The Deerslayer; or, The First Warpath . . . Volume 1

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Old Tom is full of contrivances,” added Hurry, “and he set his heart on the success of his chimney, which threatened, more than once, to give out altogether; but parseverance will even overcome smoke; and now he has a comfortable cabin of it, though it did promise, at one time, to be a chinky sort of a flue to carry flames and fire.”

  “You seem to know the whole history of the castle, Hurry, chimney and sides,” said Deerslayer, smiling; “is love so overcoming that it causes a man to study the story of his sweetheart’s habitation?”

  “Partly that, lad, and partly eyesight,” returned the good-natured giant, laughing; “there was a large gang of us, in at the lake, the summer the old fellow built, and we helped him along with the job. I raised no small part of the weight of them uprights, with my own shoulders, and the axes flew, I can inform you, Master Natty, while we were bee-ing it among the trees ashore. The old devil is no way stingy about food, and as we had often eat at his hearth, we thought we would just house him comfortably, afore we went to Albany with our skins. Yes, many is the meal I’ve swallowed in Tom Hutter’s cabins; and Hetty, though so weak in the way of wits, has a wonderful particular way about a frying-pan or a gridiron!”

  While the parties were thus discoursing, the canoe had been gradually drawing nearer to the “castle,” and was now so close, as to require but a single stroke of a paddle to reach the landing. This was at a floored platform in front of the entrance, that might have been some twenty feet square.

  “Old Tom calls this sort of a wharf, his door-yard,” observed Hurry, as he fastened the canoe, after he and his companion had left it; “and the gallants from the forts have named it the ‘castle court,’ though what a ‘court’ can have to do here, is more than I can tell you, seeing that there is no law. ’T is as I supposed; not a soul within, but the whole family is off on a v’y’ge of discovery!”

  While Hurry was bustling about the “door-yard,” examining the fishing-spears, rods, nets, and other similar appliances of a frontier cabin, Deerslayer, whose manner was altogether more rebuked and quiet, entered the building, with a curiosity that was not usually exhibited by one so long trained in Indian habits. The interior of the “castle” was as faultlessly neat, as its exterior was novel. The entire space, some twenty feet by forty, was subdivided into several small sleeping-rooms; the apartment into which he first entered, serving equally for the ordinary uses of its inmates, and for a kitchen. The furniture was of the strange mixture that it is not uncommon to find in the remotely situated log-tenements of the interior. Most of it was rude, and, to the last degree, rustic; but there was a clock, with a handsome case of dark wood, in a corner, and two or three chairs, with a table and bureau, that had evidently come from some dwelling of more than usual pretension. The clock was industriously ticking, but its leaden-looking hands did no discredit to their dull aspect, for they pointed to the hour of eleven, though the sun plainly showed it was some time past the turn of the day. There was also a dark, massive chest. The kitchen utensils were of the simplest kind, and far from numerous, but every article was in its place, and showed the nicest care in its condition.

  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 bed-room. 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 ribands, 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 colours, 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 ribands, hung above it, and a pair of long gloves, such as were rarely used in those days by persons of the labouring 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, every thing 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 ribands 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 colour 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. 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 humour, 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. ’T is 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 faint-hearted 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 red-skins; and then, Harry March, it keeps blood off the conscience, too.”

  “Well, for my part, I account game, a red-skin, 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 quarreller, 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!”

  “’T is 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.

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p; “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 did n’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 had n’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, was, moreover, a standing topic of ridicule among them; for, if they had not science enough to make any better themselves, they had sufficient 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 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 pale-face name; for their christenings always foretell waste and destruction. No doubt, howsever, the red-skins 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 red-men’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 favourable 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.

  CHAPTER III.

  “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.”

  Shakspeare. 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.

  “’T is 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 this-a-way; ’t will 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 late, discolour 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 war-path. 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 quarrelling 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 pale-faces and the red-skins. 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 ave
nues, almost as soon as men begin to think and feel, and which seldom relinquishes his 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.