Chapter Seventeen.
Nothing further worth mentioning occurred to the hunters that day, save that little Tolly Trevor was amazed—we might almost say petrified—by the splendour and precision of the trapper’s shooting, besides which he was deeply impressed with the undercurrent of what we may style grave fun, coupled with calm enthusiasm, which characterised the man, and the utter absence of self-assertion or boastfulness.
But if the remainder of the day was uneventful, the stories round the camp-fire more than compensated him and his friend Leaping Buck. The latter was intimately acquainted with the trapper, and seemed to derive more pleasure from watching the effect of his anecdotes on his new friend than in listening to them himself. Probably this was in part owing to the fact that he had heard them all before more than once.
The spot they had selected for their encampment was the summit of a projecting crag, which was crowned with a little thicket, and surrounded on three sides by sheer precipices. The neck of rock by which it was reached was free from shrubs, besides being split across by a deep chasm of several feet in width, so that it formed a natural fortress, and the marks of old encampments seemed to indicate that it had been used as a camping-place by the red man long before his white brother—too often his white foe—had appeared in that western wilderness to disturb him. The Indians had no special name for the spot, but the roving trappers who first came to it had named it the Outlook, because from its summit a magnificent view of nearly the whole region could be obtained. The great chasm or fissure already mentioned descended sheer down, like the neighbouring precipices, to an immense depth, so that the Outlook, being a species of aerial island, was usually reached by a narrow plank which bridged the chasm. It had stood many a siege in times past, and when used as a fortress, whether by white hunters or savages, the plank bridge was withdrawn, and the place rendered—at least esteemed—impregnable.
When Mahoghany Drake and his young friends came up to the chasm a little before sunset Leaping Buck took a short run and bounded clear over it.
“Ha! I knowed he couldn’t resist the temptation,” said Mahoghany, with a quiet chuckle, “an’ it’s not many boys—no, nor yet men—who could jump that. I wouldn’t try it myself for a noo rifle—no, though ye was to throw in a silver-mounted powder-horn to the bargain.”
“But you have jumped it?” cried the Indian boy, turning round with a gleeful face.
“Ay, lad, long ago, and then I was forced to, when runnin’ for my life. A man’ll do many a deed when so sitooate that he couldn’t do in cold blood. Come, come, young feller,” he added, suddenly laying his heavy hand on little Trevor’s collar and arresting him, “you wasn’t thinkin’ o’ tryin’ it was ye?”