The Prairie (34 page)

The hounds, who had also manifested great uneasiness for some time,
followed him for a little distance, and then terminated their chase by
seating themselves on the ground, and raising their usual low, whining,
and warning howls.

How if he will not stand?
—Shakespeare.

The several movements, related in the close of the preceding chapter,
had passed in so short a space of time, that the old man, while he
neglected not to note the smallest incident, had no opportunity of
expressing his opinion concerning the stranger's motives. After the
Pawnee had disappeared, however, he shook his head and muttered, while
he walked slowly to the angle of the thicket that the Indian had just
quitted—

"There are both scents and sounds in the air, though my miserable
senses are not good enough to hear the one, or to catch the taint of the
other."

"There is nothing to be seen," cried Middleton, who kept close at his
side. "My eyes and my ears are good, and yet I can assure you that I
neither hear nor see any thing."

"Your eyes are good! and you are not deaf!" returned the other with a
slight air of contempt; "no, lad, no; they may be good to see across a
church, or to hear a town-bell, but afore you had passed a year in these
prairies you would find yourself taking a turkey for a buffaloe, or
conceiting, fifty times, that the roar of a buffaloe bull was the
thunder of the Lord! There is a deception of natur' in these naked
plains, in which the air throws up the images like water, and then it is
hard to tell the prairies from a sea. But yonder is a sign that a hunter
never fails to know!"

The trapper pointed to a flight of vultures, that were sailing over the
plain at no great distance, and apparently in the direction in which the
Pawnee had riveted his eye. At first Middleton could not distinguish the
small dark objects, that were dotting the dusky clouds, but as they came
swiftly onward, first their forms, and then their heavy waving wings,
became distinctly visible.

"Listen," said the trapper, when he had succeeded in making Middleton
see the moving column of birds. "Now you hear the buffaloes, or bisons,
as your knowing Doctor sees fit to call them, though buffaloes is their
name among all the hunters of these regions. And, I conclude, that a
hunter is a better judge of a beast and of its name," he added, winking
to the young soldier, "than any man who has turned over the leaves of a
book, instead of travelling over the face of the 'arth, in order to find
out the natur's of its inhabitants."

"Of their habits, I will grant you," cried the naturalist, who rarely
missed an opportunity to agitate any disputed point in his favourite
studies. "That is, provided always, deference is had to the proper use
of definitions, and that they are contemplated with scientific eyes."

"Eyes of a mole! as if man's eyes were not as good for names as the eyes
of any other creatur'! Who named the works of His hand? can you tell me
that, with your books and college wisdom? Was it not the first man in
the Garden, and is it not a plain consequence that his children inherit
his gifts?"

"That is certainly the Mosaic account of the event," said the Doctor;
"though your reading is by far too literal!"

"My reading! nay, if you suppose, that I have wasted my time in schools,
you do such a wrong to my knowledge, as one mortal should never lay to
the door of another without sufficient reason. If I have ever craved the
art of reading, it has been that I might better know the sayings of the
book you name, for it is a book which speaks, in every line, according
to human feelings, and therein according to reason."

"And do you then believe," said the Doctor a little provoked by
the dogmatism of his stubborn adversary, and perhaps, secretly, too
confident in his own more liberal, though scarcely as profitable,
attainments,—"do you then believe that all these beasts were literally
collected in a garden, to be enrolled in the nomenclature of the first
man?"

"Why not? I understand your meaning; for it is not needful to live in
towns to hear all the devilish devices, that the conceit of man can
invent to upset his own happiness. What does it prove, except indeed it
may be said to prove that the garden He made was not after the miserable
fashions of our times, thereby directly giving the lie to what the world
calls its civilising? No, no, the garden of the Lord was the forest
then, and is the forest now, where the fruits do grow, and the birds
do sing, according to his own wise ordering. Now, lady, you may see
the mystery of the vultures! There come the buffaloes themselves, and a
noble herd it is! I warrant me, that Pawnee has a troop of his people in
some of the hollows, nigh by; and as he has gone scampering after
them, you are about to see a glorious chase. It will serve to keep the
squatter and his brood under cover, and for ourselves there is little
reason to fear. A Pawnee is not apt to be a malicious savage."

Every eye was now drawn to the striking spectacle that succeeded. Even
the timid Inez hastened to the side of Middleton to gaze at the sight,
and Paul summoned Ellen from her culinary labours, to become a witness
of the lively scene.

Throughout the whole of those moving events, which it has been our duty
to record, the prairies had lain in the majesty of perfect solitude. The
heavens had been blackened with the passage of the migratory birds, it
is true, but the dogs of the party, and the ass of the doctor, were
the only quadrupeds that had enlivened the broad surface of the waste
beneath. There was now a sudden exhibition of animal life, which changed
the scene, as it were, by magic, to the very opposite extreme.

A few enormous bison bulls were first observed, scouring along the most
distant roll of the prairie, and then succeeded long files of single
beasts, which, in their turns, were followed by a dark mass of bodies,
until the dun-coloured herbage of the plain was entirely lost, in the
deeper hue of their shaggy coats. The herd, as the column spread and
thickened, was like the endless flocks of the smaller birds, whose
extended flanks are so often seen to heave up out of the abyss of the
heavens, until they appear as countless as the leaves in those forests,
over which they wing their endless flight. Clouds of dust shot up in
little columns from the centre of the mass, as some animal, more furious
than the rest, ploughed the plain with his horns, and, from time to
time, a deep hollow bellowing was borne along on the wind, as if a
thousand throats vented their plaints in a discordant murmuring.

A long and musing silence reigned in the party, as they gazed on this
spectacle of wild and peculiar grandeur. It was at length broken by the
trapper, who, having been long accustomed to similar sights, felt less
of its influence, or, rather, felt it in a less thrilling and absorbing
manner, than those to whom the scene was more novel.

"There go ten thousand oxen in one drove, without keeper or master,
except Him who made them, and gave them these open plains for their
pasture! Ay, it is here that man may see the proofs of his wantonness
and folly! Can the proudest governor in all the States go into his
fields, and slaughter a nobler bullock than is here offered to the
meanest hand; and when he has gotten his sirloin, or his steak, can
he eat it with as good a relish as he who has sweetened his food
with wholesome toil, and earned it according to the law of natur', by
honestly mastering that which the Lord hath put before him?"

"If the prairie platter is smoking with a buffaloe's hump, I answer,
No," interrupted the luxurious bee-hunter.

"Ay, boy, you have tasted, and you feel the genuine reasoning of the
thing! But the herd is heading a little this-a-way, and it behoves us to
make ready for their visit. If we hide ourselves, altogether, the horned
brutes will break through the place and trample us beneath their feet,
like so many creeping worms; so we will just put the weak ones apart,
and take post, as becomes men and hunters, in the van."

As there was but little time to make the necessary arrangements, the
whole party set about them in good earnest. Inez and Ellen were placed
in the edge of the thicket on the side farthest from the approaching
herd. Asinus was posted in the centre, in consideration of his nerves,
and then the old man, with his three male companions, divided themselves
in such a manner as they thought would enable them to turn the head
of the rushing column, should it chance to approach too nigh their
position. By the vacillating movements of some fifty or a hundred bulls,
that led the advance, it remained questionable, for many moments, what
course they intended to pursue. But a tremendous and painful roar, which
came from behind the cloud of dust that rose in the centre of the herd,
and which was horridly answered by the screams of the carrion birds,
that were greedily sailing directly above the flying drove, appeared to
give a new impulse to their flight, and at once to remove every symptom
of indecision. As if glad to seek the smallest signs of the forest, the
whole of the affrighted herd became steady in its direction, rushing
in a straight line toward the little cover of bushes, which has already
been so often named.

The appearance of danger was now, in reality, of a character to try the
stoutest nerves. The flanks of the dark, moving mass, were advanced in
such a manner as to make a concave line of the front, and every fierce
eye, that was glaring from the shaggy wilderness of hair in which the
entire heads of the males were enveloped, was riveted with mad anxiety
on the thicket. It seemed as if each beast strove to outstrip his
neighbour, in gaining this desired cover; and as thousands in the
rear pressed blindly on those in front, there was the appearance of an
imminent risk that the leaders of the herd would be precipitated on the
concealed party, in which case the destruction of every one of them was
certain. Each of our adventurers felt the danger of his situation in a
manner peculiar to his individual character and circumstances.

Middleton wavered. At times he felt inclined to rush through the bushes,
and, seizing Inez, attempt to fly. Then recollecting the impossibility
of outstripping the furious speed of an alarmed bison, he felt for his
arms, determined to make head against the countless drove. The faculties
of Dr. Battius were quickly wrought up to the very summit of mental
delusion. The dark forms of the herd lost their distinctness, and then
the naturalist began to fancy he beheld a wild collection of all the
creatures of the world, rushing upon him in a body, as if to revenge the
various injuries, which in the course of a life of indefatigable labour
in behalf of the natural sciences, he had inflicted on their several
genera. The paralysis it occasioned in his system, was like the effect
of the incubus. Equally unable to fly or to advance, he stood riveted
to the spot, until the infatuation became so complete, that the
worthy naturalist was beginning, by a desperate effort of scientific
resolution, even to class the different specimens. On the other hand,
Paul shouted, and called on Ellen to come and assist him in shouting,
but his voice was lost in the bellowings and trampling of the herd.
Furious, and yet strangely excited by the obstinacy of the brutes and
the wildness of the sight, and nearly maddened by sympathy and a
species of unconscious apprehension, in which the claims of nature were
singularly mingled with concern for his mistress, he nearly split his
throat in exhorting his aged friend to interfere.

"Come forth, old trapper," he shouted, "with your prairie inventions! or
we shall be all smothered under a mountain of buffaloe humps!"

The old man, who had stood all this while leaning on his rifle, and
regarding the movements of the herd with a steady eye, now deemed it
time to strike his blow. Levelling his piece at the foremost bull,
with an agility that would have done credit to his youth, he fired. The
animal received the bullet on the matted hair between his horns, and
fell to his knees: but shaking his head he instantly arose, the very
shock seeming to increase his exertions. There was now no longer time to
hesitate. Throwing down his rifle, the trapper stretched forth his
arms, and advanced from the cover with naked hands, directly towards the
rushing column of the beasts.

The figure of a man, when sustained by the firmness and steadiness that
intellect can only impart, rarely fails of commanding respect from all
the inferior animals of the creation. The leading bulls recoiled, and
for a single instant there was a sudden stop to their speed, a dense
mass of bodies rolling up in front, until hundreds were seen floundering
and tumbling on the plain. Then came another of those hollow bellowings
from the rear, and set the herd again in motion. The head of the column,
however, divided. The immovable form of the trapper, cutting it, as it
were, into two gliding streams of life. Middleton and Paul instantly
profited by his example, and extended the feeble barrier by a similar
exhibition of their own persons.

For a few moments, the new impulse given to the animals in front, served
to protect the thicket. But, as the body of the herd pressed more and
more upon the open line of its defenders, and the dust thickened, so as
to obscure their persons, there was, at each instant, a renewed danger
of the beasts breaking through. It became necessary for the trapper
and his companions to become still more and more alert; and they were
gradually yielding before the headlong multitude, when a furious bull
darted by Middleton, so near as to brush his person, and, at the next
instant, swept through the thicket with the velocity of the wind.

"Close, and die for the ground," shouted the old man, "or a thousand of
the devils will be at his heels!"

All their efforts would have proved fruitless, however, against the
living torrent, had not Asinus, whose domains had just been so rudely
entered, lifted his voice, in the midst of the uproar. The most sturdy
and furious of the bulls trembled at the alarming and unknown cry,
and then each individual brute was seen madly pressing from that very
thicket, which, the moment before, he had endeavoured to reach, with the
eagerness with which the murderer seeks the sanctuary.