The Pioneers (56 page)

“My private feelings must not enter into——”

“Hear me, Marmaduke Temple,” interrupted the old man, with melancholy earnestness, “and hear reason. I've traveled these mountains when you was no judge, but an infant in your mother's arms; and I feel as if I had a right and a privilege to travel them ag'in afore I die. Have you forgot the time that you come on to the lake shore, when there wasn't even a jail to lodge in; and didn't I give you my own bearskin to sleep on, and the fat of a noble buck to satisfy the cravings of your hunger? Yes, yes—you thought it no sin then to kill a deer! And this I did, though I had no reason to love you, for you had never done anything but harm to them that loved and sheltered me. And now, will you shut me up in your dungeons to pay me for my kindness? A hundred dollars! Where should I get the money? No, no—there's them that says hard things of you, Marmaduke Temple, but you an't so bad as to wish to see an old man die in a prison because he stood up for the right. Come, friend, let me pass; it's long sin' I've been used to such crowds, and I crave to be in the woods ag'in. Don't fear me, Judge—I bid you not to fear me; for if there's beaver enough left on the streams, or the buckskins will sell for a shilling apiece, you shall have the last penny of the fine. Where are ye, pups! Come away, dogs! come away! We have a grievous toil to do for our years, but it shall be done—yes, yes, I've promised it, and it shall be done!”

It is unnecessary to say that the movement of the Leatherstocking was again intercepted by the constable; but before he had time to speak, a bustling in the crowd, and a loud hem, drew all eyes to another part of the room.

Benjamin had succeeded in edging his way through the people, and was now seen balancing his short body with one foot in a window and the other on a railing of the jury box. To the amazement of the whole court, the steward was evidently preparing to speak. After a good deal of difficulty, he succeeded in drawing from his pocket a small bag, and then found utterance.

“If so be,” he said, “that your honor is agreeable to trust the poor fellow out on another cruise among the beasts, here's a small matter that will help to bring down the risk, seeing that there's just thirty-five of your Spaniards in it; and I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that they was raal British guineas, for the sake of the old boy. But 'tis as it is; and if Squire Dickens will just be so good as to overhaul this small bit of an account, and take enough from the bag to settle the same, he's welcome to hold on upon the rest, till such time as the Leatherstocking can grapple with them said beaver, or, for that matter, forever, and no thanks asked.”

As Benjamin concluded, he thrust out the wooden register of his arrears to the Bold Dragoon with one hand, while he offered his bag of dollars with the other. Astonishment at this singular interruption produced a profound stillness in the room, which was only interrupted by the Sheriff, who struck his sword on the table, and cried:

“Silence!”

“There must be an end to this,” said the Judge, struggling to overcome his feelings. “Constable, lead the prisoner to the stocks. Mr. Clerk, what stands next on the calendar?”

Natty seemed to yield to his destiny, for he sank his head on his chest and followed the officer from the courtroom in silence. The crowd moved back for the passage of the prisoner, and when his tall form was seen descending from the outer door, a rush of the people to the scene of his disgrace followed.

LEAR

 

THE punishments of the common law were still known, at the time of our tale, to the people of New York; and the whipping post and its companion, the stocks, were not yet supplanted by the more merciful expedients of the public prison. Immediately in front of the jail those relics of the elder times were situated, as a lesson of precautionary justice to the evildoers of the settlement.

Natty followed the constables to this spot, bowing his head with submission to a power that he was unable to oppose, and surrounded by the crowd that formed a circle about his person, exhibiting in their countenances strong curiosity. A constable raised the upper part of the stocks and pointed with his finger to the holes where the old man was to place his feet. Without making the least objection to the punishment, the Leatherstocking quietly seated himself on the ground and suffered his limbs to be laid in the openings, without even a murmur; though he cast one glance about him in quest of that sympathy that human nature always seems to require under suffering. If he met no direct manifestations of pity, neither did he see any unfeeling exultation, or hear a single reproachful epithet. The character of the mob, if it could be called by such a name, was that of attentive subordination.

The constable was in the act of lowering the upper plank when Benjamin, who had pressed close to the side of the prisoner, said, in his hoarse tones, as if seeking for some cause to create a quarrel:

“Where away, master constable, is the use of clapping a man in them here bilboes? It neither stops his grog nor hurts his back; what for is it that you do the thing?”

“ 'Tis the sentence of the court, Mr. Penguillan, and there's law for it, I s'pose.”

“Ay, ay, I know that there's law for the thing; but where away do you find the use, I say? It does no harm, and it only keeps a man by the heels for the small matter of two glasses.”

“Is it no harm, Benny Pump,” said Natty, raising his eyes with a piteous look in the face of the steward—“is it no harm to show off a man in his seventy-first year, like a tame bear, for the settlers to look on! Is it no harm to put an old soldier, that has sarved through the war of 'fifty-six and seen the inimy in the 'seventy-six business, into a place like this, where the boys can point at him and say, I have known the time when he was a spectacle for the county! Is it no harm to bring down the pride of an honest man to be the equal of the beasts of the forest!”

Benjamin stared about him fiercely, and could he have found a single face that expressed contumely, he would have been prompt to quarrel with its owner; but meeting everywhere with looks of sobriety, and occasionally of commiseration, he very deliberately seated himself by the side of the hunter, and placing his legs in the two vacant holes of the stocks, he said:

“Now lower away, master constable, lower away, I tell ye! If so be there's such a thing hereabouts as a man that wants to see a bear, let him look and be d—d, and he shall find two of them, and mayhap one of the same that can bite as well as growl.”

“But I have no orders to put you in the stocks, Mr. Pump,” cried the constable; “you must get up and let me do my duty.”

“You've my orders, and what do you need better to meddle with my own feet? So lower away, will ye, and let me see the man that chooses to open his mouth with a grin on it.”

“There can't be any harm in locking up a creater that will enter the pound,” said the constable, laughing and closing the stocks on them both.

It was fortunate that this act was executed with decision, for the whole of the spectators, when they saw Benjamin assume the position he took, felt an inclination for merriment, which few thought it worth while to suppress. The steward struggled violently for his liberty again, with an evident intention of making battle on those who stood nearest to him; but the key was already turned, and all his efforts were vain.

“Hark ye, master constable,” he cried, “just clear away your bilboes for the small matter of a log glass, will ye, and let me show some of them there chaps who it is they are so merry about.”

“No, no, you would go in, and you can't come out,” returned the officer, “until the time has expired that the Judge directed for the keeping of the prisoner.”

Benjamin, finding that his threats and his struggles were useless, had good sense enough to learn patience from the resigned manner of his companion, and soon settled himself down by the side of Natty, with a contemptuousness expressed in his hard features that showed he had substituted disgust for rage. When the violence of the steward's feelings had in some measure subsided, he turned to his fellow-sufferer, and, with a motive that might have vindicated a worse effusion, he attempted the charitable office of consolation.

“Taking it by and large, Master Bump-ho, 'tis but a small matter, after all,” he said. “Now, I've known very good sort of men, aboard of the Boadishey, laid by the heels, for nothing, mayhap, but forgetting that they'd drunk their allowance already, when a glass of grog has come in their way. This is nothing more than riding with two anchors ahead, waiting for a turn in the tide, or a shift of wind, d'ye see, with a soft bottom and plenty of room for the sweep of your hawse. Now I've seen many a man, for overshooting his reckoning, as I told ye, moored head and starn, where he couldn't so much as heave his broadside round, and mayhap a stopper clapt on his tongue, too, in the shape of a pump bolt lashed athwartship his jaws, all the same as an outrigger alongside of a taffarel rail.”

The hunter appeared to appreciate the kind intentions of the other, though he could not understand his eloquence; and raising his humbled countenance, he attempted a smile, as he said:

“Anan!”

“ 'Tis nothing, I say, but a small matter of a squall that will soon blow over,” continued Benjamin. “To you that has such a length of keel, it must be all the same as nothing; tho'f, seeing that I'm a little short in my lower timbers, they've triced my heels up in such a way as to give me a bit of a cant. But what cares I, Master Bump-ho, if the ship strains a little at her anchor; it's only for a dogwatch, and dam'me but she'll sail with you then on that cruise after them said beaver. I'm not much used to small arms, seeing that I was stationed at the ammunition boxes, being sum'mat too low-rigged to see over the hammock cloths; but I can carry the game, d'ye see, and mayhap make out to lend a hand with the traps; and if so be you're any way so handy with them as ye be with your boat hook, 'twill be but a short cruise, after all. I've squared the yards with Squire Dickens this morning, and I shall send him word that he needn't bear my name on the books again till such time as the cruise is over.”

“You're used to dwell with men, Benny,” said Leatherstocking, mournfully, “and the ways of the woods would be hard on you, if——”

“Not a bit—not a bit,” cried the steward; “I'm none of your fair-weather chaps, Master Bump-ho, as sails only in smooth water. When I find a friend, I sticks by him, d'ye see. Now, there's no better man agoing than Squire Dickens, and I love him about the same as I loves Mistress Hollister's new keg of Jamaiky.” The steward paused, and turning his uncouth visage on the hunter, he surveyed him with a roguish leer of his eye, and gradually suffered the muscles of his hard features to relax, until his face was illuminated by the display of his white teeth, when he dropped his voice, and added,—“I say, Master Leatherstocking, 'tis fresher and livelier than any Hollands you'll get in Garnsey. But we'll send a hand over and ask the woman for a taste, for I'm so jamb'd in these here bilboes that I begin to want sum'mat to lighten my upper works.”

Natty sighed, and gazed about him on the crowd, that already began to disperse, and which had now diminished greatly as its members scattered in their various pursuits. He looked wistfully at Benjamin, but did not reply; a deeply seated anxiety seeming to absorb every other sensation, and to throw a melancholy gloom over his wrinkled features, which were working with the movements of his mind.

The steward was about to act on the old principle that silence gives consent, when Hiram Doolittle, attended by Jotham, stalked out of the crowd, across the open space, and approached the stocks. The magistrate passed by the end where Benjamin was seated and posted himself, at a safe distance from the steward, in front of the Leatherstocking. Hiram stood, for a moment, cowering before the keen looks that Natty fastened on him, and suffering under an embarrassment that was quite new; when, having in some degree recovered himself, he looked at the heavens, and then at the smoky atmosphere, as if it were only an ordinary meeting with a friend, and said in his formal hesitating way:

“Quite a scurcity of rain lately; I some think we shall have a long drought on't.”

Benjamin was occupied in untying his bag of dollars and did not observe the approach of the magistrate, while Natty turned his face, in which every muscle was working, away from him in disgust, without answering. Rather encouraged than daunted by this exhibition of dislike, Hiram, after a short pause, continued.

“The clouds look as if they'd no water in them, and the earth is dreadfully parched. To my judgment, there'll be short crops this season, if the rain doesn't fall quite speedily.”

The air with which Mr. Doolittle delivered this prophetical opinion was peculiar to his species. It was a jesuitical, cold, unfeeling, and selfish manner that seemed to say, “I have kept within the law,” to the man he had so cruelly injured. It quite overcame the restraint that the old hunter had been laboring to impose on himself, and he burst out in a warm glow of indignation.

“Why should the rain fall from the clouds,” he cried, “when you force the tears from the eyes of the old, the sick, and the poor! Away with ye—away with ye! You may be formed in the image of the Maker, but Satan dwells in your heart. Away with ye, I say! I am mournful, and the sight of ye brings bitter thoughts.”

Benjamin ceased thumbing his money, and raised his head at the instant that Hiram, who was thrown off his guard by the invectives of the hunter, unluckily trusted his person within reach of the steward, who grasped one of his legs with a hand that had the grip of a vise and whirled the magistrate from his feet, before he had either time to collect his senses or to exercise the strength he did really possess. Benjamin wanted neither proportions nor manhood in his head, shoulders, and arms, though all the rest of his frame appeared to be originally intended for a very different sort of a man. He exerted his physical powers on the present occasion with much discretion; and as he had taken his antagonist at a great disadvantage, the struggle resulted, very soon, in Benjamin getting the magistrate fixed in a posture somewhat similar to his own, and manfully placed face to face.