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.”
“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.