The Leatherstocking Tales II

by James Fenimore Cooper

  The reader is to anticipate none of the appliances of people of refinement, in the description of the personal appearances of the group in question. They were all way-farers in the wilderness, and had they not been, neither their previous habits, nor their actual social positions would have accustomed them to many of the luxuries of rank. Two of the party, indeed, a male and a female, belonged to the native owners of the soil, being Indians of the well known tribe of the Tuscaroras, while their companions were a man, who bore about him the peculiarities of one who had passed his days on the ocean, and that, too, in a station little if any above that of a common mariner, while his female associate was a maiden of a class, in no great degree superior to his own, though her youth, sweetness of countenance, and a modest but spirited mien, lent that character of intellect and refinement, which adds so much to the charm of beauty, in the sex. On the present occasion, her full blue eye reflected the feeling of sublimity that the scene excited, and her pleasant face was beaming with the pensive expression, with which all deep emotions, even though they bring the most grateful pleasure, shadow the countenances of the ingenuous and thoughtful.

  And, truly, the scene was of a nature, deeply to impress the imagination of the beholder. Towards the west, in which direction the faces of the party were turned, and in which alone could much be seen, the eye ranged over an ocean of leaves, glorious and rich in the varied but lively verdure of a generous vegetation, and shaded by the luxuriant tints that belong to the forty second degree of latitude. The elm, with its graceful and weeping top, the rich varieties of the maple, most of the noble oaks of the American forest, with the broad leafed linden, known in the parlance of the country as the basswood, mingled their uppermost branches, forming one broad and seemingly interminable carpet of foliage, that stretched away towards the setting sun, until it bounded the horizon, by blending with the clouds, as the waves and sky meet at the base of the vault of Heaven. Here and there, by some accident of the tempests, or by a caprice of nature, a trifling opening among these giant members of the forest, permitted an inferior tree to struggle upward toward the light, and to lift its modest head nearly to a level with the surrounding surface of verdure. Of this class were the birch, a tree of some account, in regions less favored, the quivering aspen, various generous nut-woods, and divers others, that resembled the ignoble and vulgar, thrown by circumstances, into the presence of the stately and great. Here and there, too, the tall, straight trunk of the pine, pierced the vast field, rising high above it, like some grand monument reared by art on the plain of leaves.

  It was the vastness of the view, the nearly unbroken surface of verdure, that contained the principle of grandeur. The beauty was to be traced in the delicate tints, relieved by gradations of light and shadow, while the solemn repose, induced a feeling allied to awe.

  “Uncle,” said the wondering but pleased girl, addressing her male companion, whose arm she rather touched than leaned on, to steady her own light but firm footing—“this is like a view of the ocean you so much love!”

  “So much for ignorance, and a girl’s fancy, Magnet”—a term of affection, the sailor often used in allusion to his niece’s personal attractions—“No one but a child would think of likening this handful of leaves, to a look at the real Atlantic. You might stop all these tree-tops to Neptune’s jacket, and they would make no more than a nosegay in his bosom.”

  “More fanciful than true, I think, uncle. Look, thither; it must be miles on miles, and yet we see nothing but leaves! What more could one behold, if looking at the ocean?”

  “More!” returned the uncle, giving an impatient gesture with the elbow the other touched, for his arms were crossed, and the hands were thrust into the bosom of a vest of red cloth, a fashion of the times, “More, Magnet; say, rather, what less. Where are your combing-seas, your blue-water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your water-spouts and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?”

  “And where are your tree-tops, your solemn silence, your fragrant leaves and your beautiful green, uncle, on the ocean?”

  “Tut, Magnet; if you understood the thing, you would know that green water is a sailor’s bane. He scarcely relishes a green horn, less.”

  “But green trees are a different thing. Hist! that sound is the air breathing among the leaves!”

  “You should hear a nor-wester breathe, girl, if you fancy noise aloft. Now where are your gales, and hurricanes, and trades, and Levanters and such like incidents in this bit of a forest, and what fishes have you swimming beneath yonder tame surface?”

  “That there have been tempests here, these signs around us plainly show, and beasts, if not fishes, are beneath these leaves.”

  “I do not know that—” returned the uncle, with a sailor’s dogmatism. “They told us many stories, at Albany, of the wild animals we should fall in with, and yet we have seen nothing to frighten a seal. I doubt any of your inland animals, will compare with a low latitude shark.”

  “See!” exclaimed the niece, who was more occupied with the sublimity and beauty of the “boundless wood,” than with her uncle’s arguments, “yonder is a smoke curling over the tops of the trees—can it come from a house?”

  “Ay—ay—there is a look of humanity in that smoke,” returned the old seaman, “which is worth a thousand trees. I must show it to Arrowhead, who may be running past a port without knowing it. It is a probable there is a camboose, where there is a smoke.”

  As he concluded, the uncle drew a hand from his bosom, touched the male Indian, who was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder, and pointed out a thin line of vapor, that was stealing slowly out of the wilderness of leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and was diffusing itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity, in the quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those noble-looking warriors that were oftener met with among the aborigines of this continent a century since, than to day, and, while he had mingled sufficiently with the colonists to be familiar with their habits, and even with their language, he had lost little, if any, of the wild grandeur, and simple dignity of a chief. Between him and the old seaman the intercourse had been friendly, but distant, for the Indian had been too much accustomed to mingle with the officers of the different military posts he had frequented, not to understand that his present companion was only a subordinate. So imposing indeed, had been the quiet superiority of the Tuscarora’s reserve, that Charles Cap, for so was the seaman named, in his most dogmatical or facetious moments had not ventured on familiarity, in an intercourse that had now lasted more than a week. The sight of the curling smoke, however, had struck the latter like the sudden appearance of a sail at sea, and, for the first time since they met, he ventured to touch the warrior, as has been related.

  The quick eye of the Tuscarora instantly caught a sight of the smoke, and for quite a minute, he stood, slightly raised on tiptoe, with distended nostrils, like the buck that scents a taint in the air, and a gaze as riveted as that of the trained pointer, while he waits his master’s aim. Then falling back on his feet, a low exclamation, in the soft tones that form so singular a contrast to its harsher cries, in the Indian warrior’s voice, was barely audible. Otherwise he was undisturbed. His countenance was calm, and his quick, dark, eagle eye moved over the leafy panorama, as if to take in at a glance every circumstance that might enlighten his mind.

  That the long journey they had attempted to make through a broad belt of wilderness, was necessarily attended with danger, both uncle and niece well knew, though neither could at once determine whether the sign that others were in their vicinity, was the harbinger of good, or evil.

  “There must be Oneidas, or Tuscaroras, near us, Arrowhead,” said Cap, addressing his Indian companion by his conventional English name; “will it not be well to join company with them, and get a comfortable berth for the night in their wigwam?”

  “No wigwam there,” Arrowhead answered in his unmoved manner—“too much tree.”

  “But Indians
must be there; perhaps some old mess-mates of your own, Master Arrowhead.”

  “No Tuscarora—no Oneida—no Mohawk—pale-face fire.”

  “The devil it is! Well, Magnet, this surpasses a seaman’s philosophy—we old sea-dogs can tell a soldier’s from a sailor’s quid, or a lubber’s nest from a mate’s hammock, but I do not think the oldest admiral in His Majesty’s Fleet can tell a King’s smoke from a collier’s!”

  The idea that human beings were in their vicinity in that ocean of wilderness, had deepened the flush on the blooming cheek, and brightened the eye of the fair creature at his side, but she now turned with a look of surprise to her relative, and said hesitatingly,—for both had often admired the Tuscarora’s knowledge, or we might almost say, instinct—

  “A pale face’s fire! Surely, uncle, he cannot know that!”

  “Ten days since, child, I would have sworn to it; but, now, I hardly know what to believe. May I take the liberty of asking, Arrowhead, why you fancy that smoke, now, a pale face’s smoke, and not a red skin’s?”

  “Wet wood—” returned the warrior, with the calmness with which the pedagogue might point out an arithmetical demonstration to his puzzled pupil. “Much wet—much smoke—much water, black smoke.”

  “But, begging your pardon, Master Arrowhead, the smoke is not black, nor is there much of it. To my eye, now, it is as light and fanciful a smoke as ever rose from a captain’s tea kettle, when nothing was left to make the fire, but a few chips from the dunnage.”

  “Too much water—” returned Arrowhead, with a slight nod of the head. “Tuscarora too cunning to make fire with water; pale face too much book and burn anything. Much book, little know.”

  “Well, that’s reasonable, I allow,” said Cap, who was no devotee of learning. “He means that as a hit at your reading, Magnet, for the chief has sensible notions of things, in his own way. How far, now, Arrowhead, do you make us by your calculation, from the bit of a pond, that you call the Great Lake, and towards which we have been so many days shaping our course?”

  The Tuscarora looked at the seaman with quiet superiority, as he answered.

  “Ontario like heaven; one sun, and the great traveller know it.”

  “Well, I have been a great traveller, I cannot deny, but of all my v’y’ges this has been the longest, the least profitable, and the farthest inland. If this body of fresh water is so nigh, Arrowhead, and at the same time so large, one might think a pair of good eyes would find it out, for apparently, every thing within thirty miles, is to be seen from this look out.”

  “Look,” said Arrowhead, stretching an arm before him, with quiet grace; “Ontario!”

  “Uncle, you are accustomed to cry ‘land ho,’ but not ‘water ho,’ and you do not see it,” cried the niece, laughing as girls will laugh at their own idle conceits.

  “How now, Magnet, dost suppose that I shouldn’t know my native element, if it were in sight?”

  “But Ontario is not your native element, dear uncle, for you come from the salt water, while this is fresh.”

  “That might make some difference to your young mariner, but none in the world to the old ones. I should know water, child, were I to see it in China.”

  “Ontario—” repeated the Arrowhead, with emphasis, again stretching his hand towards the North West.

  Cap looked at the Tuscarora, for the first time since their acquaintance, with something like an air of contempt, though he did not fail to follow the direction of the chief’s eye and arm, both of which were pointing, to all appearance, toward a vacant spot in the heavens, a short distance above the plain of leaves.

  “Ay, ay; this is much as I expected, when I left the coast to come in search of a fresh-water pond,” resumed Cap, shrugging his shoulders like one whose mind was made up, and who thought no more need be said. “Ontario may be there, or, for that matter, it may be in my pocket. Well I suppose there will be room enough, when we reach it, to work our canoe. But, Arrowhead, if there be pale faces in our neighborhood, I confess I should like to get within hail of them.”

  The Tuscarora now gave a quiet inclination of his head, and the whole party descended from the roots of the uptorn tree, in silence. When they had reached the ground, Arrowhead intimated his intention to go towards the fire, and ascertain who had lighted it, while he advised his wife, and the two others to proceed to a canoe, which they had left in the adjacent stream, and await his return.

  “Why, chief, this might do on soundings, and in an offing where one knew the channel,” returned old Cap, “but in an unknown region like this, I think it unsafe to trust the pilot alone too far from the ship, so, with your leave, we will not part company.”

  “What my brother want?” asked the Indian gravely, though without taking offence at a distrust that was sufficiently plain.

  “Your company, Master Arrowhead, and no more. I will go with you, and speak these strangers.”

  The Tuscarora assented without difficulty, and again he directed his patient and submissive little wife, who seldom turned her full rich black eye on him, but to express equally her respect, her dread, and her love, to proceed to the boat. But, here, Magnet raised a difficulty. Although spirited, and of unusual energy under circumstances of trial, she was but woman, and the idea of being entirely deserted by her two male protectors, in the midst of a wilderness, that her senses had just told her was seemingly illimitable, became so keenly painful that she expressed a wish to accompany her uncle.

  “The exercise will be a relief, dear sir, after sitting so long in the canoe,” she added, as the rich blood slowly returned to a cheek that had paled, in spite of her effort to be calm, “and there may be females, with the strangers.”

  “Come, then, child—it is but a cable’s length, and we shall return an hour before the sun sets.”

  With this permission, the girl, whose real name was Mabel Dunham, prepared to be of the party, while the Dew-of-June, as the wife of Arrowhead was called, passively went her way towards the canoe, too much accustomed to obedience, solitude, and the gloom of the forest, to feel apprehension.

  The three who remained in the wind-row, now picked their way around its tangled maze, and gained the margin of the woods, in the necessary direction. A few glances of the eye sufficed for Arrowhead, but old Cap, deliberately set the smoke by a pocket compass, before he trusted himself within the shadows of the trees.

  “This steering by the nose, Magnet, may do well enough for an Indian, but your thorough-bred knows the virtue of the needle,” said the uncle, as he trudged at the heels of the light stepping Tuscarora. “America would never have been discovered, take my word for it, if Columbus had been nothing but nostrils. Friend Arrowhead, didst ever see a machine like this?”

  The Indian turned, cast a glance at the compass, which Cap held in a way to direct his course, and gravely answered—

  “A pale face eye. The Tuscarora see in his head. The salt water (for so the Indian styled his companion) all eye—now; no tongue.”

  “He means, uncle, that we had needs be silent; perhaps he distrusts the persons we are about to meet.”

  “Ay—’tis an Indian’s fashion of going to quarters. You perceive he has examined the priming of his rifle, and it may be as well, if I look to that of my own pistols.”

  Without betraying alarm at these preparations, to which she had become accustomed by her long journey in the wilderness, Mabel followed with a step as light and elastic as that of the Indian, keeping close in the rear of her companions. For the first half mile, no other caution, beyond a rigid silence was observed, but as the party drew nearer to the spot, where the fire was known to be, much greater care became necessary.

  The forest, as usual, had little to intercept the view, below the branches, but the tall straight trunks of trees. Every thing, belonging to vegetation, had struggled towards the light, and beneath the leafy canopy one walked, as it might be, through a vast natural vault, that was upheld by myriads of rustic columns. These columns, or trees, howev
er, often served to conceal the adventurer, the hunter, or the foe, and as Arrowhead swiftly approached the spot where his practised and unerring senses told him the strangers ought to be, his footstep gradually became lighter, his eye more vigilant, and his person was more carefully concealed.

  “See, Salt-Water,” he said exultingly, pointing at the same time through the vista of trees, “pale-face fire!”

  “By the Lord, the fellow is right!” muttered Cap. “There they are, sure enough, and eating their grub as quietly as if they were in the cabin of a three decker.”

  “Arrowhead is but half right,” whispered Mabel, “for there are two Indians and only one white man.”

  “Pale face,” said the Tuscarora, holding up two fingers; “red man” holding up one.

  “Well,” rejoined Cap, “it is hard to say, which is right and which is wrong. One is certainly white; and a comely, fine lad he is, with an air of life and respectability about him; one is a red skin as plain as paint and nature can make him; but the third chap is half-rigged; being neither brig, nor schooner.”

  “Pale-face,” repeated Arrowhead, again raising two fingers; “red-man,” showing but one.

  “He must be right, uncle, for his eye seems never to fail. But it is now urgent to know whether we meet as friends, or foes. They may be French.”

  “One hail will soon satisfy us, on that head,” returned Cap. “Stand you, behind this tree, Magnet, lest the knaves take it into their heads to fire a broadside, without a parley, and I will soon learn what colours they sail under.”

  The uncle had placed his two hands to his mouth, to form a trumpet, and was about to give the promised hail, when a rapid movement from Arrowhead defeated the intention, by deranging the instrument.

  “Red man, Mohican,” said the Tuscarora; “good; pale-face, Yengeese.”