Hardly, however, could the apology have been expressed in words, when up he bounces again to his hind feet and begins executing a series of antics, so fantastic and undog-like that they who witnessed them were quite as much astonished as amused. Jervis Whitney himself, than whom there was not a man in the hunter's paradise more deeply versed in dogs and their ways, and who thought he knew his own dog from head to tail and back again, was even more astonished than the rest. Had old Mother Hubbard and her far-famed dog risen from their honored graves and, presenting themselves before our friends, repeated the dear old programme, from the cupboard so bare, to the bier so sad, with the fruits and the flue, the tripe and the pipe, the wig and the jig, and all the other fondly remembered marvels between—scarcely could the effect have been more startling.
Now, Pow-wow's antics on this occasion, unaccountable as they seemed to those who witnessed them, and must seem to the more sober class of my readers, admit of perfectly rational explanation, give them only Manitou ground to rest on. Nick of the Woods and Meg of the Hills, who knew as well as anybody—better, I fear, than many a human body—that there are few things more wholesome for us poor mortals than hearty, unrestrained, unrestrainable, innocent laughter, had decided between them that, in order to put his case beyond all human or superhuman possibility of relapse, Sprigg should have some hearty laughter. Accordingly, they had sent one of their dog-robed, dog-natured elves to tinker and conjure with Pow-wow's tail, and through that sensitive member, as a medium, telegraph, as it were, such fancies to his sober old noddle as should, for a brief space, set him quite beside himself. In other words, set him to acting the human, according to the monkey conception of the character. A conception so nearly suits an occasional specimen of the model race as scarcely to be deemed caricature.
And Sprigg did laugh—laughed till his sore sides ached—laughed "fit to die," as they say, when they mean the very opposite—"fit to live." After such a laugh, Sprigg was in no more danger of dying than had all the doctors, with their doses; all the preachers, with their prayers, stood between him and the grave. Of course, everybody else was laughing; not but that they felt still more inclined to cry, so touching was it to witness the old dog's clumsy playfulness and the little sufferer's spasmodic merriment—for spasmodic it needs must be, as yet, though so hearty, heart-easing and wholesome. Indeed, there are few things more pathetical than the innocent mirth of the young heart, over whose dawning existence has already fallen, though but for a brief space, the shadow of the inevitable hour. And I will venture to affirm, upon the strength of my own experience and observation, that if you, my gentle reader, had been present and witnessed, without both tears and laughter, the scene I am describing, you would be as fit a subject for a "putting through" as ever was poor Sprigg; and that, sooner or later for your fuller humanizing, you must run the Manitou gauntlet. And whether you run it in red moccasins or in split-leather Yankee shoes, all one will it be to Nick of the Woods!
CHAPTER XXIII.
Young Ben Logan.
Pow-wow was still performing, Sprigg still laughing, the rest of the company still in a maze of delighted bewilderment, when, home from the forest, in came rolling young Ben Logan. He had heard the good news at the gate, and now, as if feeling there was no further need of his being tender-footed, he came lumbering through the house, making every loose board he trod on a speaking witness to the joy of his heart. "Actions speak louder than words," so they say; and yet it does so happen sometimes, but very rarely, mind you, that what they say is a good deal louder than what they do. At sight of the young hunter, Pow-wow had cut short his antics, or, rather, was made to cut them short—the Manitou inspiration, to which they had been due, departing from him as suddenly as it had entered; and subsiding to his haunches, he became in an instant as quiet and solemn as a tumbler between cues. In the joy of the moment, Ben had forgotten to leave his rifle at the door, and now, with it in his left hand rested on the floor, he stood by the bedside of his strangely fated little friend, a heroic smell of gunpowder and buckskin boisterous in the air about him, and on his face a look of benignant wonderment, as he gazed down into the newly reopened eyes, whose light had so well nigh been lost in the shadows of death. Bright and clear as were the eyes turned up to his own, they were still hardly capable of more than a dreamy perception of what they looked on. Taking the little hand, so white and wan, in his own huge, powder-begrimed paw, and shaking it gently from side to side, in a wag-tail way, Ben, after some moments of silence, said:
"Howd'y do, Sprigg?"