Our Home in the Silver West Part 31

'Another Archie!' said Dugald, 'and a countryman, too?'

'He is shy of strangers. Archie, boy! He is swinging in some tree-top, no doubt.'

'What a queer fellow he must be! Wears nothing but the kilt, speaks Gaelic, swings in tree-tops, and is shy! A _rara avis_ indeed.'

'Ah! here he comes. Archie, spread the awning out of doors, lay the table, bring a jug of cold _mate_ and the cigars.'

Truly Archie was a curious Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie, and though the hermit a.s.sured us he was only a baby when he bought him in Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety--wrinkled, wizened, and weird.

But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit called his kilt. He was, in fact, an African orang-outang.

'Come and shake hands with the good gentlemen, Archie.'

Archie knitted his brows, and looked at us without moving. The hermit laughingly handed him a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles. These he put on with all the gravity of some ancient professor of Sanscrit, then looked us all over once again.

We could stand this no longer, and so burst into a chorus of laughing.

'Don't laugh longer than you can help, boys. See, Archie is angry.'

Archie was. He showed a mouth full of fearful-looking fangs, and fingered his club in a way that was not pleasant.

'Archie, you may have some peaches presently.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interview with the Orang-outang]

Archie grew pleasant again in a moment, and advanced and shook hands with us all round, looking all the time, however, as if he had some silent sorrow somewhere. I confess he wrung our hands pretty hard. Neither my brother nor I made any remark, but when it came to Archie's turn--

'Honolulu!' he shouted, shaking his fingers, and blowing on them. 'I believe he has made the blood come!'

'I suppose,' said Dugald, laughing, 'he knows you are a namesake.'

Off went the great baboon, and to our intense astonishment spread the awning, placed table and camp-stools under it, and fetched the cold _mate_ with all the gravity and decorum of the chief steward on a first-cla.s.s liner.

I looked at my brothers, and they looked at me.

'You seem all surprised,' the hermit said, 'but remember that in olden times it was no rare thing to see baboons of this same species waiting at the tables of your English n.o.bility. Well, I am not only a n.o.ble, but a king; why should not I also have an anthropoid as a butler and valet?'

'I confess,' I said, 'I for one am very much surprised at all I have seen and all that has happened since last night, and I really cannot help thinking that presently I shall awake and find, as the story-books say, it is all a dream.'

'You will find it all a very substantial dream, I do a.s.sure you, sir. But help yourself to the _mate_. You will find it better than any imported stuff.'

'Archie! Archie! Where are you?'

'Ah! ah! Yah, yah, yah!' cried Archie, hopping round behind his master.

'The sugar, Archie.'

'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, yah!'

'Is that Gaelic, Dugald?' said our Archie.

'Not quite, my c.o.c.kney cousin.'

'I thought not.'

'Why?' said Dugald.

'It is much more intelligible.'

The hermit laughed.

'I think, Dugald,' he said, 'your cousin has the best of you.'

He then made us tell him all our strange though brief history, as the reader already knows it. If he asked us questions, however, it was evidently not for the sake of inquisitiveness, but to exchange experiences, and support the conversation. He was quite as ready to impart as to solicit information; but somehow we felt towards him as if he were an elder brother or uncle; and this only proves the hermit was a perfect gentleman.

'Shall you live much longer in this beautiful wilderness?' asked Donald.

'Well, I will tell you all about that,' replied the hermit. 'And the all is very brief. When I came here first I had no intention of making a long stay. I was a trapper and hunter then pure and simple, and sold my skins and other odds and ends which these hills yield--and what these are I must not even tell to you--journeying over the Andes with mules twice every year for that purpose. But gradually, as my trees and bushes and all the beauty of this wild garden-glen grew up around me, and so many of G.o.d's wild children came to keep me company, I got to love my strange life. So from playing at being a hermit, I dare say I have come to be one in reality. And now, though I have money--much more than one would imagine--in the Chilian banks, I do not seem to care to enter civilized life again. For some years back I have been promising myself a city holiday, but I keep putting it off and off. I should not wonder if it never comes, or, to speak more correctly, I should wonder if it ever came.

Oh, I dare say I shall die in my own private wilderness here, with no one to close my eyes but old Archie.'

'Do you still go on journeys to Chili?'

'I still go twice a year. I have strong fleet mules. I go once in summer and once in winter.'

'Going in winter across the Andes! That must be a terribly dreary journey.'

'It is. Yet it has its advantages. I never have to flee from hostile Indians then. They do not like the hills in winter.'

'Are you not afraid of the pampas Indians?'

'No, not at all. They visit me occasionally here, but do not stay long. I trust them, I am kind to them, and I have nothing they could find to steal, even if they cared to be dishonest. But they are _not_. They are good-hearted fellows in their own way.'

'Yes,' I said, 'very much in their own way.'

'My dear boy,' said the hermit, 'you do not know all. A different policy would have made those Indians the sworn friends, the faithful allies and servants of the white man. They would have kept then to their own hunting-grounds, they would have brought to you wealth of skins, and wealth of gold and silver, too, for believe me, they (the Indians) have secrets that the white trader little wots of. No, it is the dishonest, blood-stained policy of the Republic that has made the Indian what he is--his hand against every man, every man's hand against him.'

'But they even attack you at times, I think you gave us to understand?'

'Nay, not the pampas or pampean Indians: only prowling gipsy tribes from the far north. Even they will not when they know me better. My fame is spreading as a seer.'

'As a seer?'

'Yes, a kind of prophet. Do not imagine that I foster any such folly, only they will believe that, living here all alone in the wilds, I must have communication with--ha! ha! a worse world than this.'

As we rose to go the hermit held out his hand.

'Come and see me to-night,' he said; 'and let me advise you to make this glen your headquarters for a time. The hills and glens and bush for leagues around abound in game. Then your way back lies across a pampa north and east of here; not the road you have come.'

'By the by,' said Archie, 'before we go, I want to ask you the question which tramps always put in England: "Are the dogs all safe?"'