The Thorogood Family, R. M. Ballantyne [ebook reader library .txt] 📗

great change. Great, therefore, was his amazement when Reuben begged of him to make arrangements for performing the interrupted marriage ceremony within half-an-hour.

“But you seem to be dying, friend?” said the perplexed pastor.

“That may be so,” replied the hunter quietly, “but Loo wants to be wed before I die, and we’d better waste no time about it.”

There was no resisting this, so the Reverend William Tucker made arrangements for the wedding, while The MacFearsome and his men were busied extinguishing the last sparks of the fire.

It was near midnight before these arrangements were completed. Then the men were summoned once more to the Hall, but how different were their feelings now from what they had been earlier on that day! The occupation of old Fiddlestrings was gone. Even the huge pie was dismissed from the scene. The wedding guests crept quietly in, their gay costumes torn and covered with charcoal, and bearing other evidences of the recent conflict. They were very silent, too, and sad, for they were aware of the critical condition of the bridegroom.

When all was at last prepared a new and unexpected difficulty arose. It was found that Reuben had fallen into a sound sleep!

Thereupon a whispered but anxious conversation took place at the end of the hall farthest from the wounded man’s couch.

“We must waken him,” said MacFearsome, with stern look and tone.

“No, father,” said Loo, with a tearful smile, “we must wait.”

“Your daughter is right,” whispered Mr Tucker. “Whatever be the condition of Reuben, sleep is the best thing for him.”

“But you must start for your conference at four in the morning, and he may not awake before that,” objected MacFearsome.

Their perplexities were suddenly removed by Reuben himself, who awoke while they were consulting, and asked his friend Jacob—who watched at his side with the tenderness of a brother—where Loo had gone to.

“She’s here, Reuben, waitin’ to get married,” replied his friend.

The hunter roused himself, looked hastily round, raised himself one one elbow, and said in a strong voice, “Come, I’m ready now. Let’s get it over.”

Immediately Loo was at his side; the whole party assembled round his couch; the pastor opened his book, and in these exceptional circumstances Reuben Dale and Louisa MacFearsome were married!

“Now, Reuben dear,” whispered Loo, as she pressed his lips, “lie down again and go to sleep.”

“On one condition only,” said the wounded man, with something like a twinkle in his eye, “that you go on with the wedding feast. Jacob says a wedding is worth nothing without a dance. Now, as this wedding is worth all the world to me, Loo, I’m determined that it shall be worth something to my old friend and comrade.”

It was found that remonstrances were in vain, so, as resistance to his wishes might have proved hurtful to the invalid, the wedding feast was continued and carried through with far more vigour than might have been expected, Reuben himself being, apparently, one of the most interested spectators.

So Jacob had his dance, and he performed his part with unwonted energy,—for the sake of pleasing his friend rather than himself.

When the lights were waxing low, and the great pie had been eaten, and old Fiddlestrings had been used up, Reuben called his friend to his side.

“What with searchin’,” he said, “an’ fightin’, and fire-stoppin’ an’ dancin’ you’ve had a pretty stiff time of it, Jacob. But you’re a strong man—leastwise you used to be—an’ I daresay there’s plenty of go in you yet.”

“I’m fresh as a lark, Reuben,” replied his friend. “What want ye wi’ me?”

“I just want ye go fetch your horse, an’ saddle my best buffalo-runner for the parson, an’ take him to Beaver Creek. Do it as fast as you can, Jacob, and by the short cut, and don’t spare the cattle.”

“I’ll do it, Reuben.”

Jacob was a man of few words. He did it, and thus it came to pass that when grey dawn began to break over Mac’s Fort, it found the Reverend William Tucker and his guide scouring over the western plains at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour—more or less—while Reuben Dale lay sound asleep in his blood-stained wedding dress, his strong hand clasping that of pretty little Loo, who was also sound asleep, in an easy chair by his side.

About the same time The MacFearsome flung himself down on his half-burned bed, where in dreams—to judge from his snorting, snoring, and stertorous breathing—he waged war with the whole Blackfeet race single-handed!

When the pastor bade farewell to Reuben he had done so with the sad feelings of one who expected never to see his face again, but the pastor’s judgment was at fault. Reuben Dale lived—he lived to become as strong and able a hunter of the Rocky Mountains as ever he had been; he lived to take Loo to the western settlements, and squat down beside The MacFearsome’s new farm, as a species of hunting farmer; he lived to become a respected member of the Reverend William Tucker’s church in the wilderness, where he filled two pews with little Dales, which, as an Irish comrade remarked, was a dale more than he deserved; and last, but not least, he lived to urge, argue, badger, bamboozle, worry, and haul Jacob Strang up to that “p’int” at which he had so often stuck before, but over which he finally fell, and managed to secure that “dear Liz” who was destined to become the sunshine of his after-life.

In regard to this matter, Jacob was wont to say to his friend at times, when he was particularly confidential, that “the catchin’ of Liz was the best bit of trappin’ he had done since he took to huntin’ in the Rocky Mountains, and that if it hadn’t bin for his chum Reuben Dale, he never would have bin able to come up to the p’int, much less git over it, though he had lived to the age of Methuselah and hunted for a wife all the time.”

“A good story,” said Dick Thorogood, as Fred folded up the manuscript; “but to return to matter of greater importance than this hunter’s wedding, curious though it be: what about emigrating?”

“I’ll go, for one!” exclaimed the blacksmith bringing his huge fist down with a heavy thud on the table.

“John, John, it’s not the anvil you’ve got before you,” said old Moll.

“No, nor yet is my fist the fore-hammer,” rejoined the smith, with sparkling eyes. “Nevertheless, I repeat that I’ll go—always supposing that you and Molly have no objections.”

It was one of the dearest wishes of the old woman’s heart to be near her crippled and favourite son, but she would not commit herself at once.

“What says Molly?” she asked, turning to her daughter.

Molly cast a sidelong glance at Fred, who gave the slightest possible nod, and then said, in her gentle voice, “The sooner we begin to pack the better!”

“Bravo, lass!” cried the young sailor, slapping his thigh; “well said, and we’ll all go together. What say you, boys?”

“Agreed—agreed!” was the hearty reply.

And this was no idle talk. That night at worship, the father of the family spread Jim’s letter, as he said, before the Lord, and asked for guidance. The end of the whole matter was that, a few months later, the Thorogood family emigrated to the backwoods of America, and began that career of useful, energetic, patient, God-directed labour which ended in the formation of a happy garden in a part of the wilderness which had formerly been the haunt of wild beasts and wilder men.

And here, kind reader, we must close our little tale, for it would take a large book, if not two books, to tell the story of that thorough-going family’s adventures while endeavouring to spread the truth in the Far West. Suffice it to say, that they all found what they went in search of—health and happiness—because they sought for these blessings in accordance with the teachings of the blessed Word of God.