The Prairie (18 page)

"I am glad to hear that so many of them are saved, though I know not
the value of the animals you name; which is nothing uncommon, seeing how
long it is that I have been out of the settlements. But can you tell me,
friend, what the traveller carries under the white cloth, he guards with
teeth as sharp as a wolf that quarrels for the carcass the hunter has
left?"

"You've heard of it!" exclaimed the other, dropping the morsel he was
conveying to his mouth in manifest surprise.

"Nay, I have heard nothing; but I have seen the cloth, and had like
to have been bitten for no greater crime than wishing to know what it
covered."

"Bitten! then, after all, the animal must be carnivorous! It is too
tranquil for the ursus horridus; if it were the canis latrans, the voice
would betray it. Nor would Nelly Wade be so familiar with any of the
genus ferae. Venerable hunter! the solitary animal confined in
that wagon by day, and in the tent at night, has occasioned me more
perplexity of mind than the whole catalogue of quadrupeds besides: and
for this plain reason; I did not know how to class it."

"You think it a ravenous beast?"

"I know it to be a quadruped: your own danger proves it to be
carnivorous."

During this broken explanation, Paul Hover had sat silent and
thoughtful, regarding each speaker with deep attention. But, suddenly
moved by the manner of the Doctor, the latter had scarcely time to utter
his positive assertion, before the young man bluntly demanded—

"And pray, friend, what may you call a quadruped?"

"A vagary of nature, wherein she has displayed less of her infinite
wisdom than is usual. Could rotary levers be substituted for two of the
limbs, agreeably to the improvement in my new order of phalangacrura,
which might be rendered into the vernacular as lever-legged, there would
be a delightful perfection and harmony in the construction. But, as the
quadruped is now formed, I call it a mere vagary of nature; no other
than a vagary."

"Harkee, stranger! in Kentucky we are but small dealers in dictionaries.
Vagary is as hard a word to turn into English as quadruped."

"A quadruped is an animal with four legs—a beast."

"A beast! Do you then reckon that Ishmael Bush travels with a beast
caged in that wagon?"

"I know it, and lend me your ear—not literally, friend," observing Paul
to start and look surprised, "but figuratively, through its functions,
and you shall hear. I have already made known that, in virtue of a
compactum, I journey with the aforesaid Ishmael Bush; but though I am
bound to perform certain duties while the journey lasts, there is no
condition which says that the said journey shall be sempiternum, or
eternal. Now, though this region may scarcely be said to be wedded
to science, being to all intents a virgin territory as respects the
enquirer into natural history, still it is greatly destitute of the
treasures of the vegetable kingdom. I should, therefore, have tarried
some hundreds of miles more to the eastward, were it not for the inward
propensity that I feel to have the beast in question inspected and
suitably described and classed. For that matter," he continued, dropping
his voice, like one who imparts an important secret, "I am not without
hopes of persuading Ishmael to let me dissect it."

"You have seen the creature?"

"Not with the organs of sight; but with much more infallible instruments
of vision: the conclusions of reason, and the deductions of scientific
premises. I have watched the habits of the animal, young man; and can
fearlessly pronounce, by evidence that would be thrown away on ordinary
observers, that it is of vast dimensions, inactive, possibly torpid, of
voracious appetite, and, as it now appears by the direct testimony of
this venerable hunter, ferocious and carnivorous!"

"I should be better pleased, stranger," said Paul, on whom the Doctor's
description was making a very sensible impression, "to be sure the
creature was a beast at all."

"As to that, if I wanted evidence of a fact, which is abundantly
apparent by the habits of the animal, I have the word of Ishmael
himself. A reason can be given for my smallest deductions. I am not
troubled, young man, with a vulgar and idle curiosity, but all my
aspirations after knowledge, as I humbly believe, are, first, for
the advancement of learning, and, secondly, for the benefit of my
fellow-creatures. I pined greatly in secret to know the contents of the
tent, which Ishmael guarded so carefully, and which he had covenanted
that I should swear, (jurare per deos) not to approach nigher than
a defined number of cubits, for a definite period of time. Your
jusjurandum, or oath, is a serious matter, and not to be dealt in
lightly; but, as my expedition depended on complying, I consented to the
act, reserving to myself at all times the power of distant observation.
It is now some ten days since Ishmael, pitying the state in which he
saw me, a humble lover of science, imparted the fact that the vehicle
contained a beast, which he was carrying into the prairies as a decoy,
by which he intends to entrap others of the same genus, or perhaps
species. Since then, my task has been reduced simply to watch the
habits of the animal, and to record the results. When we reach a certain
distance where these beasts are said to abound, I am to have the liberal
examination of the specimen."

Paul continued to listen, in the most profound silence, until the
Doctor concluded his singular but characteristic explanation; then the
incredulous bee-hunter shook his head, and saw fit to reply, by saying—

"Stranger, old Ishmael has burrowed you in the very bottom of a hollow
tree, where your eyes will be of no more use than the sting of a drone.
I, too, know something of that very wagon, and I may say that I have
lined the squatter down into a flat lie. Harkee, friend; do you think a
girl, like Ellen Wade, would become the companion of a wild beast?"

"Why not? why not?" repeated the naturalist; "Nelly has a taste,
and often listens with pleasure to the treasures that I am sometimes
compelled to scatter in this desert. Why should she not study the habits
of any animal, even though it were a rhinoceros?"

"Softly, softly," returned the equally positive, and, though less
scientific, certainly, on this subject, better instructed bee-hunter;
"Ellen is a girl of spirit, and one too that knows her own mind, or
I'm much mistaken; but with all her courage and brave looks, she is no
better than a woman after all. Haven't I often had the girl crying—"

"You are an acquaintance, then, of Nelly's?"

"The devil a bit. But I know woman is woman; and all the books in
Kentucky couldn't make Ellen Wade go into a tent alone with a ravenous
beast!"

"It seems to me," the trapper calmly observed, "that there is something
dark and hidden in this matter. I am a witness that the traveller likes
none to look into the tent, and I have a proof more sure than what
either of you can lay claim to, that the wagon does not carry the cage
of a beast. Here is Hector, come of a breed with noses as true and
faithful as a hand that is all-powerful has made any of their kind, and
had there been a beast in the place, the hound would long since have
told it to his master."

"Do you pretend to oppose a dog to a man! brutality to learning!
instinct to reason!" exclaimed the Doctor in some heat. "In what manner,
pray, can a hound distinguish the habits, species, or even the genus of
an animal, like reasoning, learned, scientific, triumphant man!"

"In what manner!" coolly repeated the veteran woodsman. "Listen; and if
you believe that a schoolmaster can make a quicker wit than the Lord,
you shall be made to see how much you're mistaken. Do you not hear
something move in the brake? it has been cracking the twigs these five
minutes. Now tell me what the creatur' is?"

"I hope nothing ferocious!" exclaimed the Doctor, who still retained a
lively impression of his {rencounter} with the vespertilio horribilis.
"You have rifles, friends; would it not be prudent to prime them? for
this fowling piece of mine is little to be depended on."

"There may be reason in what he says," returned the trapper, so far
complying as to take his piece from the place where it had lain during
the repast, and raising its muzzle in the air. "Now tell me the name of
the creatur'?"

"It exceeds the limits of earthly knowledge! Buffon himself could not
tell whether the animal was a quadruped, or of the order, serpens! a
sheep, or a tiger!"

"Then was your buffoon a fool to my Hector! Here: pup!—What is it,
dog?—Shall we run it down, pup—or shall we let it pass?"

The hound, which had already manifested to the experienced trapper, by
the tremulous motion of his ears, his consciousness of the proximity of
a strange animal, lifted his head from his fore paws and slightly parted
his lips, as if about to show the remnants of his teeth. But, suddenly
abandoning his hostile purpose, he snuffed the air a moment, gaped
heavily, shook himself, and peaceably resumed his recumbent attitude.

"Now, Doctor," cried the trapper, triumphantly, "I am well convinced
there is neither game nor ravenous beast in the thicket; and that I call
substantial knowledge to a man who is too old to be a spendthrift of his
strength, and yet who would not wish to be a meal for a panther!"

The dog interrupted his master by a growl, but still kept his head
crouched to the earth.

"It is a man!" exclaimed the trapper, rising. "It is a man, if I am a
judge of the creatur's ways. There is but little said atwixt the hound
and me, but we seldom mistake each other's meaning!"

Paul Hover sprang to his feet like lightning; and, throwing forward his
rifle, he cried in a voice of menace—

"Come forward, if a friend; if an enemy, stand ready for the worst!"

"A friend, a white man, and, I hope, a Christian," returned a voice
from the thicket; which opened at the same instant, and at the next the
speaker made his appearance.

Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear
How he will shake me up.
—As you like it.

It is well known, that even long before the immense regions of Louisiana
changed their masters for the second, and, as it is to be hoped, for the
last time, its unguarded territory was by no means safe from the inroads
of white adventurers. The semi-barbarous hunters from the Canadas, the
same description of population, a little more enlightened, from the
States, and the metiffs or half-breeds, who claimed to be ranked in the
class of white men, were scattered among the different Indian tribes, or
gleaned a scanty livelihood in solitude, amid the haunts of the beaver
and the bison; or, to adopt the popular nomenclature of the country of
the buffaloe.
[15]

It was, therefore, no unusual thing for strangers to encounter each
other in the endless wastes of the west. By signs, which an unpractised
eye would pass unobserved, these borderers knew when one of his fellows
was in his vicinity, and he avoided or approached the intruder as
best comported with his feelings or his interests. Generally, these
interviews were pacific; for the whites had a common enemy to dread,
in the ancient and perhaps more lawful occupants of the country; but
instances were not rare, in which jealousy and cupidity had caused them
to terminate in scenes of the most violent and ruthless treachery. The
meeting of two hunters on the American desert, as we find it convenient
sometimes to call this region, was consequently somewhat in the
suspicious and wary manner in which two vessels draw together in a
sea that is known to be infested with pirates. While neither party
is willing to betray its weakness, by exhibiting distrust, neither is
disposed to commit itself by any acts of confidence, from which it may
be difficult to recede.

Such was, in some degree, the character of the present interview. The
stranger drew nigh deliberately; keeping his eyes steadily fastened
on the movements of the other party, while he purposely created little
difficulties to impede an approach which might prove too hasty. On the
other hand, Paul stood playing with the lock of his rifle, too proud
to let it appear that three men could manifest any apprehension of
a solitary individual, and yet too prudent to omit, entirely, the
customary precautions. The principal reason of the marked difference
which the two legitimate proprietors of the banquet made in the
receptions of their guests, was to be explained by the entire difference
which existed in their respective appearances.

While the exterior of the naturalist was decidedly pacific, not to say
abstracted, that of the new comer was distinguished by an air of vigour,
and a front and step which it would not have been difficult to have at
once pronounced to be military.

He wore a forage-cap of fine blue cloth, from which depended a soiled
tassel in gold, and which was nearly buried in a mass of exuberant,
curling, jet-black hair. Around his throat he had negligently fastened
a stock of black silk. His body was enveloped in a hunting-shirt of dark
green, trimmed with the yellow fringes and ornaments that were sometimes
seen among the border-troops of the Confederacy. Beneath this, however,
were visible the collar and lapels of a jacket, similar in colour and
cloth to the cap. His lower limbs were protected by buckskin leggings,
and his feet by the ordinary Indian moccasins. A richly ornamented,
and exceedingly dangerous straight dirk was stuck in a sash of red
silk net-work; another girdle, or rather belt, of uncoloured leather
contained a pair of the smallest sized pistols, in holsters nicely made
to fit, and across his shoulder was thrown a short, heavy, military
rifle; its horn and pouch occupying the usual places beneath his arms.
At his back he bore a knapsack, marked by the well known initials
that have since gained for the government of the United States the
good-humoured and quaint appellation of Uncle Sam.