Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (48 page)

The arms of Deerslayer were not pinioned, and he was left the free use of his hands, his knife having been first removed. The only precaution that was taken to secure his person was untiring watchfulness, and a strong rope of bark that passed from ankle to ankle, not so much to prevent his walking as to place an obstacle in the way of his attempting to escape by any sudden leap. Even this extra provision against flight was not made until the captive had been brought to the light and his character ascertained. It was, in fact, a compliment to his prowess, and he felt proud of the distinction. That he might be bound when the warriors slept he thought probable, but to be bound in the moment of capture showed that he was already, and thus early, attaining a name. While the young Indians were fastening the rope, he wondered if Chingachgook would have been treated in the same manner, had he too fallen into the hands of the enemy. Nor did the reputation of the young paleface rest altogether on his success in the previous combat, or in his discriminating and cool manner of managing the late negotiation; for it had received a great accession by the occurrences of the night. Ignorant of the movements of the ark, and of the accident that had brought their fire into view, the Iroquois attributed the discovery of their new camp to the vigilance of so shrewd a foe. The manner in which he ventured upon the point, the abstraction or escape of Hist, and most of all the self-devotion of the prisoner, united to the readiness with which he had sent the canoe adrift, were so many important links in the chain of facts on which his growing fame was founded. Many of these circumstances had been seen, some had been explained, and all were understood.

While this admiration and these honors were so unreservedly bestowed on Deerslayer, he did not escape some of the penalties of his situation. He was permitted to seat himself on the end of a log, near the fire, in order to dry his clothes, his late adversary standing opposite, now holding articles of his own scanty vestments to the heat, and now feeling his throat, on which the marks of his enemy’s fingers were still quite visible. The rest of the warriors consulted together, near at hand, all those who had been out having returned to report that no signs of any other prowlers near the camp were to be found. In this state of things, the old woman, whose name was Shebear, in plain English, approached Deerslayer, with her fists clenched and her eyes flashing fire. Hitherto she had been occupied with screaming, an employment at which she had played her part with no small degree of success, but having succeeded in effectually alarming all within reach of a pair of lungs that had been strengthened by long practice, she next turned her attention to the injuries her own person had sustained in the struggle. These were in no manner material, though they were of a nature to arouse all the fury of a woman who had long ceased to attract by means of the gentler qualities, and who was much disposed to revenge the hardships she had so long endured, as the neglected wife and mother of savages, on all who came within her power. If Deerslayer had not permanently injured her, he had temporarily caused her to suffer, and she was not a person to overlook a wrong of this nature on account of its motive.

“Skunk of the palefaces,” commenced this exasperated and semipoetic fury, shaking her fist under the nose of the impassible hunter, “you are not even a woman. Your friends, the Delawares, are only women, and you are their sheep. Your own people will not own you, and no tribe of redmen would have you in their wigwams; you skulk among petticoated warriors. You slay our brave friend who has left us?—no—his great soul scorned to fight you, and left his body rather than have the shame of slaying you! But the blood that you spilt when the spirit was not looking on has not sunk into the ground. It must be buried in your groans! What music do I hear? Those are not the wailings of a redman!—no red warrior groans so much like a hog. They come from a paleface throat—a Yengeese bosom, and sound as pleasant as girls singing. Dog—skunk—woodchuck—mink—hedgehog—pig—toad—spider—Yengee—”

Here the old woman, having expended her breath, and exhausted her epithets, was fain to pause a moment, though both her fists were shaken in the prisoner’s face, and the whole of her wrinkled countenance was filled with fierce resentment. Deerslayer looked upon these impotent attempts to arouse him, as indifferently as a gentleman in our own state of society regards the vituperative terms of a blackguard; the one party feeling that the tongue of an old woman could never injure a warrior, and the other knowing that mendacity and vulgarity can only permanently affect those who resort to their use; but he was spared any further attack at present, by the interposition of Rivenoak, who shoved aside the hag, bidding her quit the spot, and prepared to take his seat at the side of his prisoner. The old woman withdrew, but the hunter well understood that he was to be the subject of all her means of annoyance, if not of positive injury, so long as he remained in the power of his enemies; for nothing rankles so deeply as the consciousness that an attempt to irritate has been met by contempt, a feeling that is usually the most passive of any that is harbored in the human breast. Rivenoak quietly took the seat we have mentioned, and after a short pause, he commenced a dialogue, which we translate as usual, for the benefit of those readers who have not studied the North American languages.

“My paleface friend is very welcome,” said the Indian, with a familiar nod, and a smile so covert that it required all Deerslayer’s vigilance to detect, and not a little of his philosophy to detect unmoved; “he is welcome. The Hurons keep a hot fire to dry the white man’s clothes.”

“I thank you, Huron, or Mingo, as I most like to call you,” returned the other; “I thank you for the welcome, and I thank you for the fire. Each is good in its way, and the last is very good, when one has been in a spring as cold as the Glimmerglass. Even Huron warmth may be pleasant, at such a time, to a man with a Delaware heart.”

“The paleface—but my brother has a name? So great a warrior would not have lived without a name?”

“Mingo,” said the hunter, a little of the weakness of human nature exhibiting itself in the glance of his eye, and the color on his cheek, “Mingo, your brave called me Hawkeye, I suppose on account of a quick and sartain aim, when he was lying with his head in my lap, afore his spirit started for the happy hunting-grounds.”

“ ’Tis a good name! The hawk is sure of his blow. Hawkeye is not a woman; why does he live with the Delawares?”

“I understand you, Mingo, but we look on all that as a sarcumvention of some of your subtle devils, and deny the charge. Providence placed me among the Delawares young; and, ’bating what Christian usages demand of my color and gifts, I hope to live and die in their tribe. Still, I do not mean to throw away altogether my natyve rights, and shall strive to do a paleface’s duty in redskin society”

“Good! a Huron is a redskin, as well as a Delaware. Hawkeye is more of a Huron than of a woman.”

“I suppose you know, Mingo, your own meaning; if you don‘t, I make no question ’tis well known to Satan. But if you wish to get anything out of me, speak plainer, for bargains cannot be made blindfolded or tonguetied.”

“Good! Hawkeye has not a forked tongue, and he likes to say what he thinks. He is an acquaintance of the Muskrat”—this was a name by which all the Indians designated Hutter—“and he has lived in his wigwam; but he is not a friend. He wants no scalps, like a miserable Indian, but fights like a stouthearted paleface. The Muskrat is neither white nor red; neither a beast nor a fish. He is a water snake; sometimes in the spring and sometimes on the land. He looks for scalps like an outcast. Hawkeye can go back and tell him how he has outwitted the Hurons, how he has escaped; and when his eyes are in a fog, when he can’t see as far as from his cabin to the woods, then Hawkeye can open the door for the Hurons. And how will the plunder be divided? Why, Hawkeye will carry away the most, and the Hurons will take what he may choose to leave behind him. The scalps can go to Canada, for a paleface has no satisfaction in them.”

“Well, well, Rivenoak—for so I hear ‘em tarm you—this is plain English enough, though spoken in Iroquois. I understand all you mean, now, and must say it out-devils even Mingo deviltry! No doubt, ’twould be easy enough to go back and tell the Muskrat that I had got away from you, and gain some credit, too, by the expl’ite.”

“Good! that is what I want the paleface to do.”

“Yes—yes—that’s plain enough. I know what you want me to do, without more words. When inside the house, and eating the Muskrat’s bread, and laughing and talking with his pretty darters, I might put his eyes into so thick a fog, that he couldn’t even see the door, much less the land.”

“Good! Hawkeye should have been born a Huron! His blood is not more than half white!”

“There you’re out, Huron; yes there you’re as much out, as if you mistook a wolf for a catamount. I’m white in blood, heart, natur‘, and gifts, though a little redskin in feelin’s and habits. But when old Hutter’s eyes are well befogged, and his pretty darters, perhaps, in a deep sleep, and Hurry Harry, the Great Pine, as you Indians tarm him, is dreaming of anything but mischief, and all suppose Hawkeye is acting as a faithful sentinel, all I have to do is, to set a torch somewhere in sight for a signal, open the door, and let in the Hurons to knock ’em all on the head.”

“Surely my brother is mistaken; he cannot be white! He is worthy to be a great chief among the Hurons!”

“That is true enough, I dare to say, if he could do all this. Now, harkee, Huron, and for once hear a few honest words from the mouth of a plain man. I am a Christian born, and them that come of such a stock, and that listen to the words that were spoken to their fathers, and will be spoken to their children, until ‘arth and all it holds perishes, can never lend themselves to such wickedness. Sarcumventions in war may be, and are lawful; but sarcumventions, and deceit, and treachery, among fri’nds, are fit only for the paleface devils. I know that there are white men enough to give you this wrong idee of our natur’, but such are ontrue to their blood and gifts, and ought to be, if they are not, outcasts and vagabonds. No upright paleface could do what you wish, and to be as plain with you as I wish to be, in my judgment no upright Delaware either; with a Mingo it may be different.”
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The Huron listened to his rebuke with obvious disgust; but he had his ends in view, and was too wily to lose all chance of effecting them by a precipitate avowal of resentment. Affecting to smile, he seemed to listen eagerly, and he then pondered on what he had heard.

“Does Hawkeye love the Muskrat?” he abruptly demanded; “or does he love his daughters?”

“Neither, Mingo. Old Tom is not a man to gain my love; and as for the darters, they are comely enough to gain the liking of any young man; but there’s reason ag’in any very great love for either. Hetty is a good soul, but natur’ has laid a heavy hand on her mind, poor thing!”

“And the Wild Rose!” exclaimed the Huron—for the fame of Judith’s beauty had spread among those who could travel the wilderness as well as the highway, by means of old eagles’ nests, rocks, and riven trees, known to them by report and tradition, as well as among the white borderers—“And the Wild Rose; is she not sweet enough to be put in the bosom of my brother?”

Deerslayer had far too much of the innate gentleman to insinuate aught against the fair fame of one who, by nature and position, was so helpless; and as he did not choose to utter an untruth, he preferred being silent. The Huron mistook the motive, and supposed that disappointed affection lay at the bottom of his reserve. Still bent on corrupting or bribing his captive, in order to obtain possession of the treasures with which his imagination filled the castle, he persevered in his attack.

“Hawkeye is talking with a friend,” he continued. “He knows that Rivenoak is a man of his word, for they have traded together, and trade opens the soul. My friend has come here on account of a little string held by a girl, that can pull the whole body of the stoutest warrior?”

“You are nearer the truth now, Huron, than you’ve been afore, since we began to talk. This is true. But one end of that string was not fast to my heart, nor did the Wild Rose hold the other.”

“This is wonderful! Does my brother love in his head, and not in his heart? And can the Feeble-Mind pull so hard against so stout a warrior?”

“There it is ag‘in; sometimes right and sometimes wrong! The string you mean is fast to the heart of a great Delaware; one of the Mohican stock in fact, living among the Delawares since the dispersion of his own people, and of the family of Uncas—Chingachgook by name, or Great Sarpent. He has come here, led by the string, and I’ve followed, or rather come afore, for I got here first, pulled by nothing stronger than fri’ndship; which is strong enough for such as are not niggardly of their feelin‘s, and are willing to live a little for their fellow creatur’s, as well as for themselves.”

“But a string has two ends—one is fast to the mind of a Mohican, and the other—?”

“Why the other was here close to the fire, half an hour since. Wah-ta-Wah held it in her hand, if she didn’t hold it to her heart.”

“I understand what you mean, my brother,” returned the Indian gravely, for the first time catching a direct clue to the adventures of the evening. “The Great Serpent being strongest, pulled the hardest, and Hist was forced to leave us.”

“I don’t think there was much pulling about it,” answered the other, laughing, always in his silent manner, with as much heartiness as if he were not a captive, and in danger of torture or death. “I don’t think there was much pulling about it; no, I don’t. Lord help you, Huron! he likes the gal, and the gal likes him, and it surpassed Huron sarcumventions to keep two young people apart when there was so strong a feelin’ to bring ’em together.”

“And Hawkeye and Chingachgook came into our camp on this errand only?”

“That’s a question that’ll answer itself, Mingo! Yes, if a question could talk, it would answer itself to your perfect satisfaction. For what else should we come? And yet, it isn’t exactly so, neither; for we didn’t come into your camp at all, but only as far as that pine, there, that you see on the other side of the ridge, where we stood watching your movements and conduct as long as we liked. When we were ready the Sarpent gave his signal, and then all went just as it should, down to the moment when yonder vagabond leaped upon my back. Sartain; we came for that and no other purpose, and we got what we came for, there’s no use in pretending otherwise. Hist is off with a man who’s the next thing to her husband, and come what will to me, that’s one good thing detarmined.”