Chapter XIV.—Crusoe’s Return.
THE means by which Crusoe managed to escape from his two-legged captors, and rejoin his master, require separate and special notice.
In the struggle with the fallen horse and Indian, which Dick had seen begun but not concluded, he was almost crushed to death; and the instant the Indian gained his feet he sent an arrow at his head with savage violence. Crusoe, however, had been so well used to dodging the blunt-headed arrows that were wont to be shot at him by the boys of the Mustang Valley, that he was quite prepared, and eluded the shaft by an active bound. Moreover, he uttered one of his own peculiar roars, flew at the Indian’s throat, and dragged him down. At the same moment the other Indians came up, and one of them turned aside to the rescue. This man happened to have an old gun, at that time exchanged for peltries by the fur-traders. With the butt he struck Crusoe a blow that sent him sprawling.
The rest of the savages, as we have seen, continued in pursuit of Dick until he leaped into the river; then they returned, took the saddle and bridle off his dead horse, and rejoined their comrades. Here they held a court-martial on Crusoe, who was now bound foot and muzzle with cords. Some were for killing him; others, who admired his noble appearance, immense size, and courage, thought it would be well to carry him to their village and keep him. There was a pretty violent dispute on the subject, but at length it was agreed that they should spare his life, and perhaps have a dog-dance round him when they got to their wigwams.
This dance, of which Crusoe was to be the chief though passive performer, is peculiar to some of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, and consists in killing a dog and cutting out its liver, which is afterwards sliced into shreds or strings and hung on a pole, about the height of a man’s head. A band of warriors then come and dance wildly round this pole, and each one in succession goes up to the raw liver and bites a piece off it, without, however, putting his hands near it. Such is the dog-dance, and to such was poor Crusoe destined by his fierce captors, especially by the one whose throat still bore marks of his teeth.
But Crusoe was much too clever a dog to be disposed of in so disgusting a manner. He had privately resolved in his own mind that he would escape; but the hopelessness of his ever carrying that resolution into effect would have been apparent to any one who could have seen the way in which his muzzle was secured, and his four paws were tied, as he hung across the saddle of one of the savages.
This particular party of Indians who had followed Dick Varley determined not to wait for the return of their comrades who were in pursuit of the other two hunters, but to go straight home; so for several days they galloped away over the prairie. At nights, when they encamped, Crusoe was thrown on the ground like a piece of old lumber, and left to lie there with a mere scrap of food till morning, when he was again thrown across the horse of his captor and carried on. When the village was reached he was thrown again on the ground, and would certainly have been torn to pieces in five minutes by the Indian curs which came howling round him, had not an old woman come to the rescue and driven them away. With the help of her grandson—a little naked creature, just able to walk, or rather to stagger—she dragged him to her tent, and, undoing the line that fastened his mouth, offered him a bone.
Although lying in a position that was unfavourable for eating purposes, Crusoe opened his jaws and took it. An awful crash followed by two crunches—and it was gone; and Crusoe looked up in the old squaw’s face with a look that said plainly, “Another of the same, please, and as quick as possible.” The old woman gave him another, and then a lump of meat, which latter went down with a gulp; but he coughed after it, and it was well he didn’t choke. After this the squaw left him, and Crusoe spent the remainder of that night gnawing the cords that bound him. So diligent was he that he was free before morning, and walked deliberately out of the tent. Then he shook himself, and with a yell that one might have fancied was intended for defiance he bounded joyfully away.
To a dog with a good appetite which had been on short allowance for several days, the mouthful given to him by the old squaw was a mere nothing. All that day he kept bounding over the plain from bluff to bluff in search of something to eat, but found nothing until dusk, when he pounced suddenly on a prairie-hen asleep. In one moment its life was gone. In less than a minute its body was gone too—feathers and bones and all—down Crusoe’s throat.
On the identical spot Crusoe lay down and slept like a top for four hours. At the end of that time he jumped up, bolted a scrap of skin that somehow had been overlooked at supper, and flew straight over the prairie to the spot where he had had the scuffle with the Indian. He came to the edge of the river, took precisely the same leap that his master had done before him, and came out on the other side a good deal higher up than Dick had, for the dog had no savages to dodge, and was a powerful swimmer.
It cost him a good deal of running about to find the trail, and it was nearly dark before he resumed his journey; then putting his keen nose to the ground, he ran step by step over Dick’s track, and found him, as we have shown.
It is quite impossible to describe the intense joy which filled Dick’s heart on again beholding his favourite. Dick seized him round the neck and hugged him as well as he could, poor fellow, in his feeble arms; then he wept, then he laughed, then he fainted, and this took Crusoe quite aback. Never having seen his master in such a state before he seemed to think at first that he was playing some trick, for he bounded round him, barked and wagged his tail. But as Dick lay motionless, he went forward with a look of alarm, snuffed him once or twice, and whined piteously; then he raised his nose in the air and uttered a long melancholy wail.
The cry seemed to revive Dick, for he moved, and with some difficulty sat up, to the dog’s evident relief. There is no doubt that Crusoe learned an erroneous lesson that day, and was firmly convinced that the best cure for a fainting fit is a melancholy yell. So easy is it for the wisest of dogs as well as men to fall into gross error!
“Crusoe,” said Dick, in a feeble voice, “dear good pup, come here.” He crawled, as he spoke, down to the water’s edge, where there was a level patch of dry sand.
“Dig,” said Dick, pointing to the sand.
Crusoe looked at him in surprise, as well he might, for he had never heard the word “dig” in all his life before.
Dick pondered a minute; then a thought struck him. He turned up a little of the sand with his fingers, and pointing to the hole cried, “Seek him out, pup!”
Ha! Crusoe understood that. Many and many a time had he unhoused rabbits, and squirrels, and other creatures at that word of command; so, without a moment’s delay, he commenced to dig down into the sand, every now and then stopping for a moment and shoving in his nose, and snuffing interrogatively, as if he fully expected to find a buffalo at the bottom of it. Then he would resume again, one paw after another, so fast that you could scarce see them going—“hand over hand,” as sailors would have called it—while the sand flew out between his hind legs in a continuous shower. When the sand accumulated so much behind him as to impede his motions he scraped it out of his way, and set to work again with tenfold earnestness. After a good while he paused and looked up at Dick with an “it-won’t-do;-I-fear-there’s-nothing-here” expression on his face. “Seek him out, pup!” repeated Dick.
“Oh! very good,” mutely answered the dog, and went at it again, tooth and nail, harder than ever.
In the course of a quarter of an hour there was a deep yawning hole in the sand, into which Dick peered with intense anxiety. The bottom appeared slightly damp, Hope now reanimated Dick Varley, and by various devices he succeeded in getting the dog to scrape away a sort of tunnel from the hole, into which he might roll himself and put down his lips to drink when the water should rise high enough. Impatiently and anxiously he lay watching the moisture slowly accumulate in the bottom of the hole, drop by drop; and while he gazed he fell into a troubled, slumber, and dreamed that Crusoe’s return was a dream, and that he was alone, perishing for want of water.
When he awakened the hole was half full of clear water, and Crusoe was lapping it greedily.
“Back, pup!” he shouted, as he crept down to the hole and put his trembling lips to the water. It was brackish, but drinkable, and as Dick drank deeply of it he esteemed it at that moment better than nectar. Here he lay for half an hour, alternately drinking and gazing in surprise at his own emaciated visage as reflected in the pool.
The same afternoon Crusoe, in a private hunting excursion of his own, caught a prairie-hen, which he proceeded to devour, when Dick whistled.
Obedience was engrained in every fibre of Crusoe’s being. He did not merely answer at once to the call—he sprang to it, leaving the prairie-hen untasted.
“Fetch it, pup,” cried Dick eagerly as the dog came up.
In a few moments the hen was at his feet. Dick’s circumstances could not brook the delay of cookery; he gashed the bird with his knife and drank the blood, and then gave the flesh to the dog, while he crept to the pool again for another draught. Ah! think not, reader, that although we have treated this subject in a slight vein of pleasantry, because it ended well, that therefore our tale is pure fiction. Not only are Indians glad to satisfy the urgent cravings of hunger with raw flesh, but many civilized and delicately nurtured men have done the same—ay, and doubtless will do the same again, as long as enterprising and fearless men shall go forth to dare the dangers of flood and field in the wild places of our world.
Crusoe had finished his share of the feast before Dick returned from the pool. Then master and dog lay down together and fell into a long, deep, peaceful slumber.