The Wild Man of the West by Robert Michael Ballantyne (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📖

CHAPTER ONE.


IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO A MAD HERO, A RECKLESS LOVER, AND A RUNAWAY HUSBAND--BACKWOODS JUVENILE TRAINING DESCRIBED--THE PRINCIPLES OF FIGHTING FULLY DISCUSSED, AND SOME VALUABLE HINTS THROWN OUT.

March Marston was mad! The exact state of madness to which March had attained at the age when we take up his personal history--namely, sixteen--is uncertain, for the people of the backwoods settlement in which he dwelt differed in their opinions on that point.

The clergyman, who was a Wesleyan, said he was as wild as a young buffalo bull; but the manner in which he said so led his hearers to conclude that he did not think such a state of ungovernable madness to be a hopeless condition, by any means. The doctor said he was as mad as a hatter; but this was an indefinite remark, worthy of a doctor who had never obtained a diploma, and required explanation, inasmuch as it was impossible to know _how_ mad he considered a hatter to be. Some of the trappers who came to the settlement for powder and lead, said he was as mad as a grisly bear with a whooping-cough--a remark which, if true, might tend to throw light on the diseases to which the grisly bear is liable, but which failed to indicate to any one, except perhaps trappers, the extent of young Marston's madness. The carpenter and the blacksmith of the place--who were fast friends and had a pitched battle only once a month, or twice at most--agreed in saying that he was as mad as a wild-cat. In short, every one asserted stoutly that the boy was mad, with the exception of the women of the settlement, who thought him a fine, bold, handsome fellow; and his own mother, who thought him a paragon of perfection, and who held the opinion (privately) that, in the wide range of the habitable globe there was not another like him--and she was not far wrong!

Now, the whole and sole reason why March Marston was thus deemed a madman, was that he displayed an insane tendency, at all times and in all manners, to break his own neck, or to make away with himself in some similarly violent and uncomfortable manner.

There was not a fence in the whole countryside that March had not bolted over at full gallop, or ridden crash through if he could not go over it. There was not a tree within a circuit of four miles from the top of which he had not fallen. There was not a pond or pool in the neighbourhood into which he had not soused at some period of his stormy juvenile career, and there was not a big boy whom he had not fought and thrashed--or been thrashed by--scores of times.

But for all this March had not a single enemy. He did his companions many a kind turn; never an unkind one. He fought for love, not for hatred. He loved a dog--if any one kicked it, he fought him. He loved a little boy--if any one was cruel to that little boy, he fought him. He loved fair play--if any one was guilty of foul play, he fought him. When he was guilty of foul play himself (as was sometimes the case, for who is perfect?) he felt inclined to jump out of his own body and turn about and thrash himself! And he would have done so often, had it been practicable. Yes, there is no doubt whatever about it March Marston was mad--as mad, after a fashion, as any creature, human or otherwise, you choose to name.

Young Marston's mother was a handsome, stout, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired woman, of a little over thirty-five summers. She was an English emigrant, and had, seventeen years before the time we write of settled at Pine Point, on the banks of the Yellowstone River, along with her brother, the blacksmith above referred to. At that time she was the sweetest maiden in all the village, and now she was the handsomest matron. Indeed, the bloom of her youth remained on her cheeks so little impaired that she was often mistaken by strangers for March Marston's elder sister. The men of the place called her pretty widow Marston; but she was not a widow--at least, they had as little ground for saying that she was as they had for asserting that her son was mad. Mrs Marston was peculiarly circumstanced, but she was not a widow.

The peculiar circumstances connected with her history are soon told. Immediately after the arrival of the blacksmith and his pretty sister at Pine Point settlement, a tall stout young stripling--a trapper--about a year older than herself, fell deeply in love with Mary West--that being Mrs Marston's maiden name. The young trapper's case was desperate. He sank at once so deep into the profundities of love, that no deep-sea lead, however ingeniously contrived, could reach him.

Although just emerging from boyhood, Louis the trapper was already a tall, strong, handsome man, and Mary felt flattered by his attentions. But when, a month afterwards, he boldly offered her his hand and fortune (which latter consisted of a trapper's costume and a western rifle), she was taken aback and flatly refused him. Louis was hare-brained and passionate. He told her he would give her one day and a night to think of it. At the end of that time he came back and was again refused, for Mary West had no notion of being taken by storm in that fashion. But she trembled and grew pale on observing the storm of angry passion that gleamed from the young trapper's eyes and caused his broad chest to heave violently. He did not speak. He did not even look at Mary--had he done so, years of sorrow and suffering might have been spared them both. He stood for one moment with his eyes fixed upon the ground--then he turned, sprang through the doorway, vaulted on his horse, and went off from her cottage door as an arrow leaps from a bow. The fences and ditches that lay in his way were no impediment. His powerful steed carried him over all and into the forest beyond, where he was quickly lost to view. Mary tried to resume her household occupations with a sigh. She did not believe he was gone. But he was!

At first Mary was nettled; then she grew sad; as weeks passed away she became nettled again, and at this juncture another suitor appeared in the shape of a young immigrant farmer, whose good looks and insinuating address soothed her irritation at the strange abrupt conduct of her lover. She began to think that she must have been mistaken in supposing that she cared for the wild trapper--and, in order to prove the correctness of her supposition, she married Obadiah Marston, the farmer.

Alas! poor Mary discovered her error too late. Marston turned out a profligate drunkard. At first he did not come out in his true colours. A son was born, and he insisted on calling him March, for no other reason than that he was born in the month so named. Mary was obliged to consent, and at last came to congratulate herself that the child had been born in March, and not in April or October, or any other month equally unsuitable for a Christian name. After the first year, Obadiah Marston treated his wife badly, then brutally, and at last he received a sound drubbing from his brother-in-law, the blacksmith, for having beaten poor Mary with a stick. This brought things to a climax. Marston vowed he would forsake his wife, and never set eyes on her again; and he kept his vow. He embarked one day in a boat that was going down to the Missouri with a cargo of furs, and his poor wife never saw him again. Thus was Mary West forsaken, first by her lover and then by her husband.

It was long before she recovered from the blow; but time gradually reconciled her to her lot, and she devoted herself thenceforth to the training of her little boy. As years rolled on, Mrs Marston recovered her spirits and her looks; but, although many a fine young fellow sought her heart and hand, assuring her that she was a widow--that she _must_ be a widow, that no man in his senses could remain so long away from such a wife unless he were dead--she turned a deaf ear to them all.

March Marston's infancy was spent in yelling and kicking, with the exception of those preternaturally calm periods when he was employed in eating and sleeping. As he grew older the kicking and yelling decreased, the eating increased, and the sleeping continued pretty much the same. Then came a period when he began to learn his A, B, C. Mrs Marston had been well educated for her station in life. She had read much, and had brought a number of books to the backwoods settlement; so she gave her boy a pretty good education--as education went in those days--and certainly a much better one than was given to boys in such out-of-the-way regions. She taught him to read and write, and carried him on in arithmetic as far as compound division, where she stuck, having reached the extreme limits of her own tether.

Contemporaneously with the cessation of squalling and kicking, and the acquirement of the A, B, C, there arose in little March's bosom unutterable love for his mother; or, rather, the love that had always dwelt there began to well up powerfully, and to overflow in copious streams of obedience and considerate attention. About the same time the roving, reckless "madness," as it was styled, began to develop itself. And, strange to say, Mrs Marston did not check that! She was a large-minded, a liberal-minded woman, that semi-widow. She watched her son closely, but very few of his deeds were regarded by her in the light of faults. Tumbling off trees was not. Falling into ditches and horse ponds was not. Fighting was, to some extent; and on this point alone did mother and son seem to entertain any difference of opinion, if we may style that difference of opinion where the son fell into silent and extreme perplexity after a short, and on his part humble, discussion on the subject.

"Why, mother," said March in surprise (having attained the mature age of eight when he said it), "if a grisly bear was to 'tack me, you'd let me defend myself, wouldn't you?"

Mrs Marston smiled to see the rotund little object of two-feet-ten standing before the fire with its legs apart and its arms crossed, putting such a question, and replied--

"Certainly, my boy."

"And when Tom Blake offered to hit Susy Jefferson, wasn't I right to fight him for that?"

"Yes, my boy, I think it right to fight in defence of the weak and helpless."

The object of two-feet-ten began to swell and his eyes to brighten at the unexpected success of this catechising of its mother, and went on to say--

"Well, mother, why do you blame me for fightin', then, if it's right?"

"Because fighting is not always right, my boy. You had a fight with Bill Summers, hadn't you,