The Red Moccasins Part 13

"Sometimes she comes, bringing with her the pleasant smell of the woods--the fresh, green, beautiful woods I love so much. She seems to bring with her the sky, too, so sunny her presence makes all around me; and once more I am happy--so full of rest and sleep. That smell of the woods--it never comes, but I feel as if Meg of the Hills must be near, with her crown of crimson flowers; so wonderful--it is bliss to see their beauty, life to breathe their sweetness. Surely she who goes and comes must have found these flowers and brought them to me! Else I had never been here where I am, this what I am. I think she must be near me now. I will see."

So saying, and before he had fairly reopened his eyes, our Manitou b.u.t.terfly, now nearly ready to spurn the chrysalis, raised himself again to his elbow and took another dreamy survey of the room. His eyes, however, seemed to find no object to rest on, until they met a pair as dreamy as themselves--the innocent, blue ones, there at the foot of his bed, through which a soul was looking so directly into his own that he could no longer but be cognizant of a fellow creature's presence.

"Yes, there she is. But she looks like Bertha, and Bertha is not a little angel, like the one who goes and comes. Though, if she is not, it must be because the good angels have not yet taken her to themselves; for, now that I see her better, she looks enough like an angel to be the one who goes and comes. Can it be that Meg of the Hills has sent Bertha to me with these flowers, but for which--the life that is in them--I must have died. Yes, that's the reason why; at least, I think it is.

"But, who are these?" Beginning at last to have some dim perception of his actual surroundings. "These are they who have kissed me, embraced me, wept over me, as though I were going to die. Will they do so still?

I think not; for they mean it for Sprigg, and Sprigg is dead already--pa.s.sed away into nothing. They shall never see their old Sprigg again--never, never, never! But they may call me Sprigg if they like.

And this pretty woman here, who is laughing and crying both at once, I will call her mother. And this big man, who looks glad enough to laugh and sorry enough to cry, and can't do either, I will call him father."

Sprigg never called them "pap" and "mam" again, the longest day he lived. Neither did Jervis and Elster ever again, the longest day they lived, say "my dear son," without putting in the fond words as much silver for will, as gold for love.

"Yes, and that is just the way it really is, after all! Father, mother; yes, and grandpap, too, and grandmam, and others whose names I ought to know, but do not. All are here--none missing. No, not all, either; I do not see dear old Pow-wow. And I must see him. He will make me laugh, and I must laugh, or I may die yet. I thought I heard him bark but now."

CHAPTER XXII.

Pow-wow.

Pow-wow had not barked within hearing of the fort since the evening he had found his little master down there at the foot of the precipice. He had gone and come, hastening back when he went, lingering when he came--a silent, sad and thoughtful dog. By some inscrutable operation of instinct he had soon discovered that the errands which led Ben and Bertha daily abroad had a reference in some way to the wants of his unfortunate little friend, and that, therefore, it was his bounden duty to lend a helping hand. Accordingly he had divided his time about equally between the two young people; helping the one about the wild herds of the forest, the other about the tame herds of the field. In the morning he would follow the young hunter to the distant lick, and, having acquitted himself in the chase, with his wonted address, he would hasten back to the fort, leaving his companion to follow at that plodding pace peculiar to two-footed animals, and so irksome to dogs, to accommodate themselves to which they must needs trot out, on a magnified scale, the ground plan of a straggling worm fence, with wide digression to right and left; now to sniff at a stump, then to bark down a sinkhole. In the afternoon he would accompany Bertha to the bluegra.s.s glades, where he would take her charge so completely upon himself as to leave her nothing to do but clamber up the hill for a fresh culling of flowers, then follow him, as homeward he drove the cows.

When not occupied thus, he would station himself on the porch at the door of the sick room, looking up wistfully into every face that pa.s.sed him, in the poor, dumb, asking way, which so endears a dog to us when the shadow of death is on our home. He had never ventured to intrude himself into the house, but now that he was called, the grateful look and humble alertness with which he answered the summons testified how earnestly he had wished to do all along. Setting his feet as carefully on the floor as were he shod with heavy shoes, that, too, without a warning whisper in the ear from Ben's mother, he slowly walked up to the bedside and softly ran his huge head under the little hand, so white and wan, extended to greet and caress him. Pow-wow licked the hand in the dear old way, and the familiar sensation helped, not a little, to rea.s.sure the boy of his own ident.i.ty and make him more present to the state of things around him. And it was strange how much more natural his voice and manner became the moment he began speaking to his old play-fellow; though what he spoke was hardly less fantastic or more coherent than the greater part of what he had spoken already.

"Pow-wow, is it really you, old pard, and no mistake? And are we all alive and here at grandpap's house, and no dreaming about it? (Pausing to pat the old dog's head.) Pow-wow, did Nick of the Woods ever give you a pair of red moccasins? No, he never did, because he knew you weren't a fool. (Here closing his eyes and seeming for a moment to forget the dog.) Pow-wow, were you ever chased by the Manitous? No, you never were, for you never sneaked away from home with a lie in your mouth, like a spit-thief dog. (Again closing his eyes for a few moments, to open them again and add:) The Manitous chase n.o.body but bad people, and chase them only to make them good. (Pausing to play with the old dog's ear.) And so they have chased your old Sprigg, Pow-wow; chased him out of the world!

You shall never see your old friend Sprigg again! Never! Never! Never!"

(Now giving the old dog's ragged ear a certain pluck which had always been well understood between them.)

At each repet.i.tion of his name the only part of his little master's speech which had any sound of English to his ear, Pow-wow would fall to wagging his tail in a hearty, emphatic manner, as were he, Chinaman-like, shaking hands with himself over the glad event of the day. But on receiving the pluck of the ear, in the dear old way, the dear old fellow, quick to take the hint, gave vent to a sort of double yelp, peculiar to him when in a waggish humor--a smothered nasal "boo-woo," so irresistibly ludicrous that it had always made Sprigg laugh, as now it did, right heartily. This is but the prelude to what needs must follow. Up he rears himself on his hind legs, snaps at the imaginary bone thrown up by an imaginary hand, catches it in his mouth, drops with it to the floor, and, stretching himself out at full length, pretends to gnaw what he pretends to hold between his paws. But this was Pow-wow's only accomplishment--fancy accomplishment, I mean--for he was a finished hunter and a finis.h.i.+ng fighter, and we have seen for ourselves that he knew exactly what to do with cows when he went with a nice little girl to the pasture to help her drive them home. Therefore, finding himself at the end of his programme sooner than the occasion seemed to demand, he raised himself to his haunches and looked around him with a deprecating air, as if he would fain apologize for his deficiencies.

Hardly, however, could the apology have been expressed in words, when up he bounces again to his hind feet and begins executing a series of antics, so fantastic and undog-like that they who witnessed them were quite as much astonished as amused. Jervis Whitney himself, than whom there was not a man in the hunter's paradise more deeply versed in dogs and their ways, and who thought he knew his own dog from head to tail and back again, was even more astonished than the rest. Had old Mother Hubbard and her far-famed dog risen from their honored graves and, presenting themselves before our friends, repeated the dear old programme, from the cupboard so bare, to the bier so sad, with the fruits and the flue, the tripe and the pipe, the wig and the jig, and all the other fondly remembered marvels between--scarcely could the effect have been more startling.

Now, Pow-wow's antics on this occasion, unaccountable as they seemed to those who witnessed them, and must seem to the more sober cla.s.s of my readers, admit of perfectly rational explanation, give them only Manitou ground to rest on. Nick of the Woods and Meg of the Hills, who knew as well as anybody--better, I fear, than many a human body--that there are few things more wholesome for us poor mortals than hearty, unrestrained, unrestrainable, innocent laughter, had decided between them that, in order to put his case beyond all human or superhuman possibility of relapse, Sprigg should have some hearty laughter. Accordingly, they had sent one of their dog-robed, dog-natured elves to tinker and conjure with Pow-wow's tail, and through that sensitive member, as a medium, telegraph, as it were, such fancies to his sober old noddle as should, for a brief s.p.a.ce, set him quite beside himself. In other words, set him to acting the human, according to the monkey conception of the character. A conception so nearly suits an occasional specimen of the model race as scarcely to be deemed caricature.

And Sprigg did laugh--laughed till his sore sides ached--laughed "fit to die," as they say, when they mean the very opposite--"fit to live."

After such a laugh, Sprigg was in no more danger of dying than had all the doctors, with their doses; all the preachers, with their prayers, stood between him and the grave. Of course, everybody else was laughing; not but that they felt still more inclined to cry, so touching was it to witness the old dog's clumsy playfulness and the little sufferer's spasmodic merriment--for spasmodic it needs must be, as yet, though so hearty, heart-easing and wholesome. Indeed, there are few things more pathetical than the innocent mirth of the young heart, over whose dawning existence has already fallen, though but for a brief s.p.a.ce, the shadow of the inevitable hour. And I will venture to affirm, upon the strength of my own experience and observation, that if you, my gentle reader, had been present and witnessed, without both tears and laughter, the scene I am describing, you would be as fit a subject for a "putting through" as ever was poor Sprigg; and that, sooner or later for your fuller humanizing, you must run the Manitou gauntlet. And whether you run it in red moccasins or in split-leather Yankee shoes, all one will it be to Nick of the Woods!

CHAPTER XXIII.

Young Ben Logan.

Pow-wow was still performing, Sprigg still laughing, the rest of the company still in a maze of delighted bewilderment, when, home from the forest, in came rolling young Ben Logan. He had heard the good news at the gate, and now, as if feeling there was no further need of his being tender-footed, he came lumbering through the house, making every loose board he trod on a speaking witness to the joy of his heart. "Actions speak louder than words," so they say; and yet it does so happen sometimes, but very rarely, mind you, that what they say is a good deal louder than what they do. At sight of the young hunter, Pow-wow had cut short his antics, or, rather, was made to cut them short--the Manitou inspiration, to which they had been due, departing from him as suddenly as it had entered; and subsiding to his haunches, he became in an instant as quiet and solemn as a tumbler between cues. In the joy of the moment, Ben had forgotten to leave his rifle at the door, and now, with it in his left hand rested on the floor, he stood by the bedside of his strangely fated little friend, a heroic smell of gunpowder and buckskin boisterous in the air about him, and on his face a look of benignant wonderment, as he gazed down into the newly reopened eyes, whose light had so well nigh been lost in the shadows of death. Bright and clear as were the eyes turned up to his own, they were still hardly capable of more than a dreamy perception of what they looked on. Taking the little hand, so white and wan, in his own huge, powder-begrimed paw, and shaking it gently from side to side, in a wag-tail way, Ben, after some moments of silence, said:

"Howd'y do, Sprigg?"

"My name is Sprigg, then, sure enough?"

"If it isn't I don't know the man I'm talking to; never did--stranger to me."

"And is your name Ben Logan?"

"If it isn't I don't know the man that's talking to you; never did--stranger to me."

"And these two pretty people here, are they my father and mother, really, now?"

"If they ain't so now, they never were so and never will be so, in this world." Delivered with much solemnity and some stress on "now" and "this."

"And this place, where we all are, is it really grandpap's house, and no mistake?"

"If it isn't you can't prove it by me. It's just where I left just such a house this morning, though it doesn't look much like the same place, either, with you wide awake in it, and old Pow-wow on his hind legs in it, and both so jolly."

"And that little girl there, at the foot of my bed, is her name Bertha?"

Here Ben paused before answering, regarding the person referred to with a look of some perplexity. "Well, she used to answer to that name, but here lately she don't answer to any when I call her; goes about like one in a traveling dream. There she stands, a-gazing at you with a far-off look in her eyes, as though you were on the other side of the Kentucky river, and not a living thing anear you. Bertha!" Here Ben elevated his voice a little. Bertha turned her eyes toward the speaker, though apparently with as little perception of his actual presence as though he were lying at the bottom of the river he had named. "There, you see how she does, and that's the way she's doing all the time. When she wakes up she won't know any more for a minute where she is than you did, before I told you. She's either in love, or fixing to be a ghost."

What young Ben Logan meant by this concluding remark were hard to imagine; unless, indeed, he had in his mind the idea of a little angel, when he said "ghost." After receiving each answer, Sprigg would pause for a few moments to consider what he had heard and a.s.sure himself of its meaning before proceeding further. Now, after a somewhat longer pause than before, he put the startling question:

"Ben, did you ever see Nick of the Woods?" To which he received the equally startling answer:

"Well, if I didn't see him to-day, it wasn't because I didn't stare with all the eyes I had. I never saw the woods behave so in all my life before. There a tree, just one tree, would fall to waving its limbs and shaking its leaves, making the liveliest flutter, and all the rest of the trees as still as mice when the cat's about. And there went smoke a-rolling up in puffs as big as feather beds, and not a sign of fire to show for it, that I could see. And there went fire a-shooting up in flames higher than my head, and not the sign of a stick of wood to show for it, that I could see. And here went shadows, skipping and dodging about, and not the sign of a living thing to do the skipping and dodging, that I could see. And there were voices all about me--some on this side, others on that; some close at my ear, and others far away--all talking the strangest gibberish, and not the sign of a living thing to do the talking, that I could see."

"Weren't you terribly frightened, Ben?"

"Well, at first I did feel queer--just a little queer, up and down the back and about the roots of my hair--but just as I had c.o.c.ked my gun, and was looking about me for something to let fly at--plump! It was all gone as quick as the blowing out of a candle. Then I felt a little better, and after a short while a great deal better--real good and easy.

I don't know why, but it's just so."

Each time, after giving his answer, and while Sprigg would be pausing to consider it, Ben would fill up the interval with another wag-tail shake of the hand he still held in his own, thereby lengthening out his answer with something he had omitted to express in words. Now, after two or three of the supplementary shakes, he did bethink him to put the something else in words.

"But, Sprigg, you are looking a great deal better than I expected to find you. Though I needn't wonder so much at that, either, for they wanted to feed you on trash--squirrels and birds, and I wouldn't let 'em. Tell us--me and Pow-wow--how you liked the buffalo we brought home for you yesterday?"

"Oh, very much, I am sure."

"And the fat, young bear we brought you the day before yesterday?"

"Better still, I am certain."

"And the fat, young buck we brought you the day before that?"

"Best of all; and if I didn't tell you so at the time it was because I was asleep and thinking about something else. And now I am beginning to find out what my heart has been trying to tell me all this while. I see it in Bertha's face. I see it in Ben's face--in the face of every one here--how good and kind you have been to me since I have been lying here; and I so undeserving. I should be thankful you had kept me alive, were it but to tell you how I love you all as I have never loved any one before."

Now were the tears in his eyes, which, up to this moment, had been so bright and clear--tears that went on telling the grat.i.tude and love which the lips had left but half expressed. Ben had already had some two or three little spells of filling up and choking down; of feeling soft and breathing hard, so touching was it, so touching is it always to witness the grat.i.tude of the poor human heart to poor human love for poor human life; and this was just more than the good fellow could bear without some noise. Abruptly checking himself in the midst of another wag-tail shake, he laid the little hand on the bed as carefully as you would a gla.s.s of water on the table, right side up, and hurried out of the house like one who had overstayed his time and must rush to make ends meet. He went no farther, however, than just out of doors, where, finding room for his heart to expand in, roared out in a voice perfectly tremendous for one of his age:

"Hurrah for General Was.h.i.+ngton! Hurrah for Colonel Boone! Hurrah for Sprigg!" And bang! went his gun.