Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (13 page)

As Hurry complied, Deerslayer was soon on the shore, advancing into the thicket with a moccasined foot, and a caution that prevented the least noise. In a minute he was in the center of the narrow strip of land, and moving slowly down towards its end, the bushes rendering extreme watchfulness necessary. Just as he reached the center of the thicket the dried twigs cracked again, and the noise was repeated at short intervals, as if some creature having life walked slowly towards the point. Hurry heard these sounds also, and pushing the canoe off into the bay, he seized his rifle to watch the result. A breathless minute succeeded, after which a noble buck walked out of the thicket, proceeded with a stately step to the sandy extremity of the point, and began to slake his thirst from the water of the lake.

Hurry hesitated an instant; then raising his rifle hastily to his shoulder, he took sight and fired. The effect of this sudden interruption of the solemn stillness of such a scene was not its least striking peculiarity The report of the weapon had the usual sharp, short sound of the rifle: but when a few moments of silence had succeeded the sudden crack, during which the noise was floating in air across the water, it reached the rocks of the opposite mountain, where the vibrations accumulated, and were rolled from cavity to cavity for miles along the hills, seeming to awaken the sleeping thunders of the woods. The buck merely shook his head at the report of the rifle and the whistling of the bullet, for never before had he come in contact with man; but the echoes of the hills awakened his distrust, and leaping forward, with his four legs drawn under his body, he fell at once into deep water, and began to swim towards the foot of the lake. Hurry shouted and dashed forward in chase, and for one or two minutes the water foamed around the pursuer and the pursued. The former was dashing past the point, when Deerslayer appeared on the sand, and signed to him to return.

“ ’Twas inconsiderate to pull a trigger afore we had reconnoitered the shore, and made sartain that no inimies harbored near it,” said the latter, as his companion slowly and reluctantly complied. “This much I have l’arned from the Delawares, in the way of schooling and traditions, even though I’ve never yet been on a warpath. And, moreover, venison can hardly be called in season now, and we do not want for food. They call me Deerslayer, I’ll own; and perhaps I desarve the name, in the way of understanding the creatur’s habits, as well as for sartainty in the aim; but they can’t accuse me of killing an animal when there is no occasion for the meat or the skin. I may be a slayer, it’s true, but I’m no slaughterer.”

“’Twas an awful mistake to miss that buck!” exclaimed Hurry, doffing his cap, and running his fingers through his handsome but matted curls, as if he would loosen his tangled ideas by the process; “I’ve not done so onhandy a thing since I was fifteen.”

“Never lament it; the creatur’s death could have done neither of us any good, and might have done us harm. Them echoes are more awful in my ears than your mistake, Hurry; for they sound like the voice of natur’ calling out ag’in a wasteful and onthinking action.”

“You’ll hear plenty of such calls, if you tarry long in this quarter of the world, lad,” returned the other, laughing. “The echoes repeat pretty much all that is said or done on the Glimmerglass, in this calm summer weather. If a paddle falls, you hear of it sometimes ag‘in and ag’in, as if the hills were mocking your clumsiness; and a laugh or a whistle comes out of them pines, when they’re in the humor to speak, in a way to make you believe they can r’ally convarse.”

“So much the more reason for being prudent and silent. I do not think the inimy can have found their way into these hills yet, for I don’t know what they are to gain by it; but all the Delawares tell me, that as courage is a warrior’s first vartue, so is prudence his second. One such call, from the mountains, is enough to let a whole tribe into the secret of our arrival.”

“If it does no other good, it will warn old Tom to put the pot over, and let him know visitors are at hand. Come, lad; get into the canoe, and we will hunt the ark up while there is yet day”

Deerslayer complied, and the canoe left the spot. Its head was turned diagonally across the lake, pointing towards the southeastern curvature of the sheet. In that direction, the distance to the shore, or to the termination of the lake, on the course the two were now steering, was not quite a mile, and their progress being always swift, it was fast lessening, under the skilful but easy sweeps of the paddles. When about halfway across, a slight noise drew the eyes of the men towards the nearest land, and they saw that the buck was just emerging from the lake, and wading towards the beach. In a minute the noble animal shook the water from his flanks, gazed upwards at the covering of trees, and, bounding against the bank, plunged into the forest.

“That creatur’ goes off with gratitude in his heart,” said Deerslayer, “for natur’ tells him he has escaped a great danger. You ought to have some of the same feelin’s, Hurry, to think your eye wasn’t truer—that your hand was onsteady, when no good could come of a shot that was intended onmeaningly, rather than in reason.”

“I deny the eye and the hand,” cried March, with some heat. “You’ve got a little character, down among the Delawares, there, for quickness and sartainty, at a deer; but I should like to see you behind one of them pines, and a full-painted Mingo behind another, each with a cocked rifle, and a-striving for the chance! Them’s the situations, Nathaniel, to try the sight and the hand, for they begin with trying the narves. I never look upon killing a creatur’ as an explite;
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but killing a savage is. The time will come to try your hand, now we’ve got to blows ag‘in, and we shall soon know what a ven’son reputation can do in the field. I deny that either hand or eye was onsteady ; it was all a miscalculation of the buck, which stood still when he ought to have kept in motion, and so I shot ahead of him.”

“Have it your own way, Hurry; all I contend for is, that it’s lucky I dare say I shall not pull upon a human mortal as steadily or with as light a heart, as I pull upon a deer.”

“Who’s talking of mortals, or of human beings at all, Deerslayer? I put the matter to you on the supposition of an Injin. I dare say any man would have his feelin’s when it got to be life or death, ag’in another human mortal; but there would be no such scruples in regard to an Injin; nothing but the chance of his hitting you, or the chance of your hitting him.”

“I look upon the redmen to be quite as human as we are ourselves, Hurry They have their gifts, and their religion, it’s true; but that makes no difference in the end, when each will be judged according to his deeds, and not according to his skin.”

“That’s downright missionary, and will find little favor up in this part of the country, where the Moravians don’t congregate. Now, skin makes the man. This is reason; else how are people to judge of each other. The skin is put on, over all, in order when a creatur’, or a mortal, is fairly seen, you may know at once what to make of him. You know a bear from a hog, by his skin, and a gray squirrel from a black.”

“True, Hurry,” said the other looking back and smiling, “nevertheless, they are both squirrels.”

“Who denies it? But you’ll not say that a redman and a white man are both Injins?”

“No; but I do say they are both men. Men of different races and colors, and having different gifts and traditions, but, in the main, with the same natur’. Both have souls; and both will be held accountable for their deeds in this life.”

Hurry was one of those theorists who believed in the inferiority of all the human race who were not white. His notions on the subject were not very clear, nor were his definitions at all well settled; but his opinions were none the less dogmatical or fierce. His conscience accused him of sundry lawless acts against the Indians, and he had found it an exceedingly easy mode of quieting it, by putting the whole family of redmen, incontinently, without the category of human rights. Nothing angered him sooner than to deny his proposition, more especially if the denial were accompanied by a show of plausible argument; and he did not listen to his companion’s remarks with much composure of either manner or feeling.

“You’re a boy, Deerslayer, misled and misconsaited by Delaware arts, and missionary ignorance,” he exclaimed, with his usual indifference to the forms of speech, when excited. “You may account yourself as a redskin’s brother, but I hold ‘em all to be animals; with nothing human about ’em but cunning. That they have, I’ll allow; but so has a fox, or even a bear. I’m older than you, and have lived longer in the woods—or, for that matter, have lived always there, and am not to be told what an Injin is or what he is not. If you wish to be considered a savage, you’ve only to say so, and I’ll name you as such to Judith and the old man, and then we’ll see how you’ll like your welcome.”

Here Hurry’s imagination did his temper some service, since, by conjuring up the reception his semiaquatic acquaintance would be likely to bestow on one thus introduced, he burst into a hearty fit of laughter. Deerslayer too well knew the uselessness of attempting to convince such a being of anything against his prejudices, to feel a desire to undertake the task; and he was not sorry that the approach of the canoe to the southeastern curve of the lake gave a new direction to his ideas. They were now, indeed, quite near the place that March had pointed out for the position of the outlet, and both began to look for it with a curiosity that was increased by the expectation of finding the ark.

It may strike the reader as a little singular, that the place where a stream of any size passed through banks that had an elevation of some twenty feet, should be a matter of doubt with men who could not now have been more than two hundred yards distant from the precise spot. It will be recollected, however, that the trees and bushes here, as elsewhere, fairly overhung the water, making such a fringe to the lake, as to conceal any little variations from its general outline.

“I’ve not been down at this end of the lake these two summers,” said Hurry, standing up in the canoe, the better to look about him. “Ay, there’s the rock, showing its chin above the water, and I know that the river begins in its neighborhood.”

The men now plied the paddles again, and they were presently within a few yards of the rock, floating towards it, though their ef forts were suspended. This rock was not large, being merely some five or six feet high, only half of which elevation rose above the lake. The incessant washing of the water for centuries had so rounded its summit, that it resembled a large beehive in shape, its form being more than usually regular and even. Hurry remarked, as they floated slowly past, that this rock was well known to all the Indians in that part of the country, and that they were in the practice of using it as a mark to designate the place of meeting, when separated by their hunts and marches.

“And here is the river, Deerslayer,” he continued, “though so shut in by trees and bushes as to look more like an and-bush, than the outlet of such a sheet as the Glimmerglass.”

Hurry had not badly described the place, which did truly seem to be a stream lying in ambush. The high banks might have been a hundred feet asunder; but, on the western side, a small bit of low land extended so far forward as to diminish the breadth of the stream to half that width. As the bushes hung in the water beneath, and pines that had the stature of church steeples, rose in tall columns above, all inclining towards the light, until their branches intermingled, the eye, at a little distance, could not easily detect any opening in the shore, to mark the egress of the water. In the forest above, no traces of this outlet were to be seen from the lake, the whole presenting the same connected and seemingly interminable carpet of leaves. As the canoe slowly advanced, sucked in by the current, it entered beneath an arch of trees, through which the light from the heavens struggled by casual openings, faintly relieving the gloom beneath.

“This is a nat’ral and-bush,” half whispered Hurry, as if he felt that the place was devoted to secrecy and watchfulness; “depend on it, old Tom has burrowed with the ark somewhere in this quarter. We will drop down with the current a short distance, and ferret him out.”

“This seems no place for a vessel of any size,” returned the other; “it appears to me that we shall have hardly room enough for the canoe.

Hurry laughed at the suggestion, and, as it soon appeared, with reason; for the fringe of bushes immediately on the shore of the lake was no sooner passed, than the adventurers found themselves in a narrow stream, of a sufficient depth of limpid water, with a strong current, and a canopy of leaves upheld by arches composed of the limbs of hoary trees. Bushes lined the shores, as usual, but they left sufficient space between them to admit the passage of anything that did not exceed twenty feet in width, and to allow of a perspective ahead of eight or ten times that distance.

Neither of our two adventurers used his paddle, except to keep the light bark in the center of the current, but both watched each turning of the stream, of which there were two or three within the first hundred yards, with jealous vigilance. Turn after turn, however, was passed, and the canoe had dropped down with the current some little distance, when Hurry caught a bush, and arrested its movement so suddenly and silently as to denote some unusual motive for the act. Deerslayer laid his hand on the stock of his rifle as soon as he noted this proceeding, but it was quite as much with a hunter’s habit as from any feeling of alarm.

“There the old fellow is!” whispered Hurry, pointing with a finger, and laughing heartily, though he carefully avoided making a noise, “ratting it away, just as I supposed; up to his knees in the mud and water, looking to the traps and the bait. But for the life of me I can see nothing of the ark; though I’ll bet every skin I take this season, Jude isn’t trusting her pretty little feet in the neighborhood of that black mud. The gal’s more likely to be braiding her hair by the side of some spring, where she can see her own good looks, and collect scornful feelings ag’in us men.”