The Leatherstocking Tales II

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Très bon!”

  “Well, if I must speak plainly, Pathfinder, I e’en must. Capt. Sanglier, here, and Arrowhead, this brave Tuscarora, have both informed me that this unfortunate boy is the traitor. After such testimony, you can no longer refuse my right to arrest him, as well as the necessity of the act.”

  “Scélérat—” muttered the Frenchman.

  “Capt. Sanglier is a brave soldier, and will not gainsay the conduct of an honest sailor,” put in Jasper. “Is there any traitor, here, Capt. Flinty-heart?”

  “Ay,” added Muir, “lat him speak out, then, since ye wish it, unhappy youth, that the truth may be known. I only hope that ye may escape the last punishment when a court will be sitting on yer misdeeds. How is it, Captain; do ye, or do ye not see a traitor amang us?”

  “Oui—yes, sair—bien sûr.”

  “Too much lie—” said Arrowhead, in a voice of thunder, striking the breast of Muir, with the back of his own hand, in a sort of ungovernable gesture. “Where, my warriors?—Where Yengeese scalp? Too much lie.”

  Muir wanted not for personal courage, nor for a certain sense of personal honor. The violence which had been intended only for a gesture, he mistook for a blow, for conscience was suddenly aroused within him, and he stepped back a pace, extending a hand towards a gun. His face was livid with rage, and his countenance expressed the fell intent of his heart. But Arrowhead was too quick for him. With a wild glare of the eye, the Tuscarora looked about him, then thrusting a hand beneath his own girdle, drew forth a concealed knife, and in the twinkling of an eye buried it in the body of the Quarter Master to the handle. As the latter fell at his feet, gazing into his face with the vacant stare of one surprised by death, Sanglier took a pinch of snuff, and said in a calm voice—

  “Voilà l’affaire finie—mais—” shrugging his shoulders, “ce n’est qu’un scélérat de moins.”

  The act was too sudden to be prevented, and when Arrowhead, uttering a yell, bounded into the bushes, the white men were too confounded to follow. Chingachgook, however, was more collected, and the bushes had scarcely closed on the passing body of the Tuscarora, than they were again opened by that of the Delaware, in full pursuit.

  Jasper Western spoke French fluently, and the words and manner of Sanglier struck him.

  “Speak, Monsieur,” he cried in English—“am I the traitor?”

  “Le voilà—” answered the cool Frenchman. “Là-dat is our espion—our agent—our friend—Ma foi—c’etait un grand scélérat! Voici—”

  While speaking, Sanglier bent over the dead body, and thrust a hand into a pocket of the Quarter Master, out of which he drew a purse. Emptying the contents on the ground, several double Louis rolled towards the soldiers, who were not slow in picking them up. Casting the purse from him, in contempt, the soldier of fortune turned towards the soup he had been preparing with so much care, and finding it to his liking, he began to break his fast, with an air of indifference that the most stoical Indian warrior might have envied.

  Chapter XXVII

  “The only amaranthine flower on Earth

  Is virtue; th’ only lasting treasure, Truth.”

  —Cowper, The Task, III.268–69.

  * * *

  THE READER must imagine some of the occurrences, that followed the sudden death of Muir. While his body was in the hands of his soldiers, who laid it decently aside, and covered it with a great coat, Chingachgook silently resumed his place at the fire, and both Sanglier and Pathfinder remarked that he carried a fresh and bleeding scalp at his girdle. No one asked any questions, and the former, although perfectly satisfied that Arrowhead had fallen, manifested neither curiosity nor feeling. He continued calmly eating his soup, as if the meal had been tranquil as usual. There was something of pride, and of an assumed indifference to fate, imitated from the Indians, in all this, but there was more that really resulted from practice, habitual self-command, and constitutional hardihood. With Pathfinder, the case was a little different in feeling, though much the same in appearance. He disliked Muir, whose smooth-tongued courtesy was little in accordance with his own frank and ingenuous nature, but he had been shocked at his unexpected and violent death, though accustomed to similar scenes, and he had been surprised at the exposure of his treachery. With a view to ascertain the extent of the latter, as soon as the body was removed, he began to question the captain on the subject. The latter having no particular motive for secrecy, now that his agent was dead, in the course of the breakfast revealed the following circumstances, which will serve to clear up some of the minor incidents of our tale.

  Soon after the 55th appeared on the frontiers, Muir had volunteered his services to the enemy. In making his offers, he boasted of his intimacy with Lundie, and of the means it afforded of furnishing more accurate and important information than usual. His terms had been accepted, and Mons. Sanglier, had several interviews with him, in the vicinity of the fort at Oswego, and had actually passed one entire night secreted in the garrison. Arrowhead, however, was the usual channel of communication, and the anonymous letter to Major Duncan had been originally written by Muir, transmitted to Frontenac, copied and sent back by the Tuscarora, who was returning from that errand when captured by the Scud. It is scarcely necessary to add, that Jasper was to be sacrificed, in order to conceal the Quarter Master’s treason, and that the position of the island had been betrayed to the enemy by the latter. An extraordinary compensation, that which was found in his purse, had induced him to accompany the party under Serjeant Dunham, in order to give the signals that were to bring on the attack. The disposition of Muir towards the sex was a natural weakness, and he would have married Mabel, or any one else who would accept his hand, but his admiration of her was in a great degree feigned, in order that he might have an excuse for accompanying the party, without sharing in the responsibility of its defeat, or incurring the risk of having no other strong and seemingly sufficient motive. Much of this was known to Capt. Sanglier, particularly the part in connection with Mabel, and he did not fail to let his auditors into the whole secret, frequently laughing, in a sarcastic manner, as he revealed the different expedients of the luckless Quarter Master.

  “Touchez-la,” said the cold blooded partisan, holding out his sinewy hand to Pathfinder, when he ended his explanations—“You be honnête, and dat is beaucoup. We tak’ de spy, as we tak’ la médicine, for de good, mais, je les déteste! Touchez-la.”

  “I’ll shake your hand, captain, I will, for you’re a lawful and nat’ral inimy,” returned Pathfinder, “and a manful one; but the body of the Quarter Master shall never disgrace English ground. I did intend to carry it back to Lundie, that he might play his bagpipes over it, but, now, it shall lie here, on the spot where he acted his villainy, and have his own treason for a headstone. Capt. Flinty-heart, I suppose this consorting with traitors is a part of a soldier’s regular business, but, I tell you honestly, it is not to my liking, and I’d rather it should be you, than I, who had this affair on his conscience. What an awful sinner!—to plot, right and left, ag’in country, friends and the Lord!—Jasper, boy, a word with you, aside, for a single minute.”

  Pathfinder now led the young man apart, and squeezing his hand, with the tears in his own eyes, he continued—

  “You know me, Eau douce, and I know you,” he said, “and this news has not changed my opinion of you, in any manner. I never believed their tales, though it looked solemn at one minute, I will own; yes, it did look solemn; and it made me feel solemn, too. I never suspected you for a minute, for I know your gifts do’n’t lie that-a-way, but, I must own I did n’t suspect the Quarter Master, neither.”

  “And he holding His Majesty’s commission, Pathfinder!”

  “It isn’t so much that, Jasper Western; it isn’t so much that. He held a commission from God to act right, and to deal fairly with his fellow creatur’s, and he has failed awfully in his duty!”

  “To think of his pretending love for one like Mabel, too, when he felt none!” />
  “That was bad, sartainly; the fellow must have had Mingo blood in his veins. The man that deals unfairly by a woman can be but a mongrel, lad, for the Lord has made them helpless on purpose that we may gain their love by kindness and sarvice. Here is the sarjeant, poor man, on his dying bed; he has given me his daughter for a wife, and Mabel, dear girl, she has consented to it, and it makes me feel that I have two welfares to look after, two natur’s to care for, and two hearts to gladden. Ah’s! me, Jasper; I sometimes feel that I’m not good enough for that sweet child!”

  Eau douce had nearly gasped for breath, when he first heard this intelligence, and, though he succeeded in suppressing any other outward sign of agitation, his cheek was blanched nearly to the paleness of death. Still, he found means to answer, not only with firmness, but with energy—

  “Say not so, Pathfinder; you are good enough for a Queen.”

  “Ay, ay, boy, according to your idees of my goodness; that is to say—I can kill a deer, or even a Mingo at need, with any man on the lines; or I can follow a forest path with as true an eye, or, read the stars, when others do not understand them. No doubt, no doubt, Mabel will have venison enough, and fish enough, and pigeons enough; but will she have knowledge enough, and will she have idees enough, and pleasant conversation enough, when life comes to drag a little, and each of us begins to pass for our true valu!”

  “If you pass for your value, Pathfinder, the greatest lady in the land, would be happy with you. On that head, you have no reason to feel afraid.”

  “Now, Jasper, I dare to say you think so—nay, I know you do; for it is nat’ral and according to friendship, for people to look over favorably at them they love. Yes, yes; if I had to marry you, boy, I should give myself no consarn about being well looked upon, for you have always shown a disposition to see me and all I do with friendly eyes. But a young gal, after all, must wish to marry a man that is nearer to her own age and fancies, than to have one old enough to be her father, and rude enough to frighten her. I wonder, Jasper, that Mabel never took a fancy to you, now, rather than setting her mind on me!”

  “Take a fancy to me, Pathfinder!” returned the young man, endeavoring to clear his voice without betraying himself—“What is there about me, to please such a girl as Mabel Dunham? I have all that you find fault with in yourself, with none of that excellence that makes even the generals respect you.”

  “Well—well—it’s all chance, say what we will about it. Here have I journeyed and guided through the woods, female after female, and consorted with them in the garrisons, and never have I ever felt an inclination for any, until I saw Mabel Dunham. It’s true the poor sarjeant first set me to thinking about his daughter, but after we got a little acquainted like, I’d no need of being spoken to, to think of her night and day. I’m tough, Jasper; yes, I’m very tough; and I’m risolute, enough, as you all know; and yet I do think it would quite break me down, now, to lose Mabel Dunham!”

  “We will talk no more of it, Pathfinder,” said Jasper, returning his friend’s squeeze of the hand, and moving back towards the fire, though slowly and in the manner of one who cared little where he went; “we will talk no more of it. You are worthy of Mabel, and Mabel is worthy of you—you like Mabel, and Mabel likes you—her father has chosen you for her husband, and no one has a right to interfere. As for the Quarter Master, his feigning love for Mabel, is worse even than his treason to the king!”

  By this time, they were so near the fire, that it was necessary to change the conversation. Luckily, at that instant, Cap, who had been in the block in company with his dying brother-in-law, and who knew nothing of what had passed since the capitulation, now appeared, walking with a meditative and melancholy air towards the group. Much of that hearty dogmatism, that imparted even to his ordinary air and demeanor, an appearance of something like contempt for all around him, had disappeared, and he seemed thoughtful, if not meek.

  “This death, gentlemen,” he said, when he had got sufficiently near, “is a melancholy business, make the best of it. Now, here is Serjeant Dunham, a very good soldier, I make no question, about to slip his cable, and yet he holds on to the better end of it, as if he was determined it should never run out of the hawse-hole, and all because he loves his daughter, it seems to me. For my part, when a friend is really under the necessity of making a long journey, I always wish him well and happily off.”

  “You would n’t kill the sarjeant afore his time,” Pathfinder reproachfully answered. “Life is sweet, even to the aged, and, for that matter, I’ve known some that seemed to set more store by it, when it got to be of the least valu.”

  Nothing had been farther from Cap’s real thoughts, than the wish to hasten his brother-in-law’s end. He had found himself embarrassed with the duties of smoothing a deathbed, and all he had meant was to express a sincere desire that the serjeant were happily rid of doubt and suffering. A little shocked, therefore, at the interpretation that had been put on his words, he rejoined with some of the asperity of the man, though rebuked by a consciousness of not having done his own wishes justice.

  “You are too old and too sensible a person, Pathfinder,” he said, “to fetch a man up with a surge, when he is paying out his ideas in distress, as it might be. Serjeant Dunham is both my brother-in-law, and my friend—that is to say, as intimate a friend, as a soldier well can be with a sea-faring man, and I respect and honor him accordingly. I make no doubt, moreover, that he has lived such a life as becomes a man, and there can be no great harm, after all, in wishing any one well berthed in heaven. Well! We are mortal the best of us, that, you’ll not deny; and it ought to be a lesson not to feel pride in our strength and beauty. Where is the Quarter Master, Pathfinder?—It is proper he should come and have a parting word with the poor serjeant, who is only going a little before us.”

  “You have spoken more truth, Master Cap, than you’ve been knowing to, all this time; in which there is no great wonder, howsever, mankind as often telling biting truths, when they least mean it, as at any other time. You might have gone farther, notwithstanding, and said that we are mortal, the worst of us, which is quite as true, and a good deal more wholesome than saying that we are mortal, the best of us. As for the Quarter Master’s coming to speak a parting word to the sarjeant, it is quite out of the question, seeing that he has gone ahead, and that too with little parting notice to himself, or any one else.”

  “You are not quite as clear as common, in your language, Pathfinder. I know that we ought all to have solemn thoughts, on these occasions, but I see no use in speaking in parables.”

  “If my words are not plain, the idee is. In short, Master Cap, while Sarjeant Dunham has been preparing himself for a long journey, like a conscientious and honest man as he is, deliberately and slowly, the Quarter Master has started, in a hurry, afore him; and, although it is a matter on which it does not become me to be very positive, I give it as my opinion that they travel such different roads, that they will never meet.”

  “Explain yourself, my friend,” said the bewildered seaman, looking around him in search of Muir, whose absence began to excite his distrust. “I see nothing of the Quarter Master, but I think him too much of a man to run away, now that the victory is gained. If the fight were ahead, instead of in our wake, the case would be altered.”

  “There lies all that is left of him, beneath that great-coat,” returned the guide, who then briefly related the manner of the Lieutenant’s death. “The Tuscarora was as venomous in his blow, as a rattler, though he failed to give the warning,” continued Pathfinder. “I’ve seen many a desperate fight, and several of these sudden outbreaks of savage temper, but never, before, did I see a human soul quit the body more unexpectedly, or at a worse moment, for the hopes of the dying man. His breath was stopped with the lie on his lips, and the spirit might be said to have passed away in the very ardor of wickedness!”

  Cap listened with a gaping mouth, and he gave two or three violent hems, as the other concluded, like one who distrusted hi
s own respiration.

  “This is an uncertain and uncomfortable life of yours, Master Pathfinder, what between the fresh water and the savages,” he said, “and the sooner I get quit of it, the higher will be my opinion of myself. Now you mention it, I will say that the man ran for that berth in the rocks, when the enemy first bore down upon us, with a sort of instinct that I thought surprising in an officer, but I was in too great a hurry to follow, to log the whole matter accurately. God bless me—God bless me! A traitor do you say, and ready to sell his country, and to a bloody Frenchman too?”

  “To sell any thing—country, soul, body, Mabel and all our scalps; and no ways particular, I’ll engage, as to the purchaser. The countrymen of Capt. Flinty-heart, here, were the paymasters this time.”

  “Just like ’em; ever ready to buy, when they can’t thrash, and to run when they can do neither.”

  Mons. Sanglier lifted his cap with ironical gravity, and acknowledged the compliment with an expression of polite contempt that was altogether lost on its insensible subject. But Pathfinder had too much native courtesy, and was far too just-minded, to allow the attack to go unnoticed—

  “Well—well—” he interposed, “to my mind there is no great difference atween an Englishman and a Frenchman, a’ter all. They talk different tongues, and live under different kings I will allow, but both are human, and feel like human beings, when there is occasion for it. If a Frenchman is sometimes skeary, so is an Englishman; and as for running away, why a man will now and then do it, as well as a horse, let him come of what people he may.”