death?”
“It can – they have,” is the agonised answer, as the sounds of the chase come fainter from the forest. “They have – they have,” he repeats, and then, as the tide of vengeance surges up in his heart, he cries, through clenched teeth, “O God; give me escape – if but to avenge myself on those villains who have outraged your own image. O God! look down in mercy! Send some one to deliver me!”
Some one to deliver him! He has no hope that any of his late tormentors will return to do it. He had but little from the first. He knows them all, except Spence, the son of the clergyman; and from the late behaviour of this youth, he has seen that he is like the rest. All six are of the same stamp and character, the most dissolute scamps in the country. No hope now; for the bear hunt has borne them far away, and even their yells are no longer heard by him.
Hitherto he has remained silent. It seemed idle to do otherwise. Who was there to hear him, save those who would not have heeded. And his shouts would not have been heard among the howling of hounds, the trampling of horses, and the shrill screeching of six fiends in human form.
Now that silence is around him – deep, solemn silence – a new hope springs up within his breast. Some one might be near, straying through the forest or travelling along the trace. He knows there is a trace. Better he had never trodden it!
But another might be on it. Some one with a human heart. Oh, if it were only Lena!
“Hilloa!” he cries, again and again; “help, help! For the love of God, give help!”
His words are repeated, every one of them, and with distinctness. But, alas, not in answer, only in echo. The giant trunks are but taunting him. A fiend seems to mock him far off in the forest!
He shouts till he is hoarse – till despair causes him to desist. Once more he hangs silent. A wonder he has hung so long. There are few boys, and perhaps fewer men, who could for such a time have sustained the terrible strain, under which even the professional gymnast might have sunk. It is explained by his training, and partly by the Indian blood coursing through his veins. A true child of the forest – a hunter from earliest boyhood – to scale the tall tree, and hang lightly from its limbs, was part of his education. To such as he the hand has a grasp prehensile as the tail of the American monkey, the arm a tension not known to the sons of civilisation.
Fortunate for him it is thus, or perhaps the opposite, since it has only added to his misery by delaying the fate that seems certainly in store for him.
He makes this reflection as he utters his last cry, and once more suffers himself to droop despairingly. So strongly does it shape itself, that he thinks of letting go his hold, and at once and for ever putting an end to his agony.
Death is a terrible alternative. There are few who do not fear to look it in the face – few who will hasten to meet it, so long as the slightest spark of hope glimmers in the distance. Men have been known to spring into the sea, to be swallowed by the tumultuous waves; but it was only when the ship was on fire, or certainly sinking beneath them. This is but fleeing from death to death, when all hope of life is extinguished. Perhaps it is only madness.
But Pierre Robideau – for such is the name of the young hunter – is not mad, and not yet ready to rush to the last terrible alternative.
It is not hope that induces him to hold on – it is only the dread horror of death.
His arm is stretched almost to dislocation of its joints – the sinews drawn tight as a bow-string, and still his fingers clutch firmly to the branch, lapped like iron round it.
His cheeks are colourless; his jaws have dropped till the lips are agape, displaying his white teeth; his eyes protrude as if about to start forth from their sockets.
And yet out of these wild eyes one more glance is given to the glade – one more sweep among the trunks standing around it.
What was seen in that last glaring look?
Was it the form of a fair girl dimly outlined under the shadow of the trees? or was it only that same form conjured up by a fancy flickering on the edge of eternity?
No matter now. It is too late. Even if Lena were there she would not be in time to save him. Nature, tortured to the last throe, can hold out no longer. She relaxes the grasp of Pierre Robideau’s hand, and the next moment he is seen hanging under the branch, with the tightened noose around his neck, and his tongue protruding between his lips, livid with the dark mantling of death!
Story 1-Chapter V.
Two Old Chums
“Bound for Kaliforny, air ye?”
“Yes; that’s the country for me.”
“If what you say’s true, it oughter be the country for more’n you. Air ye sure ’beout it?”
“Seems believing. Look at this.”
The man who gave utterance to the old saw pulled from his pocket a small packet done up in fawn skin, and untying the string, exhibited some glistening nodules of a yellowish colour.
“True; seein’ air believin’, they do say, an’ feelin’ air second nater. Let’s lay my claw on’t.”
The packet was passed into his hands.
“Hang me eft don’t look like gold! an’ it feel like it, too; an’, durn me, ef’t don’t taste like it.”
This after he had put one of the nodules in his mouth, and rolled it over his tongue, as if testing it.
“It is gold,” was the positive rejoinder.
“An’ ye tell me, Dick Tarleton, they find these sort o’ nuts in Kaliforny lyin’ right on the surface o’ the groun’?”
“Almost the same. They dig them out of the bed of a river, and then wash the mud off them. The thing’s been just found out by a man named Captain Sutter while they were clearing out a mill-race. The fellow I got these from’s come direct from there with his bullet-pouch chock full of them, besides several pounds weight of dust in a canvas bag. He was in New Orleans to get it changed into dollars; an’ he did it, too, five thousand in all, picked up, he says, in a spell of three months’ washing. He’s going right back.”
“Burn me ef I oughten’t to go too. Huntin’ ain’t much o’ a bizness hyar any longer. Bar’s gettin’ pretty scace, an’ deer’s most run off altogither from the settlements springin’ up too thick. Besides, these young planters an’ the fellers from the towns air allers ’beout wi’ thar blasted horns, scarin’ everything out of creashun. Thar’s a ruck o’ them kine clost by hyar ’beout a hour ago, full tare arter a bar. Burn ’em! What hev they got to do wi’ bar-huntin’ – a parcel o’ brats o’ boys? Jess as much as this chile kin do’ to keep his ole karkidge from starvin’; and thar’s the gurl, too, growin’ up, an’ nothin’ provided for her but this ole shanty, an’ the patch o’ gurden groun’. I’d pull up sticks and go wi’ ye, only for one thing.”
“What is that, Rook?”
“Wal, wal; I don’t mind tellin’ you, Dick. The gurl’s good-lookin’, an’ thar’s a rich young feller ’pears a bit sweet on her. I don’t much like him myself; but he air rich, or’s boun’ to be when the old ’un goes under. He’s an only son, an’ they’ve got one o’ the slickest cotton plantations in all Arkansaw.”
“Ah,
