The Leatherstocking Tales II

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “The old fellow was burnt out three times, atween the Indians and the hunters, and in one affray with the red skins he lost his only son; since which time he has taken to the water for safety. No one can attack him, here, without coming in a boat, and the plunder and scalps would scarce be worth the trouble of digging out canoes. Then, it’s by no means sartain which would whip, in such a skrimmage, for, old Tom is well supplied with arms and ammunition, and the castle, as you may see, is a tight breast-work, ag’in light shot.”

  Deerslayer had some theoretical knowledge of frontier warfare, though he had never yet been called on to raise his hand, in anger, against a fellow creature. He saw that Hurry did not over-rate the strength of this position, in a military point of view, since it would not be easy to attack it, without exposing the assailants to the fire of the besieged. A good deal of art had also been manifested in the disposition of the timber, of which the building was constructed, and which afforded a protection much greater than was usual to the ordinary log cabins of the frontier. The sides and ends were composed of the trunks of large pines, cut about nine feet long, and placed upright, instead of being laid horizontally, as was the practice of the country. These logs were squared on three sides, and had large tennons on each end. Massive sills were secured on the heads of the piles, with suitable grooves dug out of their upper surfaces, which had been squared for the purpose, and the lower tennons of the upright pieces were placed in these grooves, giving them a secure fastening below. Plates had been laid on the upper ends of the upright logs and were kept in their places, by a similar contrivance; the several corners of the structure being well fastened by scarfing and pinning the sills, and plates. The floors were made of smaller logs, similarly squared, and the roof was composed of light poles, firmly united, and well covered with bark. The effect of this ingenious arrangement was to give its owner a house that could be approached only by water, the sides of which were composed of logs, closely wedged together, which were two feet thick in their thinnest parts and which could be separated only by a deliberate and laborious use of human hands, or by the slow operation of time. The outer surface of the building was rude and uneven, the logs being of unequal sizes, but the squared surfaces within, gave both the sides and floors as uniform an appearance as was desired either for use, or show. The chimney was not the least singular portion of the castle, as Hurry made his companion observe, while he explained the process by which it had been made. The material was a stiff clay, properly worked, which had been put together in a mould of sticks, and suffered to harden a foot or two, at a time, commencing at the bottom. When the entire chimney had thus been raised, and had been properly bound in with outward props, a brisk fire was kindled, and kept going until it was burned to something like a brick red. This had not been an easy operation, nor had it succeeded entirely, but by dint of filling the cracks with fresh clay, a safe fire-place and chimney had been obtained in the end. This part of the work stood on the log floor, secured beneath by an extra pile. There were a few other peculiarities about this dwelling, which will better appear in the course of the narrative.

  “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 eye sight,” 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 beeing 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 in 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 grid-iron!”

  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. ’Tis 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 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 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 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, 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 s
eemed 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 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 him 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 lesser 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 farther, 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. ’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 faint-hearted man is like a no-tailed beaver.”

  “I don’t believe, Hurry, that they account me as out-of-the-way timoursome, 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 aweary 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 did’nt 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, were, 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 times, 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 foretel 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 the 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 one 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 names!”

  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 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. 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, either, 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 da
ppled fools,—

  Being native burghers of this desert city,—

  Should, in their own confines, with forked heads

  Have their round haunches gored.”

  —As You Like It, II.i.21–25.

  * * *

  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 this-a-way, ’twill be but a small matter to paddle down, and hunt him up in his hiding place.”