Little Rifle; or, The Young Fur Hunters

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

And humming a merry tune, the boy struck off into the wood, and almost instantly vanished from view.

Young, strong and in perfect health it was scarcely possible that he should not be in the best of spirits. There is something in the clear, brilliant, pure air of the Far West and North-west, that penetrates a man’s system like the electric current.

Added to this was that strange, vague, fluttering hope that had risen in his breast, and which as yet he could scarcely comprehend, but with the passing of every hour, the conviction grew upon him that he was upon the eve of a great crisis in his life history. It was a verification of the old legend that “Coming events cast their shadows before.”

The day was as beautifully clear as the preceding one, and the lad moved through the solitude, with an elastic step, that proved that there was no unwillingness upon his part to assume this task, which it may be supposed was attended with no inconsiderable danger.

“How strangely I was rescued,” he muttered, as he walked along. “Heaven sent my unknown friend at the very moment; had he delayed his coming a moment longer, I should not have been here. Uncle Ruff is pretty shrewd, but he can not imagine who the man was, except he thinks in a general way that it was some hunter who has happened to stroll down this way; but there is something which he don’t understand in the way he takes himself off after firing his gun, without waiting for so much as a word of thanks from us. I am glad that Uncle Ruff has sent me off on this scout, for it seems as if I were going toward my friend, with a good chance of meeting.”

The dense woods through which the boy had been making his way thus far, now assumed a different character—being much more open and broken, while the ground was rocky and hilly—the face of the country being such as is found in a place where the rivers and streams can only make their way by passing through deep gorges and kenyons.

Pressing forward in this manner, Little Rifle at last found himself upon quite a lofty ridge, which gave him an extensive view in every direction. It was indeed the post of observation, whither he had directed his steps from the first.

With characteristic caution, he screened himself from observation as much as possible by climbing to the top of one of the scrubby oaks, and then making a long and careful survey of the suspicious territory.

Only a single hasty glance was cast back over the region from which he had just come, as that was under the guardianship of old Robsart, who needed no assistance from him, in a work of that kind.

But he looked to the westward, where hundreds of miles of the vast solitude opened before him. It was a scene made up of rock, stream and wood in all their varied beauty, such as would have won the eye, in a loving dream, of any painter.