The Pioneers (24 page)

“It sames to me, Natty, but a sorry compliment, to call your comrade after the evil one,” said the landlady; “and it's no much like a snake that old John is looking now. Nimrod would be a more besameing name for the lad, and a more Christian, too, seeing that it comes from the Bible. The sargeant read me the chapter about him, the night before my christening, and a mighty asement it was, to listen to anything from the book.”

“Old John and Chingachgook were very different men to look on,” returned the hunter, shaking his head at his melancholy recollections. “In the ‘fifty-eighth war' he was in the middle of manhood, and taller than now by three inches. If you had seen him, as I did, the morning we beat Dieskau, from behind our log walls, you would have called him as comely a redskin as ye ever set eyes on. He was naked all to his breechcloth and leggins; and you never seed a creater so handsomely painted. One side of his face was red, and the other black. His head was shaved clean, all to a few hairs on the crown, where he wore a tuft of eagle's feathers, as bright as if they had come from a peacock's tail. He had colored his sides so that they looked like an atomy, ribs and all; for Chingachgook had a great taste in such things; so that, what with his bold, fiery countenance, his knife, and his tomahawk, I have never seen a fiercer warrior on the ground. He played his part, too, like a man; for I saw him next day, with thirteen scalps on his pole. And I will say this for the ‘Big Snake,' that he always dealt fair, and never scalped any that he didn't kill with his own hands.”

“Well, well,” cried the landlady; “fighting is fighting, anyway, and there is different fashions in the thing; though I can't say that I relish mangling a body after the breath is out of it; neither do I think it can be uphild by doctrine. I hope, sargeant, ye niver was helping in sich evil worrek.”

“It was my duty to keep my ranks, and to stand or fall by the baggonet or lead,” returned the veteran. “I was then in the fort, and seldom leaving my place, saw but little of the savages, who kept on the flanks or in front, scrimmaging. I remember, howsomever, to have heard mention made of the ‘Great Snake,' as he was called, for he was a chief of renown; but little did I ever expect to see him enlisted in the cause of Christianity, and civilized like old John.”

“Oh! He was Christianized by the Moravians, who were always overintimate with the Delawares,” said Leatherstocking. “It's my opinion that, had they been left to themselves, there would be no such doings now, about the headwaters of the two rivers, and that these hills mought have been kept as good hunting ground by their right owner, who is not too old to carry a rifle, and whose sight is as true as a fish hawk hovering——”

He was interrupted by more stamping at the door, and presently the party from the mansion house entered, followed by the Indian himself.

DRINKING SONG

 

SOME little commotion was produced by the appearance of the new guests, during which the lawyer slunk from the room. Most of the men approached Marmaduke and shook his offered hand, hoping “that the Judge was well”; while Major Hartmann, having laid aside his hat and wig and substituted for the latter a warm, peaked woolen nightcap, took his seat very quietly on one end of the settee, which was relinquished by its former occupants. His tobacco box was next produced, and a clean pipe was handed him by the landlord. When he had succeeded in raising a smoke, the Major gave a long whiff, and turning his head towards the bar, he said:

“Petty, pring in ter toddy.”

In the meantime the Judge had exchanged his salutations with most of the company and taken a place by the side of the Major, and Richard had bustled himself into the most comfortable seat in the room. Mr. Le Quoi was the last seated, nor did he venture to place his chair finally, until by frequent removals, he had ascertained that he could not possibly intercept a ray of heat from any individual present. Mohegan found a place on an end of one of the benches, and somewhat approximated to the bar. When these movements had subsided, the Judge remarked pleasantly:

“Well, Betty, I find you retain your popularity through all weathers, against all rivals, and among all religions. How liked you the sermon?”

“Is it the sarmon?” exclaimed the landlady. “I can't say but it was rasonable; but the prayers is mighty unasy. It's no small a matter for a body in their fifty-nint' year, to be moving so much in church. Mr. Grant sames a godly man, anyway, and his garrel is a hoomble one, and a devout.—Here, John, is a mug of cider, laced with whiskey. An Indian will drink cider, though he niver be athirst.”

“I must say,” observed Hiram, with due deliberation, “that it was a tonguey thing, and I rather guess that it gave considerable satisfaction. There was one part, though, which might have been left out, or something else put in; but then I s'pose that, as it was a written discourse, it is not so easily altered as where a minister preaches without notes.”

“Ay! There's the rub, Jooge,” cried the landlady. “How can a man stand up and be praching his word, when all that he is saying is written down, and he is as much tied to it as iver a thaving dragoon was to the pickets?”

“Well, well,” cried Marmaduke, waving his hand for silence, “there is enough said; as Mr. Grant told us, there are different sentiments on such subjects, and in my opinion he spoke most sensibly. So, Jotham, I am told you have sold your betterments to a new settler and have moved into the village and opened a school. Was it cash or dicker?”

The man who was thus addressed occupied a seat immediately behind Marmaduke; and one who was ignorant of the extent of the Judge's observation might have thought he would have escaped notice. He was of a thin, shapeless figure, with a discontented expression of countenance, and with something extremely shiftless in his whole air. Thus spoken to, after turning and twisting a little, by way of preparation, he made a reply.

“Why, part cash, and part dicker. I sold out to a Pumfret-man who was so'thin forehanded. He was to give me ten dollars an acre for the clearin', and one dollar an acre over the first cost, on the woodland; and we agreed to leave the buildin's to men. So I tuck Asa Montagu, and he tuck Absalom Bement, and they two tuck old Squire Napthali Green. And so they had a meetin', and made out a vardict of eighty dollars for the buildins. There was twelve acres of clearin', at ten dollars, and eighty-eight at one, and the whull came to two hundred and eighty-six dollars and a half, after paying the men.”

“Hum,” said Marmaduke, “what did you give for the place?”

“Why, besides what's comin' to the Judge, I gi'n my brother Tim a hundred dollars for his bargain; but then there's a new house on't, that cost me sixty more, and I paid Moses a hundred dollars for choppin' and loggin' and sowin'; so that the whull stood me in about two hundred and sixty dollars. But then I had a great crop off on't, and as I got twenty-six dollars and a half more than it cost, I conclude I made a pretty good trade on't.”

“Yes, but you forgot that the crop was yours without the trade, and you have turned yourself out of doors for twenty-six dollars.”

“Oh! The Judge is clean out,” said the man, with a look of sagacious calculation. “He turned out a span of horses, that is wuth a hundred and fifty dollars of any man's money, with a bran-new wagon; fifty dollars in cash; and a good note for eighty more; and a sidesaddle that was valued at seven and a half—so there was jist twelve shillings betwixt us. I wanted him to turn out a set of harness, and take the cow and the sap troughs. He wouldn't—but I saw through it; he thought I should have to buy the tacklin' afore I could use the wagon and horses; but I know'd a thing or two myself; I should like to know of what use is the tacklin' to him! I offered him to trade back ag'in, for one hundred and fifty-five. But my woman said she wanted a churn, so I tuck a churn for the change.”

“And what do you mean to do with your time this winter? You must remember that time is money.”

“Why, as the master is gone down country, to see his mother, who, they say, is going to make a die on't, I agreed to take the school in hand till he comes back. If times doosn't get worse in the spring, I've some notion of going into trade, or maybe I may move off to the Genesee; they say they are carryin' on a great stroke of business that-a-way. If the wust comes to the wust, I can but work at my trade, for I was brought up in a shoe manufactory.”

It would seem that Marmaduke did not think his society of sufficient value to attempt inducing him to remain where he was; for he addressed no further discourse to the man, but turned his attention to other subjects. After a short pause, Hiram ventured a question:

“What news does the Judge bring us from the Legislature? It's not likely that Congress has done much this session: or maybe the French haven't fit any more battles lately?”

“The French since they have beheaded their king have done nothing but fight,” returned the Judge. “The character of the nation seems changed. I knew many French gentlemen, during our war, and they all appeared to me to be men of great humanity and goodness of heart; but these Jacobins are as bloodthirsty as bulldogs.”

“There was one Roshambow wid us, down at Yorrektown,” cried the landlady; “a mighty pratty man he was, too; and their horse was the very same. It was there that the sargeant got the hurt in the leg, from the English batteries, bad luck to 'em.”

“Ah! Mon pauvre Roi!” murmured Monsieur Le Quoi.

“The Legislature have been passing laws,” continued Marmaduke, “that the country much required. Among others, there is an act prohibiting the drawing of seines, at any other than proper seasons, in certain of our streams and small lakes; and another, to prohibit the killing of deer in the teeming months. These are laws that were loudly called for, by judicious men; nor do I despair of getting an act to make the unlawful felling of timber a criminal offense.”

The hunter listened to this detail with breathless attention, and when the Judge had ended, he laughed in open derision.

“You may make your laws, Judge,” he cried, “but who will you find to watch the mountains through the long summer days, or the lakes at night? Game is game, and he who finds may kill; that has been the law in these mountains for forty years, to my sartain knowledge; and I think one old law is worth two new ones. None but a green one would wish to kill a doe with a fa'n by its side, unless his moccasins were getting old, or his leggins ragged, for the flesh is lean and coarse. But a rifle rings among the rocks along the lake shore, sometimes, as if fifty pieces were fired at once—it would be hard to tell where the man stood who pulled the trigger.”

“Armed with the dignity of the law, Mr. Bumppo,” returned the Judge, gravely, “a vigilant magistrate can prevent much of the evil that has hitherto prevailed, and which is already rendering the game scarce. I hope to live to see the day when a man's rights in his game shall be as much respected as his title to his farm.”

“Your titles and your farms are all new together,” cried Natty; “but laws should be equal, and not more for one than another. I shot a deer, last Wednesday was a fortnight, and it floundered through the snowbanks till it got over a brush fence; I catch'd the lock of my rifle in the twigs in following, and was kept back, until finally the creater got off. Now I want to know who is to pay me for that deer; and a fine buck it was. If there hadn't been a fence I should have gotten another shot into it; and I never draw'd upon anything that hadn't wings three times running, in my born days.—No, no, Judge, it's the farmers that makes the game scarce, and not the hunters.”

“Ter teer is not so plenty as in ter old war, Pumppo,” said the Major, who had been an attentive listener, amidst clouds of smoke; “put ter lant is not mate as for ter teer to live on, put for Christians.”

“Why, Major, I believe you're a friend to justice and the right, though you go so often to the grand house; but it's a hard case to a man to have his honest calling for a livelihood stopped by laws, and that too when, if right was done, he mought hunt or fish on any day in the week, or on the best flat in the Patent, if he was so minded.”

“I unstertant you, Letterstockint,” returned the Major, fixing his black eyes, with a look of peculiar meaning, on the hunter; “put you didn't use to be so prutent, as to look ahet mit so much care.”

“Maybe there wasn't so much occasion,” said the hunter, a little sulkily; when he sank into a silence from which he was not roused for some time.

“The Judge was saying so'thin about the French,” Hiram observed, when the pause in the conversation had continued a decent time.

“Yes, sir,” returned Marmaduke, “the Jacobins of France seem rushing from one act of licentiousness to another. They continue those murders which are dignified by the name of executions. You have heard that they have added the death of their Queen to the long list of their crimes.”

“Les Monstres!” again murmured Monsieur Le Quoi, turning himself suddenly in his chair with a convulsive start.

“The province of La Vendée is laid waste by the troops of the Republic, and hundreds of its inhabitants, who are Royalists in their sentiments, are shot at a time. La Vendée is a district in the southwest of France that continues yet much attached to the family of the Bourbons; doubtless Monsieur Le Quoi is acquainted with it, and can describe it more faithfully.”