The Pioneers (45 page)

The Indian laughed at the conceit of his friend, but continued to send the canoe forward with a velocity that proceeded much more from his skill than his strength. Both of the old men now used the language of the Delawares when they spoke.

“Hugh!” exclaimed Mohegan; “the deer turns his head. Hawkeye, lift your spear.”

Natty never moved abroad without taking with him every implement that might, by possibility, be of service in his pursuits. From his rifle he never parted; and although intending to fish with the line, the canoe was invariably furnished with all of its utensils, even to its grate. This precaution grew out of the habits of the hunter, who was often led, by his necessities or his sports, far beyond the limits of his original destination. A few years earlier than the date of our tale, the Leatherstocking had left his hut on the shores of the Otsego with his rifle and his hounds for a few days' hunting in the hills; but before he returned he had seen the waters of Ontario. One, two, or even three hundred miles had once been nothing to his sinews, which were now a little stiffened by age. The hunter did as Mohegan advised and prepared to strike a blow with the barbed weapon into the neck of the buck.

“Lay her more to the left, John,” he cried, “lay her more to the left; another stroke of the paddle, and I have him.”

While speaking, he raised the spear and darted it from him like an arrow. At that instant the buck turned, the long pole glanced by him, the iron striking against his horn, and buried itself harmlessly in the lake.

“Back water,” cried Natty, as the canoe glided over the place where the spear had fallen; “hold water, John.”

The pole soon reappeared, shooting upwards from the lake, and as the hunter seized it in his hand, the Indian whirled the light canoe round and renewed the chase. But this evolution gave the buck a great advantage; and it also allowed time for Edwards to approach the scene of action.

“Hold your hand, Natty!” cried the youth, “hold your hand! Remember it is out of season.”

This remonstrance was made as the bateau arrived close to the place where the deer was struggling with the water, his back now rising to the surface, now sinking beneath it, as the waves curled from his neck, the animal still sustaining itself nobly against the odds.

“Hurrah!” shouted Edwards, inflamed beyond prudence at the sight; “mind him as he doubles—mind him as he doubles; sheer more to the right, Mohegan, more to the right, and I'll have him by the horns; I'll throw the rope over his antlers.”

The dark eye of the old warrior was dancing in his head with a wild animation, and the sluggish repose in which his aged frame had been resting in the canoe was now changed to all the rapid inflections of practiced agility. The canoe whirled with each cunning evolution of the chase, like a bubble floating in a whirlpool; and when the direction of the pursuit admitted of a straight course, the little bark skimmed the lake with a velocity that urged the deer to seek its safety in some new turn.

It was the frequency of these circuitous movements that, by confining the action to so small a compass, enabled the youth to keep near his companions. More than twenty times both the pursued and the pursuers glided by him, just without the reach of his oars, until he thought the best way to view the sport was to remain stationary and, by watching a favorable opportunity, assist as much as he could in taking the victim.

He was not required to wait long, for no sooner had he adopted this resolution and risen in the boat, than he saw the deer coming bravely towards him, with an apparent intention of pushing for a point of land at some distance from the hounds, who were still barking and howling on the shore. Edwards caught the painter of his skiff and, making a noose, cast it from him with all his force and luckily succeeded in drawing its knot close around one of the antlers of the buck.

For one instant, the skiff was drawn through the water, but in the next, the canoe glided before it, and Natty, bending low, passed his knife across the throat of the animal, whose blood followed the wound, dyeing the waters. The short time that was passed in the last struggles of the animal was spent by the hunters in bringing their boats together and securing them in that position, when Leatherstocking drew the deer from the water and laid its lifeless form in the bottom of the canoe. He placed his hands on the ribs and on different parts of the body of his prize, and then, raising his head, he laughed in his peculiar manner:

“So much for Marmaduke Temple's law!” he said. “This warms a body's blood, old John; I haven't killed a buck in the lake afore this, sin' many a year. I call that good venison, lad; and I know them that will relish the creater's steaks, for all the betterments in the land.”

The Indian had long been drooping with his years, and perhaps under the calamities of his race, but this invigorating and exciting sport caused a gleam of sunshine to cross his swarthy face that had long been absent from his features. It was evident the old man enjoyed the chase more as a memorial of his youthful sports and deeds than with any expectation of profiting by the success. He felt the deer, however, lightly, his hand already trembling with the reaction of his unusual exertions, and smiled with a nod of approbation, as he said, in the emphatic and sententious manner of his people:

“Good.”

“I am afraid, Natty,” said Edwards, when the heat of the moment had passed, and his blood began to cool, “that we have all been equally transgressors of the law. But keep your own counsel, and there are none here to betray us. Yet, how came those dogs at large? I left them securely fastened, I know, for I felt the thongs and examined the knots, when I was at the hut.”

“It has been too much for the poor things,” said Natty, “to have such a buck take the wind of them. See, lad, the pieces of the buckskin are hanging from their necks yet. Let us paddle up, John, and I will call them in and look a little into the matter.”

When the old hunter landed and examined the thongs that were yet fast to the hounds, his countenance sensibly changed, and he shook his head doubtingly.

“Here has been a knife at work,” he said. “This skin was never torn, nor is this the mark of a hound's tooth. No, no—Hector is not in fault, as I feared.”

“Has the leather been cut?” cried Edwards.

“No, no—I didn't say it had been cut, lad; but this is a mark that was never made by a jump or a bite.”

“Could that rascally carpenter have dared!”

“Ay! he durst to do anything when there is no danger,” said Natty. “He is a curious body and loves to be helping other people on with their consarns. But he had best not harbor so much near the wigwam!”

In the meantime, Mohegan had been examining, with an Indian's sagacity, the place where the leather thong had been separated. After scrutinizing it closely, he said, in Delaware:

“It was cut with a knife—a sharp blade and a long handle—the man was afraid of the dogs.”

“How is this, Mohegan?” exclaimed Edwards. “You saw it not! How can you know these facts?”

“Listen, son,” said the warrior. “The knife was sharp, for the cut is smooth; the handle was long, for a man's arm would not reach from this gash to the cut that did not go through the skin: he was a coward, or he would have cut the thongs around the necks of the hounds.”

“On my life,” cried Natty, “John is on the scent! It was the carpenter; and he has got on the rock back of the kennel and let the dogs loose by fastening his knife to a stick. It would be an easy matter to do it, where a man is so minded.”

“And why should he do so?” asked Edwards. “Who has done him wrong, that he should trouble two old men like you?”

“It's a hard matter, lad, to know men's ways, I find, since the settlers have brought in their new fashions. But is there nothing to be found out in the place? And maybe he is troubled with his longings after other people's business, as he often is.”

“Your suspicions are just. Give me the canoe: I am young and strong, and will get down there yet, perhaps, in time to interrupt his plans. Heaven forbid that we should be at the mercy of such a man!”

His proposal was accepted, the deer being placed in the skiff in order to lighten the canoe, and in less than five minutes the little vessel of bark was gliding over the glassy lake and was soon hid by the points of land, as it shot close along the shore.

Mohegan followed slowly with the skiff, while Natty called his hounds to him, bade them keep close, and, shouldering his rifle, he ascended the mountain with an intention of going to the hut by land.

SCOTT

 

WHILE the chase was occurring on the lake, Miss Temple and her companion pursued their walk on the mountain. Male attendants on such excursions were thought to be altogether unnecessary, for none were ever known to offer an insult to a female who respected herself. After the embarrassment created by the parting discourse with Edwards had dissipated, the girls maintained a conversation that was as innocent and cheerful as themselves.

The path they took led them but a short distance above the hut of Leatherstocking, and there was a point in the road which commanded a bird's eye view of the sequestered spot.

From a feeling that might have been natural, and must have been powerful, neither of the friends, in their frequent and confidential dialogues, had ever trusted herself to utter one syllable concerning the equivocal situation in which the young man who was now so intimately associated with them had been found. If Judge Temple had deemed it prudent to make any inquiries on the subject, he had also thought it proper to keep the answers to himself; though it was so common an occurrence to find the well-educated youth of the eastern states in every stage of their career to wealth, that the simple circumstances of his intelligence, connected with his poverty, would not, at that day, and in that country, have excited any very powerful curiosity. With his breeding, it might have been different; but the youth himself had so effectually guarded against surprise on this subject, by his cold, and even, in some cases, rude deportment, that when his manners seemed to soften by time, the Judge, if he thought about it at all, would have been most likely to imagine that the improvement was the result of his late association. But women are always more alive to such subjects than men; and what the abstraction of the father had overlooked, the observation of the daughter had easily detected. In the thousand little courtesies of polished life, she had early discovered that Edwards was not wanting, though his gentleness was so often crossed by marks of what she conceived to be fierce and uncontrollable passions. It may, perhaps, be unnecessary to tell the reader that Louisa Grant never reasoned so much after the fashions of the world. The gentle girl, however, had her own thoughts on the subject, and, like others, she drew her own conclusions.

“I would give all my other secrets, Louisa,” exclaimed Miss Temple, laughing, and shaking back her dark locks, with a look of childish simplicity that her intelligent face seldom expressed, “to be mistress of all that those rude logs have heard and witnessed.”

They were both looking at the secluded hut at the instant, and Miss Grant raised her mild eyes as she answered:

“I am sure they would tell nothing to the disadvantage of Mr. Edwards.”

“Perhaps not; but they might, at least, tell who he is.”

“Why, dear Miss Temple, we know all that already. I have heard it all very rationally explained by your cousin—”

“The executive chief! He can explain anything. His ingenuity will one day discover the philosopher's stone. But what did he say?”

“Say!” echoed Louisa, with a look of surprise; “why everything that seemed to me to be satisfactory, and I have believed it to be true. He said that Natty Bumppo had lived most of his life in the woods, and among the Indians, by which means he had formed an acquaintance with old John, the Delaware chief.”

“Indeed! That was quite a matter-of-fact tale for cousin Dickon. What came next?”

“I believe he accounted for their close intimacy by some story about the Leatherstocking saving the life of John in a battle.”

“Nothing more likely,” said Elizabeth, a little impatiently; “but what is all this to the purpose?”

“Nay, Elizabeth, you must bear with my ignorance, and I will repeat all that I remember to have overheard; for the dialogue was between my father and the Sheriff, so lately as the last time they met. He then added that the kings of England used to keep gentlemen as agents among the different tribes of Indians, and sometimes officers in the army, who frequently passed half their lives on the edge of the wilderness.”

“Told with wonderful historical accuracy! And did he end there?”

“Oh! no—then he said that these agents seldom married; and—and—they must have been wicked men, Elizabeth! But I assure you he said so.”

“Never mind,” said Miss Temple, blushing and smiling, though so slightly that both were unheeded by her companion—“skip all that.”

“Well, then, he said that they often took great pride in the education of their children, whom they frequently sent to England and even to the colleges; and this is the way that he accounts for the liberal manner in which Mr. Edwards has been taught; for he acknowledges that he knows almost as much as your father—or mine—or even himself.”

“Quite a climax in learning! And so he made Mohegan the granduncle, or grandfather of Oliver Edwards.”