Jim’s horse, with its reins trailing, was cropping grass close by.
Jim was seated on the grassy bank near the creek, where the clear water wimpled and gurgled over the white, rounded stones. Around Jim, in easy attitudes but with eyes wide and gaping mouths, squatted some twenty-five or thirty boys of varying ages and of varying colours and nationalities, but all of a kin when it came to appreciation of the universal language––the language of an exciting story.
Jim was reading to them from one of his most bloody dime novels, and the wonderful elocution he possessed never displayed itself with greater zest. His wavy, reddish-brown hair swept his forehead becomingly; his face, thin, keen and full of cultured intelligence, betrayed every emotion as he declaimed; and his long arms and tapering fingers moved in a ceaseless rhythm of gesticulation.
It was the same old stuff:––
“‘Hal, the boy rider of the Western plains, stood on the brink of the chasm: behind him, three thousand feet of sheer precipice to the seething, boiling waters and jagged rocks below;––before him, the onrushing bandits.
“‘Black Dan, outstripping the others, sprang on Hal, mouthing fearful oaths. With astounding agility, Hal stepped aside, caught Dan by the middle, and, swinging 227 him high over his head, sent him hurtling, with ear-splitting shrieks, down, sheer down to his doom.
“‘This staggered Dan’s followers for a second, until Cross-eyed Dick, jibing his comrades for their cowardice, next rushed in upon our dauntless hero. Hal drew his dagger from his belt and bravely awaited the onslaught. When Cross-eyed Dick was within a few yards of him, he raised his arm and threw his dagger deftly and with terrific force, burying it to the hilt in the train-robber’s windpipe. With a clotted gurgle––blood spurting from his mortal wound––Hal’s assailant still came rushing on. He staggered on the brink for a moment, then––without another sound––he toppled over and joined his dead leader who was lying, a beaten pulp, among the boulders, far below.’”
On and on Jim went, making the hackneyed, original; the ridiculous, feasible; the impossible, real; until even Phil hated to pull himself away from the scene, to await a more convenient season for his endeavours to bring Jim back to himself.
If ever there was poetry in a “Deadwood Dick,” thought Phil, surely it was then.
Feeling that Jim was in harmless company for the time being, Phil left him, intending to round him up later.