The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Man of the West, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: The Wild Man of the West
A Tale of the Rocky Mountains

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Illustrator: Arch Webb

Release Date: February 15, 2008 [EBook #24617]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Wild Man of the West, by R.M. Ballantyne.

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The action of this book takes place entirely in the foothills of the
Rocky Mountains in North America. We can certainly appreciate the
hardness of the life of the hunters in those days, which were during the
early part of the nineteenth century. The action is very well narrated,
and is very exciting and interesting. All sorts of things are suddenly
pulled together in the very last few pages, and it would be quite hard
for the reader to guess what was going to happen, before the last two
chapters.

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THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

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