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.