Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (11 page)

After Deerslayer had cast a look about him in the outer room, he raised a wooden latch, and entered a narrow passage that divided the inner end of the house into two equal parts. Frontier usages being no way scrupulous, and his curiosity being strongly excited, the young man now opened a door, and found himself in a bedroom. A single glance sufficed to show that the apartment belonged to females. The bed was of the feathers of wild geese, and filled nearly to overflowing ; but it lay in a rude bunk, raised only a foot from the floor. On one side of it were arranged, on pegs, various dresses, of a quality much superior to what one would expect to meet in such a place, with ribbons and other similar articles to correspond. Pretty shoes, with handsome silver buckles, such as were then worn by females in easy circumstances, were not wanting; and no less than six fans, of gay colors, were placed half open, in a way to catch the eye by their conceits and hues. Even the pillow, on this side of the bed, was covered with finer linen than its companion, and it was ornamented with a small ruffle. A cap, coquettishly decorated with ribbons, hung above it, and a pair of long gloves, such as were rarely used in those days by persons of the laboring classes, were pinned ostentatiously to it, as if with an intention to exhibit them there, if they could not be shown on the owner’s arms.

All this Deerslayer saw, and noted with a degree of minuteness that would have done credit to the habitual observation of his friends, the Delawares. Nor did he fail to perceive the distinction that existed between the appearances on the different sides of the bed, the head of which stood against the wall. On that opposite to the one just described, everything was homely and uninviting, except through its perfect neatness. The few garments that were hanging from the pegs were of the coarsest materials and of the commonest forms, while nothing seemed made for show. Of ribbons there was not one; nor was there either cap or kerchief beyond those which Hutter’s daughters might be fairly entitled to wear.

It was now several years since Deerslayer had been in a spot especially devoted to the uses of females of his own color and race. The sight brought back to his mind a rush of childish recollections; and he lingered in the room with a tenderness of feeling to which he had long been a stranger. He bethought him of his mother, whose homely vestments he remembered to have seen hanging on pegs like those which he felt must belong to Hetty Hutter; and he bethought himself of a sister, whose incipient and native taste for finery had exhibited itself somewhat in the manner of that of Judith, though necessarily in a less degree. These little resemblances opened a long hidden vein of sensations; and as he quitted the room, it was with a saddened mien.
²
He looked no further, but returned slowly and thoughtfully towards the “door-yard.”

“Old Tom has taken to a new calling, and has been trying his hand at the traps,” cried Hurry, who had been coolly examining the borderer’s implements; “if that is his humor, and you’re disposed to remain in these parts, we can make an oncommon comfortable season of it; for, while the old man and I out-knowledge the beaver, you can fish, and knock down the deer, to keep body and soul together. We always give the poorest hunters half a share, but one as actyve and sartain as yourself might expect a full one.”

“Thank‘ee, Hurry; thank’ee, with all my heart—but I do a little beavering for myself as occasions offer. ‘Tis true, the Delawares call me Deerslayer, but it’s not so much because I’m pretty fatal with the venison as because that while I kill so many bucks and does, I’ve never yet taken the life of a fellow creatur’. They say their traditions do not tell of another who had shed so much blood of animals that had not shed the blood of man.”

“I hope they don’t account you chicken-hearted, lad? A fainthearted man is like a no-tailed beaver.”

“I don’t believe, Hurry, that they account me as out-of-the-way timorsome, even though they may not account me as out-of-the-way brave. But I’m not quarrelsome; and that goes a great way towards keeping blood off the hands, among the hunters and redskins; and then, Harry March, it keeps blood off the conscience, too.”

“Well, for my part I account game, a redskin, and a Frenchman as pretty much the same thing; though I’m as onquarrelsome a man, too, as there is in all the colonies. I despise a quarreler as I do a cur-dog ; but one has no need to be over-scrupulsome when it’s the right time to show the flint.”

“I look upon him as the most of a man who acts nearest the right, Hurry. But this is a glorious spot, and my eyes never a-weary looking at it!”

“ ’Tis your first acquaintance with a lake; and these idees come over us all at such times. Lakes have a general character, as I say, being pretty much water and land, and points and bays.”

As this definition by no means met the feelings that were uppermost in the mind of the young hunter, he made no immediate answer, but stood gazing at the dark hills and the glassy water in silent enjoyment.

“Have the Governor’s or the King’s people given this lake a name?” he suddenly asked, as if struck with a new idea. “If they’ve not begun to blaze their trees, and set up their compasses, and line off their maps, it’s likely they’ve not bethought them to disturb natur’ with a name.”

“They’ve not got to that, yet; and the last time I went in with skins, one of the King’s surveyors was questioning me consarning all the region hereabouts. He had heard that there was a lake in this quarter, and had got some general notions about it, such as that there was water and hills; but how much of either, he know’d no more than you know of the Mohawk tongue. I didn’t open the trap any wider than was necessary, giving him but poor encouragement in the way of farms and clearings. In short, I left on his mind some such opinion of this country as a man gets of a spring of dirty water, with a path to it that is so muddy that one mires afore he sets out. He told me they hadn’t got the spot down yet, on their maps; though I conclude that is a mistake, for he showed me his parchment, and there is a lake down on it where there is no lake in fact, and which is about fifty miles from the place where it ought to be, if they meant it for this. I don’t think my account will encourage him to mark down another, by way of improvement.”

Here Hurry laughed heartily, such tricks being particularly grateful to a set of men who dreaded the approaches of civilization as a curtailment of their own lawless empire. The egregious errors that existed in the maps of the day, all of which were made in Europe, were, moreover, a standing topic of ridicule among them; for, if they had not science enough to make any better themselves, they had suf ficient local information to detect the gross blunders contained in those that existed. Any one who will take the trouble to compare these unanswerable evidences of the topographical skill of our fathers a century since, with the more accurate sketches of our own time, will at once perceive that the men of the woods had a sufficient justification for all their criticism on this branch of the skill of the colonial governments, which did not at all hesitate to place a river or a lake a degree or two out of the way, even though they lay within a day’s march of the inhabited parts of the country

“I’m glad it has no name,” resumed Deerslayer, “or, at least, no paleface name; for their christenings always foretell waste and destruction. No doubt, howsever, the redskins have their modes of knowing it, and the hunters and trappers, too; they are likely to call the place by something reasonable and resembling.”

“As for the tribes, each has its own tongue, and its own way of calling things; and they treat this part of the world just as they treat all others. Among ourselves, we’ve got to calling the place the ‘Glimmerglass,’ seeing that its whole basin is so often fringed with pines, cast upward from its face; as if it would throw back the hills that hang over it.”

“There is an outlet, I know, for all lakes have outlets, and the rock at which I am to meet Chingachgook stands near an outlet. Has that no colony-name yet?”

“In that particular they’ve got the advantage of us, having one end, and that the biggest, in their own keeping: they’ve given it a name which has found its way up to its source; names nat’rally working up stream. No doubt, Deerslayer, you’ve seen the Susquehannah, down in the Delaware country?”

“That have I, and hunted along its banks a hundred times.”

“That and this are the same in fact, and, I suppose, the same in sound. I am glad they’ve been compelled to keep the redmen’s name, for it would be too hard to rob them of both land and name!”

Deerslayer made no answer; but he stood leaning on his rifle, gazing at the view which so much delighted him. The reader is not to suppose, however, that it was the picturesque alone which so strongly attracted his attention. The spot was very lovely, of a truth, and it was then seen in one of its most favorable moments, the surface of the lake being as smooth as glass and as limpid as pure air, throwing back the mountains, clothed in dark pines, along the whole of its eastern boundary, the points thrusting forward their trees even to nearly horizontal lines, while the bays were seen glittering through an occasional arch beneath, left by a vault fretted with branches and leaves. It was the air of deep repose—the solitudes, that spoke of scenes and forests untouched by the hands of man—the reign of nature, in a word, that gave so much pure delight to one of his habits and turn of mind. Still, he felt, though it was unconsciously, like a poet also. If he found a pleasure in studying this large, and to him unusual opening into the mysteries and forms of the woods, as one is gratified in getting broader views of any subject that has long occupied his thoughts, he was not insensible to the innate loveliness of such a landscape neither, but felt a portion of that soothing of the spirit which is a common attendant of a scene so thoroughly pervaded by the holy calm of nature.

“Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,—
Being native burghers of this desert city,—
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.”

Shakespeare

 

HURRY HARRY THOUGHT MORE of the beauties of Judith Hutter than of those of the Glimmerglass and its accompanying scenery. As soon as he had taken a sufficiently intimate survey of Floating Tom’s implements, therefore, he summoned his companion to the canoe, that they might go down the lake in quest of the family. Previously to embarking, however, Hurry carefully examined the whole of the northern end of the water with an indifferent ship’s glass, that formed a part of Hutter’s effects. In this scrutiny, no part of the shore was overlooked; the bays and points in particular being subjected to a closer inquiry than the rest of the wooded boundary.

“’Tis as I thought,” said Hurry, laying aside the glass, “the old fellow is drifting about the south end this fine weather, and has left the castle to defend itself Well, now we know that he is not up thisaway, ’twill be but a small matter to paddle down and hunt him up in his hiding place.”

“Does Master Hutter think it necessary to burrow on this lake?” inquired Deerslayer, as he followed his companion into the canoe; “to my eye it is such a solitude as one might open his whole soul in, and fear no one to disarrange his thoughts or his worship.”

“You forget your friends, the Mingos, and all the French savages. Is there a spot on ’arth, Deerslayer, to which them disquiet rogues don’t go? Where is the lake, or even the deer-lick, that the blackguards don’t find out; and, having found out, don’t sooner or later discolor its water with blood?”

“I hear no good character of them, sartainly, friend Hurry, though I’ve never been called on, as yet, to meet them, or any other mortal, on the warpath. I dare to say that such a lovely spot as this would not be likely to be overlooked by such plunderers; for, though I’ve not been in the way of quarreling with them tribes myself, the Delawares give me such an account of ‘em that I’ve pretty much set ’em down, in my own mind, as thorough miscreants.”

“You may do that with a safe conscience, or, for that matter, any other savage you may happen to meet.”

Here Deerslayer protested, and as they went paddling down the lake a hot discussion was maintained concerning the respective merits of the palefaces and the redskins. Hurry had all the prejudices and antipathies of a white hunter, who generally regards the Indian as a sort of natural competitor, and not unfrequently as a natural enemy As a matter of course, he was loud, clamorous, dogmatical, and not very argumentative. Deerslayer, on the other hand, manifested a very different temper; proving, by the moderation of his language, the fairness of his views, and the simplicity of his distinctions, that he possessed every disposition to hear reason, a strong, innate desire to do justice, and an ingenuousness that was singularly indisposed to have recourse to sophisms to maintain an argument, or to defend a prejudice. Still, he was not altogether free from the influence of the latter feeling. This tyrant of the human mind, which rushes on its prey through a thousand avenues, almost as soon as men begin to think and feel, and which seldom relinquishes its iron sway until they cease to do either, had made some impression on even the just propensities of this individual, who probably offered in these particulars a fair specimen of what absence from bad example, the want of temptation to go wrong, and native good feeling, can render youth.

“You will allow, Deerslayer, that a Mingo is more than half devil,” cried Hurry, following up the discussion with an animation that touched closely on ferocity, “though you want to overpersuade me that the Delaware tribe is pretty much made up of angels. Now, I gainsay that proposal, consarning white men, even. All white men are not faultless, and therefore all Indians can’t be faultless. And so your argument is out at the elbow in the start. But this is what I call reason. Here’s three colors on ‘arth: white, black, and red. White is the highest color, and therefore the best man; black comes next, and is put to live in the neighborhood of the white man, as tolerable, and fit to be made use of; and red comes last, which shows that those that made ’em never expected an Indian to be accounted as more than half human.”