The Prairie, Volume 2

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “The earth is white, by people of the colour of my father.”

  “Nay, nay, I speak not now of any strollers, who have crept into the land to rob the lawful owners of their birth-right, but of a people who are, or rather were, what with nature and what with paint, red as the berry on the bush.”

  “I have heard the old men say, that there were bands, who hid themselves in the woods under the rising sun, because they dared not come upon the open prairies with men.”

  “Do not your traditions tell you of the greatest, the bravest, and the wisest nation of Red-skins that the Wahcondah has ever breathed upon?”

  Hard-Heart raised his head, with a loftiness and dignity that even his bonds could not repress, as he answered--

  “Has age blinded my father; or does he see so many Siouxes, that he believes there are no longer any Pawnees?”

  “Ah! such is mortal vanity and pride!” exclaimed the disappointed old man, in English; “Natur’ is as strong in a Red-skin as in the bosom of a man of white gifts. Now would a Delaware conceit himself far mightier than a Pawnee, just as a Pawnee boasts himself to be of the princes of the ’arth. And so it was atween the Frenchers of the Canadas and the red-coated English, that the king did use to send into the States, when States they were not, but outcrying and petitioning provinces, they fou’t and they fou’t, and what marvellous boastings did they give forth to the world of their own valour and victories, while both parties forgot to name the humble soldier of the land, who did the real service, but who, as he was not privileged then to smoke at the great council fire of his nation, seldom heard of his deeds, after they were once bravely done.”

  When the old man had thus given vent to the nearly dormant, but far from extinct, military pride, that had so unconsciously led him into the very error he deprecated, his eye, which had begun to quicken and and glimmer with some of the ardour of his youth, softened and turned its anxious look on the devoted captive, whose countenance was also restored to its former cold look of abstraction and thought.

  “Young warrior,” he continued in a voice that was growing tremulous, “I have never been father or brother. The Wahcondah made me to live alone. He never tied my heart to house or field, by the cords with which the men of my race are bound to their lodges; if he had, I should not have journeyed so far, and seen so much. But I have tarried long among a people, who lived in those woods you mention, and much reason did I find to imitate their courage and love their honesty. The Master of Life has made us all, Pawnee, with a feeling for our kind. I never was a father, but well do I know what is the love of one. You are like a lad I valued, and I had even begun to fancy that some of his blood might be in your veins. But what matters that? You are a true man, as I know by the way in which you keep your faith; and honesty is a gift too rare to be forgotten. My heart yearns to you, boy, and gladly would I do you good.”

  The youthful warrior listened to the words, which came from the lips of the other with a force and simplicity that established their truth, and he bowed his head on his naked bosom, in testimony of the respect with which he met the proffer. Then lifting his dark eye to the level of the view, he seemed to be again considering of things removed from every personal consideration. The trapper, who well knew how high the pride of a warrior would sustain him, in those moments he believed to be his last, awaited the pleasure of his young friend, with a meekness and patience that he had acquired by his association with that remarkable race. At length the gaze of the Pawnee began to waver; and then quick, flashing glances were turned from the countenance of the old man to the air, and from the air to his deeply marked lineaments again, as if the spirit, which governed their movements, was beginning to be troubled.

  “Father,” the young brave finally answered in a voice of confidence and kindness, “I have heard your words. They have gone in at my ears, and are now within me. The white-headed Long-knife has no son; the Hard-Heart of the Pawnees is young, but he is already the oldest of his family. He found the bones of his father on the hunting-ground of the Osages, and he has sent them to the prairies of the Good Spirits. No doubt the great chief, his father, has seen them, and knows what is part of himself. But the Wahcondah will soon call to us both; you, because you have seen all that is to be seen in this country, and Hard-Heart, because he has need of a warrior, who is young. There is no time for the Pawnee to show the Pale-face the duty, that a son owes to his father.”

  “Old as I am, and miserable and helpless as I now stand, to what I once was, I may live to see the sun go down in the prairie. Does my son expect ever to see darkness come again?”

  “The Tetons are counting the scalps on my lodge!” returned the young chief, with a smile whose melancholy was singularly illuminated by a gleam of triumph.

  “And they find them many. Too many for the safety of its owner, while he is in their revengeful hands. My son is not a woman, and he looks on the path he is about to travel with a steady eye. Has he nothing to whisper in the ears of his people before he starts? These legs are old, but they may yet carry me to the forks of the Loup-river.”

  “Tell them that Hard-Heart has tied a knot in his wampum for every Teton!” burst from the lips of the captive, with that vehemence with which sudden passion is known to break through the barriers of artificial restraint; “if he meets one of them all, in the prairies of the Master of Life, his heart will become Sioux!”

  “Ah! that feeling would be a dangerous companion for a man with white gifts to start with on such a solemn journey,” muttered the old man in English. “This is not what the good Moravians said to the councils of the Delawares, nor what is so often preached, to the White-skins in the settlements, though to the shame of the colour be it said, it is so little heeded. Pawnee, I love you; but being a Christian man I cannot be the runner to bear such a message.”

  “If my father is afraid the Tetons will hear him, let him whisper it softly to our old men.”

  “As for fear, young warrior, it is no more the shame of a Pale-face than of a Red-skin. The Wahcondah teaches us to love the life he gives; but it is as men love their hunts, and their dogs, and their carabines, and not with the doting that a mother looks upon her infant. The Master of Life will not have to speak aloud twice when he calls my name. I am as ready to answer to it now, as I shall be to-morrow, or at any time it may please his mighty will. But what is a warrior without his traditions? Mine forbid me to carry your words.”

  The chief made a dignified motion of assent, and here there was great danger that those feelings of confidence, which had been so singularly awakened, would as suddenly subside. But the heart of the old man had been too sensibly touched, through long dormant but still living recollections, to break off the communication so rudely. He pondered for a minute, and then bending his look wistfully on his young associate, again continued--

  “Each warrior must be judged by his gifts. I have told my son what I cannot, but let him open his ears to what I can do. An elk shall not measure the prairie much swifter than these old legs, if the Pawnee will give me a message that a white man may bear.”

  “Let the Pale-face listen;” returned the other, after hesitating a single instant longer, under a lingering sensation of his former disappointment. “He will stay here till the Siouxes have done counting the scalps of their dead warriors. He will wait until they have tried to cover the heads of eighteen Tetons with the skin of one Pawnee; he will open his eyes wide, that he may see the place where they bury the bones of a warrior.”

  “All this will I and may I, do, noble boy.”

  “He will mark the spot that he may know it.”

  “No fear, no fear that I shall forget the place,” interrupted the other, whose fortitude began to give way under so trying an exhibition of calmness and resignation.

  “Then I know that my father will go to my people. His head is grey and his words will not be blown away with the smoke. Let him get on my lodge, and call the name of Hard-Heart aloud. No Pawnee will be deaf. Then let my father ask
for the colt, that has never been ridden, but which is sleeker than the buck, and swifter than the elk.”

  “I understand you, boy, I understand you,” interrupted the attentive old man; “and what you say shall be done, ay, and well done too, or I’m but little skilled in the wishes of a dying Indian.”

  “And when my young men have given my father the halter of that colt, he will lead him by a crooked path to the grave of Hard-Heart?”

  “Will I! ay, that I will, my brave youth, though the winter covers these plains in banks of snow, and the sun is hidden as much by day as by night. To the head of the holy spot will I lead the beast, and place him with his eyes looking towards the setting sun.”

  “And my father will speak to him, and tell him, that the master, who has fed him since he was foaled, has now need of him.”

  “That, too, will I do; though the Lord he know; that I shall hold discourse with a horse, not with any vain conceit that my words will be understood, but only to satisfy the cravings of Indian superstition. Hector, my pup, what think you, dog, of talking to a horse?”

  “Let the grey-beard speak to him with the tongue of a Pawnee,” interrupted the young victim, perceiving that his companion had used an unknown language for the preceding speech.

  “My son’s will shall be done--And with these old hands, which I had hoped had nearly done with blood-shed, whether it be of man or beast, will I slay the animal on your grave!”

  “It is good;” returned the other, a gleam of satisfaction flitting across his grave and composed features. “Hard-Heart will ride his horse to the blessed prairies, and he will come before the Master of Life like a chief!”

  The sudden and striking change, which instantly occurred in the countenance of the Indian, caused the trapper to look aside, when he perceived that the conference of the Siouxes had ended, and that Mahtoree, attended by one or two of the principal warriors, was deliberately approaching his intended victim.

  CHAPTER IX.

  “I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are.--”

  “--But I have that honourable Grief lodged here, which burns worse than Tears drown.”

  Shakspeare

  When within twenty feet of the prisoners, the Tetons stopped, and their leader made a sign to the old man to draw nigh. The trapper obeyed, quitting the young Pawnee with a significant look, which was received, as it was meant, for an additional pledge that he would never forget his promise. So soon as Mahtoree found that the other had stopped within reach of him, he stretched forth his arm, and laying a hand upon the shoulder of the attentive old man, he stood regarding him, a minute, with eyes that seemed willing to penetrate the recesses of his most secret thoughts.

  “Is a Pale-face made with two tongues?” he demanded, when he found that, as usual, with the subject of this examination, he was as little intimidated by his present frown as moved by any apprehensions of the future.

  “Honesty lies deeper than the skin.”

  “It is so. Now let my father hear me. Mahtoree has but one tongue, the grey-head has many. They may be all straight, and none of them forked. A Sioux is no more than a Sioux, but a Pale-face is every thing! He can talk to the Pawnee, and the Konza, and the Omawhaw, and he can talk to his own people.”

  “Ay, there are linguisters in the settlements that can do still more. But what profits it all? The Master of Life has an ear for every language!”

  “The grey-head has done wrong. He has said one thing when he meant another. He has looked before him with his eyes, and behind him with his mind. He has ridden the horse of a Sioux too hard; he has been the friend of a Pawnee and the enemy of my people.”

  “Teton, I am your prisoner. Though my words are white, they will not complain. Act your will.”

  “No. Mahtoree will not make a white hair red. My father is free. The prairie is open on every side of him. But before the gray-head turns his back on the Siouxes, let him look well at them, that he may tell his own chief, how great is a Dahcotah!”

  “I am not in a hurry to go on my path. You see a man with a white head, and no woman, Teton; therefore shall I not run myself out of breath, to tell the nations of the prairies what the Siouxes are doing.”

  “It is good. My father has smoked with the chiefs at many councils,” returned Mahtoree, who now thought himself sufficiently sure of the other’s favour to go more directly to his object. “Mahtoree will speak with the tongue, of his very dear friend and father. A young Pale-face will listen when an old man of that nation opens his mouth. Go, my father will make what a poor Indian says fit for a white ear.”

  “Speak aloud!” said the trapper, who readily understood the metaphorical manner, in which the Teton expressed a desire that he should become an interpreter of his words into the English language; “speak, my young men listen. Now, captain, and you too, friend bee-hunter, prepare yourselves to meet the deviltries of this savage with the stout hearts of white warriors. If you find yourselves giving way under his threats, just turn your eyes on that noble looking Pawnee, whose time is measured with a hand as niggardly, as that with which a trader in the towns gives forth the fruits of the Lord, inch by inch, in order to satisfy his covetousness. A single look at the boy will set you both up in resolution.”

  “My brother has turned his eyes on the wrong path;” interrupted Mahtoree, with a complacency that betrayed how unwilling he was to offend his intended interpreter.

  “The Dahcotah will speak to my young men?”

  “After he has sung in the ear of the flower of the Pale-faces.”

  “The Lord forgive the desperate villian!” exclaimed the old man in English. “There are none so tender, or so young, or so innocent, as to escape his ravenous wishes. But hard words and cold looks will profit nothing; therefore it will be wise to speak him fair. Let Mahtoree open his mouth.”

  “Would my father cry out, that the women and children should hear the wisdom of chiefs. We will go into the lodge and whisper.”

  As the Teton ended, he pointed significantly towards a tent, vividly emblazoned with the history of one of his own boldest and most commended exploits, and which stood a little apart from the rest, as if to denote it was the residence of some privileged individual of the band. The shield and quiver at its entrance were richer than common, and the high distinction of a fusee, unequivocally attested the importance of its proprietor. In every other particular it was rather distinguished by signs of poverty than of wealth. The domestic utensils were fewer in number and simpler in their forms, than those to be seen about the openings of the meanest lodges, nor was there a single one of those high-prized articles of civilized life, which were occasionally bought of the traders, in bargains that bore so hard on the ignorant natives. All these had been bestowed, as they had been acquired, by the generous chief, on his subordinates, to purchase an influence that might render him the master of their lives and persons; a species of wealth that was certainly more noble in itself, and far dearer to his ambition.

  The old man well knew this to be the lodge of Mahtoree, and, in obedience to the sign of the chief, he held his way towards it with slow and reluctant steps. But there were others present, who were equally interested in the approaching conference, whose apprehensions were not to be so easily suppressed. The watchful eyes and jealous ears of Middleton had taught him enough to fill his soul with the most horrible forebodings. With an incredible effort he succeeded in gaining his feet, and called aloud to the retiring trapper--

  “I conjure you, old man, if the love you bore my parents was more than words, or if the love you bear your God is that of a Christian man, utter not a syllable that may wound the ear of that innocent--”

  Exhausted in spirit and fettered in limbs, he then fell, like an inanimate log, to the earth, where he lay as if perfectly dead.

  Paul had however caught the clue and completed the exhortation, in his peculiar manner.

  “Harkee, old trapper,” he shouted, vainly endeavouring at the same time to make a gesture of defiance
with his hand; “if you ar’ about to play the interpreter, speak such words to the ears of that damnable savage, as becomes a white man to use and a heathen to hearken to. Tell him, from me, that if he does or says the thing that is uncivil to the girl, called Nelly Wade, that I’ll curse him with my dying breath; that I’ll pray for all good Christians in Kentucky to curse him; sitting and standing; eating and drinking; fighting, praying, or at horse-races; in-doors and out-doors; in summer or winter, or in the month of March; in short I’ll--ay, it ar’ a fact, morally true--I’ll haunt him, if the ghost of a Pale-face can contrive to lift itself from a grave made by the hands of a Red-skin!”

  Having thus vented the most terrible denunciation he could devise, and the one which, in the eyes of the honest bee-hunter, there seemed the greatest likelihood of his being able to put in execution, he was obliged to await the fruits of his threat, with all that calm resignation which would be apt to govern a western border-man who, in addition to the prospects just named, had the advantage of contemplating them in fetters and bondage. We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the quaint morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping spirits of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and peculiar benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the Dahcotahs, commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or murdering, on the banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, in terms of suitable energy, with the Teton tribe. The latter more than once received from his lips curses as sententious and as complicated as that celebrated anathema of the church, for a knowledge of which most unlettered Protestants are indebted to the pious researches of the worthy Tristram Shandy. But as Middleton recovered from his exhaustion he was fain to appease the boisterous temper of his associate, by admonishing him of the uselessness of such denunciations, and of the possibility of their hastening the very evil he deprecated, by irritating the resentments of a race, who were sufficiently fierce and lawless, even in their most pacific moods.