"True, I know that—yet if that man were here now, if he could appear suddenly—"
A remarkable change came over the man as he broke off the sentence and sprung to his feet. Blaze, who trusted completely his own senses, and was confident that Winkle could have discovered no signs of any danger, looked at him in doubt and amazement as he stood bending now to one side, again to another, eagerly listening, his rifle clutched with a nervous grip.
"D'ye hear him?" he whispered. "He's coming, he's coming! curse him, I tell you he's here now."
Then Blaze listened. It seemed, almost like a fancy, too, that he heard, away miles off, a voice. He knew not whether it was the voice of man or of nature. There are times when in Western solitudes the two sound so wondrously alike that one is startled and perplexed. The voices that one hears in the cottonwoods by the river-side, or the cedars in the cañons! A brooder or a dreamer alone with them might well be driven mad.
While the trapper listened, Winkle stole noiselessly away. The negro, who had, during the recital of Winkle's story, been lying wrapped in a blanket, unconsciously sleeping, suddenly awoke to consciousness, and answered Blaze's astonished exclamation of, "Where the thunder's the boy gone to?" with:
"Jist hold on hyar a bit. Dat's nuffin new. He done gone do dat ebery leetle while; I fotch him back. Dat's de on'y t'ing 'bout Mass'r Winkle dat's cur'us. He say he t'inks he hear hees man."
Pompey, without more ado, slid off in the direction in which Winkle had gone, leaving Blaze alone, to ruminate on the story he had just heard. The negro was brimful of western experience, and Blaze thought it needless to follow. This summary exit of the two from camp gave him fresh food for reflection, and his thoughts were somewhat mixed as would appear from his soliloquy:
"Some, now, would call him crazy. I dunno; guess both sides is ground down to one p'int, an' that, 'my man.' Everyways else I reckon he's more brains ner I hev—which's a fair allowance fur this individooal to make. Ef he could git 'my man' off his intellek he'd be purty square. Cuss me, though, ef I wouldn't like to know whether 'my man' is in the cañon, or hereabouts. That's the queer part of the thing—his followin' him by guess, er instink. I've see'd a herd o' deer scattered this way an' that an' the t'other, an' often wondered how it come they war all together ag'in by mornin'. Not so sing'lar as the way he's follered 'my man.' I wonder ef he'll ever find him? I b'lieve 'bout two month waitin' to see, alongside o' this Winkle, would tame me down amazin'. I'm gittin' steady es an otter-slide now. Waugh!"
CHAPTER XI.