled from Mahoghany Drake’s lips, “that you men are so strong in discouragin’ us boys from smokin’. You keep it all selfishly to yourselves, though Buckie an’ I would give anythin’ to be allowed to try a whiff now an’ then. Paul Bevan’s just like you—won’t hear o’ me touchin’ a pipe, though he smokes himself like a wigwam wi’ a greenwood fire!”
Drake pondered a little before replying.
“It would never do, you know,” he said, at length, “for you boys to do ’zackly as we men does.”
“Why not?” demanded Tolly, developing an early bud of independent thought.
“Why, ’cause it wouldn’t” replied Drake. Then, feeling that his answer was not a very convincing argument he added, “You see, boys ain’t men, no more than men are boys, an’ what’s good for the one ain’t good for the tother.”
“I don’t see that” returned the radical-hearted Tolly. “Isn’t eatin’, an’ drinkin’, an’ sleepin’, an’ walkin’, an’ runnin’, an’ talkin’, an’ thinkin’, an’ huntin’, equally good for boys and men? If all these things is good for us both, why not smokin’?”
“That’s more than I can tell ’ee, lad,” answered the honest trapper, with a somewhat puzzled look.
If Mahoghany Drake had thought the matter out a little more closely he might perhaps have seen that smoking is as good for boys as for men—or, what comes to much the same thing, is equally bad for both of them! But the sturdy trapper liked smoking; hence, like many wiser men, he did not care to think the matter out. On the contrary, he changed the subject, and, as the change was very much for the better in the estimation of his companions, Tolly did not object.
“Well now, about that jump,” he began, emitting a prolonged and delicate whiff.
“Ah, yes! How did you manage to do it?” asked little Trevor, eagerly.
“Oh, for the matter o’ that it’s easy to explain; but it wasn’t my jump I was goin’ to tell about; it was the jump o’ a poor critter—a sort o’ ne’er-do-well who jined a band o’ us trappers the day before we arrived at this place, on our way through the mountains on a huntin’ expedition. He was a miserable specimen o’ human natur’—all the worse that he had a pretty stout body o’ his own, an’ might have made a fairish man if he’d had the spirit even of a cross-grained rabbit. His name was Miffy, an’ it sounded nat’ral to him, for there was no go in him whatever. I often wonder what sitch men was made for. They’re o’ no use to anybody, an’ a nuisance to themselves.”
“P’r’aps they wasn’t made for any use at all,” suggested Tolly, who, having whittled a small piece of stick down to nothing, commenced another piece with renewed interest.
“No, lad,” returned the trapper, with a look of deeper gravity. “Even poor, foolish man does not construct anything without some sort o’ purpose in view. It’s an outrage on common sense to think the Almighty could do so. Mayhap sitch critters was meant to act as warnin’s to other men. He told us that he’d runned away from home when he was a boy ’cause he didn’t like school. Then he engaged as a cabin-boy aboard a ship tradin’ to some place in South America, an’ runned away from his ship the first port they touched at ’cause he didn’t like the sea. Then he came well-nigh to the starvin’ p’int an’ took work on a farm as a labourer, but left that ’cause it was too hard, after which he got a berth as watchman at a warehouse, or some place o’ the sort but left that, for it was too easy. Then he tried gold-diggin’, but could make nothin’ of it; engaged in a fur company, but soon left it; an’ then tried his hand at trappin’ on his own account but gave it up ’cause he could catch nothin’. When he fell in with our band he was redooced to two rabbits an’ a prairie hen, wi’ only three charges o’ powder in his horn, an’ not a drop o’ lead.
“Well, we tuck pity on the miserable critter, an’ let him come along wi’ us. There was ten of us altogether, an’ he made eleven. At first we thought he’d be of some use to us, but we soon found he was fit for nothin’. However, we couldn’t cast him adrift in the wilderness, for he’d have bin sure to come to damage somehow, so we let him go on with us. When we came to this neighbourhood we made up............