The Prairie (17 page)

The one, to whose knowledge in the culinary art the other was indebted
for his banquet, seemed the least disposed of the two to profit by his
own skill. He ate, it is true, and with a relish; but it was always with
the moderation with which age is apt to temper the appetite. No such
restraint, however, was imposed on the inclination of his companion.
In the very flower of his days and in the vigour of manhood, the homage
that he paid to the work of his more aged friend's hands was of the most
profound and engrossing character. As one delicious morsel succeeded
another he rolled his eyes towards his companion, and seemed to express
that gratitude which he had not speech to utter, in looks of the most
benignant nature.

"Cut more into the heart of it, lad," said the trapper, for it was the
venerable inhabitant of those vast wastes, who had served the bee-hunter
with the banquet in question; "cut more into the centre of the piece;
there you will find the genuine riches of natur'; and that without need
from spices, or any of your biting mustard to give it a foreign relish."

"If I had but a cup of metheglin," said Paul, stopping to perform the
necessary operation of breathing, "I should swear this was the strongest
meal that was ever placed before the mouth of man!"

"Ay, ay, well you may call it strong!" returned the other, laughing
after his peculiar manner, in pure satisfaction at witnessing the
infinite contentment of his companion; "strong it is, and strong it
makes him who eats it! Here, Hector," tossing the patient hound, who was
watching his eye with a wistful look, a portion of the meat, "you have
need of strength, my friend, in your old days as well as your master.
Now, lad, there is a dog that has eaten and slept wiser and better, ay,
and that of richer food, than any king of them all! and why? because he
has used and not abused the gifts of his Maker. He was made a hound, and
like a hound has he feasted. Then did He create men; but they have eaten
like famished wolves! A good and prudent dog has Hector proved, and
never have I found one of his breed false in nose or friendship. Do you
know the difference between the cookery of the wilderness and that
which is found in the settlements? No; I see plainly you don't, by your
appetite; then I will tell you. The one follows man, the other natur'.
One thinks he can add to the gifts of the Creator, while the other is
humble enough to enjoy them; therein lies the secret."

"I tell you, trapper," said Paul, who was very little edified by the
morality with which his associate saw fit to season their repast, "that,
every day while we are in this place, and they are likely to be many, I
will shoot a buffaloe and you shall cook his hump!"

"I cannot say that, I cannot say that. The beast is good, take him in
what part you will, and it was to be food for man that he was fashioned;
but I cannot say that I will be a witness and a helper to the waste of
killing one daily."

"The devil a bit of waste shall there be, old man. If they all turn out
as good as this, I will engage to eat them clean myself, even to the
hoofs;—how now, who comes here! some one with a long nose, I will
answer; and one that has led him on a true scent, if he is following the
trail of a dinner."

The individual who interrupted the conversation, and who had elicited
the foregoing remark of Paul, was seen advancing along the margin of the
run with a deliberate pace, in a direct line for the two revellers.
As there was nothing formidable nor hostile in his appearance, the
bee-hunter, instead of suspending his operations, rather increased his
efforts, in a manner which would seem to imply that he doubted whether
the hump would suffice for the proper entertainment of all who were now
likely to partake of the delicious morsel. With the trapper, however,
the case was different. His more tempered appetite was already
satisfied, and he faced the new comer with a look of cordiality, that
plainly evinced how very opportune he considered his arrival.

"Come on, friend," he said, waving his hand, as he observed the stranger
to pause a moment, apparently in doubt. "Come on, I say, if hunger be
your guide, it has led you to a fitting place. Here is meat, and this
youth can give you corn, parch'd till it be whiter than the upland snow;
come on, without fear. We are not ravenous beasts, eating of each other,
but Christian men, receiving thankfully that which the Lord hath seen
fit to give."

"Venerable hunter," returned the Doctor, for it was no other than the
naturalist on one of his daily exploring expeditions, "I rejoice greatly
at this happy meeting; we are lovers of the same pursuits, and should be
friends."

"Lord, Lord!" said the old man, laughing, without much deference to the
rules of decorum, in the philosopher's very face, "it is the man who
wanted to make me believe that a name could change the natur' of a
beast! Come, friend; you are welcome, though your notions are a little
blinded with reading too many books. Sit ye down, and, after eating
of this morsel, tell me, if you can, the name of the creatur' that has
bestowed on you its flesh for a meal?"

The eyes of Doctor Battius (for we deem it decorous to give the good man
the appellation he most preferred) sufficiently denoted the satisfaction
with which he listened to this proposal. The exercise he had taken, and
the sharpness of the wind, proved excellent stimulants; and Paul himself
had hardly been in better plight to do credit to the trapper's cookery,
than was the lover of nature, when the grateful invitation met his
ears. Indulging in a small laugh, which his exertions to repress reduced
nearly to a simper, he took the indicated seat by the old man's side,
and made the customary dispositions to commence his meal without further
ceremony.

"I should be ashamed of my profession," he said, swallowing a morsel of
the hump with evident delight, slily endeavouring at the same time to
distinguish the peculiarities of the singed and defaced skin, "I ought
to be ashamed of my profession, were there beast, or bird, on the
continent of America, that I could not tell by some one of the many
evidences which science has enlisted in her cause. This—then—the
food is nutritious and savoury—a mouthful of your corn, friend, if you
please?"

Paul, who continued eating with increasing industry, looking askaunt not
unlike a dog when engaged in the same agreeable pursuit, threw him his
pouch, without deeming it at all necessary to suspend his own labours.

"You were saying, friend, that you have many ways of telling the
creatur'?"—observed the attentive trapper.

"Many; many and infallible. Now, the animals that are carnivorous are
known by their incisores."

"Their what?" demanded the trapper.

"The teeth with which nature has furnished them for defence, and in
order to tear their food. Again—"

"Look you then for the teeth of this creatur'," interrupted the
trapper, who was bent on convincing a man who had presumed to enter into
competition with himself, in matters pertaining to the wilds, of gross
ignorance; "turn the piece round and find your inside-overs."

The Doctor complied, and of course without success; though he profited
by the occasion to take another fruitless glance at the wrinkled hide.

"Well, friend, do you find the things you need, before you can pronounce
the creatur' a duck or a salmon?"

"I apprehend the entire animal is not here?"

"You may well say as much," cried Paul, who was now compelled to pause
from pure repletion; "I will answer for some pounds of the fellow,
weighed by the truest steel-yards west of the Alleghanies. Still you may
make out to keep soul and body together, with what is left," reluctantly
eyeing a piece large enough to feed twenty men, but which he felt
compelled to abandon from satiety; "cut in nigher to the heart, as the
old man says, and you will find the riches of the piece."

"The heart!" exclaimed the Doctor, inwardly delighted to learn there was
a distinct organ to be submitted to his inspection. "Ay, let me see the
heart—it will at once determine the character of the animal—certes
this is not the cor—ay, sure enough it is—the animal must be of the
order belluae, from its obese habits!"

He was interrupted by a long and hearty, but still a noiseless fit of
merriment, from the trapper, which was considered so ill-timed by the
offended naturalist, as to produce an instant cessation of speech, if
not a stagnation of ideas.

"Listen to his beasts' habits and belly orders," said the old man,
delighted with the evident embarrassment of his rival; "and then he says
it is not the core! Why, man, you are farther from the truth than you
are from the settlements, with all your bookish laming and hard words;
which I have, once for all, said cannot be understood by any tribe or
nation east of the Rocky Mountains. Beastly habits or no beastly habits,
the creatur's are to be seen cropping the prairies by tens of thousands,
and the piece in your hand is the core of as juicy a buffaloe-hump as
stomach need crave!"

"My aged companion," said Obed, struggling to keep down a rising
irascibility, that he conceived would ill comport with the dignity
of his character, "your system is erroneous, from the premises to the
conclusion; and your classification so faulty, as utterly to confound
the distinctions of science. The buffaloe is not gifted with a hump at
all; nor is his flesh savoury and wholesome, as I must acknowledge it
would seem the subject before us may well be characterised—"

"There I'm dead against you, and clearly with the trapper," interrupted
Paul Hover. "The man who denies that buffaloe beef is good, should scorn
to eat it!"
[13]

The Doctor, whose observation of the bee-hunter had hitherto been
exceedingly cursory, stared at the new speaker with a look which denoted
something like recognition.

"The principal characteristics of your countenance, friend," he said,
"are familiar; either you, or some other specimen of your class, is
known to me."

"I am the man you met in the woods east of the big river, and whom you
tried to persuade to line a yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was
not too true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in a clear
day! We tarried together a week, as you may remember; you at your toads
and lizards, and I at my high-holes and hollow trees: and a good job we
made of it between us! I filled my tubs with the sweetest honey I ever
sent to the settlements, besides housing a dozen hives; and your bag was
near bursting with a crawling museum. I never was bold enough to put
the question to your face, stranger, but I reckon you are a keeper of
curiosities?"
[14]

"Ay! that is another of their wanton wickednesses!" exclaimed the
trapper. "They slay the buck, and the moose, and the wild cat, and all
the beasts that range the woods, and stuffing them with worthless rags,
and placing eyes of glass into their heads, they set them up to be
stared at, and call them the creatur's of the Lord; as if any mortal
effigy could equal the works of his hand!"

"I know you well," returned the Doctor, on whom the plaint of the old
man produced no visible impression. "I know you," offering his hand
cordially to Paul; "it was a prolific week, as my herbal and catalogues
shall one day prove. Ay, I remember you well, young man. You are of
the class, mammalia; order, primates; genus, homo; species, Kentucky."
Pausing to smile at his own humour, the naturalist proceeded. "Since
our separation, I have journeyed far, having entered into a compactum or
agreement with a certain man named Ishmael—"

"Bush!" interrupted the impatient and reckless Paul. "By the Lord,
trapper, this is the very blood-letter that Ellen told me of!"

"Then Nelly has not done me credit for what I trust I deserve," returned
the single-minded Doctor, "for I am not of the phlebotomising school at
all; greatly preferring the practice which purifies the blood instead of
abstracting it."

"It was a blunder of mine, good stranger; the girl called you a skilful
man."

"Therein she may have exceeded my merits," Dr. Battius continued,
bowing with sufficient meekness. "But Ellen is a good, and a kind, and a
spirited girl, too. A kind and a sweet girl I have ever found Nell Wade
to be!"

"The devil you have!" cried Paul, dropping the morsel he was sucking,
from sheer reluctance to abandon the hump, and casting a fierce and
direct look into the very teeth of the unconscious physician. "I reckon,
stranger, you have a mind to bag Ellen, too!"

"The riches of the whole vegetable and animal world united, would not
tempt me to harm a hair of her head! I love the child, with what may he
called amor naturalis—or rather paternus—the affection of a father."

"Ay—that, indeed, is more befitting the difference in your years,"
Paul coolly rejoined, stretching forth his hand to regain the rejected
morsel. "You would be no better than a drone at your time of day, with a
young hive to feed and swarm."

"Yes, there is reason, because there is natur', in what he says,"
observed the trapper: "but, friend, you have said you were a dweller in
the camp of one Ishmael Bush?"

"True; it is in virtue of a compactum—"

"I know but little of the virtue of packing, though I follow trapping,
in my old age, for a livelihood. They tell me that skins are well kept
in the new fashion; but it is long since I have left off killing more
than I need for food and garments. I was an eye-witness, myself, of the
manner in which the Siouxes broke into your encampment, and drove off
the cattle; stripping the poor man you call Ishmael of his smallest
hoofs, counting even the cloven feet."

"Asinus excepted," muttered the Doctor, who by this time was discussing
his portion of the hump, in utter forgetfulness of all its scientific
attributes. "Asinus domesticus Americanus excepted."