on him. These he caught and thrashed
soundly, after the fashion of a schoolmaster with a refractory boy, and
turned them adrift with a warning thenceforth to mind their own
business. At last the Indians set him down as a "great medicine-man,"
or a demon, whom it was impossible to slay; and the trappers shook their
heads and touched their foreheads significantly, as if to indicate that
they thought him mad.

Thus Dick, in course of years, freed himself in a great measure from
annoyance, and many good and kind actions which he did both to Indians
and trappers began to be circulated and exaggerated, so that he became a
greater mystery than ever, especially to the savages, who naturally
misconstrued the spirit in which he made his furious attacks, in
self-defence, just as much as they misunderstood his motives in
performing deeds of kindness. He was a monstrous mystery! the greatest
mystery that had ever been seen or heard of in the Rocky Mountains since
the beginning of time, and no doubt a greater mystery than will ever be
heard of there again.

Having traversed this roundabout pathway, we now come to the explanation
which we intended to have given much earlier in this chapter. But it is
really wonderful how natural it is for the human mind to prose and to
diverge, and how very difficult it is, at any time, to come to the
point! Public speakers know this well. Perhaps their hearers know it
better!

Well, although Dick was thus feared, yet he was not entirely unmolested.
Wandering tribes from distant hunting grounds used to go there, and,
not knowing much about the Wild Man of the West, did not believe in him;
even ventured to go in search of him, and on more than one occasion
almost caught him asleep in his cave. Having an ingenious turn of mind,
and being somewhat fanciful, he devised a curious plan to deceive the
savages and warn him of their approach.

By means of an axe and a knife, he carved a representation of his own
head, and covered it with hair by means of the tail of one of his
light-coloured horses, which he docked for the purpose. (His steeds, by
the way, occupied another chamber of the cavern in which he dwelt.) The
head thus formed, he planted behind a bush that grew on a ledge of rock
about two yards from the bottom of the cliff of the amphitheatre
outside, and directly opposite to the entrance to it. The cave, it will
be remembered, was on the right of that entrance. Thus, the first thing