The Leatherstocking Tales II

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Ay, Huron this is soon settled, accordin’ to your notions, but it goes sorely ag’in the grain of a white man’s feelin’s. I’ve heard of men’s saving their lives this-a-way, and I’ve know’d them that would prefar death to such a sort of captivity. For my part, I do not seek my end, nor do I seek matrimony.”

  “The pale face will think of this, while my people get ready for the council. He will be told what will happen. Let him remember how hard it is to lose a husband and a brother. Go; when we want him, the name of Deerslayer will be called.”

  This conversation had been held with no one near but the speakers. Of all the band that had so lately thronged the place, Rivenoak alone was visible. The rest seemed to have totally abandoned the spot. Even the furniture, clothes, arms, and other property of the camp had entirely disappeared, and the place bore no other proofs of the crowd that had so lately occupied it, than the traces of their fires and resting places, and the trodden earth, that still showed the marks of their feet. So sudden and unexpected a change caused Deerslayer a good deal of surprise and some uneasiness, for he had never known it to occur, in the course of his experience among the Delawares. He suspected, however, and rightly, that a change of encampment was intended, and that the mystery of the movement was resorted to, in order to work on his apprehensions.

  Rivenoak walked up the vista of trees, as soon as he ceased speaking, leaving Deerslayer by himself. The chief disappeared behind the covers of the forest, and one unpractised in such scenes might have believed the prisoner left to the dictates of his own judgment. But the young man, while he felt a little amazement at the dramatic aspect of things, knew his enemies too well to fancy himself at liberty, or a free agent. Still, he was ignorant how far the Hurons meant to carry their artifices, and he determined to bring the question, as soon as practicable, to the proof. Affecting an indifference he was far from feeling, he strolled about the area, gradually getting nearer and nearer to the spot where he had landed, when he suddenly quickened his pace, though carefully avoiding all appearance of flight, and pushing aside the bushes, he stepped upon the beach. The canoe was gone, nor could he see any traces of it, after walking to the northern and southern verges of the point, and examining the shores in both directions. It was evidently removed beyond his reach and knowledge, and under circumstances to show that such had been the intention of the savages.

  Deerslayer now better understood his actual situation. He was a prisoner on the narrow tongue of land, vigilantly watched beyond a question, and with no other means of escape than that of swimming. He, again, thought of this last expedient, but the certainty that the canoe would be sent in chase, and the desperate nature of the chances of success deterred him from the undertaking. While on the strand, he came to a spot where the bushes had been cut, and thrust into a small pile. Removing a few of the upper branches, he found beneath them the dead body of the Panther. He knew that it was kept until the savages might find a place to inter it, where it would be beyond the reach of the scalping knife. He gazed wistfully towards the castle, but there all seemed to be silent and desolate, and a feeling of loneliness and desertion came over him to increase the gloom of the moment.

  “God’s will be done!” murmured the young man, as he walked sorrowfully away from the beach, entering again beneath the arches of the wood. “God’s will be done, on ’arth as it is in heaven! I did hope that my days would not be numbered so soon, but it matters little a’ter all. A few more winters, and a few more summers, and ’twould have been over, accordin’ to natur’. Ah’s! me, the young and actyve seldom think death possible, till he grins in their faces, and tells ’em the hour is come!”

  While this soliloquy was being pronounced, the hunter advanced into the area, where to his surprise he saw Hetty alone, evidently awaiting his return. The girl carried the bible under her arm, and her face, over which a shadow of gentle melancholy was usually thrown, now seemed sad, and downcast. Moving nearer, Deerslayer spoke.

  “Poor Hetty,” he said, “times have been so troublesome, of late, that I’d altogether forgotten you; we meet, as it might be to mourn over what is to happen. I wonder what has become of Chingachgook and Wah!”

  “Why did you kill the Huron, Deerslayer?—” returned the girl reproachfully. “Don’t you know your commandments, which say ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ They tell me you have now slain the woman’s husband and brother!”

  “It’s true, my good Hetty—’tis gospel truth, and I’ll not deny what has come to pass. But, you must remember, gal, that many things are lawful in war, which would be onlawful in peace. The husband was shot in open fight—or, open so far as I was consarned, while he had a better cover than common—and the brother brought his end on himself, by casting his tomahawk at an unarmed prisoner. Did you witness that deed, gal?”

  “I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer, for I hoped you would n’t have returned blow for blow, but good for evil.”

  “Ah, Hetty, that may do among the Missionaries, but ’twould make an onsartain life in the woods! The Panther craved my blood, and he was foolish enough to throw arms into my hands, at the very moment he was striving a’ter it. ’Twould have been ag’in natur’ not to raise a hand in such a trial, and ’twould have done discredit to my training and gifts. No—no—I’m as willing to give every man his own, as another, and so I hope you’ll testify to them that will be likely to question you as to what you’ve seen this day.”

  “Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she has neither husband nor brother to feed her?”

  “Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty! Ought the young to wive with the old—the pale face with the red skin—the christian with the heathen? It’s ag’in reason and natur’, and so you’ll see, if you think of it a moment.”

  “I’ve always heard mother say,” returned Hetty, averting her face more from a feminine instinct, than from any consciousness of wrong, “that people should never marry, until they loved each other better than brothers and sisters, and I suppose that is what you mean. Sumach is old, and you are young!”

  “Ay and she’s red, and I’m white. Beside, Hetty, suppose you was a wife, now, having married some young man of your own years, and state, and colour—Hurry Harry, for instance—” Deerslayer selected this example, simply from the circumstance that he was the only young man known to both—“and that he had fallen on a war path, would you wish to take to your bosom, for a husband, the man that slew him?”

  “Oh! no, no, no—” returned the girl shuddering—“That would be wicked as well as heartless! No christian girl could, or would do that! I never shall be the wife of Hurry, I know, but were he my husband no man should ever be it, again, after his death!”

  “I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to understand sarcumstances. ’Tis a moral impossibility that I should ever marry Sumach, and, though Injin weddin’s have no priests and not much religion, a white man who knows his gifts and duties can’t profit by that, and so make his escape at the fitting time. I do think, death would be more nat’ral like, and welcome, than wedlock with this woman.”

  “Don’t say it too loud,” interrupted Hetty impatiently; “I suppose she will not like to hear it. I’m sure Hurry would rather marry even me than suffer torments, though I am feeble minded; and I am sure it would kill me to think he’d prefer death to being my husband.”

  “Ay, gal, you an’t Sumach, but a comely young Christian, with a good heart, pleasant smile, and kind eye. Hurry might be proud to get you, and that, too, not in misery and sorrow, but in his best and happiest days. Howsever, take my advice, and never talk to Hurry about these things; he’s only a borderer, at the best.”

  “I would n’t tell him, for the world!” exclaimed the girl, looking about her, like one affrighted, and blushing, she knew not why. “Mother always said young women should n’t be forward, and speak their minds before they’re asked; Oh! I never forget what mother told me. Tis a pity Hurry is so handsome, Deerslayer; I do think fewer girl
s would like him then, and he would sooner know his own mind.”

  “Poor gal, poor gal, it’s plain enough how it is, but the Lord will bear in mind one of your simple heart, and kind feelin’s! We’ll talk no more of these things; if you had reason, you’d be sorrowful at having let others so much into your secret. Tell me, Hetty, what has become of all the Hurons, and why they let you roam about the p’int, as if you, too, was a prisoner?”

  “I’m no prisoner, Deerslayer, but a free girl, and go when and where I please. Nobody dare hurt me! If they did, God would be angry, as I can show them in the bible. No—no—Hetty Hutter is not afraid; she’s in good hands. The Hurons are up yonder in the woods, and keep a good watch on us both, I’ll answer for it, since all the women and children are on the look-out. Some are burying the body of the poor girl who was shot, so that the enemy and the wild beasts can’t find it. I told ’em that father and mother lay in the lake, but I would n’t let them know, in what part of it, for Judith and I don’t want any of their heathenish company, in our burying ground.”

  “Ahs! me;—Well, it is an awful despatch to be standing here, alive and angry, and with the feelin’s up and ferocious, one hour, and then to be carried away at the next, and put out of sight of mankind in a hole in the ’arth! No one knows what will happen to him on a warpath, that’s sartain.”

  Here the stirring of leaves and the cracking of dried twigs interrupted the discourse, and apprised Deerslayer of the approach of his enemies. The Hurons closed around the spot that had been prepared for the coming scene, and in the centre of which the intended victim now stood, in a circle, the armed men being so distributed, among the feebler members of the band, that there was no safe opening through which the prisoner could break. But the latter no longer contemplated flight, the recent trial having satisfied him of his inability to escape when pursued so closely by numbers. On the contrary, all his energies were aroused, in order to meet his expected fate, with a calmness that should do credit to his colour and his manhood; one equally removed from recreant alarm, and savage boasting.

  When Rivenoak re-appeared in the circle, he occupied his old place at the head of the area. Several of the elder warriors stood near him, but, now that the brother of Sumach had fallen, there was no longer any recognised chief present, whose influence and authority offered a dangerous rivalry to his own. Nevertheless, it is well known that little which could be called monarchical, or despotic entered into the politics of the North American tribes, although the first colonists, bringing with them to this hemisphere, the notions and opinions of their own countries, often dignified the chief men of those primitive nations, with the titles of kings and princes. Hereditary influence did certainly exist, but there is much reason to believe it existed rather as a consequence of hereditary merit and acquired qualifications, than as a birth-right. Rivenoak, however, had not even this claim, having risen to consideration purely by the force of talents, sagacity, and, as Bacon expresses it, in relation to all distinguished statesmen, “by a union of great and mean qualities;” a truth of which the career of the profound Englishman himself furnishes so apt an illustration. Next to arms, eloquence offers the great avenue to popular favor, whether it be in civilized or savage life, and Rivenoak had succeeded, as so many have succeeded, before him, quite as much by rendering fallacies acceptable to his listeners, as by any profound or learned expositions of truth, or the accuracy of his logic. Nevertheless, he had influence; and was far from being altogether without just claims to its possession. Like most men who reason more than they feel, the Huron was not addicted to the indulgence of the more ferocious passions of his people: he had been commonly found on the side of mercy, in all the scenes of vindictive torture and revenge that had occurred in his tribe, since his own attainment to power. On the present occasion, he was reluctant to proceed to extremities, although the provocation was so great. Still it exceeded his ingenuity to see how that alternative could well be avoided. Sumach resented her rejection more than she did the deaths of her husband and brother, and there was little probability that the woman would pardon a man who had so unequivocally preferred death to her embraces. Without her forgiveness, there was scarce a hope that the tribe could be induced to overlook its loss, and even to Rivenoak, himself, much as he was disposed to pardon, the fate of our hero now appeared to be almost hopelessly sealed.

  When the whole band was arrayed around the captive, a grave silence, so much the more threatening from its profound quiet, pervaded the place. Deerslayer perceived that the women and boys had been preparing splinters of the fat pine roots, which he well knew were to be stuck into his flesh, and set in flames, while two or three of the young men held the thongs of bark with which he was to be bound. The smoke of a distant fire announced that the burning brands were in preparation, and several of the elder warriors passed their fingers over the edges of their tomahawks, as if to prove their keenness and temper. Even the knives seemed loosened in their sheathes, impatient for the bloody and merciless work to begin.

  “Killer of the Deer,” recommenced Rivenoak, certainly without any signs of sympathy or pity in his manner, though with calmness and dignity, “Killer of the Deer, it is time that my people knew their minds. The sun is no longer over our heads; tired of waiting on the Hurons, he has begun to fall near the pines on this side of the valley. He is travelling fast towards the country of our French fathers; it is to warn his children that their lodges are empty, and that they ought to be at home. The roaming wolf has his den, and he goes to it, when he wishes to see his young. The Iroquois are not poorer than the wolves. They have villages, and wigwams, and fields of corn; the Good Spirits will be tired of watching them alone. My people must go back, and see to their own business. There will be joy in the lodges when they hear our whoop from the forest! It will be a sorrowful whoop; when it is understood, grief will come after it. There will be one scalp-whoop, but there will be only one. We have the fur of the Muskrat; his body is among the fishes. Deerslayer must say whether another scalp shall be on our pole. Two lodges are empty; a scalp, living or dead, is wanted at each door.”

  “Then take ’em dead, Huron,” firmly, but altogether without dramatic boasting, returned the captive. “My hour is come, I do suppose, and what must be, must. If you are bent on the tortur’, I’ll do my indivours to bear up ag’in it, though no man can say how far his natur’ will stand pain, until he’s been tried.”

  “The pale face cur begins to put his tail between his legs!” cried a young and garrulous savage, who bore the appropriate tide of the Corbeau Rouge; a sobriquet he had gained from the French, by his facility in making unseasonable noises, and an undue tendency to hear his own voice; “he is no warrior; he has killed the Loup Cervier when looking behind him not to see the flash of his own rifle. He grunts like a hog, already; when the Huron women begin to torment him, he will cry like the young of the catamount. He is a Delaware woman, dressed in the skin of a Yengeese!”

  “Have your say, young man; have your say,” returned Deerslayer, unmoved; “you know no better, and I can overlook it. Talking may aggravate women, but can hardly make knives sharper, fire hotter, or rifles more sartain.”

  Rivenoak now interposed, reproving the Red Crow for his premature interference, and then directing the proper persons to bind the captive. This expedient was adopted, not from any apprehensions that he would escape, or from any necessity, that was yet apparent, of his being unable to endure the torture with his limbs free, but from an ingenious design of making him feel his helplessness, and of gradually sapping his resolution, by undermining it, as it might be, little by little. Deerslayer offered no resistance. He submitted his arms and legs, freely if not cheerfully, to the ligaments of bark, which were bound around them, by order of the chief, in a way to produce as little pain as possible. These directions were secret, and given in the hope that the captive would finally save himself from any serious bodily suffering, by consenting to take the Sumach for a wife. As soon as the body of Deerslayer was wit
hed in bark sufficiently to create a lively sense of helplessness, he was literally carried to a young tree, and bound against it, in a way that effectually prevented him from moving, as well as from falling. The hands were laid flat against the legs, and thongs were passed over all, in a way nearly to incorporate the prisoner with the tree. His cap was then removed, and he was left half-standing, half-sustained by his bonds, to face the coming scene, in the best manner he could.

  Previously to proceeding to any thing like extremities, it was the wish of Rivenoak to put his captive’s resolution to the proof, by renewing the attempt at a compromise. This could be effected only in one manner, the acquiescence of the Sumach being indispensably necessary to a compromise of her right to be revenged. With this view, then, the woman was next desired to advance, and to look to her own interests; no agent being considered as efficient as the principal, herself, in this negotiation. The Indian females, when girls, are usually mild, and submissive, with musical tones, pleasant voices, and merry laughs, but toil and suffering generally deprive them of most of these advantages, by the time they have reached an age which the Sumach had long before passed. To render their voices harsh, it would seem to require active, malignant, passions, though, when excited, their screams can rise to a sufficiently conspicuous degree of discordancy, to assert their claim to possess this distinctive peculiarity of the sex. The Sumach was not altogether without feminine attraction, however, and had so recently been deemed handsome in her tribe, as not to have yet learned the full influence that time and exposure produce on man, as well as on woman. By an arrangement of Rivenoak’s, some of the women around her, had been employing the time in endeavoring to persuade the bereaved widow, that there was still a hope Deerslayer might be prevailed on to enter her wigwam, in preference to entering the world of spirits, and this, too, with a success that previous symptoms scarcely justified. All this was the result of a resolution on the part of the chief to leave no proper means unemployed, in order to get transferred to his own nation the greatest hunter that was then thought to exist in all that region, as well as a husband for a woman who he felt would be likely to be troublesome, were any of her claims to the attention and care of the tribe overlooked.