Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “I never was more in earnest in my life, Deerslayer, and I am as much in earnest in the wish as in the gift.”

  “Well, gal, well; we’ll find time to talk of this ag’in. You mustn’t be downhearted, Hurry, for Judith is a sprightly young woman, and she has a quick reason; she knows that the credit of her father’s rifle is safer in my hands than it can possibly be in your’n; and, therefore, you mustn’t be downhearted. In other matters, more to your liking, too, you’ll find she’ll give you the preference.”

  Hurry growled out his dissatisfaction; but he was too intent on quitting the lake, and in making his preparations, to waste his breath on a subject of this nature. Shortly after, the supper was ready; it was eaten in silence, as is so much the habit of those who consider the table as merely a place of animal refreshment. On this occasion, however, sadness and thought contributed their share to the general desire not to converse; for Deerslayer was so far an exception to the usages of men of his cast, as not only to wish to hold discourse on such occasions, but as often to create a similar desire in his companions.

  The meal ended, and the humble preparations removed, the whole party assembled on the platform to hear the expected intelligence from Deerslayer on the subject of his visit. It had been evident he was in no haste to make his communications; but the feelings of Judith would no longer admit of delay. Stools were brought from the ark and the hut, and the whole six placed themselves in a circle near the door, watching each other’s countenances, as best they could, by the scanty means that were furnished by a lovely starlight night. Along the shore, beneath the mountains, lay the usual body of gloom; but in the broad lake no shadow was cast, and a thousand mimic stars were dancing in the limpid element, that was just stirred enough by the evening air to set them all in motion.

  “Now, Deerslayer,” commenced Judith, whose impatience resisted further restraint; “now, Deerslayer, tell us all the Hurons have to say, and the reason why they have sent you on parole, to make us some offer.”

  “Furlough, Judith; furlough is the word; and it carries the same meaning with a captyve at large as it does with a soldier who has leave to quit his colors. In both cases the word is passed to come back; and now I remember to have heard that’s the ra‘al signification, ‘furlough,’ meaning a ‘word’ passed for the doing of anything, or the like. Parole, I rather think, is Dutch, and has something to do with the tattoos of the garrisons. But this makes no great difference, since the vartue of a pledge lies in the idee, and not in the word. Well, then, if the message must be given, it must; and perhaps there is no use in putting it off. Hurry will soon be wanting to set out on his journey to the river, and the stars rise and set, just as if they cared for neither Injin nor message. Ah’s me! ‘tisn’t a pleasant, and I know it’s a useless arr’nd; but it must be told.”

  “Harkee, Deerslayer,” put in Hurry, a little authoritatively; “you’re a sensible man in a hunt, and as good a fellow on a march as a sixty-miler-a-day could wish to meet with; but you’re oncommon slow about messages, especially them that you think won’t be likely to be well received. When a thing is to be told, why, tell it, and don’t hang back like a Yankee lawyer pretending he can’t understand a Dutchman’s English, just to get a double fee out of him.”

  “I understand you, Hurry, and well are you named tonight, seeing you’ve no time to lose. But let us come at once to the p‘int, seeing that’s the object of this council; for council it may be called, though women have seats among us. The simple fact is this. When the party came back from the castle, the Mingos held a council, and bitter thoughts were uppermost, as was plainly to be seen by their gloomy faces. No one likes to be beaten, and a redskin as little as a paleface. Well, when they had smoked upon it, and made their speeches, and their council fire had burnt low, the matter came out. It seems the elders among ’em consaited I was a man to be trusted on a furlough. They’re wonderful obsarvant, them Mingos; that their worst inimies must allow; but they consaited I was such a man; and it isn’t often”—added the hunter, with a pleasing consciousness that his previous life justified this implicit reliance on his good faith—“it isn’t often they consait anything so good of a paleface; but so they did with me, and therefore they didn’t hesitate to speak their minds, which is just this: You see the state of things. The lake and all on it, they fancy, lie at their mercy. Thomas Hutter is deceased, and as for Hurry, they’ve got the idee he has been near enough to death today not to wish to take another look at him this summer. Therefore, they account all your forces as reduced to Chingachgook and the two young women, and, while they know the Delaware to be of a high race, and a born warrior, they know he’s now on his first warpath. As for the gals, of course they set them down much as they do women in gin’ral.”

  “You mean that they despise us!” interrupted Judith, with eyes that flashed so brightly as to be observed by all present.

  “That will be seen in the ind. They hold that all on the lake lies at their mercy, and, therefore, they send by me this belt of wampum,” showing the article in question to the Delaware, as he spoke, “with these words: Tell the Sarpent, they say, that he has done well for a beginner; he may now strike across the mountains, for his own villages, and no one shall look for his trail. If he has found a scalp, let him take it with him; the Huron braves have hearts, and can feel for a young warrior who doesn’t wish to go home empty-handed. If he is nimble, he is welcome to lead out a party in pursuit. Hist, howsever, must go back to the Hurons; when she left them in the night, she carried away, by mistake, that which doesn’t belong to her.” “That can’t be true!” said Hetty, earnestly. “Hist is no such girl; but one that gives everybody his due—”

  How much more she would have said, in remonstrance, cannot be known, inasmuch as Hist, partly laughing, and partly hiding her face in shame, put her own hand across the speaker’s mouth, in a way to check the words.

  “You don’t understand Mingo messages, poor Hetty,” resumed Deerslayer, “which seldom mean what lies exactly uppermost. Hist has brought away with her the inclinations of a young Huron, and they want her back again, that the poor young man may find them where he last saw them! The Sarpent, they say, is too promising a young warrior not to find as many wives as he wants, but this one he cannot have. That’s their meaning, and nothing else, as I understand it.”

  “They were very obliging and thoughtful, in supposing a young woman can forget all her own inclinations in order to let this unhappy youth find his!” said Judith ironically, though her manner became more bitter as she proceeded. “I suppose a woman is a woman, let her color be white or red; and your chiefs know little of a woman’s heart, Deerslayer, if they think it can ever forgive when wronged, or ever forget when it fairly loves.”

  “I suppose that’s pretty much the truth, with some women, Judith, though I’ve known them that could do both. The next message is to you. They say the Muskrat, as they call your father, has dove to the bottom of the lake; that he will never come up again, and that his young will soon be in want of wigwams, if not of food. The Huron huts, they think, are better than the huts of York; they wish you to come and try them. Your color is white, they own, but they think young women who’ve lived so long in the woods, would lose their way in the clearin’s. A great warrior among them has lately lost his wife, and he would be glad to put the Wild Rose on her bench at his fireside. As for the Feeble-Mind, she will always be honored and taken care of by red warriors. Your father’s goods, they think, ought to go to enrich the tribe; but your own property, which is to include everything of a female natur‘, will go, like that of all wives, into the wigwam of the husband. Moreover, they’ve lost a young maiden by violence, lately, and ’twill take two palefaces to fill her seat.”

  “And do you bring such a message to me?” exclaimed Judith, though the tone in which the words were uttered had more in it of sorrow than of anger. “Am I a girl to be an Indian’s slave?”

  “If you wish my honest thoughts on this p’int, Judith, I sha
ll answer that I don’t think you’ll willingly ever become any man’s slave, redskin or white. You’re not to think hard, howsever, of my bringing the message, as near as I could, in the very words in which it was given to me. Them was the conditions on which I got my furlough, and a bargain is a bargain, though it is made with a vagabond. I’ve told you what they’ve said, but I’ve not yet told you what I think you ought, one and all, to answer.”

  “Ay; let’s hear that, Deerslayer,” put in Hurry. “My cur‘osity is up on that consideration, and I should like right well to hear your idees of the reasonableness of the reply. For my part, though, my own mind is pretty much settled on the p’int of my own answer, which shall be made known as soon as necessary.”

  “And so is mine, Hurry, on all the different heads, and on no one is it more sartainly settled than on your’n. If I was you, I should say—‘Deerslayer, tell them scamps they don’t know Harry March! He is human; and having a white skin he has also a white natur’, which natur’ won’t let him desart females of his own race and gifts, in their greatest need. So set me down as one that will refuse to come into your treaty, though you should smoke a hogshead of tobacco over it.’ ”

  March was a little embarrassed at this rebuke, which was uttered with sufficient warmth of manner, and with a point that left no doubt of the meaning. Had Judith encouraged him, he would not have hesitated about remaining to defend her and her sister, but under the circumstances, a feeling of resentment rather urged him to abandon them. At all events, there was not a sufficiency of chivalry in Hurry Harry to induce him to hazard the safety of his own person, unless he could see a direct connection between the probable consequences and his own interests. It is no wonder, therefore, that his answer partook equally of his intention, and of the reliance he so boastingly placed on his gigantic strength, which, if it did not always make him courageous, usually made him impudent as respects those with whom he conversed.

  “Fair words make long friendships, Master Deerslayer,” he said, a little menacingly. “You’re but a stripling, and you know, by ex-per’ ence, what you are in the hands of a man. As you’re not me, but only a go-between, sent by the savages to us Christians, you may tell your empl‘yers that they do know Harry March, which is a proof of their sense as well as his. He’s human enough to follow human natur’, and that tells him to see the folly of one man’s fighting a whole tribe. If females desart him, they must expect to be desarted by him, whether they’re of his own gifts or another man’s gifts. Should Judith see fit to change her mind, she’s welcome to my company to the river, and Hetty with her; but shouldn’t she come to this conclusion, I start as soon as I think the enemy’s scouts are beginning to nestle themselves in among the brush and leaves for the night.”

  “Judith will not change her mind, and she does not ask your company, Master March,” returned the girl, with spirit.

  “That p’int’s settled, then,” resumed Deerslayer, unmoved by the other’s warmth. “Hurry Harry must act for himself, and do that which will be most likely to suit his own fancy. The course he means to take will give him an easy race, if it don’t give him an easy conscience. Next comes the question with Hist—what say you, gal?—will you desart your duty, too, and go back to the Mingos and take a Huron husband; and all, not for the love of the man you’re to marry, but for the love of your own scalp?”

  “Why you talk so to Hist?” demanded the girl, half offended. “You t’ink a redskin girl made like captain’s lady, to laugh and joke with any officer that come.”

  “What I think, Hist, is neither here nor there, in this matter. I must carry back your answer, and in order to do so, it is necessary that you should send it. A faithful messenger gives his arr’nd word for word.”

  Hist no longer hesitated to speak her mind fully. In the excitement she rose from her bench, and naturally recurring to that language in which she expressed herself the most readily, she delivered her thoughts and intentions, beautifully and with dignity, in the tongue of her own people.

  “Tell the Hurons, Deerslayer,” she said, “that they are as ignorant as moles; they don’t know the wolf from the dog. Among my people, the rose dies on the stem where it budded; the tears of the child fall on the graves of its parents; the corn grows where the seed has been planted. The Delaware girls are not messengers, to be sent, like belts of wampum, from tribe to tribe. They are honeysuckles, that are sweetest in their own woods; their own young men carry them away in their bosoms, because they are fragrant; they are sweetest when plucked from their native stems. Even the robin and the martin come back, year after year, to their old nests; shall a woman be less true-hearted than a bird? Set the pine in the clay, and it will turn yellow; the willow will not flourish on the hill; the tamarack is healthiest in the swamp; the tribes of the sea love best to hear the winds that blow over the salt water. As for a Huron youth, what is he to a maiden of the Lenni Lenape? He may be fleet, but her eyes do not follow him in the race; they look back towards the lodges of the Delawares. He may sing a sweet song for the girls of Canada, but there is no music for Wah, but in the tongue she has listened to from childhood. Were the Huron born of the people that once roamed the shores of the salt lake, it would be in vain, unless he were of the family of Uncas. The young pine will rise to be as high as any of its fathers. Wah-ta-Wah has but one heart, and it can love but one husband.”

  Deerslayer listened to this characteristic message, which was given with an earnestness suited to the feelings from which it sprang, with undisguised delight; meeting the ardent eloquence of the girl, as she concluded, with one of his own heartfelt, silent, and peculiar fits of laughter.

  “That’s worth all the wampum in the woods!” he exclaimed. “You don’t understand it, I suppose, Judith; but if you’ll look into your feelin‘s, and fancy that an inimy had sent to tell you to give up the man of your ch’ice, and to take up with another that wasn’t the man of your ch‘ice, you’ll get the substance of it, I’ll warrant! Give me a woman for ra’al eloquence, if they’ll only make up their minds to speak what they feel. By speakin‘, I don’t mean, chatterin’, howsever ; for most of them will do that by the hour; but comin’ out with their honest, deepest feelin’s, in proper words. And now, Judith, having got the answer of a redskin girl, it is fit I should get that of a paleface, if indeed, a countenance that is as blooming as your’n can in any wise so be tarmed. You are well named the Wild Rose, and so far as color goes, Hetty ought to be called the Honeysuckle.”

  “Did this language come from one of the garrison gallants, I should deride it, Deerslayer; but coming from you, I know it can be depended on,” returned Judith, deeply gratified by his unmeditated and characteristic compliments. “It is too soon, however, to ask my answer; the Great Serpent has not yet spoken.”

  “The Sarpent? Lord; I could carry back his speech without hearing a word of it! I didn’t think of putting the question to him at all, I will allow; though ‘twould be hardly right either, seeing that truth is truth, and I’m bound to tell these Mingos the fact, and nothing else. So, Chingachgook, let us hear your mind on this matter: are you inclined to strike across the hills towards your village, to give up Hist to a Huron, and to tell the chiefs at home, that if they’re actyve, and successful they may possibly get on the end of the Iroquois trail some two or three days a’ter the inimy has got off of it?”

  Like his betrothed, the young chief arose, that his answer might be given with due distinctness and dignity. Hist had spoken with her hands crossed upon her bosom, as if to suppress the emotions within; but the warrior stretched an arm before him, with a calm energy that aided in giving emphasis to his expressions.

  “Wampum should be sent for wampum,” he said; “a message must be answered by a message. Hear what the Great Serpent of the Delawares has to say to the pretended wolves from the great lakes, that are howling through our woods. They are no wolves; they are dogs that have come to get their tails and ears cropped by the hands of the Delawares. They are good at stealing you
ng women: bad at keeping them. Chingachgook takes his own where he finds it; he asks leave of no cur from the Canadas. If he has a tender feeling in his heart, it is no business of the Hurons. He tells it to her who most likes to know it; he will not bellow it in the forest for the ears of those that only understand yells of terror. What passes in his lodge is not for the chiefs of his own people to know; still less for Mingo rogues—”

  “Call ’ em vagabonds, Sarpent,” interrupted Deerslayer, unable to restrain his delight—“yes, just call ’em up-and-down vagabonds, which is a word easily intarpreted, and the most hateful to all their ears, it’s so true. Never fear me; I’ll give ‘em your message, syllable for syllable, sneer for sneer, idee for idee, scorn for scorn, and they desarve no better at your hands. Only call ’em vagabonds, once or twice, and that will set the sap mounting in ’em, from their lowest roots to the uppermost branches.”

  “Still less for Mingo vagabonds!” resumed Chingachgook, quite willingly complying with his friend’s request. “Tell the Huron dogs to howl louder, if they wish a Delaware to find them in the woods, where they burrow like foxes, instead of hunting like warriors. When they had a Delaware maiden in their camp, there was a reason for hunting them up; now they will be forgotten, unless they make a noise. Chingachgook don’t like the trouble of going to his villages for more warriors; he can strike their runaway trail; unless they hide it underground, he will follow it to Canada, alone. He will keep Wah-ta-Wah with him to cook his game; they two will be Delawares enough to scare all the Hurons back to their own country.”

  “That’s a grand dispatch, as the officers call them things!” cried Deerslayer; “ ’twill set all the Huron blood in motion; most particularly that part where he tells ’em Hist, too, will keep on their heels, till they’re fairly driven out of the country. Ah’s me! big words aren’t always big deeds, notwithstanding. The Lord send that we be able to be only one half as good as we promise to be. And now, Judith, it’s your turn to speak, for them miscreants will expect an answer from each person, poor Hetty, perhaps, excepted.”