Lippincotts Magazine, August, 1885 | Page 7

military fort, where, having made friends with "a pleasant, gentlemanly set of fellows," the commanding officer, "a friendly old buffer," had courteously given them an escort to protect them from "those dirty, treacherous brutes, the Indians." Not a joy was wanting in this crowning bliss. The guide was "a wonderful chap named Big-Foot Williams, so called by the Indians, good all around from knocking over a rabbit to tackling a grizzly," with an amazing knowledge of woodcraft, "a nose like a bloodhound, an eye as cool as a toad's." No special mention was made of his ear; but the first time he got off his horse and applied it to the earth, listening for the tramp of distant hoofs in a hushed silence, one bosom could hardly hold all the rapture that filled Mr. Ramsay's figurative cup up to the brim. And the tales he told of savageness long drawn out were as dew to the parched herb, greedily absorbed at every pore. A portrait of "Black Eagle," a noted chief, was given when they got among the Indians,--"a great hulking slugger of a savage, awfully interesting, long, reaching step, magnificent muscles, snake eye, could thrash us all in turn if he liked. The best of the lot."
Even the noble red man was not insensible to the charms of this graceful, handsome young athlete who smiled at them perpetually and said, "_Amigo! amigo_!" at short intervals,--a phrase suggested by the redoubtable Williams and varied occasionally by a prefix of his own, "_Muchee amigo_!" The way in which he tested the elasticity of their bows, inspected their guns, the game they had killed, the other natural objects about them, aroused a certain sympathy, perhaps. At any rate, they were soon teaching him their mode of using the most picturesquely murderous of all weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was declined, the skin accepted, a quid pro quo being bestowed on the chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when he shot an arrow straight through the neck of a big buffalo, and, wheeling, galloped madly away, like the hero of one of his favorite stories? Was not the duke, who "knew a thing or two about shooting" and had hunted the noble bison in Lithuania, almost as much delighted as though he had done it himself? Is it any wonder that these intoxicating pleasures were all-sufficient for the time to Mr. Ramsay? Perhaps Thekla would have been forgotten by her Max, and Romeo would never have sighed and died for love of Juliet, if those interesting lovers had ceased from wooing and gone a-hunting of the buffalo instead. Not the most deadly and cruel pangs of the most unfortunate attachment could have taken away all the zest from such an occupation, provided they had had what the Mexican journals call the "corazon de los sportsmans." Youth, strength, courage, skill, exercised in a vagabondage that has all the nomadic charm without any of its drawbacks, are apt to sponge the old figures off the slate of life, leaving a teary smear, perhaps, to show where they have been, and room for fresh problems. At night over the camp-fire Mr. Ramsay gave a few pensive thoughts to the girl who regularly put two handkerchiefs under her pillow to receive the tears that welled out copiously when she was at last alone and unobserved after a day of virtuous hypocrisy. Poor child! The pain was very real, and the tears were bitter and salty enough, though they were to be dried in due time. If he had known of them, perhaps he might have kept awake a little longer; but when he wasn't sleepy he was hungry, and when he wasn't hungry he was tired, and when he wasn't tired he was too actively employed to think of anything but the business in hand. Happily, at five-and-twenty it is perfectly possible to postpone being miserable until a more convenient season; and, though he would have denied it emphatically afterward, he certainly thought only occasionally of Bijou at this period, and of Ethel not at all.
Miss Noel heard very regularly from Mrs. Sykes all this while; and that energetic traveller had not been idle. She had made her new friends "take her about tremendously," she said. She had seen all the large towns in that part of the country, and thought them "very ugly and monotonously commonplace, but prosperous-looking,--like the inhabitants." The scenery she had found "far too uninteresting to repay the