After all, there was nothing mysterious in this. The boy followed implicitly the dictates of nature within him. He was amiable, straightforward, sanguine, and intensely earnest. When he laughed he let it out, as sailors have it, “with a will.” When there was good cause to be grave, no power on earth could make him smile. We have called him boy, but in truth he was about that uncertain period of life when a youth is said to be neither a man nor a boy. His face was good-looking (every earnest, candid face is) and masculine; his hair was reddish-brown, and his eye bright blue. He was costumed in the deerskin cap, leggings, moccasins, and leathern shirt common to the western hunter.
“You seem tickled wi’ the Injuns, Dick Varley,” said a man who at that moment issued from the block-house.
“That’s just what I am, Joe Blunt,” replied the youth, turning with a broad grin to his companion.
“Have a care, lad; do not laugh at ’em too much. They soon take offence; an’ them Red-skins never forgive.”
“But I’m only laughing at the baby,” returned the youth, pointing to the child, which, with a mixture of boldness and timidity, was playing with a pup, wrinkling up its fat visage into a smile when its playmate rushed away in sport, and opening wide its jet-black eyes in grave anxiety as the pup returned at full gallop.
“It ’ud make an owl laugh,” continued young Varley, “to see such a queer pictur’ o’ itself.”
He paused suddenly, and a dark frown covered his face as he saw the Indian woman stoop quickly down, catch the pup by its hind-leg with one hand, seize a heavy piece of wood with the other, and strike it several violent blows on the throat. Without taking the trouble to kill the poor animal outright, the savage then held its still writhing body over the fire in order to singe off the hair before putting it into the pot to be cooked.
The cruel act drew young Varley’s attention more closely to the pup, and it flashed across his mind that this could be no other than young Crusoe, which neither he nor his companion had before seen, although they had often heard others speak of and describe it.
Had the little creature been one of the unfortunate Indian curs, the two hunters would probably have turned from the sickening sight with disgust, feeling that, however much they might dislike such cruelty, it would be of no use attempting to interfere with Indian usages. But the instant the idea that it was Crusoe occurred to Varley he uttered a yell of anger, and sprang towards the woman with a bound that caused the three Indians to leap to their feet and grasp their tomahawks.
Blunt did not move from the gate, but threw forward his rifle with a careless motion, but an expressive glance, that caused the Indians to resume their seats and pipes with an emphatic “Wah!” of disgust at having been startled out of their propriety by a trifle, while Dick Varley snatched poor Crusoe from his dangerous and painful position, scowled angrily in the woman’s face, and, turning on his heel, walked up to the house, holding the pup tenderly in his arms.