Boon

“ Says my Lord Delamere to his Majesty soon,
'If it please you, my liege, of you I'll soon beg a boon.'
'Then what is your boon? let me it understand:'
'It's to have all the poor men you have in your land ”

“ At the sight of his master he withdraws—backwards and with difficulty....
“Then,” said Boon, “I get my crowning chapter: the breakfast, a peculiar something, something almost palpable in the atmosphere—Deshman hoarse and a little talkative, Mimbleton with a possibly nervous headache, husky also and demanding tea in a thick voice, Mutimer waiting uneasily, and Mr. Blandish, outwardly calm, yet noting every particular, thinking meanings into every word and movement, and growing more and more clear in his conviction that Mutimer knows—knows everything.... ”

“ Boone suddenly flattens his muscular figure to the earth, but the effort is useless. A dark figure bounds through the air, crashing through the frail bush, alighting fairly between the broad shoulders of the Wood King. ”

“ Boone, stout woodman as he was, tried in courage, a man that laughed at danger and faced death coolly and without shrinking, felt a cold shiver come over him as he watched the movements of the mysterious being who was so free in his actions and so sparing of his words. ”

“ A wild cheer broke from his lips, and leaping up, Boone ran forward, waving his hand as a signal.
The party instantly halted and seemed about to turn back into the grove, but then appeared to recognize the comer as a white man. Breathlessly Boone gained their side, but not until he spoke did they recognize him. Black mud had dried upon his face and hair. His skin, what little was visible, was burned to a blister, blackened with smoke. ”

“ Even the whitewashed walls were the gray yellow of putty in that feeble light, and Boone turned his eyes toward the brighter spot of the door, giving upon another room, where operators sat at switchboards and where were mingled the buzz of voices, the tramp of booted feet, the clink of spurs and accoutrements, into a tempered babel as restlessly constant as surf on rocks. ”

“ Countless other times Boone had sat here on this top-rail in his hodden-gray clothes and his slate-gray despair, making the same plaint, and knowing that only a miracle would ever bring around the road's turning anything less commonplace than a yoke of oxen or a native as drab as the mule he straddled. ”

“ A few moments later Boone suddenly paused, pressing close to the gnarled trunk of a huge tree that had been momentarily revealed by the glare of lightning. Here, holding his breath, trying to still the loud throbbings of his heart, he stood with knife tight clenched in his hand, to await the result of his ruse.
One, two, half a dozen savages dash by, running with hushed voices now, for they dread losing their prey, since the tempest so nearly drowns his footfalls. Then others pass by panting, losing hope with each step. ”

“ The red men fought for the Paradise—fought till it was drenched with blood, but no tribe, without mortal challenge from another straightway, could ever call a rood its own. Boone loved the land from the moment the eagle eye in his head swept its shaking wilderness from a mountain-top, and every man who followed him loved the land no less. ”

“ The lad with his freckled face and his red-brown shock of hair made an absurd contrast with the gentleman whose sword play possessed the exquisite grace and deft elegance of a Parisian fencing master—but Boone had the astonishing swiftness of a panther cub, and a lightning play of wrist and agility of limb. How rapidly he was gaining mastery over his foil he could not, himself, realize because standing over against him was one of the best swords of Europe, but this enthusiasm, which was a very passion to learn, was also a thing of which he never spoke outside. ”

“ With the curtain rung down on the thrilling drama whose theme had been dominated by love, work seemed to Boone increasingly the motif of things. Service appeared more and more the purpose meant in the blind gropings of existence toward some end. ”

“ The latter was at the side of Boone when, approaching a spur of the Cumberland mountains, upon whose slopes they saw multitudes of bisons grazing, the great pioneer paused, and surveying the scene for a moment, exclaimed, with kindling eyes:
"I am richer than He who owned the cattle on a thousand hills, for I own the wild beasts of a thousand valleys." ”

“ When the mentor of a man's common sense has forewarned him that he is being shadowed by an inevitable spectre, and when that spectre steps suddenly out into his path, he should not be astonished. Boone only sat there with features branded under the shock of suffering. His fine young shoulders, all at once, seemed to lose something of their straight vigour and to grow tired. His palms rested inertly on his saddle pommel. ”

“ Yonder, talking in loud voice, stood a colleague from a neighbouring mountain district. He was nursing, in fingers more used to the gourd-dipper, the stem of a cocktail glass, and his cheap wit, couched in an affected drawl and garbed with exaggerated colloquialisms, was being acclaimed with encouraging mirth. The fellow fancied himself a raconteur, appreciated. In reality he was a sorry clown being baited.
At another time that sight, trivial in itself, would have steadied Boone with a realization of his own self-duty to represent another type of mountain man. Now he was past such realization. ”

“ Both man and beast fell, Boone rolling to the place where he had dropped his arms, while the bear advanced upon him. The moment was a critical one; but Boone was accustomed to look at and brave death under every shape,—and, with a steady hand, he buried the tomahawk in the snout of his enemy, and, turning round, he rushed to his cabin, believing he would have time to secure the door. ”

“ Their mission today recalled to his mind others of like nature, and as he talked of them, enlarging upon the piteous helplessness of young women whose gentle natures are unequipped for the predatory struggles of a city where one does not know one's next-door neighbour, Boone's anxieties grew heavier. ”

“ Then Boone made his way between the tables and found himself being presented to several other women, to a pair of liaison officers on leave and, because it all took place in a moment, suddenly felt the floor grow unsteady under his feet, and saw, as the one clear vision in a blur of indistinctness, the slender figure of a woman whose hair was a disputed dominion along the borderland of gold and brown. ”

“ Boone drew forth a brace of pistols that had been concealed under his hunting-shirt, one of which he pointed at Raven, and with the other intimidated the rest who had advanced on himself, until his friends were all within the palisade. ”

“ It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of the Ohio thirteen years before.
Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back, Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed for an hour before any one heard him. ”

“ But mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. ”

“ There the boy grew to manhood. After his marriage, at twenty, he built himself a hut far out in the lonely forest, beyond the homes of the other settlers.
But he was a restless man and looked with longing toward the rugged mountains on the west. Along the foothills other pioneer settlers and hunters had taken up their 96abode. And young Boone’s imagination leaped to the country beyond the mountains, where the forest stretched for miles upon miles, no one knew how far, to the Mississippi River. It was an immense wilderness teeming with game, and he wanted to hunt and explore in it. ”

“ Boone was delighted. There thrilled in his heart all the joy of the hunter and explorer. Now the little party moved over to the Red River, where Finley had formerly been located. “Here,” said Boone, “both man and beast may grow to their full size.” That was good American prophecy.
For six months this adventurous little party lived and hunted in their new empire. Then, swiftly and without warning, there came a taste of some of the disadvantages of this wild residence. Stewart and Boone were taken captive by the Indians and were carried to the north, a march of seven days. ”

“ There is a legend which has been told many a time to the effect that Boone, while hunting, mistook the bright eyes of a young lady for those of a deer, and that he came within a hair's-breadth of sending a ball between them with his unerring rifle, before he discovered his mistake. ”

“ The ordinary man could with difficulty have discerned an object upon the ground immediately below Boone’s position, but the keen eyes of the hunter, accustomed to the gloom of the forest, penetrated the darkness to at least the distance of fifty yards. ”

“ In boyhood he had read of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky, the celebrated hunter and 91 Indian fighter, and in imagination he portrayed a “rough, uncouth looking specimen of humanity, and, of course, at this period of life, an irritable and intractable old man. ”

“ These ceremonies of peace-making they consider among their most solemn duties; and to be perfectly accomplished in all the notes and gestures is an indispensable acquirement to a thorough trained warrior.
Boone has related, at different times, many oral details of his private and domestic life, and his modes of getting along in the family, of which he was considered a member. ”

“ Such a vast field could not but possess an irresistible attraction to a consummate hunter like Boone, and the glimpses which the North Carolina woods gave of the possibilities awaiting him, and13 the growth of empire in the West, were sure to produce the result that came when he had been married some fifteen or more years and was in the prime of life. ”

“ It shone soft and lustrous in the sky, where other stars would soon add their myriad points of light, but however many others might fill the heavens there would still be only one evening star—and Boone, as he waited for one girl, fell to thinking of the other with whom he had climbed Slag-face yesterday; the girl who had set fire to his young imagination.
Then Happy came out of the door and soon after the father went in. "Thar hain't no place fer an ign'rant old feller like me, out hyar amongst ther young an' wise," he chuckled as he left them. ”

“ Have felled me with a feather.
A witch, as sure, as sure could be! You see what she has done to
me! And all because I carelessly
Forgot my early training.
From which you learn this lesson true, that it will never, never
do to speak before you’re spoken to
Or stay out when it’s raining.”
The voice stopped, and the wasp flew off, directly before my nose, as if leading me away.
“Why, dear me!” interrupted the Queen. “I believe this wasp was nothing more nor less than a Highwayman.”
[214] “What I don’t understand is,” said the King, “how a Highwayman could have learned to make up verses.” ”

“ The boy observed it, as I could see, and looked as if he were going to cry again.
“What do we say, brothers,” shouted one of the ballad singers, “what do we say to the damsel in the tattered gown? Shall one of us marry the tattered damsel? Oh, yes, oh, yes! Tra la, tra la,—”
He paused, as if waiting for a laugh; but the crowd did not laugh any more, and my daughter was herself in fact the only one who seemed to be amused. As for myself, I was beginning to be angry. ”

“ On my way the itching of the night before returned, and this time I felt it in both my hands. I knew that my sister and myself, in common with the King and all his subjects, had been handling the dead leaves freely since I had worked the cure, and I began to be uneasy.
When I knocked at the King’s door the voice of the Fool said “Come in,” and I found the King running with his tripping step up and down the room, rubbing his hands, and beside him trotted the Fool and the monkey.
“Imbecile!” cried the King, without stopping for an instant. “You shall die the death! A trick, a trick! ”

“ I whispered rapidly into my father’s ear, and the sorcerer, kneeling before the King, began to explain.
The King paid no attention to him, but placed a hand upon his daughter’s arm and wept.
“My poor child!” he said. “What shall we do now?”
There was a movement at the door. A crowd of the castle people poured into the room, and parting, opened a lane for a young man, a stranger, who advanced rapidly from the door; a very fat young man, with a round, pink face and [165] round, blue eyes, who wore hanging from his shoulders the skin and head of a seal.
“Brother!” cried the seal’s sister. ”

“ My father, prince, has long been expecting you and is very angry; however, don’t grieve, and don’t be frightened, but do as I tell you. As soon as you see King Bony, fall at once on your knees, and, paying no regard to his outcry, upbraiding, and threats, approach him boldly. What will happen afterwards you will learn, but now we must part.’ On saying this the princess stamped on the ground with her little foot; the ground sprang open at once, and they descended into the subterranean realm, right into Bony’s palace, which shone all underground brighter than our sun. ”

“ The King continued to look from one to the other; he wore a heavy brown velvet thickly braided with gold, and held in his right hand a paper written upon, and folded across.
"Affairs," he said, in his tired voice, with his peculiar short manner of speaking, "have reached a crisis, my lords, and I have come to acquaint you with my resolution."
He leant forward a little, and rested his right arm on the table, keeping his dark, powerful eyes fixed on these ministers whom he read so perfectly. ”

“ Moon, smiling once more. “I never heard of another moon, but of course how was I to be sure? Such wonderful things happen all the time. People fly up in the air in airships, and behave just like birds. So I wasn’t sure whether there was another moon or not, and thought perhaps this fellow was blue, being blue in color and feeling blue in spirits are different—eh?”
“Quite different,” said the Fairy Queen. “You don’t feel blue now, do you?” And as the moon grinned happily the Fairy Queen knew that everything was all right, and a banquet took place in Fairyland that night. ”