Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (72 page)

“My ears are open,” returned the Delaware, gravely; “the words of my brother have entered so far that they never can fall out again. They are like rings that have no end, and cannot drop. Let him speak on; the song of the wren and the voice of a friend never tire.”

“I will speak a little longer, chief, but you will excuse it for the sake of old companionship, should I now talk about myself. If the worst comes to the worst, it’s not likely there’ll be much left of me but ashes; so a grave would be useless, and a sort of vanity. On that score I’m no way partic‘lar, though it might be well enough to take a look at the remains of the pile, and should any bones or pieces be found, ’twould be more decent to gather them together and bury them than to let them lie for the wolves to gnaw at and howl over. These matters can make no great difference in the ind, but men of white blood and Christian feelin’s have rather a gift for graves.”

“It shall be done as my brother says,” returned the Indian, gravely. “If his mind is full let him empty it in the bosom of a friend.”

“Thank you, Sarpent; my mind’s easy enough; yes, it’s tolerable easy. Idees will come uppermost that I’m not apt to think about in common, it’s true; but by striving ag‘in some, and lettin’ others come out, all will be right in the long run. There’s one thing, howsever, chief, that does seem to be onreasonable, and ag’in natur‘, though the missionaries say it’s true; and bein’ of my religion and color, I feel bound to believe them. They say an Injin may torment and tortur’ the body to the heart’s content, and scalp, and cut, and tear, and burn, and consume all his inventions and diviltries, until nothin’ is left but ashes, and they shall be scattered to the four winds of heaven, yet, when the trumpet of God shall sound, all will come together ag’in, and the man will stand forth in his flesh the same creatur’ as to looks, if not to feelin’s, that he was afore he was harmed!”

“The missionaries are good men; they mean well,” returned the Delaware, courteously; “they are not great medicines. They think all they say, Deerslayer; that is no reason why warriors and orators should be all ears. When Chingachgook shall see the father of Tamenund standing in his scalp, and paint, and warlock, then will he believe the missionaries.”

“Seein’ is believin‘, of a sartainty—ah’s me! and some of us may see these things sooner than we thought. I comprehend your meanin’ about Tamenund’s father, Sarpent, and the idee’s a close idee. Tamenund is now an elderly man, say eighty, every day of it; and his father was scalped, and tormented, and burnt when the present prophet was a youngster. Yes, if one could see that come to pass, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in yieldin’ faith to all that the missionaries say. Howsever, I’m not ag’in the opinion now; for you must know, Sarpent, that the great principle of Christianity is to believe without seeing; and a man should always act up to his religion and principles, let them be what they may.”

“That is strange for a wise nation,” said the Delaware, with emphasis. “The redman looks hard, that he may see and understand.”

“Yes, that’s plauserable and is agreeable to mortal pride; but it’s not as deep as it seems. If we could understand all we see, Sarpent, there might be not only sense, but safety, in refusin’ to give faith to any one thing that we might find oncomprehensible; but when there’s so many things about which it may be said we know nothing at all, why, there’s little use and no reason in bein’ difficult touchin’ any one in partic‘lar. For my part, Delaware, all my thoughts haven’t been on the game, when outlyin’ in the hunts and scoutin’s of our youth. Many’s the hour I’ve passed, pleasantly enough too, in what is tarmed conterplation by my people. On such occasions the mind is actyve, though the body seems lazy and listless. An open spot on a mountain side, where a wide look can be had at the heavens and the ’arth, is a most judicious place for a man to get a just idee of the power of the Manitou, and of his own littleness. At such times there isn’t any great disposition to find fault with little difficulties in the way of comprehension, as there are so many big ones to hide them. Believin’ comes easy enough to me, at such times; and if the Lord made man first, out of ‘arth, as they tell me it is written in the Bible, then turns him into dust at death, I see no great difficulty in the way to bringin’ him back in the body, though ashes be the only substance left. These things lie beyond our understandin’, though they may and do lie so close to our feelin’s. But of all the doctrines, Sarpent, that which disturbs me, and disconsarts my mind the most, is the one which teaches us to think that a paleface goes to one heaven and a redskin to another; it may separate in death them which lived much together, and loved each other well in life!”

“Do the missionaries teach their white brethren to think it is so!” demanded the Indian, with serious earnestness. “The Delawares believe that good men and brave warriors will hunt together in the same pleasant woods, let them belong to whatever tribe they may; that all the unjust Indians, and cowards, will have to sneak in with the dogs and the wolves, to get venison for their lodges.”

“ ’Tis wonderful how many consaits mankind have consarnin’ happiness and misery, hereafter!” exclaimed the hunter, borne away by the power of his own thoughts. “Some believe in burnin’s and flames, and some think punishment is to eat with the wolves and dogs. Then, ag’in, some fancy heaven to be only the carryin’ out of their own ‘arthly longin’s; while others fancy it all gold and shinin’ lights! Well, I’ve an idee of my own, in that matter, which is just this, Sarpent. Whenever I’ve done wrong, I’ve gin’rally found ‘twas owin’ to some blindness of the mind, which hid the right from view, and when sight has returned, then has come sorrow and repentance. Now, I consait that, after death, when the body is laid aside, or, if used at all, is purified and without its longin’s, the spirit sees all things in their ra’al light, and never becomes blind to truth and justice. Such bein’ the case, all that has been done in life, is beheld as plainly as the sun is seen at noon; the good brings joy, while the evil brings sorrow. There’s nothin’ onreasonable in that, but it’s agreeable to every man’s experience.”

“I thought the palefaces believed all men were wicked; who then could ever find the white man’s heaven?”

“That’s ingen‘ous, but it falls short of the missionary teachin’s. You’ll be Christianized one day,
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I make no doubt, and then ’twill all come plain enough. You must know, Sarpent, that there’s been a great deed of salvation done, that, by God’s help, enables all men to find a pardon for their wickedness, and that is the essence of the white man’s religion. I can’t stop to talk this matter over with you any longer, for Hetty’s in the canoe, and the furlough takes me away; but the time will come, I hope, when you’ll feel these things; for, after all, they must be felt, rather than reasoned about. Ah’s me! well, Delaware, there’s my hand, you know it’s that of a fri’nd, and will shake it as such, though it never has done you one half the good its owner wishes it had.”

The Indian took the offered hand, and returned its pressure warmly. Then falling back on his acquired stoicism of manner, which so many mistake for constitutional indifference, he drew up in reserve, and prepared to part from his friend with dignity. Deerslayer, however, was more natural; nor would he have at all cared about giving way to his feelings, had not the recent conduct and language of Judith given him some secret, though ill-defined apprehensions of a scene. He was too humble to imagine the truth concerning the actual feelings of that beautiful girl, while he was too observant not to have noted the struggle she had maintained with herself, and which had so often led her to the very verge of discovery. That something extraordinary was concealed in her breast, he thought obvious enough; and, through a sentiment of manly delicacy that would have done credit to the highest human refinement, he shrank from any exposure of her secret that might subsequently cause regret to the girl herself. He therefore determined to depart now, and that without any further manifestations of feeling, either from himself or from others.

“God bless you! Sarpent—God bless you!” cried the hunter, as the canoe left the side of the platform. “Your Manitou and my God only knows when and where we shall meet ag‘in; I shall count it a great blessing, and a full reward for any little good I may have done on ’arth, if we shall be permitted to know each other, and to consort together, hereafter, as we have so long done in these pleasant woods afore us!”

Chingachgook waved his hand. Drawing the light blanket he wore over his head, as a Roman would conceal his grief in his robes, he slowly withdrew into the ark, in order to indulge his sorrow and his musings alone. Deerslayer did not speak again, until the canoe was halfway to the shore. Then he suddenly ceased paddling, at an interruption that came from the mild, musical voice of Hetty.

“Why do you go back to the Hurons, Deerslayer?” demanded the girl. “They say I am feebleminded, and such they never harm; but you have as much sense as Hurry Harry; and more too, Judith thinks, though I don’t see how that can well be.”

“Ah! Hetty, afore we land, I must convarse a little with you, child; and that, too, on matters touching your own welfare, principally. Stop paddling—or, rather, that the Mingos needn’t think we are plotting and contriving, and so treat us accordingly, just dip your paddle lightly, and give the canoe a little motion and no more. That’s just the idee and the movement; I see you’re ready enough at an appearance, and might be made useful at a sarcumvention, if it was lawful now to use one—that’s just the idee and the movement! Ah’s me! Desait and a false tongue are evil things, and altogether onbecoming our color, Hetty; but it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to outdo the contrivances of a redskin, in the strife of lawful warfare. My path has been short, and is like soon to have an end; but I can see that the wanderings of a warrior aren’t altogether among brambles and difficulties. There’s a bright side to a warpath, as well as to most other things, if we’ll only have the wisdom to see it, and the ginerosity to own it.”

“And why should your warpath, as you call it, come so near to an end, Deerslayer?”

“Because, my good girl, my furlough comes so near to an end. They’re likely to have pretty much the same tarmination, as regards time—one following on the heels of the other, as a matter of course.”

“I don’t understand your meaning, Deerslayer,” returned the girl, looking a little bewildered. “Mother always said people ought to speak more plainly to me than to most other persons, because I’m feebleminded. Those that are feebleminded don’t understand as easily as those that have sense.”

“Well then, Hetty, the simple truth is this. You know that I’m now a captyve to the Hurons, and captyves can’t do, in all things, as they please—”

“But how can you be a captive,” eagerly interrupted the girl, “when you are out here on the lake, in father’s bark canoe, and the Indians are in the woods, with no canoe at all? That can’t be true, Deerslayer!”

“I wish with all my heart and soul, Hetty, that you was right, and that I was wrong, instead of your bein’ all wrong, and my bein’ only too near the truth. Free as I seem to your eyes, gal, I’m bound hand and foot in ra’ality.”

“Well, it is a great misfortune not to have sense! Now, I can’t see, or understand, that you are a captive, or bound in any manner. If you are bound, with what are your hands and feet fastened?”

“With a furlough, gal; that’s a thong that binds tighter than any chain. One may be broken, but the other can’t. Ropes and chains allow of knives, and desait, and contrivances; but a furlough can be neither cut, slipped, nor sarcumvented.”

“What sort of a thing is a furlough, then, if it be stronger than hemp or iron? I never saw a furlough.”

“I hope you may never feel one, gal; the tie is altogether in the feelin’s, in these matters, and therefore is to be felt and not seen. You can understand what it is to give a promise, I dare to say, good little Hetty?”

“Certainly. A promise is to say you will do a thing, and that binds you to be as good as your word. Mother always kept her promises to me, and then she said it would be wicked if I didn’t keep my promises to her, and to everybody else.”

“You have had a good mother, in some matters, child, whatever she may have been in other some. That is a promise, and, as you say, it must be kept. Now, I fell into the hands of the Mingos last night, and they let me come off to see my fri‘nds and send messages in to my own color, if any such feel consarn on my account, on condition that I shall be back, when the sun is up today, and take whatever their revenge and hatred can contrive, in the way of torments, in satisfaction for the life of a warrior that fell by my rifle, as well as for that of the young woman shot by Hurry, and other disapp’intments met with on and about this lake. What is called a promise atween a mother and darter, or even atween strangers, in the settlements is called a furlough, when given by one soldier to another, on a warpath. And now I suppose you understand my situation, Hetty?”

The girl made no answer for some time, but she ceased paddling altogether, as if the novel idea distracted her mind too much to admit of other employment. Then she resumed the dialogue earnestly and with solicitude.

“Do you think the Hurons will have the heart to do what you say, Deerslayer?” she asked. “I have found them kind and harmless.”

“That’s true enough as consarns one like you, Hetty; but it’s a very different affair when it comes to an open inimy, and he too the owner of a pretty sartain rifle. I don’t say that they bear me special malice on account of any expl‘ites already performed, for that would be bragging, as it might be, on the verge of the grave; but it’s no vanity to believe that they know one of their bravest and cunnin’est chiefs fell by my hands. Such bein’ the case, the tribe would reproach them if they failed to send the spirit of a paleface to keep the company of the spirit of their red brother; always supposin’ that he can catch it. I look for no marcy, Hetty, at their hands; and my principal sorrow is, that such a calamity should befall me on my first warpath: that it would come sooner or later, every soldier counts on and expects.”