We glanced towards the fire still raging on the distant plain.
No: it was not probable he had moved thence. By the last look we had obtained of him, he did not appear to be making any effort to escape, and he could scarcely have gone a hundred yards before the flames swept over the spot and must have enveloped him.
How then? Were his bones entirely consumed—calcined—reduced to ashes? The lean, withered, dried-up body of the old mountain-man favoured such a supposition; and we began seriously to entertain it—for in no other way could we account for the total absence of all remains!
For some moments we sat in our saddles under the influence of strange emotions, but without exchanging a word. We scanned the black plain round and round. The smoke no longer hindered our view of the ground. In the weed-prairies there is no grassy turf; and the dry herbaceous stems of the annuals had burned out with the rapidity of blazing flax, so that nothing was left to cause a smoke. The fire was red or dead in an instant. We could see clear enough all the surface of the ground, but nothing that resembled the remains of a human being!
“No,” said Garey, with a long-drawn sigh. “Poor Old Rube! The classed thing has burned him to ashes—bones an all! Thur ain’t as much o’ ’im left as ’ud fill a tabacca-pipe!”
“The hell, thur ain’t!” replied a voice that caused both of us to start in our saddles, as if it had been Rube’s ghost that addressed us—“the hell, thur ain’t!” repeated the voice, as though it came out of the ground beneath our feet. “Thur’s enough o’ Ole Rube left to fill the stummuk o’ this hyur buffler; an by the jumpin Geehosophat, a tight fit it ur! Wagh! I’m well-nigh sufflocated! Gie’s yur claws, Bill, an pull me out o’ this hyur trap!”
To our astonishment the pendent hide of the buffalo was raised by an invisible hand; and underneath appeared, protruding through a hole in the side of the carcass, the unmistakable physiognomy of the earless trapper!
There was something so ludicrous in the apparition, that the sight of it, combined with the joyful reaction of our feelings, sent both Garey and myself into convulsions of laughter. The young trapper lay back in the saddle to give freer play to his lungs; and his loud cachinnations, varied at intervals by savage yells, caused our horses to dance about as if they anticipated an onslaught of Indians!
At first I could detect a significant smile at the angles formed by Rube’s thin lips; but this disappeared as the laughter continued too long for his patience.
“Cuss yur larfin!” cried he at length. “Kum, Billee, boy! Lay holt hyur, an gi’ me a help, or I must wriggle out o’ meself. The durned hole ain’t es big es twur when I krep in. Durn it, man, make haste! I’m better’n half-baked!”