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.
CHAPTER X
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.
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.