Do you call this a fire?
If you had seen what I have witnessed in the Eastern hills, when mighty mountains were like the furnace of smith, you would have known what it was to fear the flames, and to be thankful that you were spared!
Come, lads, come; ‘tis time to be doing now, and to cease talking; for yonder curling flame is truly coming on like a trotting moose.
Put hands upon this short and withered grass where we stand, and lay bare the ‘arth.”
“Would you think to deprive the fire of its victims in this childish manner?” exclaimed Middleton.
A faint but solemn smile passed over the features of the old man, as he answered—
“Your grand’ther would have said, that when the enemy was nigh, a soldier could do no better than to obey.”
The captain felt the reproof, and instantly began to imitate the industry of Paul, who was tearing the decayed herbage from the ground in a sort of desperate compliance with the trapper’s direction.
Even Ellen lent her hands to the labour, nor was it long before Inez was seen similarly employed, though none amongst them knew why or wherefore.
When life is thought to be the reward of labour, men are wont to be industrious.
A very few moments sufficed to lay bare a spot of some twenty feet in diameter.
Into one edge of this little area the trapper brought the females, directing Middleton and Paul to cover their light and inflammable dresses with the blankets of the party.
So soon as this precaution was observed, the old man approached the opposite margin of the grass, which still environed them in a tall and dangerous circle, and selecting a handful of the driest of the herbage he placed it over the pan of his rifle.
The light combustible kindled at the flash.
Then he placed the little flame in a bed of the standing fog, and withdrawing from the spot to the centre of the ring, he patiently awaited the result.
The subtle element seized with avidity upon its new fuel, and in a moment forked flames were gliding among the grass, as the tongues of ruminating animals are seen rolling among their food, apparently in quest of its sweetest portions.
“Now,” said the old man, holding up a finger, and laughing in his peculiarly silent manner, “you shall see fire fight fire!
Ah’s me! many is the time I have burnt a smooty path, from wanton laziness to pick my way across a tangled bottom.”
“But is this not fatal?” cried the amazed Middleton; “are you not bringing the enemy nigher to us instead of avoiding it?”
“Do you scorch so easily? your grand’ther had a tougher skin.
But we shall live to see; we shall all live to see.”
The experience of the trapper was in the right.
As the fire gained strength and heat, it began to spread on three sides, dying of itself on the fourth, for want of aliment.
As it increased, and the sullen roaring announced its power, it cleared every thing before it, leaving the black and smoking soil far more naked than if the scythe had swept the place.
The situation of the fugitives would have still been hazardous had not the area enlarged as the flame encircled them.
But by advancing to the spot where the trapper had kindled the grass, they avoided the heat, and in a very few moments the flames began to recede in every quarter, leaving them enveloped in a cloud of smoke, but perfectly safe from the torrent of fire that was still furiously rolling onward.
The spectators regarded the simple expedient of the trapper with that species of wonder, with which the courtiers of Ferdinand are said to have viewed the manner in which Columbus made his egg stand on its end, though with feelings that were filled with gratitude instead of envy.
“Most wonderful!” said Middleton, when he saw the complete success of the means by which they had been rescued from a danger that he had conceived to be unavoidable. “The thought was a gift from Heaven, and the hand that executed it should be immortal!”
“Old trapper,” cried Paul, thrusting his fingers through his shaggy locks, “I have lined many a loaded bee into his hole, and know something of the nature of the woods, but this is robbing a hornet of his sting without touching the insect!”
“It will do—it will do,” returned the old man, who after the first moment of his success seemed to think no more of the exploit; “now get the horses in readiness.
Let the flames do their work for a short half hour, and then we will mount.
That time is needed to cool the meadow, for these unshod Teton beasts are as tender on the hoof as a barefooted girl.”
Middleton and Paul, who considered this unlooked-for escape as a species of resurrection, patiently awaited the time the trapper mentioned with renewed confidence in the infallibility of his judgment.
The Doctor regained his tablets, a little the worse from having fallen among the grass which had been subject to the action of the flames, and was consoling himself for this slight misfortune by recording uninterruptedly such different vacillations in light and shadow as he chose to consider phenomena.
In the mean time the veteran, on whose experience they all so implicitly relied for protection, employed himself in reconnoitring objects in the distance, through the openings which the air occasionally made in the immense bodies of smoke, that by this time lay in enormous piles on every part of the plain.
“Look you here, lads,” the trapper said, after a long and anxious examination, “your eyes are young and may prove better than my worthless sight—though the time has been, when a wise and brave people saw reason to think me quick on a look-out; but those times are gone, and many a true and tried friend has passed away with them.
Ah’s me! if I could choose a change in the orderings of Providence—which I cannot, and which it would be blasphemy to attempt, seeing that all things are governed by a wiser mind than belongs to mortal weakness—but if I were to choose a change, it would be to say, that such as they who have lived long together in friendship and kindness, and who have proved their fitness to go in company, by many acts of suffering and daring in each other’s behalf, should be permitted to give up life at such times, as when the death of one leaves the other but little reason to wish to live.”
“Is it an Indian, that you see?” demanded the impatient Middleton.
“Red-skin or White-skin it is much the same.
Friendship and use can tie men as strongly together in the woods as in the towns—ay, and for that matter, stronger.
Here are the young warriors of the prairies.—Often do they sort themselves in pairs, and set apart their lives for deeds of friendship; and well and truly do they act up to their promises.
The death-blow to one is commonly mortal to the other!
I have been a solitary man much of my time, if he can be called solitary, who has lived for seventy years in the very bosom of natur’, and where he could at any instant open his heart to God, without having to strip it of the cares and wickednesses of the settlements—but making that allowance, have I been a solitary man; and yet have I always found that intercourse with my kind was pleasant, and painful to break off, provided that the companion was brave and honest. Brave, because a skeary comrade in the woods,” suffering his eyes inadvertently to rest a moment on the person of the abstracted naturalist, “is apt to make a short path long; and honest, inasmuch as craftiness is rather an instinct of the brutes, than a gift becoming the reason of a human man.”
“But the object, that you saw—was it a Sioux?”
“What the world of America is coming to, and where the machinations and inventions of its people are to have an end, the Lord, he only knows.
I have seen, in my day, the chief who, in his time, had beheld the first Christian that placed his wicked foot in the regions of York!
How much has the beauty of the wilderness been deformed in two short lives!
My own eyes were first opened on the shores of the Eastern sea, and well do I remember, that I tried the virtues of the first rifle I ever bore, after such a march, from the door of my father to the forest, as a stripling could make between sun and sun; and that without offence to the rights, or prejudices, of any man who set himself up to be the owner of the beasts of the fields.
Natur’ then lay in its glory along the whole coast, giving a narrow stripe, between the woods and the ocean, to the greediness of the settlers.
And where am I now?