Beadle's Dime Library, No. 13 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_— the wrong, Ben. that we di “etill a Or & man. ‘stains u , The features of the ruftians blanched with horror. Believing that they saw before them his hands, stood motionless a long He'll have his own way, if it costs a man or two.’ “ Don’t talk of our quarrel, because you’s ir I've been sorry, sometimes d that. A smart trapper was An- drew Jeanjean, I knowed him several years ago. He ’peard a hearty, honest chap, allers ulet exvugh, if you minded your business and dn’t meddle with his’n. I b’longed to a bri- gade with him a short time, and that was the way I met tps to know him. We had a lit- tle trouble onee, for he ’eused me of takin’ ‘beaver and otter from his traps, which,” added Zene, ingenuously, “I sartinly did. I told him he lied, when he knocked me down without ceremony. If he hadn’t done that, I don't think he’d be sleepin’ down in the canon.” “Bah! there allers was a white stripe in you, You must l’arn to look upon these things a¢ matters of business. We're the lords o’ the sile, and all that don’t b’long to our jolly boys ig our prey, and must pay tribute tous. A conscience, Zene Beck, is a useless piece o’ lum- ber to be totin’ about in the mountains.” Then aa his dogged eyes to Sebastian, added, dressing Bite : “Tl git ye to go out, and dig a hole to put that sparrow-legged boy in _ The sparrow-legged boy, although very pale, Was more self-possessed than could have been anticipated at the outset, and did not appear to heed this sinister observation. It must not be supposed that the anger of Joice had cooled ; on the contrary, their villainous conversation had excited and rendered it more dangerous, though, perhaps, less impetuous. In fact, both the ruffians were racking their brains for an ar- tifice or expedient by which to free themselves | from their awkward dilemn a. ‘* Poor Jeanjean!” said Beck, perceiving that this topie affected Sebastian.” I dreamed about him last night. But ’twas in the way o’ busi- ness, a8 you say ; and arter all, it don’t make no great difference whether we pop over a, bufaler Yah! yah!” ; _Zene Beck suddenly thrust his head in the direction of Sebastian, and making a horrible face, perpetrated the last exclamations in a style that would have startled one unused to the freaks of free trappers. The boy recoiled. 5 Wah! wah !”’ vociferated Joice, with an ex- plosiveness that was yet more alarming. _,A. slight thrill ran over the boy, but he grasped the knives more firmly. +here was a rustling of leaves, & crackling of twigs breaking beneath footsteps. A pale, haggard face presented itself at the door ; the eyes were large, fixed, and expressionless. It was the wounded trapper. The bandage had slipped from his head, and there were fresh, red n his hair around the wound. the ghost of the murdered trapper, they sprang through the side of the camp as if its frail walls were pasteboard, and ran from the spot as if gi by an avenging angel. Sebastian eard them bounding away with the speed of hunted buffaloes, an clasping his brow with | time. When, at length, he looked up» the wounded man had not changed his attitude, nor his stony vacancy of fe ane tees y-and-by he timidly approached the dogs, and as they did not rahe] is advances, he sat down by Smuggler, stroked his glossy coat with childlike satisfaction and curiosity. The instinct of the animals told them that Andrew Jeanjean was one to be dealt gently with. Oc- casionally he paused, as if a laggard ray of reason had overtaken him, but could find no fitting entrance to the temple of Understand. ing. Usually, when this occurred, he mutter- » and sang snatches of “ The Trapper’s Daughter.” Sebastian, having in a measure recovered ‘from his trepidation, looked out anxiously for Nick ; but pereeiving no welcome sign of his coming, consoled himself as best he could, un- der the cireumstances. _“ It’s not time, yet,” he said. “Trapper Valley is a long walk from here.” Anon he added, complainin y; “*Am I never to lose sight of those fearful men? They pass before me like spectres. Their appearance revives recollections that fill me with terror. But I must struggle to be brave and cheerful on ick’s account as well as my own, Kind, quaint Nick! His presence makes me feel sometimes content—almost happy. And why not quite happy ?” he continued, musingly. The you op per as if to tind an answer to this question, He went on: e, and | . Pathaway. “Then comes this man: Pathaway. shall I say of this man Pathaway ?” Sebastian was troubled. This query per- plexed him, apparently, more than the pre- vious one. He stood with clasped hands and bent head, thinking of ita long time; then he one slowly back and forth under the trees fore the camp, pursuing, perhaps, the same train of thought, which was finally interrupt- ed by the return of Nick and Pathaway, ac- companied by the French voyageur. ‘‘ What's the diffikilty, little ‘un ?” inquired Nicholas, glancing about curiously. “ Been makin’ a hole in the side o’ the camp, hain’t e? That’s to let more oxygin in, I spose.” “ T’ve had visitors, Nicholas,” answered Se- bastian, with a perceptible shiver. “ Unwel- come guests, I assure you—Ben Joice and Ze- nas Beck. They revived such—~” “Yes, I understan’!” interposed Nick. - tae frightened ye about to death, I’ll be bound. I wish I'd been here, by mighty! Wouldn’t they ketched it? Wouldn't they got sunthin’?” he added, raising his voice and his hands at the same moment, “ wouldn't they got sunthin’ that they never got afore, and wouldn’t never had no need on ag’in? Did they hurt ou, sonny? Did they lay a finger on ye, umbug? If they did, jes’ say the word, and my head sha’n’t touch blanket ag’in till the mean skunks have got their desarts. Where was Smuggler ? here on airth was Misfor- « Present and faithful. They behaved nobly. Fi ae been a credit to you, Uficle Nick. “Loo and satisfy yourself.” Sebastian pointed to the keg and the trap- per's rifles. The whole truth suggested itself to Nick at once. His kindly countenance beamed beney- ‘olently upon his canine friends. “T have observed,” said Pathaway, “ that ‘you display singular taste in the names of your dogs and horse.” Although the gray hunter addressed this re- mark to Nick, his attention was fixed upon Se- bastian with a wondering, perplexed intensity that was almost painfal “ Yes,” answered Nick, mildly, “I have my idees. Everybody has his idees. I change the names of my animiles, ’casionally, same as the Ingins change the names of their braves. That critter’s name used to be Calamity ; but arter I got into the p’ison newspapers, I changed it to Misfortin.”’ At that moment, Portneuf, who had been carried by Daphnis thé latter part of the way, esught sight of the Wounded trapper, and evinced considerable surprise. “Ah! what do I see! It is my ver’ good friend, Andrew Jeanjean! Mon Dieu. Is’all be ver’ much amaze. What has happen?” “This,” said Nick to Sebastian, ‘is Port- neuf the voyageur. We found him ina dread- ful plight—with a rope round Lis neck, and his horse for his exedutioner. He was starvin’ and sufferin’ horribly. Look at him, sonny, and see what terrible goin’s on there is down in Trapper Valley. “Oh! oh!” exclaimed Sebastian. “And, Ptoo, for that matter, and all the rest of the alphabit. A day or two in that po- sition will put white threads in the blackest hair, I allow. But don’t think on't—don't think on’t! It’s too much for a lad who’s so ruinated, as twere, by the scarlet fever; and not so much by the searlet fever as by other things neither.” There was something in the tenderness with which Nick treated the boy, and the readiness with which he made excuses for his girlish weaknesses, that excited in a pre-eminent man- ner the interest of Pathaway. He had ob- served, as who would not, that the trapper’s apologies were not always consistent, but al- most without exception contradictory, and that he unconsciously mixed them with the ludicrous. “Ninon ?” queried Sebastian, earnestly. Nicholas shook his head sorrowfully. “ Nothin’ yet—nothin’ yet but we’re all hopin’ for the best; and,” he added, philoso- phically, “ when sevril people hope for athing airnest, it’s apt to happen. I’ve obsarved it time arter time, and the cowincidence was startlin’; and not startlin’ neither, but oncom- mon; and not so much oncommon,” he con- tinued, reverentially, in a lower voice, “as providential.” “Who is this Jeanjean?” asked Pathaway, addressing the voyageur. “A trapper, and once a bourgeois I knew him yer" wel'™ Then to Jeanjean : * How do What | am em mm mm mmm mmm . 15 pale! I you do, mon friend? Ah! how nevare s’all see you so pale !” “Oh! the trapper’s daughter— Oh ! the trapper’s daughter !” sang Jeanjean, in accents more plaintive than ordinary. “T s’all be so—what you call him—aston- ish!” said Portneuf, quite bewildered by the strange manner of the trapper. “ He’s been in a condemned little diffikilty ; and not so little, neither, for it upset all his fakilties and nighabout snuffed the candle of his life,” answered Nick, explanatorily. “ You see a man afore ye that’s been shot, exassinat- ed, killed, baied. resurrectionized, and resuf- foeated, all o’ which happened in a lonesome canon not fur from Trapper Valley. This is the man’’—pointing to Pathaway—* who did it; and that isn’t what I mean, neither; but that he dug him up and brung himto. Sebas- tian, we must go to cookin’; for the Freneh- man’s stomich is as holler as a drum, and hol- lerer too; for a drum’s full o’ air, and I'll be hanged if he looks as if he had a thimble full on’t to spare. Rattle out the camp-kettle and stew-pan, and mind and not hit ‘em ag’in them brittle legs o’ your’n. There's no Doctor Whitfles here to set bones. He was what is called a nat’ral bone-setter. Be in a hurry, lad, for we've got the condemndest stumich to cook for that ever darkened a camp-door. Our family’s increasin’, sonny. We'll havea hospital here by-and-by, by mighty! Spent ® year in a hospital once, I did, when I’sa boy, etudyin’ doctor stuff. That was down in the elearin’s, afore I took to the bush. The hos- pital I was in was suntimes called an Infarm- 1 ” “Infirmary,” suggested Sebastian. “’Bliged to ye, little un. Remember the head of the ‘stablishment very well. Seems as if I could see him smokin’ his short pipe ; for a confarmed smoker of the narcootie weea was the doctor. There wasn't his equal in tell- in’ stories, neither. To hear him, you'd think that he’d conquered all the disorders, com- plaints, maladies, eperdemics, plagues, a tions, and other sicknesses that humans is su jeck to. He hated minerils dreadful, and said that all sorts o’ calomy—another slice, little ‘un—red lead, blue-pill, and canine was p'ison to the system. Arter I'd been there awhile, the doctor used to let me try my hand at them that he was practicin’ at. You'd oughter seen,” added Nick, holding out the stew-pan in one hand, and a fagot’ in the other, “the fixin’s he had in his infarmity—the hot baths, the cold baths, and the b’ilers; ’specially the b‘ilers—steam-bexes he tarmed ‘um ; but they’s regJar b’ilers, by. mighty! You see there’s some affections—don't cut your fingers, aay —that won't come out ’eept by b/ilin’. e used to bile’em right smart! I got to be mas- ter b’iler afore three months. Well, as I's sayin’—don’t step into the kittle, boy, and don’t be lookin’ at me so queer—he let me have a chanee now and then at ’em. He hap- péned to have ’mong his patients an Irishman "2h a bad leg, which was a fever-sore or some- thin’ 6’ that natur. The doctor had a good ‘eal o’ country practice, and was often gone a week at a time, like an old-fashioned Methodist minister on a eireuit. This was about the time when the hot-crop systum begun to be in vogue, which was many years ago. Now the doetor didn’t go by guess-work, but allers had a lan which he follered. He cured every- thing with a Lobely course o’ medicine, the botanic name of which was screw-auger. A course 0’ medicine was a ’metic, and a ’metie was a course o’ medicine.” “*T'm goin’ away,’ sez the doctor, arter he’d showed me the patient. “« Very well,’ sez I. «“*This is a bad leg,’ sez he. «“<¢ It's a condemned bad leg!’ sez I. « «Tie must throw it up,’ sez he. «¢ Nothin’ more nor less,’ sez I. ««Give him @ ‘metic every day till I gis back,’ sez he. «“ «Will it "fect the leg ? sez I. ‘©*"Twon’t ‘fect nothin’ else.’ seg he. * And be sure, to keep him in a horiz “tal position “*As horizontal as you please, sex L ‘Then the doctor got into his wide one-hess gig, like that my gran’father traveled in in Centril Afriky, tetched up bis cld white hoss, and trundled away, saddle-bags, Lobely, kian, end all.’” Nick gave the stew-pan a shake, and set it over the fire again. * Well,” he added, “I went at the critter The doctor was gone sixteen days, and I puked (E| o(0)(6) ecoilm CSa(EO) ee a ee EA ee ee a NE