Twice Bought, R. M. Ballantyne [ready to read books txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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“Fat is wrong, yoong man?” he inquired, with a look of sleepy surprise.
“Ye may well ax that, sor,” said Flinders, staggering to his feet and seizing his axe, which always lay handy at his side. Paul had glanced round sharply, like a man inured to danger, but seeing nothing to alarm him, had remained in a sitting position.
“Why, Westly, you’ve been dreaming,” he said with a broad grin.
“So I must have been,” returned the youth, looking very much ashamed, “but you’ve no notion what a horrible dream I had. It seemed so real, too, that I could not help jumping up and shouting. Pardon me, comrades, and, as bad boys say when caught in mischief, ‘I won’t do it again!’”
“Ve pardon you, by all means,” said the botanist stretching himself and yawning, “and ve do so vid de more pleasure for you has rouse us in time for start on de joorney.”
“You’re about right. It’s time we was off,” said Paul, rising slowly to his feet and looking round the horizon and up at the sky, while he proceeded to fill a beloved little black pipe, which invariably constituted his preliminary little breakfast.
Pat Flinders busied himself in blowing up the embers of the fire.
A slight and rapidly eaten meal sufficed to prepare these hardy backwoodsmen for their journey, and, long before daybreak illumined the plains, they were far on their way towards the Sawback mountain range.
During the journey of two days, which this trip involved, the botanist seemed to change his character to some extent. He became silent—almost morose; did not encourage the various efforts made by his companions to draw him into conversation, and frequently rode alone in advance of the party, or occasionally fell behind them.
The day after the stranger had joined them, as they were trotting slowly over the plains that lay between the Rangers Hill and the Sawbacks, Fred rode close up to Bevan, and said in a low voice, glancing at the botanist, who was in advance—
“I am convinced, Paul, that he is a scoundrel.”
“That may be so, Mr Fred, but what then?”
“Why, then I conclude that he is deceiving us for some purpose of his own.”
“Nonsense,” replied Bevan, who was apt to express himself bluntly, “what purpose can he serve in deceiving strangers like us! We carry no gold-dust and have nothing worth robbing us of, even if he were fool enough to think of attemptin’ such a thing. Then, he can scarcely be deceivin’ us in sayin’ that he met three Redskins carryin’ off a white man—an’ what good could it do him if he is? Besides, he is goin’ out of his way to sarve us.”
“It is impossible for me to answer your question, Paul, but I understand enough of both French and German to know that his broken English is a mere sham—a mixture, and a bad one too, of what no German or Frenchman would use—so it’s not likely to be the sort of bad English that a Swede would speak. Moreover, I have caught him once or twice using English words correctly at one time and wrongly at another. No, you may depend on it that, whatever his object may be, he is deceiving us.”
“It’s mesilf as agrees wid ye, sor,” said Flinders, who had been listening attentively to the conversation. “The man’s no more a Swede than an Irishman, but what can we do wid oursilves! True or false, he’s ladin’ us in the diriction we want to go, an’ it would do no good to say to him, ‘Ye spalpeen, yer decavin’ of us,’ for he’d only say he wasn’t; or may be he’d cut up rough an’ lave us—but after all, it might be the best way to push him up to that.”
“I think not” said Bevan. “Doesn’t English law say that a man should be held innocent till he’s proved guilty?”
“It’s little I know or care about English law,” answered Flinders, “but I’m sure enough that Irish law howlds a bad man to be guilty till he’s proved innocent—at laste av it dosn’t it should.”
“You’d better go an’ pump him a bit, Mr Fred,” said Bevan; “we’re close up to the Sawback range; another hour an’ we’ll be among the mountains.”
They were turning round the spur of a little hillock as he spoke. Before Fred could reply a small deer sprang from its lair, cast on the intruders one startled gaze, and then bounded gracefully into the bush, too late, however, to escape from Bevan’s deadly rifle. It had barely gone ten yards when a sharp crack was heard; the animal sprang high into the air, and fell dead upon the ground.
“Bad luck to ye, Bevan!” exclaimed Flinders, who had also taken aim at it, but not with sufficient speed, “isn’t that always the way ye do?—plucks the baste out o’ me very hand. Sure I had me sights lined on it as straight as could be; wan second more an’ I’d have sent a bullet right into its brain, when crack! ye go before me. Och! it’s onkind, to say the laste of it. Why cudn’t ye gi’ me a chance?”
“I’m sorry, Flinders, but I couldn’t well help it. The critter rose right in front o’ me.”
“Vat a goot shote you is!” exclaimed the botanist riding back to them and surveying the prostrate deer through his blue spectacles.
“Ay, and it’s a lucky shot too,” said Fred, “for our provisions are running low. But perchance we shan’t want much more food before reaching the Indian camp. You said, I think, that you have a good guess where the camp lies, Mister—what shall we call you?”
“Call me vat you please,” returned the stranger, with a peculiar smile; “I is not partickler. Some of me frunds calls me Mr Botaniste.”
“Well, Mr Botanist, the camp cannot be far off now, an’ it seems to me that we should have overtaken men travelling on foot by this time.”
“Ye vill surely come on de tracks dis naight or de morrow,” replied the botanist, riding forward, after Bevan had secured the carcass of the deer to his saddle-bow, “bot ye must have patience, yoong blood be always too hote. All in goot time.”
With this reply Fred was fain to content himself, for no amount of pressure availed to draw anything more satisfactory out of their strange guide.
Before sunset they had penetrated some distance into the Sawback range, and then proceeded to make their encampment for the night under the spreading branches of a lordly pine!
Tables are frequently turned in this world in more senses than one. As was said in the last chapter, the romantic pair who were in search of the Indians did not find those for whom they sought but as fickle fortune willed it, those for whom they sought found them. It happened thus.
Soon after the Rose of Oregon and her young champion, with their captors, had passed through the Long Gap, crossed the plain, and entered the Sawback Hills, they fell in with a band of twenty Indians, who from their appearance and costume evidently belonged to the same tribe as their captors. From the manner in which they met also, it seemed that they had been in search of each other, and had something interesting to communicate, for they gesticulated much, pointed frequently to the sky, and to various directions of the compass, chattered excitedly, showed their brilliant teeth in fitful gleams, and glittered quite awfully about the eyes.
They paid little attention at first to their prisoners, who remained sitting on their steeds looking on with interest and some anxiety.
“O Betty, what would I not give to have my arms free just now! What a chance it would be for a bold dash and a glorious run!”
“You’d make little of it on such rough ground, Tolly.”
“Pooh! I’d try it on any ground. Just fancy, I’d begin with a clear leap over that chief’s head—the one there wi’ the feathers an’ the long nose that’s makin’ such hideous faces—then away up the glen, over the stones, down the hollows, shoutin’ like mad, an’ clearin’ the brooks and precipices with a band o’ yellin’ Redskins at my tail! Isn’t it enough to drive a fellow wild to be on the brink of such a chance an’ miss it? I say, haven’t you got a penknife in your pocket—no? Not even a pair o’ scissors? Why, I thought you women never travelled without scissors!”
“Alas! Tolly, I have not even scissors; besides, if I had, it would take me at least two minutes with all the strength of my fingers to cut the thongs that bind you with scissors, and I don’t think the Redskins would stand quietly by and look on while I did it. But what say you to me trying it by myself?”
“Quite useless,” returned Tolly. “You’d be caught at once—or break your neck. And you’d never get on, you know, without me. No, no, we’ve got fairly into a fix, an’ I don’t see my way out of it. If my hands were free we might attempt anything, but what can a fellow do when tied up in this fashion?”
“He can submit, Tolly, and wait patiently.”
Tolly did not feel inclined to submit, and was not possessed of much patience, but he was too fond of Betty to answer flippantly. He therefore let his feelings escape through the safety-valve of a great sigh, and relapsed into pensive silence.
Meanwhile the attention of the band of savages was attracted to another small band of natives which approached them from the eastward. That these were also friends was evident from the fact that the larger band made no hostile demonstration, but quietly awaited the coming up of the others. The newcomers were three in number, and two of them bore on their shoulders what appeared to be the body of a man wrapped up in a blanket.
“They’ve got a wounded comrade with them, I think,” said little Trevor.
“So it would seem,” replied Betty, with a dash of pity in her tone, for she was powerfully sympathetic.
The savages laid the form in the blanket on the ground, and began to talk earnestly with their comrades.
“It’s not dead yet anyhow,” remarked Tolly, “for I see it move. I wonder whether it is a man or a woman. Mayhap it’s their old grandmother they’re giving a little exercise to. I’ve heard that some o’ the Redskins are affectionate sort o’ fellows, though most of ’em are hard enough on the old folk.”
As he spoke he looked up in Betty’s face. Just as he did so a startling change came over that face. It suddenly became ashy pale, the large eyes dilated to their utmost extent, and the mouth opened with a short gasp.
In great alarm the boy turned his eyes in the direction in which the girl gazed so fixedly, and then his own visage assumed a somewhat similar appearance as he beheld the pale, thin, cadaverous countenance of his friend Tom Brixton, from off which a corner of the blanket had just slipped. But for the slight motion above referred to Tom might have been mistaken for a dead man, for his eyes were closed and his lips bloodless.
Uttering a sudden shout Tolly Trevor flung himself headlong off the pony and tried to get on his feet but failed, owing to his hands being tied behind him. Betty also leaped to the ground, and, running to where Tom lay, went down on her knees and raised his head in her hands.
The poor youth, being roused, opened his eyes. They were terribly sunken and large, but when they met those of Betty they enlarged to an extent that seemed positively awful, and a faint tinge of colour came to his hollow cheeks.
“Betty!” he whispered; “can—can it
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