The Pioneers (52 page)

“Peace, my child,” interrupted the father; “the youth is unjust; but I have not given him cause. I overlook thy remark, Oliver, for I know thee to be the friend of Natty, and zeal in his behalf has overcome thy discretion.”

“Yes, he is my friend,” cried Edwards, “and I glory in the title. He is simple, unlettered, even ignorant; prejudiced, perhaps, though I feel that his opinion of the world is too true; but he has a heart, Judge Temple, that would atone for a thousand faults; he knows his friends, and never deserts them, even if it be his dog.”

“This is a good character, Mr. Edwards,” returned Marmaduke, mildly; “but I have never been so fortunate as to secure his esteem, for to me he has been uniformly repulsive; yet I have endured it, as an old man's whim. However, when he appears before me, as his judge, he shall find that his former conduct shall not aggravate, any more than his recent services shall extenuate, his crime.”

“Crime!” echoed Edwards; “is it a crime to drive a prying miscreant from his door? Crime! Oh, no, sir; if there be a criminal involved in this affair, it is not he.”

“And who may it be, sir?” asked Judge Temple, facing the agitated youth, his features settled to their usual composure.

This appeal was more than the young man could bear. Hitherto he had been deeply agitated by his emotions, but now the volcano burst its boundaries.

“Who! and this to me!” he cried. “Ask your own conscience, Judge Temple. Walk to that door, sir, and look out upon the valley, that placid lake, and those dusky mountains, and say to your own heart, if heart you have, Whence came these riches, this vale, those hills, and why am I their owner? I should think, sir, that the appearance of Mohegan and the Leatherstocking, stalking through the country, impoverished and forlorn, would wither your sight.”

Marmaduke heard this burst of passion at first with deep amazement: but when the youth had ended, he beckoned to his impatient daughter for silence, and replied:

“Oliver Edwards, thou forgettest in whose presence thou standest. I have heard, young man, that thou claimest descent from the native owners of the soil; but surely thy education has been given thee to no effect, if it has not taught thee the validity of the claims that have transferred the title to the whites. These lands are mine by the very grants of thy ancestry, if thou art so descended: and I appeal to Heaven for a testimony of the uses I have put them to. After this language, we must separate. I have too long sheltered thee in my dwelling; but the time has arrived when thou must quit it. Come to my office, and I will discharge the debt I owe thee. Neither shall thy present intemperate language mar thy future fortunes, if thou wilt hearken to the advice of one who is by many years thy senior.”

The ungovernable feeling that caused the violence of the youth had passed away, and he stood gazing after the retiring figure of Marmaduke, with a vacancy in his eye that denoted the absence of his mind. At length he recollected himself, and, turning his head slowly around the apartment, he beheld Elizabeth, still seated on the sofa, but with her head dropped on her bosom, and her face again concealed by her hands.

“Miss Temple,” he said—all violence had left his manner—“Miss Temple—I have forgotten myself—forgotten you. You have heard what your father has decreed, and this night I leave here. With you, at least, I would part in amity.”

Elizabeth slowly raised her face, across which a momentary expression of sadness stole; but as she left her seat, her dark eyes lighted with their usual fire, her cheek flushed to burning, and her whole air seemed to belong to another nature.

“I forgive you, Edwards, and my father will forgive you,” she said, when she reached the door. “You do not know us, but the time may come when your opinions shall change——”

“Of you! never!” interrupted the youth. “I—”

“I would speak, sir, and not listen. There is something in this affair that I do not comprehend; but tell the Leatherstocking he has friends as well as judges in us. Do not let the old man experience unnecessary uneasiness at this rupture. It is impossible that you could increase his claims here; neither shall they be diminished by anything you have said. Mr. Edwards, I wish you happiness and warmer friends.”

The youth would have spoken, but she vanished from the door so rapidly that when he reached the hall her form was nowhere to be seen. He paused a moment, in stupor, and then, rushing from the house, instead of following Marmaduke to his “office,” he took his way directly for the cabin of the hunters.

POPE

 

RICHARD did not return from the exercise of his official duties until late in the evening of the following day. It had been one portion of his business to superintend the arrest of part of a gang of counterfeiters that had, even at that early period, buried themselves in the woods to manufacture their base coin, which they afterwards circulated from one end of the Union to the other. The expedition had been completely successful, and about midnight the Sheriff entered the village at the head of a posse of deputies and constables, in the center of whom rode, pinioned, four of the malefactors. At the gate of the mansion house they separated, Mr. Jones directing his assistants to proceed with their charge to the county jail, while he pursued his own way up the graveled walk, with the kind of self-satisfaction that a man of his organization would feel, who had really, for once, done a very clever thing.

“Holla! Aggy!” shouted the Sheriff when he reached the door. “Where are you, you black dog? Will you keep me here in the dark all night? Holla! Aggy! Brave! Brave! Hoy, hoy—where have you got to, Brave? Off his watch! Everybody is asleep but myself! Poor I must keep my eyes open, that others may sleep in safety. Brave! Brave! Well, I will say this for the dog, lazy as he's grown, that it is the first time I ever knew him let anyone come to the door after dark, without having a smell to know whether it was an honest man or not. He could tell by his nose, almost as well as I could myself by looking at them. Holla! you Agamemnon! Where are you? Oh! here comes the dog at last.”

By this time the Sheriff had dismounted and observed a form, which he supposed to be that of Brave, slowly creeping out of the kennel; when, to his astonishment, it reared itself on two legs instead of four, and he was able to distinguish, by the starlight, the curly head and dark visage of the Negro.

“Ha! what the devil are you doing there, you black rascal?” he cried. “Is it not hot enough for your Guinea blood in the house, this warm night, but you must drive out the poor dog and sleep in his straw?”

By this time the boy was quite awake, and, with a blubbering whine, he attempted to reply to his master.

“Oh! Masser Richard! Masser Richard! Such a ting! such a ting! I neber tink a could 'appen! Neber tink he die! Oh, Lor-a-gor! An't bury—keep 'em till masser Richard get back—got a grabe dug——”

Here the feelings of the Negro completely got the mastery, and instead of making any intelligible explanation of the causes of his grief, he blubbered aloud.

“Eh! what! buried! grave! dead!” exclaimed Richard, with a tremor in his voice. “Nothing serious? Nothing has happened to Benjamin, I hope? I know he has been bilious, but I gave him——”

“Oh! worser 'an dat! worser 'an dat!” sobbed the Negro. “Oh! de Lor! Miss 'Lizzy an' Miss Grant—walk—mountain—poor Bravy!—kill a lady—painter—Oh! Lor, Lor!—Natty Bumppo—tare he troat open—come a see, Masser Richard—here he be—here he be.”

As all this was perfectly inexplicable to the Sheriff, he was very glad to wait patiently until the black brought a lantern from the kitchen, when he followed Aggy to the kennel, where he beheld poor Brave, indeed, lying in his blood, stiff and cold, but decently covered with the greatcoat of the Negro. He was on the point of demanding an explanation; but the grief of the black, who had fallen asleep on his voluntary watch, having burst out afresh on his waking utterly disqualified the lad from giving one. Luckily, at this moment the principal door of the house opened, and the coarse features of Benjamin were thrust over the threshold, with a candle elevated above them, shedding its dim rays around in such a manner as to exhibit the lights and shadows of his countenance. Richard threw his bridle to the black, and bidding him look to the horse, he entered the hall.

“What is the meaning of the dead dog?” he cried. “Where is Miss Temple?”

Benjamin made one of his square gestures, with the thumb of his left hand pointing over his right shoulder, as he answered:

“Turned in.”

“Judge Temple—where is he?”

“In his berth.”

“But explain; why is Brave dead? And what is the cause of Aggy's grief?”

“Why, it's all down, Squire,” said Benjamin, pointing to a slate that lay on the table by the side of a mug of toddy, a short pipe in which the tobacco was yet burning, and a prayer book.

Among the other pursuits of Richard, he had a passion to keep a register of all passing events; and his diary, which was written in the manner of a journal, or logbook, embraced not only such circumstances as affected himself, but observations on the weather, and all the occurrences of the family, and frequently of the village. Since his appointment to the office of Sheriff, and his consequent absences from home, he had employed Benjamin to make memoranda on a slate of whatever might be thought worth remembering, which, on his return, were regularly transferred to the journal with proper notations of the time, manner, and other little particulars. There was, to be sure, one material objection to the clerkship of Benjamin which the ingenuity of no one but Richard could have overcome. The steward read nothing but his prayer book, and that only in particular parts, and by the aid of a good deal of spelling and some misnomers; but he could not form a single letter with a pen. This would have been an insuperable bar to journalizing, with most men; but Richard invented a kind of hieroglyphical character, which was intended to note all the ordinary occurrences of a day, such as how the wind blew, whether the sun shone, or whether it rained, the hours, etc.; and for the extraordinary, after giving certain elementary lectures on the subject, the Sheriff was obliged to trust to the ingenuity of the major-domo. The reader will at once perceive that it was to this chronicle that Benjamin pointed, instead of directly answering the Sheriff's interrogatory.

When Mr. Jones had drunk a glass of toddy, he brought forth from its secret place his proper journal, and, seating himself by the table, he prepared to transfer the contents of the slate to the paper, at the same time that he appeased his curiosity. Benjamin laid one hand on the back of the Sheriff's chair, in a familiar manner, while he kept the other at liberty to make use of a forefinger, that was bent like some of his own characters, as an index to point out his meaning.

The first thing referred to by the Sheriff was the diagram of a compass, cut in one corner of the slate for permanent use. The cardinal points were plainly marked on it, and all the usual divisions were indicated in such a manner that no man who had ever steered a ship could mistake them.

“Oh!” said the Sheriff, settling himself down comfortably in his chair—“you'd the wind southeast, I see, all last night; I thought it would have blown up rain.”

“Devil the drop, sir,” said Benjamin; “I believe that the scuttle butt up aloft is emptied; for there hasn't so much water fell in the country for the last three weeks as would float Indian John's canoe, and that draws just one inch nothing, light.”

“Well, but didn't the wind change here this morning? There was a change where I was.”

“To be sure it did, Squire; and haven't I logged it as a shift of wind.”

“I don't see where, Benjamin——”

“Don't see!” interrupted the steward, a little crustily. “An't there a mark ag'in east-and-by-nothe-half-nothe, with sum'mat like a rising sun at the end of it, to show 'twas in the morning watch?”

“Yes, yes, that is very legible; but where is the change noted?”

“Where! why doesn't it see this here teakettle, with a mark run from the spout straight, or mayhap a little crooked or so, into west-and-by-southe-half-southe? Now I call this a shift of wind, Squire. Well, do you see this here boar's head that you made for me, alongside of the compass——”

“Ay, ay—Boreas—I see. Why you've drawn lines from its mouth, extending from one of your marks to the other.”

“It's no fault of mine, Squire Dickens; 'tis your d—d climate. The wind has been at all them there marks this very day; and that's all round the compass, except a little matter of an Irishman's hurricane at meridium, which you'll find marked right up and down. Now I've known a souwester blow for three weeks, in the channel, with a clean drizzle in which you might wash your face and hands without the trouble of hauling in water from alongside.”

“Very well, Benjamin,” said the Sheriff, writing in his journal; “I believe I have caught the idea. Oh! here's a cloud over the rising sun—so you had it hazy in the morning?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said Benjamin.

“Ah! it's Sunday, and here are the marks for the length of the sermon—one, two, three, four—what! did Mr. Grant preach forty minutes?”

“Ay, sum'mat like it; it was a good half-hour by my own glass, and then there was the time lost in turning it, and some little allowance for leeway in not being oversmart about it.”

“Benjamin, this is as long as a Presbyterian; you never could have been ten minutes in turning the glass!”