“Beat it,” replied the young Delaware at the elbow of the scout.
“Beat what, fool!—what!” exclaimed Hawkeye, still flourishing the weapon angrily above his head, though his eye no longer sought the person of Magua.
“If the white man is the warrior he pretends,” said the aged chief, “let him strike nigher to the mark.”
The scout laughed aloud—a noise that produced the startling effect of an unnatural sound on Heyward; then dropping the piece heavily into his extended left hand, it was discharged, apparently by the shock, driving the fragments of the vessel into the air, and scattering them on every side. Almost at the same instant, the rattling sound of the rifle was heard, as he suffered it to fall, contemptuously, to the earth.
The first impression of so strange a scene was engrossing admiration. Then a low, but increasing murmur, ran through the multitude, and finally swelled into sounds that denoted a lively opposition in the sentiments of the spectators. While some openly testified their satisfaction at so unexampled dexterity, by far the larger portion of the tribe were inclined to believe the success of the shot was the result of accident. Heyward was not slow to confirm an opinion that was so favorable to his own pretentions.
“It was chance!” he exclaimed; “none can shoot without an aim!”
“Chance!” echoed the excited woodsman, who was now stubbornly bent on maintaining his identity at every hazard, and on whom the secret hints of Heyward to acquiesce in the deception were entirely lost. “Does yonder lying Huron, too, think it chance? Give him another gun, and place us face to face, without cover or dodge, and let Providence, and our own eyes, decide the matter atween us! I do not make the offer to you, major; for our blood is of a color, and we serve the same master.”
“That the Huron is a liar, is very evident,” returned Heyward, coolly; “you have yourself heard him assert you to be La Longue Carabine.”
It were impossible to say what violent assertion the stubborn Hawk eye would have next made, in his headlong wish to vindicate his identity, had not the aged Delaware once more interposed.
“The hawk which comes from the clouds can return when he will,” he said; “give them the guns.”
This time the scout seized the rifle with avidity; nor had Magua, though he watched the movement of the marksman with jealous eyes, any further cause for apprehension.
“Now let it be proved, in the face of this tribe of Delawares, which is the better man,” cried the scout, tapping the butt of his piece with that finger which had pulled so many fatal triggers. “You see the gourd hanging against yonder tree, major; if you are a marksman fit for the borders, let me see you break its shell!”
Duncan noted the object, and prepared himself to renew the trial. The gourd was one of the usual little vessels used by the Indians, and it was suspended from a dead branch of a small pine, by a thong of deer-skin, at the full distance of a hundred yards. So strangely compounded is the feeling of self-love, that the young soldier, while he knew the utter worthlessness of the suffrages of his savage umpires, forgot the sudden motives of the contest in a wish to excel. It has been seen, already, that his skill was far from being contemptible, and he now resolved to put forth its nicest qualities. Had his life depended on the issue, the aim of Duncan could not have been more deliberate or guarded. He fired; and three or four young Indians, who sprang forward at the report, announced with a shout, that the ball was in the tree, a very little on one side of the proper object. The warriors uttered a common ejaculation of pleasure, and then turned their eyes inquiringly on the movements of his rival.
“It may do for the Royal Americans!” said Hawkeye, laughing once more in his own silent, heartfelt manner; “but had my gun often turned so much from the true line, many a marten, whose skin is now in a lady’s muff, would still be in the woods; ay, and many a bloody Mingo, who has departed to his final account, would be acting his deviltries at this very day, atween the provinces. I hope the squaw who owns the gourd has more of them in her wigwam, for this will never hold water again!”
The scout had shook his priming, and cocked his piece, while speaking; and, as he ended, he threw back a foot, and slowly raised the muzzle from the earth: the motion was steady, uniform, and in one direction. When on a perfect level, it remained for a single moment, without tremor or variation, as though both man and rifle were carved in stone. During that stationary instant, it poured forth its contents, in a bright, glancing sheet of flame. Again the young Indians bounded forward; but their hurried search and disappointed looks announced that no traces of the bullet were to be seen.
“Go!” said the old chief to the scout, in a tone of strong disgust; “thou art a wolf in the skin of a dog. I will talk to the ‘Long Rifle’ of the Yengeese.”
“Ah! had I that piece which furnished the name you use, I would obligate myself to cut the thong, and drop the gourd without breaking it!” returned Hawkeye, perfectly undisturbed by the other’s manner. “Fools, if you would find the bullet of a sharpshooter of these woods, you must look in the object and not around it!”
The Indian youths instantly comprehended his meaning—for this time he spoke in the Delaware tongue—and tearing the gourd from the tree, they held it on high with an exulting shout, displaying a hole in its bottom, which had been cut by the bullet, after passing through the usual orifice in the centre of its upper side. At this unexpected exhibition, a loud and vehement expression of pleasure burst from the mouth of every warrior present. It decided the question, and effectually established Hawkeye in the possession of his dangerous reputation. Those curious and admiring eyes which had been turned again on Heyward, were finally directed to the weather-beaten form of the scout, who immediately became the principal object of attention to the simple and unsophisticated beings by whom he was surrounded. When the sudden and noisy commotion had a little subsided, the aged chief resumed his examination.
“Why did you wish to stop my ears?” he said, addressing Duncan; “are the Delawares fools, that they could not know the young panther from the cat?”
“They will yet find the Huron a singing-bird,” said Duncan, endeavoring to adopt the figurative language of the natives.
“It is good. We will know who can shut the ears of men. Brother,” added the chief, turning his eyes on Magua, “the Delawares listen.”
Thus singled, and directly called on to declare his object, the Huron arose; and advancing with great deliberation and dignity into the very centre of the circle, where he stood confronted to the prisoners, he placed himself in an attitude to speak. Before opening his mouth, however, he bent his eyes slowly along the whole living boundary of earnest faces as if to temper his expressions to the capacities of his audience. On Hawkeye he cast a glance of respectful enmity; on Duncan, a look of inextinguishable hatred; the shrinking figure of Alice he scarcely deigned to notice; but when his glance met the firm, commanding, and yet lovely form of Cora, his eye lingered a moment, with an expression that it might have been difficult to define. Then, filled with his own dark intentions, he spoke in the language of the Canadas, a tongue that he well knew was comprehended by most of his auditors.
“The Spirit that made men colored them differently,” commenced the subtle Huron. “Some are blacker than the sluggish bear. These He said would be slaves; and He ordered them to work forever, like the beaver. You may hear them groan, when the south wind blows, louder than the lowing buffaloes, along the shores of the great salt lake, where the big canoes come and go with them in droves. Some He made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests; and these He ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves. He gave this people the nature of the pigeon: wings that never tire, young, more plentiful than the leaves on the trees, and appetites to devour the earth. He gave them tongues like the false call of the wild-cat; hearts like rabbits; the cunning of the hog (but none of the fox), and arms longer than the legs of the moose. With his tongue, he stops the ears of the Indians; his heart teaches him to
pay warriors to fight his battles; his cunning tells him how to get together the goods of the earth; and his arms inclose the land from the shores of the salt-water to the islands of the great lake. His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces.
“Some the Great Spirit made with skins brighter and redder than yonder sun,” continued Magua, pointing impressively upwards to the lurid luminary, which was struggling through the misty atmosphere of the horizon; “and these did He fashion to His own mind. He gave them this island as He had made it, covered with trees, and filled with game. The wind made their clearings; the sun and rains ripened their fruits; and the snows came to tell them to be thankful. What need had they of roads to journey by! They saw through the hills. When the beavers worked, they lay in the shade, and looked on. The winds cooled them in summer; in winter, skins kept them warm. If they fought among themselves, it was to prove that they were men. They were brave; they were just; they were happy.”
Here the speaker paused, and again looked around him, to discover if his legend had touched the sympathies of his listeners. He met everywhere with eyes riveted on his own, heads erect, and nostrils expanded, as if each individual present felt himself able and willing, singly, to redress the wrongs of his race.
“If the Great Spirit gave different tongues to his red children,” he continued, in a low, still, melancholy voice, “it was that all animals might understand them. Some He placed among the snows, with their cousin the bear. Some he placed near the setting sun, on the road to the happy hunting-grounds. Some on the lands around the great fresh waters; but to his greatest, and most beloved, He gave the sands of the salt lake. Do my brothers know the name of this favored people?”
“It was the Lenape!” exclaimed twenty eager voices, in a breath.
“It was the Lenni Lenape,” returned Magua, affecting to bend his head in reverence to their former greatness. “It was the tribes of the Lenape! The sun rose from water that was salt, and set in water that was sweet, and never hid himself from their eyes. But why should I, a Huron of the woods, tell a wise people their own traditions? Why remind them of their injuries; their ancient greatness; their deeds; their glory; their happiness,—their losses; their defeats; their misery? Is there not one among them who has seen it all, and who knows it to be true? I have done. My tongue is still, for my heart is of lead. I listen.”
As the voice of the speaker suddenly ceased, every face and all eyes turned, by a common movement, towards the venerable Tamenund. From the moment that he took his seat, until the present instant, the lips of the patriarch had not severed, and scarcely a sign of life had escaped him. He sat bent in feebleness, and apparently unconscious of the presence he was in, during the whole of that opening scene, in which the skill of the scout had been so clearly established. At the nicely graduated sound of Magua’s voice, however, he betrayed some evidence of consciousness, and once or twice he even raised his head, as if to listen. But when the crafty Huron spoke of his nation by name, the eyelids of the old man raised themselves, and he looked out upon the multitude with that sort of dull unmeaning expression which might be supposed to belong to the countenance of a spectre. Then he made an effort to rise, and being upheld by his supporters, he gained his feet, in a posture commanding by its dignity, while he tottered with weakness.
“Who calls upon the children of the Lenape!” he said, in a deep, guttural voice, that was rendered awfully audible by the breathless silence of the multitude: “who speaks of things gone! Does not the egg become a worm—the worm a fly, and perish? Why tell the Delawares of good that is past? Better thank the Manitou for that which remains.”
“It is a Wyandot,” said Magua, stepping nigher to the rude platform on which the other stood; “a friend of Tamenund.”
“A friend!” repeated the sage, on whose brow a dark frown settled, imparting a portion of that severity which had rendered his eye so terrible in middle age. “Are the Mingos rulers of the earth? What brings a Huron here?”
“Justice. His prisoners are with his brothers, and he comes for his own.”
Tamenund turned his head towards one of his supporters, and listened to the short explanation the man gave. Then facing the applicant, he regarded him a moment with deep attention; after which he said, in a low and reluctant voice,—
“Justice is the law of the great Manitou. My children, give the stranger food. Then, Huron, take thine own and depart.”
On the delivery of this solemn judgment, the patriarch seated himself, and closed his eyes again, as if better pleased with the images of his own ripened experience than with the visible objects of the world. Against such a decree there was no Delaware sufficiently hardy to murmur, much less oppose himself. The words were barely uttered when four or five of the younger warriors, stepping behind Heyward and the scout, passed thongs so dexterously and rapidly around their arms, as to hold them both in instant bondage. The former was too much engrossed with his precious and nearly insensible burden, to be aware of their intentions before they were executed; and the latter, who considered even the hostile tribes of the Delawares a superior race of beings, submitted without resistance. Perhaps, however, the manner of the scout would not have been so passive, had he fully comprehended the language in which the preceding dialogue had been conducted.
Magua cast a look of triumph around the whole assembly before he proceeded to the execution of his purpose. Perceiving that the men were unable to offer any resistance, he turned his looks on her he valued most. Cora met his gaze with an eye so calm and firm, that his resolution wavered. Then recollecting his former artifice, he raised Alice from the arms of the warrior against whom she leaned, and beckoning Heyward to follow, he motioned for the encircling crowd to open. But Cora, instead of obeying the impulse he had expected, rushed to the feet of the patriarch, and raising her voice, exclaimed aloud,—
“Just and venerable Delaware, on thy wisdom and power we lean for mercy! Be deaf to yonder artful and remorseless monster, who poisons thy ears with falsehoods to feed his thirst for blood. Thou that hast lived long, and that hast seen the evil of the world, should know how to temper its calamities to the miserable.”
The eyes of the old man opened heavily, and he once more looked upwards at the multitude. As the piercing tones of the supplicant swelled on his ears, they moved slowly in the direction of her person, and finally settled there in a steady gaze. Cora had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenched in each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex, looking up in his faded, but majestic countenance, with a species of holy reverence. Gradually the expression of Tamenund’s features changed, and losing their vacancy in admiration, they lighted with a portion of that intelligence which a century before had been wont to communicate his youthful fire to the extensive bands of the Delawares. Rising without assistance, and seemingly without an effort, he demanded, in a voice that startled its auditors by its firmness,—
“What art thou?”
“A woman. One of a hated race, if thou wilt—a Yengee. But one who has never harmed thee, and who cannot harm thy people, if she would; who asks for succor.”
“Tell me, my children,” continued the patriarch, hoarsely, motioning to those around him, though his eyes still dwelt upon the kneeling form of Cora, “where have the Delawares camped?”
“In the mountains of the Iroquois, beyond the clear springs of the Horican.”
“Many parching summers are come and gone,” continued the sage, “since I drank of the water of my own rivers. The children of Minquon2 are the justest white men; but they were thirsty, and they took it to themselves. Do they follow us so far?”
“We follow none; we covet nothing,” answered Cora. “Captives against our wills, have we been brought among you; and we ask but permission to depart to our own in peace. Art thou not Tamenund—the father, the judge, I had almost said, the prophet—of this people?”
“I am Tamenund
of many days.”
“‘Tis now some seven years that one of thy people was at the mercy of a white chief on the borders of this province. He claimed to be of the blood of the good and just Tamenund. ‘Go,’ said the white man, ‘for thy parent’s sake thou art free.’ Dost thou remember the name of that English warrior?”
“I remember, that when a laughing boy,” returned the patriarch, with the peculiar recollection of vast age, “I stood upon the sands of the sea-shore, and saw a big canoe, with wings whiter than the swan‘s, and wider than many eagles, come from the rising sun.”
“Nay, nay; I speak not of a time so very distant, but of favor shown to thy kindred by one of mine, within the memory of thy youngest warrior.”
“Was it when the Yengeese and the Dutchmanne fought for the hunting-grounds of the Delawares? Then Tamenund was a chief, and first laid aside the bow for the lightning of the pale faces—”
“Not yet then,” interrupted Cora, “by many ages; I speak of a thing of yesterday. Surely, surely, you forget it not.”
“It was but yesterday,” rejoined the aged man, with touching pathos, “that the children of the Lenape were masters of the world. The fishes of the salt lake, the birds, the beasts, and the Mengwe of the woods, owned them for sagamores.”
Cora bowed her head in disappointment, and, for a bitter moment, struggled with her chagrin. Then elevating her rich features and beaming eyes, she continued, in tones scarcely less penetrating than the unearthly voice of the patriarch himself,—
“Tell me, is Tamenund a father?”
The old man looked down upon her from his elevated stand, with a benignant smile on his wasted countenance, and then casting his eyes slowly over the whole assemblage, he answered,—
Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 41