“They says,” resumed Bounce in a deep tone, “the Wild Man o’ the West eats men!”
“Don’t he eat women?” inquired March sleepily.
“Yes, an’ childers too. An’ wot’s wuss, he eats ’em raw, an’ they say he once swallered one—a little one—alive, without chewin’ or chokin’!” (“Horrible!” murmured March.) “He’s a dead shot, too; he carries a double-barrelled rifle twenty foot long that takes a small cannon-ball. I forgot to tell ye he’s a giant—some o’ the trappers calls him the ‘giant o’ the hills,’ and they say he’s ’bout thirty feet high—some says forty. But there’s no gittin’ at the truth in this here wurld.”
Bounce paused here, but, as his companion made no observation, he went on in a half-soliloquising fashion, looking earnestly all the time into the heart of the fire, as if he were addressing his remarks to a salamander.
“Ay, he’s a crack shot, as I wos sayin’. One day he fell in with a grisly bar, an’ the brute rushed at him; so he up rifle an’ puts a ball up each nose,”—(“I didn’t know a grisly had two noses,” murmured March,)—“an’ loaded agin’, an’ afore it comed up he put a ball in each eye; then he drew his knife an’ split it right down the middle from nose to tail at one stroke, an’ cut it across with another stroke; an’, puttin’ one quarter on his head, he took another quarter under each arm, an’ the fourth quarter in his mouth, and so walked home to his cave in the mountains—’bout one hundred and fifty miles off, where he roasted an’ ate the whole bar at one sittin’—bones, hair, an’ all!”
This flight was too strong for March. He burst into a fit of laughter, which called the rusty hinges into violent action and produced a groan. The laugh and the groan together banished drowsiness, so he turned on his back, and said—
“Bounce, do you really believe all that?”
Thus pointedly questioned on what he felt to be a delicate point, Bounce drew a great number of whiffs from the tomahawk ere he ventured to reply. At length he said—
“Well, to say truth, an’ takin’ a feelosophical view o’ the p’int—I don’t. But I b’lieve some of it. I do b’lieve there’s some ’xtraord’nary critter in them there mountains—for I’ve lived nigh forty years, off and on, in these parts, an’ I’ve always obsarved that in this wurld w’enever ye find anythin’ ye’ve always got somethin’. Nobody never got hold o’ somethin’ an’ found afterwards that it wos nothin’. So I b’lieve there’s somethin’ in this wild man—how much I dun know.”
Bounce followed up this remark with a minute account of the reputed deeds of this mysterious creature, all of which were more or less marvellous; and at length succeeded in interesting his young companion so deeply, as to fill him with a good deal of his own belief in at least a wild something that dwelt in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.