“These are heavenly tidings,” murmured Mabel, who little relished the prospect of a deadly fray in that remote wilderness. “Let us approach at once, dear uncle, and proclaim ourselves friends.”
“Good—” said the Tuscarora—“red man cool, and know; pale-face hurried, and fire. Let squaw go.”
“What,” said Cap, in astonishment; “send little Magnet ahead, as a look out, while two lubbers like you and me, lie-to, to see what sort of a land-fall she will make! If I do, I—”
“It is wisest, uncle,” interrupted the generous girl, “and I have no fear. No christian, seeing a woman approach alone, would fire upon her, and my presence will be a pledge of peace. Let me go forward, as Arrowhead wishes, and all will be well. We are, as yet, unseen and the surprise of the strangers will not partake of alarm.”
“Good—” returned Arrowhead, who did not conceal his approbation of Mabel’s spirit.
“It has an unseaman like look,” answered Cap, “but, being in the woods, no one will know it. If you think, Mabel—”
“Uncle, I know. There is no cause to fear for me, and you are always nigh to protect me.”
“Well, take one of the pistols, then—”
“Nay, I had better rely on my youth and feebleness,” said the girl, smiling while her colour heightened under her feelings—“Among christian men, a woman’s best guard is her claim to their protection. I know nothing of arms, and wish to live in ignorance of them.”
The uncle desisted, and, after receiving a few cautious instructions from the Tuscarora, Mabel rallied all her spirit, and advanced alone towards the group seated near the fire. Although the heart of the girl beat quick, her step was firm and her movements, seemingly, were without reluctance. A death-like silence reigned in the forest, for they towards whom she approached, were too much occupied in appeasing that great natural appetite, hunger, to avert their looks, for an instant, from the important business in which they were all engaged. When Mabel, however, had got within a hundred feet of the fire, she trod upon a dried stick, and the trifling noise that was produced by her light footstep caused the Mohican, as Arrowhead had pronounced the Indian to be, and his companion whose character had been thought so equivocal, to rise to their feet, as quick as thought. Both glanced at the rifles that leaned against a tree, and then each stood without stretching out an arm, as his eyes fell on the form of the girl. The Indian uttered a few words to his companion, and resumed his seat and his meal, as calmly as if no interruption had occurred. On the contrary, the white man, left the fire, and came forward to meet Mabel.
The latter saw, as the stranger approached, that she was about to be addressed by one of her own colour, though his dress was so strange a mixture of the habits of the two races, that it required a near look to be certain of the fact. He was of middle age, but there was an open honesty, a total absence of guile, in his face, which otherwise would not have been thought handsome, that at once assured Magnet she was in no danger. Still she paused, in obedience to a law of her habits, if not of nature, which rendered her averse to the appearance of advancing too freely to meet one of the other sex, under the circumstances in which she was placed.
“Fear nothing, young woman,” said the hunter, for such his attire would indicate him to be, “you have met christian men, in the wilderness, and such as know how to treat all kindly that are disposed to peace and justice. I’m a man well known in all these parts, and perhaps one of my names may have reached your ears. By the Frenchers, and the red-skins on the other side of the Big Lakes, I am called la Longue Carabine; by the Mohicans, a just-minded and upright tribe, what is left of them, Hawk Eye; while the troops and rangers along this side of the water call me Pathfinder, inasmuch as I have never been known to miss one end of the trail, when there was a Mingo, or a friend, who stood in need of me, at the other.”
This was not uttered boastfully, but with the honest confidence of one, who well knew that by whatever name others might have heard of him, he had no reason to blush at the reports. The effect on Mabel was instantaneous. The moment she heard the last soubriquet she clasped her hands eagerly and repeated the word.
“Pathfinder!”
“So they call me, young woman, and many a great lord has got a title that he did not half so well merit, though, if truth be said, I rather pride myself in finding my way, where there is no path, than in finding it where there is. But the regular troops be by no means particular, and half the time they do’n’t know the difference atween a trail and a path, though one is a matter for the eye, while the other is little more than scent.”
“Then you are the friend, my father promised to send to meet us!”
“If you are Sarjeant Dunham’s daughter, the Great Prophet of the Delawares never uttered a plainer truth.”
“I am Mabel, and yonder, hid by the trees, are my uncle, whose name is Cap, and a Tuscarora called Arrowhead. We did not hope to meet you until we had nearly reached the shores of the Lake.”
“I wish a juster-minded Indian had been your guide,” said Pathfinder, “for I am no lover of the Tuscaroras, who have travelled too far from the graves of their fathers always to remember the Great Spirit, and Arrowhead is an ambitious chief. Is the Dew of June with him?”
“His wife accompanies us, and a humble and mild creature she is.”
“Ay, and true-hearted, which is more than any who know him will say of Arrowhead. Well, we must take the fare that Providence bestows, while we follow the trail of life. I suppose worse guides might have been found than the Tuscarora, though he has too much Mingo blood, for one who consorts altogether with the Delawares.”
“It is then, perhaps, fortunate we have met—” said Mabel.
“It is not misfortinate, at any rate, for I promised the Sarjeant I would see his child safe to the garrison, though I died for it. We expected to meet you before you reached the falls; where we have left our own canoe, while we thought it might do no harm to come up, a few miles, in order to be of sarvice if wanted. It’s lucky we did, for I doubt if Arrowhead be the man to shoot the current.”
“Here come my uncle and the Tuscarora, and our parties can now join.”
As Mabel concluded Cap and Arrowhead, who saw that the conference was amicable, drew nigh, and a few words sufficed to let them know as much, as the girl herself had learned from the stranger. As soon as this was done, the party proceeded towards the two who still remained near the fire.
Chapter II
“Yea! long as Nature’s humblest Child
Hath kept her temple undefiled
By sinful sacrifice,
Earth’s fairest scenes are all his own,
He is a Monarch, and his Throne
Is built amid the skies!”
—Wilson, “Lines Written in a Highland Glen,” ll. 31–36.
* * *
THE MOHICAN continued to eat, though the second white man rose, and courteously took off his cap to Mabel Dunham. He was young, healthful and manly in appearance, and wore a dress, which, while it was less rigidly professional than that of the uncle, also denoted one accustomed to the water. In that age, real seamen were a class entirely apart from the rest of mankind, their ideas, ordinary language, and attire being as strongly indicative of their calling, as the opinions, speech and dress of a Turk denote a Mussulman. Although the Pathfinder was scarcely in the prime of life, Mabel had met him with a steadiness that may have been the consequence of having braced her nerves for the interview, but when her eyes encountered those of the young man at the fire, they fell before the gaze of admiration, with which she saw, or fancied she saw, he greeted her. Each, in truth, felt that interest in the other, which similarity of age, condition, mutual comeliness and their novel situation would be likely to inspire in the young and ingenuous.
“Here,” said Pathfinder, with an honest smile bestowed on Mabel—“are the friends your worthy father has sent to meet you. This is a great Delaware; and one that has had honors as well as trouble, in his day. He has an Injin
name fit for a chief, but as the language is not always easy for the inexperienced to pronounce, we nat’rally turn it into English, and call him the Big Sarpent. You are not to suppose, howsever, that by this name we wish to say that he is treacherous, beyond what is lawful in a red skin, but that he is wise, and has the cunning that becomes a warrior. Arrowhead, there, knows what I mean.”
While the Pathfinder was delivering this address, the two Indians gazed on each other steadily, and then the Tuscarora advanced and spoke to the other, in an apparently friendly manner.
“I like to see this,” continued Pathfinder; “the salutes of two red-skins, in the woods, Master Cap, are like the hailing of friendly vessels on the ocean. But, speaking of water, it reminds me of my young friend Jasper Western, here, who can claim to know something of these matters, seeing that he has passed his days on Ontario.”
“I am glad to see you, friend,” said Cap, giving the young fresh-water sailor, a cordial gripe, “though you must have something still to learn, considering the school to which you have been sent. This is my niece Mabel—I call her Magnet, for a reason she never dreams of, though you may possibly have education enough to guess at it, having some pretensions to understand the compass, I suppose.”
“The reason is easily comprehended,” said the young man, involuntarily fastening his keen dark eye, at the same time, on the suffused face of the girl; “and I feel sure that the sailor who steers by your Magnet, will never make a bad land-fall.”
“Ha—you do make use of some of the terms, I find, and that with propriety and understanding. Though, on the whole, I fear you have seen more green than blue water!”
“It is not surprising that we should get some of the phrases that belong to the land, for we are seldom out of sight of it, twenty four hours at a time.”
“More’s the pity, boy; more’s the pity. A very little land ought to go a great way, with a seafaring man. Now, if the truth were known, Master Western, I suppose there is more or less land all round your lake.”
“And, uncle, is there not more or less land all round the ocean—” said Magnet quickly, for she dreaded a premature display of the old seaman’s peculiar dogmatism, not to say pedantry.
“No, child, there is more or less ocean all round the land. That’s what I tell the people ashore, youngster; they are living, as it might be, in the midst of the sea, without knowing it; by sufferance, as it were; the water being so much the more powerful, and the largest. But there is no end to conceit in this world, for a fellow who never saw salt water often fancies he knows more than one who has gone round the Horn. No—no—this earth is pretty much an island, and all that can be truly said not to be so, is water.”
Young Western had a profound deference for a mariner of the ocean, on which he had often pined to sail, but he had, also, a natural regard for the broad sheet on which he had passed his life and which was not without its beauties, in his eyes.
“What you say, sir,” he answered modestly, “may be true, as to the Atlantic, but we have a respect for the land, up here on Ontario.”
“That is because you are always land-locked,” returned Cap, laughing heartily: “but yonder is the Pathfinder, as they call him, with some smoking platters, inviting us to share in his mess, and I will confess that one gets no venison at sea. Master Western, civility to girls at your time of life, comes as easy as taking in the slack of the ensign halyards, and if you will just keep an eye to her kid and can, while I join the mess of the Pathfinder and our Indian friends, I make no doubt she will remember it.”
Master Cap uttered more than he was aware of, at the time. Jasper Western did look to the wants of Mabel, and she long remembered the kind manly attentions of the young sailor, at this their first interview. He placed the end of a log for a seat, obtained for her a delicious morsel of the venison, gave her a draught of pure water from the spring, and as he sat near, and opposite to her, fast won his way to her esteem, by his gentle, but frank, manner of manifesting his care; a homage that woman always wishes to receive, but which is never so flattering or so agreeable, as when it comes from the young to those of their own age; from the manly to the gentle. Like most of those who pass their time excluded from the society of the softer sex, young Western was earnest, sincere and kind in his attentions, which, though they wanted a conventional refinement that perhaps Mabel never missed, had those winning qualities that prove more efficient as substitutes. Leaving these two inexperienced and unsophisticated young people, to become acquainted through their feelings rather than their expressed thoughts, we will turn to the group, in which the uncle, with a facility of taking care of himself that never deserted him, had already become a principal actor.
The party had taken their places around a platter of venison steaks, which served for the common use, and the discourse naturally partook of the characters of the different individuals that composed it. The Indians were silent and industrious, the appetite of the Aboriginal American for venison, being seemingly inappeasable, while the two white men, were communicative and discursive, each of the latter being garrulous and opinionated in his way. But as the dialogue will serve to put the reader in possession of certain facts that may render the succeeding narrative more clear, it will be well to record it.
“There must be satisfaction in this life of yours, no doubt, Master Pathfinder,” continued Cap, when the hunger of the travellers was so far appeased that they began to pick and choose, among the savory morsels; “it has some of the chances and luck that we seamen love, and if ours is all water, yours is all land.”
“Nay, we have water too, in our journeyings and marches,” returned his white companion. “We border men, handle the paddle and the spear, almost as much as the rifle and the hunting knife.”
“Ay, but do you handle the brace and the bow line; the wheel and the lead-line; the reef-point and the top-rope? The paddle is a good thing, out of doubt, in a canoe, but of what use is it in the ship?”
“Nay, I respect all men in their callings, and I can believe the things you mention have their uses. One, who has lived, like myself, in company with many tribes, understands the differences in usages. The paint of a Mingo, is not the paint of a Delaware; and he who should expect to see a warrior in the dress of a squaw, might be disapp’inted. I’m not very old, but I have lived in the woods, and have some acquaintance with human natur’. I never believed much in the laming of them that dwell in towns, for I never yet met with one that had an eye for a rifle, or a trail.”
“That’s my manner of reasoning, Master Pathfinder, to a yarn. Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing rumours never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look upon foreign nations, or, what I call the face of natur’, if you wish him to understand his own character. Now, there is my brother-in-law, the Serjeant, he is as good a fellow as ever broke a biscuit, in his own way; but what is he, after all; why nothing but a soger. A serjeant, to be sure, but that is a sort of a soger, you know. When he wished to marry poor Bridget, my sister, I told the girl what he was, as in duty bound, and what she might expect from such a husband, but you know how it is with girls when their minds are jammed by an inclination. It is true, the Serjeant has risen in his calling, and they say he is an important man at the fort, but his poor wife has not lived to see it all, for she has now been dead these fourteen years.”
“A soldier’s calling is an honorable calling, provided he has fit only on the side of right,” returned the Pathfinder; “and as the Frenchers are always wrong, and His Sacred Majesty and these colonies are always right, I take it the sarjeant has a quiet conscience, as well as a good character. I have never slept more sweetly than when I have fit the Mingos, though it is a law with me to fight always like a white man, and never like an Injin. The Sarpent, here, has his fashions and I have mine; and yet have we fou’t, side by side, these many years, without either’s thinking a hard thought consarning the other’s ways.
I tell him there is but one heaven and one hell, notwithstanding his traditions, though there are many paths to both.”
“That is rational, and he is bound to believe you, though I fancy most of the roads to the last, are on dry land. The sea is what my poor sister Bridget used to call a ‘purifying place,’ and one is out of the way of temptation when out of sight of land. I doubt if as much can be said in favor of your lakes, up hereaway.”
“That towns and settlements lead to sin, I will allow, but our lakes are bordered by the forests, and one is every day called upon to worship God, in such a temple. That men are not always the same, even in the wilderness, I must admit, for the difference atween a Mingo and a Delaware, is as plain to be seen as the difference atween the sun and the moon. I am glad, friend Cap, that we have met, howsever, if it be only that you may tell the Big Sarpent, here, that there be lakes in which the water is salt. We have been pretty much of one mind, since our acquaintance began, and if the Mohican has only half the faith in me that I have in him, he believes all that I have told him, touching the white men’s ways and natur’s laws; but, it has always seemed to me that none of the red skins have given as free a belief, as an honest man likes, to the accounts of the Big Salt Lakes, and to that of there being rivers that flow up stream.”
“This comes of getting things wrong end foremost,” answered Cap, with a condescending nod. “You have thought of your lakes and rifts, as the ship, and of the ocean and the tides, as the boat. Neither Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning both, though I confess myself, to some difficulty in swallowing the tale about there being inland seas, at all, and still more that there is any sea of fresh water. I have come this long journey, as much to satisfy my own eyes and palate concerning these facts, as to oblige the Serjeant and Magnet, though the first was my sister’s husband, and I love the last like a child.”
The Leatherstocking Tales II Page 3
