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Be this as it may, when the Wild Man at length opened the door, and cried, "Come in, lads; it's all right!" they found the widow Marston with confusion and happiness beaming on her countenance, and the Wild Man himself in a condition that fully justified Bounce's suggestion that they had better send for a strait-waistcoat or a pair of handcuffs.
"I hear; but we can't always git things to go 'xactly as we approves of," replied Bounce, stooping down to arrange the embers of the previous night's fire. Bounce's proper name was Bob Ounce. His comrades called him "Bounce."
A bone having stuck in Bounce's throat at that moment he was unable to conclude the sentence. "As to the length of his rifle," said McLeod, when the noise made by Bounce in partially choking had subsided, "you seem to have got rather wild notions about that, and about the Wild Man too, I see." "But he is a giant, isn't he?" inquired March anxiously. "N-not exactly.
Pleasure and excitement being, with many people, convertible terms, we have no reason for supposing that it is otherwise with squirrels, and therefore every reason for concluding that the squirrel in question enjoyed Bounce's visit greatly.
Bounce, and Big Waller, and Black Gibault, drew naturally together and speculated, after their own peculiar fashion, on every subject of thought within the reach of their capacities; and as Bounce's capacities embraced a pretty wide range, the "feelosophical" views he set forth upon that lovely Sabbath day were so varied, so eccentric, so graphic, and so apparently inexhaustible, that he effectually quelled Gibault's inveterate tendency, to jest, and filled Big Waller with deeper admiration than ever.
Bounce's honest face assumed an expression of deep anxiety, for, fertile though his resources usually were, he could not at that moment conceive how it was possible for two unarmed men, either by force or by stratagem, to rescue five comrades who were securely bound, and guarded by forty armed warriors, all of whom were trained from infancy in the midst of alarms that made caution and intense watchfulness second nature to them.
"Him be one buffalo I see hims bump." "The bumps that ye see is neither more nor less than a man leanin' forard it is." At this moment the rest of the party rode up, and Redhand confirmed Bounce's opinion. "There's only one, I guess, an' he's in a powerful hurry," observed Big Waller. "But we may as well be ready to fix his flint if he means to cut up rough."
Presently Bounce's owner appeared, and went through something of a similar performance humanised, however, and with more of dignity. "I can't tell 'ee how glad I am to see you again, Jeff," said Bowers, sitting down beside him, and grasping his hand. "But oh, man, how thin "
I've lived a longish time now in the wilderness, but I never, before or since, heard sitch a yellin' as the painted critters set up in the woods all around when they came at us, sendin' a shower o' arrows in advance to tickle us up; but they was bad shots, for only one took effect, an' that shaft just grazed the point o' young Bounce's nose as neat as if it was only meant to make him sneeze.
"Well, then," resumed Bounce, turning to Redhand, "what do you think o' them sentiments, old man?" Redhand, who had been paying no attention whatever to these sentiments, but, during the delivery of them, had been gazing wistfully out upon the wide expanse of country before him, laid his hand on Bounce's shoulder, and said in a low, earnest tone "It's a grand country!
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