“Captain,” resumed the other untying his little wallet with great deliberation, and even in a manner to show he found satisfaction in the delay, “I wish to offer you a small matter of trade. No great bargain, mayhap; but still the best that one, of whose hand the skill of the rifle has taken leave, and who has become no better than a miserable trapper, can offer before we part.”
“Part!” was echoed from every mouth among those who had so recently shared his dangers and profited by his care.
“What the devil, old trapper, do you mean to foot it to the settlements, when here is a boat that will float the distance in half the time, that the jackass, the Doctor has given the Pawnee, could trot along the same!”
“Settlements, boy! It is long sin’ I took my leave of the waste and wickedness of the settlements and the villages. If I live in a clearing here, it is one of the Lord’s making, and I have no hard thoughts on the matter; but never again shall I be seen running wilfully into the danger of immoralities.”
“I had not thought of parting,” answered Middleton, endeavouring to seek some relief from the uneasiness he felt, by turning his eyes on the sympathizing countenances of his friends; “on the contrary, I had hoped and believed that you would have accompanied us below, where I give you a sacred pledge, nothing shall be wanting to make your days comfortable.”
“Yes, lad, yes; you would do your endeavours; but what are the strivings of man against the working of the devil! Ay, if kind offers and good wishes could have done the thing, I might have been a congress-man, or perhaps a governor, years agone. Your gran’ther wished the same, and there are them still living in the Otsego mountains, as I hope, who would gladly have given me a palace for my dwelling. But what are riches without content! My time must now be short, at any rate, and I hope it’s no mighty sin for one, who has acted his part honestly near ninety winters and summers, to wish to pass the few hours that remain in comfort. If you think I have done wrong in coming thus far to quit you again, Captain, I will own the reason of the act without shame or backwardness. Though I have seen so much of the wilderness, it is not to be gainsayed, that my feelings, as well as my skin, are white. Now it would not be a fitting spectacle, that yonder Pawnee Loups should look upon the weakness of an old warrior, if weakness he should happen to show in parting for ever from those he has reason to love, though he may not set his heart so strongly on them as to wish to go into the settlements in their company.”
“Harkee, old trapper,” said Paul, clearing his throat with a desperate effort, as if he was determined to give his voice a clear exit; “I have just one bargain to make, since you talk of trading, which is neither more nor less than this. I offer you, as my side of the business, one half of my shanty, nor do I much care if it be the biggest half; the sweetest and the purest honey that can be made of the wild locust; always enough to eat, with now and then a mouthful of venison, or, for that matter, a morsel of buffaloe’s hump, seeing that I intend to push my acquaintance with the animal, and as good and as tidy cooking as can come from the hands of one like Ellen Wade, here, who will shortly be Nelly somebody-else, and altogether such general treatment as a decent man might be supposed to pay to his best friend, or, for that matter, to his own father; in return for the same you ar’ to give us at odd moments some of your ancient traditions, perhaps a little wholesome advice on occasions, in small quantities at a time, and as much of your agreeable company as you please.”
“It is well--it is well, boy,” returned the old man, fumbling at his wallet; “honestly offered and not unthankfully declined--but it cannot be; no, it can never be.”
“Venerable venator,” said Dr. Battius; “there are obligations, which every man owes to society and to human nature. It is time that you should return to your countrymen, to deliver up some of those stores of experimental knowledge that you have doubtless obtained by so long a sojourn in the wilds, which, however they may be corrupted by preconceived opinions, will prove acceptable bequests to those whom, as you say, you must shortly leave forever.”
“Friend physicianer,” returned the trapper, looking the other steadily in the face, “as it would be no easy matter to judge of the temper of the rattler by considering the fashions of the moose, so it would be hard to speak of the usefulness of one man by thinking too much of the deeds of another. You have your gifts like others, I suppose, and little do I wish to disturb them. But as to me, the Lord has made me for a doer and not a talker, and therefore do I consider it no harm to shut my ears to your invitation.”
“It is enough,” interrupted Middleton; “I have seen and heard so much of this extraordinary man, as to know that persuasions will not change his purpose. First we will hear your request, my friend, and then we will consider what may be best done for your advantage.”
“It is a small matter, Captain,” returned the old man, succeeding at length in opening his bundle. “A small and trifling matter is it, to what I once used-to-could offer in the way of bargains; but then it is the best I have, and therein not to be despised. Here are the skins of four beavers, that I took, it might be a month afore we met, and here is another from a raccoon, that is of no great matter to be sure, but which may serve to make weight atween us.”
“And what do you propose to do with them?”
“I offer them in lawful barter. Them knaves the Siouxes, the Lord forgive me for ever believing it was the Konzas, have stolen the best of my traps, and driven me altogether to make-shift inventions, which might foretel a dreary winter for me, should my time stretch into another season. I wish you therefore to take the skins, and to offer them to some of the trappers you will not fail to meet below, and to send the same into the Pawnee village in my name. Be careful to have my mark painted on them; a letter N, with a hound’s ear and the lock of a rifle. There is no Red-skin who will then dispute my right. For all which trouble I have little more to offer than my thanks, unless my friend, the bee-hunter here, will accept of the raccoon, and take on himself the special charge of the whole matter.”
“If I do, may I be--!” The mouth of Paul was stopped by the pretty hand of Ellen, and he was obliged to swallow the rest of the sentence, which he did with a species of emotion that bore no slight resemblance to the process of strangulation.
“Well, well,” returned the old man meekly, “I hope there is no heavy offence in the offer. I know that the skin of a raccoon is of small price, but then it was no mighty labour that I asked in return.”
“You entirely mistake the meaning of our friend,” interrupted Middleton, who observed, that the bee-hunter was looking in every direction but the right one, and that he was utterly unable to make his own vindication. “He did not mean to say that he declined the charge, but merely that he refused all compensation. It is unnecessary, however, to say more of this; it shall be my office to see that the debt of gratitude, we owe, is properly discharged, and that all your necessities shall be anticipated.”
“Anan!” said the old man, looking up enquiringly into the other’s face, as if to ask an explanation.
“It shall all be as you wish. Lay the skins with my baggage. We will bargain for you as for ourselves.”
“Thankee, thankee, Captain; you gran’ther was of a free and generous mind. So much so, in truth, that those just people, the Delawares, called him the ‘Open-hand.’ I wish, now, I was as I used to be, in order that I might send in the lady a few delicate martens for her tippets and overcoats, just to show you that I know how to give courtesy for courtesy. But do not expect the same, for I am too old to give a promise. It will all be just as the Lord shall see fit. I can offer you nothing else, for I haven’t liv’d so long in the wilderness, not to know the scrupulous ways of a gentleman.”
Harkee, old trapper,” cried the bee-hunter, striking his own hand into the open palm which the other had extended, with a report but little below the crack of a rifle, “I have just two things to say. Firstly, that the captain has told you my meaning better than I can myself; and secondly, if you want
a skin, either for your private use or to send abroad, I have it at your service, and that is the skin of one Paul Hover.”
The old man returned the grasp he received, and opened his mouth to the utmost, in his extraordinary, silent laugh.
“You couldn’t have given such a squeeze, boy, when the Teton squaws were about you with the knives!” he said. “Ah! you are in your prime, and in your vigour and happiness, if honesty lies in your path.” Then the expression of his rugged features suddenly changed to a look of seriousness and thought. “Come hither, lad,” he said, leading the bee-hunter by a button to the land, and speaking apart in a tone of admonition and confidence, “much has passed atween us on the pleasures and respectableness of a life in the woods or on the borders. I do not now mean to say that all you have heard is not true; but different tempers call for different employments. You have taken to your bosom, there, a good and kind child, and it has become your duty to consider her, as well as yourself, in setting forth in life. You are a little given to skirting the settlements, but, to my poor judgment, the girl would be more like a flourishing flower in the sun of a clearing, than in the winds of a prairie. Therefore forget any thing you may have heard from me, which is nevertheless true, and turn your mind on the ways of the inner country.”
Paul could only answer with a squeeze, that would have brought tears from the eyes of most men, but which produced no other effect on the indurated muscles of the other, than to make him laugh and nod, as if he would say he received the same as a pledge that the bee-hunter would remember his advice. The trapper then turned away from his rough but warm-hearted companion, and having called Hector from the boat, he seemed anxious still to utter a few words more--
“Captain,” he at length resumed, “I know when a poor man talks of credit, he deals in a delicate word according to the fashions of the world; and when an old man talks of life, he speaks of that which he may never see; nevertheless there is one thing I will say, and that is not so much on my own behalf as on that of another person. Here is Hector, a good and faithful pup, that has long outlived the time of a dog, and like his master he looks more to comfort now, than to any deeds in running. But the creatur’ has his feelings as well as a Christian. He has consorted latterly with his kinsman, there, in such a sort as to find great pleasure in his company, and I will acknowledge that it touches my feelings to part the pair so soon. If you will set a value on your hound, I will endeavour to send it to you in the spring, more especially should them same traps come safe to hand; or, if you dislike parting with the animal altogether, I will just ask you for his loan through the winter. I think I can see my pup will not last beyond that time, for I have judgment in these matters, since many is the friend, both hound and Red-skin, that I have seen depart in my day, though the Lord hath not yet seen fit to order his angels to sound forth my name.”
“Take him, take him,” cried Middleton; “take all or any thing!”
The old man whistled the younger dog to the land; and then he proceeded to the final adieus. Little was said on either side. The trapper took each person solemnly by the hand, and uttered something friendly and kind to all. Middleton was perfectly speechless, and was driven to affect busying himself among the baggage. Paul whistled with all his might, and even Obed took his leave with an effort that bore the appearance of a desperate philosophical resolution. When he had made the circuit of the whole, the old man with his own hands shoved the boat into the current, wishing God to speed them. Not a word was spoken, nor a stroke of the oar given, until the travellers had floated past a knoll that hid the trapper from their view. He was last seen standing on the low point, leaning on his rifle, with Hector crouched at his feet and the younger dog frisking along the sands in the playfulness of youth and vigour.
CHAPTER XVII.
--“Methought, I heard a voice--”
Shakspeare The water-courses were at their height, and the boat went down the swift current like a bird. The passage proved prosperous and speedy. In less than a third of the time, that would have been necessary for the same journey by land, it was accomplished by the favour of those rapid rivers. Issuing from one stream into another, as the veins of the human body communicate with the larger channels of life, they soon entered the grand artery of the western waters, and landed safely at the very door of the father of Inez.
The joy of Don Augustin, and the embarrassment of the worthy father Ignatius, may easily be imagined. The former wept and returned thanks to Heaven; the latter returned thanks and did not weep. The mild provincials were too happy to raise any questions on the character of so joyful a restoration, and, by a sort of general consent, it soon came to be an admitted opinion that the bride of Middleton had been kidnapped by a villain, and that she was restored to her friends by human agency. There were, as respects this belief, certainly a few sceptics, but then they enjoyed their doubts in private, with that species of sublimated and solitary gratification that a miser finds in gazing at his growing but useless hoards.
In order to give the worthy priest something to employ his mind, Middleton made him the instrument of uniting Paul and Ellen. The former consented to the ceremony, because he found that all his friends laid great stress on the matter; but shortly after he led his bride into the plains of Kentucky, under the pretence of paying certain customary visits to sundry members of the family of Hover. While there he took occasion to have the marriage properly solemnized by a justice of the peace of his acquaintance, in whose ability to forge the nuptial chain he had much more faith than in that of all the gownsmen within the pale of Rome. Ellen, who appeared conscious that some extraordinary preventives might prove necessary to keep one of so erratic a temper as her partner within the proper matrimonial boundaries, raised no objections to these double knots, and therefore all parties were content.
The local importance Middleton had acquired, by his union with the daughter of so affluent a proprietor as Don Augustin, united to his personal merit, attracted the attention of the government. He was soon employed in various situations of responsibility and confidence, which both served to elevate his character in the public estimation, and to afford the means of patronage. The bee-hunter was among the first of those to whom he saw fit to extend his favour. It was far from difficult to find situations suited to the abilities of Paul, in the state of society that existed three-and-twenty years ago in those regions. The efforts of Middleton and Inez, in behalf of her husband, were warmly and sagaciously seconded by Ellen, and they succeeded, in process of time, in working a great and beneficial change in his character. He soon became a landholder, then a prosperous cultivator of the soil, and shortly after a town-officer. By that progressive change in fortune, which in the republic is often seen to be so singularly accompanied by a corresponding improvement in knowledge and self-respect, he went on from step to step, until his wife enjoyed the maternal delight of seeing her children placed far beyond the danger of returning to that state from which both their parents had issued. Paul is actually at this moment a member of the lower branch of the legislature of the State where he has long resided; and he is even notorious for making speeches that have a tendency to put that deliberative body in a good humour, and which, as they are based on great practical knowledge suited to the condition of the country, possess a merit that is much wanted in many more subtle and fine-spun theories, that are daily heard in similar assemblies to issue from the lips of certain instinctive politicians. But all these happy fruits were the results of much care and of a long period of time. Middleton, who fills, with a credit better suited to the difference in their educations, a seat in a far higher branch of legislative authority, is the source from which we have derived most of the intelligence, necessary to compose our legend. In addition to what he has related of Paul, and of his own continued happiness, he has added a short narrative of what took place in a subsequent visit to the prairies, with which, as we conceive it a suitable termination to what has gone before, we shall judge it wise to conclude our present labours
.
In the autumn of the year, that succeeded the season, in which the preceding events occurred, the young man, still in the military service of the country, found himself on the waters of the Missouri, at a point not far remote from the Pawnee towns. Released from any immediate calls of duty, and strongly urged to the measure by Paul, who was in his company, he determined to take horse and cross the country to visit the partisan, and to inquire into the fate of his friend the trapper. As his train was suited to his functions and rank, the journey was effected, with the usual privations and hardships that are the accompaniments of all travelling in a wild, but without any of those dangers and alarms that marked his former passage through the same regions. When within a proper distance, he despatched an Indian runner, belonging to a friendly tribe, to announce the approach of himself and party, continuing his route at a deliberate pace, in order that the intelligence might, as was customary, precede his arrival. To the surprise of the travellers their message was unanswered. Hour succeeded hour, and mile after mile was passed, without bringing either the signs of an honourable reception, or of the more simple assurances of a friendly welcome. At length the cavalcade, at whose head rode Middleton and Paul, descended from the elevated plain, on which they had long been journeying, to a luxuriant bottom, that brought them to the level of the village of the Loups. The sun was beginning to fall, and a sheet of golden light was spread over the placid plain, lending to its even surface those glorious tints and hues, that the human imagination is apt to conceive, forms the embellishment of still more imposing scenes. The verdure of the year yet remained, and herds of horses and mules were grazing peacefully in the vast natural pasture, under the keeping of vigilant Pawnee boys. Paul pointed out among them the well-known form of Asinus, sleek, fat, and apparently luxuriating in the fulness of content, as he stood with reclining ears and closed eye-lids, seemingly musing on the exquisite nature of his present indolent enjoyment.
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