“Friend,” was the reply; “one who has lived too long to disturb the close of life with quarrels.”
“But not so long as to forget the tricks of his youth,” said Ishmael, rearing his huge frame from beneath the slight covering of a low bush, and meeting the trapper, face to face; “old man, you have brought this tribe of red devils upon us, and to-morrow you will be sharing the booty.”
“What have you lost?” calmly demanded the trapper.
“Eight as good mares as ever travelled in gears, besides a foal that is worth thirty of the brightest Mexicans that bear the face of the King of Spain.
Then the woman has not a cloven hoof for her dairy, or her loom, and I believe even the grunters, foot sore as they be, are ploughing the prairie.
And now, stranger,” he added, dropping the butt of his rifle on the hard earth, with a violence and clatter that would have intimidated one less firm than the man he addressed, “how many of these creatures may fall to your lot?”
“Horses have I never craved, nor even used; though few have journeyed over more of the wide lands of America than myself, old and feeble as I seem.
But little use is there for a horse among the hills and woods of York—that is, as York was, but as I greatly fear York is no longer—as for woollen covering and cow’s milk, I covet no such womanly fashions!
The beasts of the field give me food and raiment.
No, I crave no cloth better than the skin of a deer, nor any meat richer than his flesh.”
The sincere manner of the trapper, as he uttered this simple vindication, was not entirely thrown away on the emigrant, whose dull nature was gradually quickening into a flame, that might speedily have burst forth with dangerous violence.
He listened like one who doubted, not entirely convinced: and he muttered between his teeth the denunciation, with which a moment before he intended to precede the summary vengeance he had certainly meditated.
“This is brave talking,” he at length grumbled; “but to my judgment, too lawyer-like, for a straight forward, fair-weather, and foul-weather hunter.”
“I claim to be no better than a trapper,” the other meekly answered.
“Hunter or trapper—there is little difference.
I have come, old man, into these districts because I found the law sitting too tight upon me, and am not over fond of neighbours who can’t settle a dispute without troubling a justice and twelve men; but I didn’t come to be robb’d of my plunder, and then to say thank’ee to the man who did it!”
“He, who ventures far into the prairies, must abide by the ways of its owners.”
“Owners!” echoed the squatter, “I am as rightful an owner of the land I stand on, as any governor in the States!
Can you tell me, stranger, where the law or the reason, is to be found, which says that one man shall have a section, or a town, or perhaps a county to his use, and another have to beg for earth to make his grave in?
This is not nature, and I deny that it is law. That is, your legal law.”
“I cannot say that you are wrong,” returned the trapper, whose opinions on this important topic, though drawn from very different premises, were in singular accordance with those of his companion, “and I have often thought and said as much, when and where I have believed my voice could be heard.
But your beasts are stolen by them who claim to be masters of all they find in the deserts.”
“They had better not dispute that matter with a man who knows better,” said the other in a portentous voice, though it seemed deep and sluggish as he who spoke. “I call myself a fair trader, and one who gives to his chaps as good as he receives.
You saw the Indians?”
“I did—they held me a prisoner, while they stole into your camp.”
“It would have been more like a white man and a Christian, to have let me known as much in better season,” retorted Ishmael, casting another ominous sidelong glance at the trapper, as if still meditating evil. “I am not much given to call every man, I fall in with, cousin, but colour should be something, when Christians meet in such a place as this.
But what is done, is done, and cannot be mended, by words.
Come out of your ambush, boys; here is no one but the old man: he has eaten of my bread, and should be our friend; though there is such good reason to suspect him of harbouring with our enemies.”
The trapper made no reply to the harsh suspicion which the other did not scruple to utter without the smallest delicacy, notwithstanding the explanations and denials to which he had just listened.
The summons of the unnurtured squatter brought an immediate accession to their party.
Four or five of his sons made their appearance from beneath as many covers, where they had been posted under the impression that the figures they had seen, on the swell of the prairie, were a part of the Sioux band.
As each man approached, and dropped his rifle into the hollow of his arm, he cast an indolent but enquiring glance at the stranger, though neither of them expressed the least curiosity to know whence he had come or why he was there.
This forbearance, however, proceeded only in part, from the sluggishness of their common temper; for long and frequent experience in scenes of a similar character, had taught them the virtue of discretion.
The trapper endured their sullen scrutiny with the steadiness of one as practised as themselves, and with the entire composure of innocence.
Content with the momentary examination he had made, the eldest of the group, who was in truth the delinquent sentinel by whose remissness the wily Mahtoree had so well profited, turned towards his father and said bluntly—
“If this man is all that is left of the party I saw on the upland, yonder, we haven’t altogether thrown away our ammunition.”
“Asa, you are right,” said the father, turning suddenly on the trapper, a lost idea being recalled by the hint of his son.
“How is it, stranger; there were three of you, just now, or there is no virtue in moonlight?”
“If you had seen the Tetons racing across the prairies, like so many black-looking evil ones, on the heels of your cattle, my friend, it would have been an easy matter to have fancied them a thousand.”
“Ay, for a town bred boy, or a skeary woman; though for that matter, there is old Esther; she has no more fear of a red-skin than of a suckling cub, or of a wolf pup.
I’ll warrant ye, had your thievish devils made their push by the light of the sun, the good woman would have been smartly at work among them, and the Siouxes would have found she was not given to part with her cheese and her butter without a price.
But there’ll come a time, stranger, right soon, when justice will have its dues, and that too, without the help of what is called the law.
We ar’ of a slow breed, it may be said, and it is often said, of us; but slow is sure; and there ar’ few men living, who can say they ever struck a blow, that they did not get one as hard in return, from Ishmael Bush.”
“Then has Ishmael Bush followed the instinct of the beasts rather than the principle which ought to belong to his kind,” returned the stubborn trapper. “I have struck many a blow myself, but never have I felt the same ease of mind that of right belongs to a man who follows his reason, after slaying even a fawn when there was no call for his meat or hide, as I have felt at leaving a Mingo unburied in the woods, when following the trade of open and honest warfare.”
“What, you have been a soldier, have you, trapper!
I made a forage or two among the Cherokees, when I was a lad myself; and I followed mad Anthony, one season, through the beeches; but there was altogether too much tatooing and regulating among his troops for me; so I left him without calling on the paymaster to settle my arrearages.
Though, as Esther afterwards boasted, she had made such use of the pay-ticket, that the States gained no great sum, by the oversight.
You have heard of such a man as mad Anthony, if you tarried long among the soldiers.”
“I fou’t my last battle, as I hope, under his orders,” returned the trapper, a gleam of sunshine shooting from his dim eyes, as if the event was recollected with pleasure, and then a sudden shade of sorrow succeeding, as though he felt a secret admonition against dwelling on the violent scenes in which he had so often been an actor. “I was passing from the States on the sea-shore into these far regions, when I cross’d the trail of his army, and I fell in, on his rear, just as a looker-on; but when they got to blows, the crack of my rifle was heard among the rest, though to my shame it may be said, I never knew the right of the quarrel as well as a man of threescore and ten should know the reason of his acts afore he takes mortal life, which is a gift he never can return!”
“Come, stranger,” said the emigrant, his rugged nature a good deal softened when he found that they had fought on the same side in the wild warfare of the west, “it is of small account, what may be the ground-work of the disturbance, when it’s a Christian ag’in a savage.