 | CHAPTER IX. The prairie |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
'Twill serve.”
Love's Labour Lost.
Having made the reader acquainted with the manner
in which Ishmael Bush had disposed of his family,
under circumstances that might have proved so
embarrassing to most other men, we shall again shift
the scene a few short miles from the place last described,
preserving, however, the due and natural
succession of time. At the very moment that the
squatter and his sons departed in the manner mentioned
in the preceding chapter, two men were intently
occupied in a swale that lay along the borders
of a little run, just out of cannon-shot from the encampment,
discussing the merits of a savoury bison's
hump, that had been prepared for their palates with
the utmost attention to the particular merits of that
description of food. The choice morsel had been
judiciously separated from the adjoining and less
worthy parts of the beast, and, enveloped in the
hairy coating provided by nature, it had duly undergone
the heat of the customary subterraneous oven,
and was now laid before its proprietors in all the
culinary glory of the prairies. So far as richness,
delicacy and wildness of flavour, and substantial
nourishment were concerned, the viand might well
have claimed a decided superiority over the meretricious
cookery and laboured compounds of the most
renowned restaurateur; though the service of the
dainty was certainly achieved in a manner far from
artificial. It would appear that the two fortunate
mortals, to whose happy lot it fell to enjoy a meal in
which health and appetite lent so keen a relish to the
exquisite food of the American deserts, were far
The one to whose knowledge in the culinary art
the other was indebted for his banquet, seemed the
least disposed of the two to profit by his own skill.
He eat, it is true, and with a relish; but it was always
with the moderation with which age is apt to
temper the appetite. No such restraint, however,
was imposed on the inclination of his companion.
In the very flower of his days and in the fullest vigour
of manhood, the homage that he paid to the work of
his more aged friend's hands was of the most profound
and engrossing character. As one delicious
morsel succeeded another he rolled his eyes towards
his companion, and seemed to express that gratitude
which he had not speech to utter, in looks of the
most benignant nature.
“Cut more into the heart of it, lad,” said the
trapper, for it was the venerable inhabitant of those
vast wastes, who had served the bee-hunter with the
banquet in question; “cut more into the centre of
the piece; there you will find the genuine riches of
natur'; and that without need from spices, or any of
your biting mustard to give it a foreign relish.”
“If I had but a cup of metheglin,” said Paul,
stopping to perform the necessary operation of
breathing, “I should swear this was the strongest
meal that was ever placed before the mouth of
man!”
“Ay, ay, well you may call it strong!” returned
the other laughing after his peculiar manner, in pure
satisfaction at witnessing the infinite contentment of
his companion; “strong it is, and strong it makes
him who eats it! Here, Hector,” tossing his patient
hound, who was watching his eye with a wistful
look, a portion of the meat, “you have need of
strength, my friend, in your old days as well as your
master. Now, lad, there is a dog that has eaten and
than any king of them all! and why? because he
has used and not abused the gifts of his Maker. He
was made a hound; and like a hound has he feasted.
Them did He create men; but they have eaten like
famished wolves! A good and prudent dog has Hector
proved, and never have I found one of his breed
false in nose or friendship. Do you know the difference
between the cookery of the wilderness and that
which is found in the settlements? No; I see plainly
you don't, by your appetite; then I will tell you.
The one follows man, the other natur'. One thinks
he can add to the gifts of the Creator, while the
other is humble enough to enjoy them; therein lies
the secret.”
“I tell you, trapper,” said Paul, who was very little
edified by the morality with which his associate
saw fit to season their repast, “that, every day while
we are in this place, and they are likely to be many,
I will shoot a buffaloe and you shall cook his hump!”
“I cannot say that, I cannot say that. The beast
is good, take him in what part you will, and it was to
be food for man that he was fashioned; but I cannot
say that I will be a witness and a helper to the waste
of killing one daily.”
“The devil a bit of waste shall there be, old man.
If they all turn out as good as this, I will engage to
eat them clean myself, even to the hoofs—how now,
who comes here! some one with a long nose I will
answer; and one that has led him on a true scent, if
he is following the trail of a dinner.”
The individual who had interrupted the conversation,
and who had elicited the foregoing remark
of Paul, was seen advancing along the margin of the
run, with a deliberate pace, in a direct line for the
two revellers. As there was nothing formidable nor
hostile in his appearance, the bee-hunter, instead of
suspending his operations, rather increased his efforts,
doubted whether the hump would suffice for the
proper entertainment of all who were now likely to
partake of the delicious morsel. With the trapper,
however, the case was different. His more tempered
appetite was already satisfied, and he faced the
new comer with a look of cordiality, that plainly
evinced how very opportune he considered his arrival.
“Come on, friend,” he said waving his hand, as he
observed the stranger to pause a moment, apparently
in doubt. “Come on, I say: if hunger be your
guide, it has led you to a fitting place. Here is meat,
and this youth can give you corn, parch'd till it be
whiter than the upland snow; come on, without fear.
We are not ravenous beasts, eating of each other,
but Christian men, receiving thankfully that which
the Lord hath seen fit to give.”
“Venerable hunter,” returned the Doctor, for it
was no other than the naturalist on one of his daily
exploring expeditions, who approached, “I rejoice
greatly at this happy meeting; we are lovers of the
same pursuits, and should be friends.”
“Lord, lord!” said the old man laughing, without
much deference to the rules of decorum, in the
philosopher's very face, “it is the man who wanted
to make me believe that a name could change the
natur' of a beast! Come, friend; you are welcome,
though your notions are a little blinded with reading
too many books. Sit ye down, and after eating of
this morsel, tell me, if you can, the name of the
creatur' that has bestowed on you its flesh for a
meal?”
The eyes of Doctor Battius (for we deem it decorous
to give the good man the appellation he most
preferred) the eyes of Dr. Battius sufficiently denoted
the satisfaction with which he listened to this
proposal. The exercise he had taken, and the sharpness
and Paul himself had hardly been in better plight to
do credit to the trapper's cookery, than was the lover
of nature, when the grateful sounds of the invitation
met his ears. Indulging in a small laugh, which his
exertions to repress reduced nearly to a simper, he
took the indicated seat by the old man's side, and
made the customary dispositions to commence his
meal without further ceremony.
“I should be ashamed of my profession,” he said,
swallowing a morsel of the hump with evident delight,
slily endeavouring at the same time to distinguish
the peculiarities of the singed and defaced
skin, “I ought to be ashamed of my profession were
there beast or bird on the continent of America that
I could not tell by some one of the many evidences
which science has enlisted in her cause. This—then
—the food is nutritious and savoury—a mouthful of
your corn, friend, if you please?”
Paul, who continued eating with increasing industry,
looking askaunt not unlike a dog when engaged
in the same agreeable pursuit, threw him his pouch,
without deeming it at all necessary to suspend his
own labours.
“You were saying, friend, that you have many
ways of telling the creatur'?”—observed the attentive
trapper.
“Many; very many and infallible. Now, the animals
that are carnivorous are known by their incisores.”
“Their what!” demanded the trapper.
“The teeth with which nature has furnished them
for defence, and in order to tear their food. Again—”
“Look you then for the teeth of this creatur',”
interrupted the trapper, who was bent on convincing
a man who had presumed to enter into competition
with himself, in matters pertaining to the wilds, of
your inside-overs.”
The Doctor complied, and of course without success;
though he profited by the occasion to take
another fruitless glance at the wrinkled hide.
“Well, friend, do you find the things you need,
before you can pronounce the creatur' a duck or a
salmon?”
“I apprehend the entire animal is not here?”
“You may well say as much,” cried Paul, who
was now compelled to pause from pure repletion;
“I will answer for some pounds of the fellow, weighed
by the truest steel-yards west of the Alleghanies.
Still you may make out to keep soul and body together,
with what is left,” reluctantly eyeing a piece
large enough to dine twenty men, which he felt compelled
to abandon from satiety; “cut in nigher to
the heart, as the old man says, and you will find the
riches of the piece.”
“The heart!” exclaimed the Doctor, inwardly delighted
to learn there was a distinct part to be submitted
to his inspection. “Ay, let me see the organ
—it will at once determine the character of the animal—certes
this is not the cor—ay, sure enough it
is—the animal must be of the order belluæ, from its
obese habits!”
He was interrupted by a long and hearty, but still
noiseless fit of merriment, from the trapper, which
was considered so ill-timed by the offended naturalist,
as to produce an instant cessation of speech, if
not a stagnation in his ideas.
“Listen to his beasts' habits and belly orders,”
said the old man, delighted, with the evident embarrassment
of his rival; “and then he says it is not
the core! Why, man, you are farther from the truth
than you are from the settlements, with all your
bookish larning and hard words; which I have once
nation east of the Rocky Mountains. Beastly habits
or no beastly habits, the creatur's are to be seen
cropping the prairies, by tens of thousands, and the
piece in your hand is the core of as juicy a buffaloe-hump
as stomach need ever crave!”
“My aged companion,” said Obed, struggling to
keep down a rising irascibility, that he conceived
would ill comport with the dignity of his character,
“your system is erroneous from the premises to the
conclusion, and your classification so faulty, as utterly
to confound the distinctions of science. The buffaloe
is not gifted with a hump at all. Nor is his
flesh savoury and wholesome, as I must acknowledge
it would seem the subject before us may well be
characterized—”
“There I'm dead against you, and clearly with
the trapper,” interrupted Paul Hover. “The man
who denies that buffaloe beef is good, should scorn
to eat it!”
The Doctor, whose observation of the bee-hunter
had hitherto been exceedingly cursory, stared at the
new speaker with a look which denoted something
like recognition.
“The principal characteristics of your countenance,
friend,” he said, “are familiar; either you,
or some other specimen of your class, is known to
me.”
“I am the man you met in the woods east of the
big river, and whom you tried to persuade to line a
yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was not too
true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in
a clear day! we tarried together a week, as you may
remember; you at your toads and lizards, and I at
my high-holes and hollow trees. And a good job we
made of it, between us! I filled my tubs with the
sweetest honey I ever sent to the settlements, besides
housing a dozen hives; and your bag was near bursting
enough to put the question to your face, stranger,
but I reckon you are a keeper of curiosities?”
“Ay! that is another of their wanton wickednesses!”
exclaimed the trapper. “They slay the
buck, and the moose, and the wild cat and all the
beasts that range the woods, and after stuffing them
with worthless rags, and placing eyes of glass into
their heads, they set them up to be stared at, and
call them the creatur's of the Lord; as if any mortal
effigy could equal the works of his hand!”
“I know you well,” returned the Doctor, on whom
the plaint of the old man produced no visible impression.
“I know you,” offering his hand cordially
to Paul; “it was a prolific week, as my herbal and
catalogues shall one day prove to the world. Ay, I
remember you well, young man. You are of the
class, mammalia; order, primates; genus, homo;
species, Kentucky.” Then, after pausing an instant
to smile complacently at his own humour, the naturalist
proceeded. “Since our separation, I have
journeyed far, having entered into a compactum or
agreement with a certain man, named Ishmael—”
“Bush!” interrupted the impatient and reckless
Paul. “By the Lord, trapper, this is the very blood-letter
that Ellen told me of!”
“Then Nelly has not done me credit for what I
trust I deserve;” returned the single-minded Doctor,
“for I am not of the phlebotomizing school at all;
greatly preferring the practice which purifies the
blood instead of abstracting it.”
“It was a blunder of mine, good stranger; the
girl called you a skilful man.”
“Therein she may have exceeded my merits,”
Dr. Battius continued, bowing with sufficient meekness.
“But Ellen is a good, and a kind, and a spirited
girl, too. A kind and a sweet girl I have ever
found Nelly Wade to be!”
“The devil you have!” cried Paul, dropping the
morsel he was sucking, from sheer reluctance to
abandon the grateful hump, and casting a fierce and
direct look into the very teeth of the unconscious
physician. “I reckon, stranger, you have a mind to
bag Ellen too!”
“The riches of the whole vegetable and animal
world united, would not tempt me to harm a hair of
her head! I love the child, with what may be called
amor naturalis—or rather paternus—The affection
of a father.”
“Ay—that indeed is more befitting the difference
in your years,” Paul coolly rejoined, stretching forth
his hand to regain the rejected morsel. “You would
be no better than a drone at your time of day, with a
young hive to feed and swarm.”
“Yes, there is reason, because there is natur', in
what he says,” observed the trapper: “But, friend,
you have said you were a dweller in the camp of one
Ishmael Bush?”
“True; it is, as you know, in virtue of a compactum—”
“I know but little of the virtue of packing, though
I follow trapping, in my old age, for a livelihood.
They tell me that skins are well kept, in the new
fashion, but it is long since I have left off killing
more than I need for food and garments. I was an
eye-witness, myself, of the manner in which the
Siouxes broke into your encampment, and drove off
the cattle; stripping the poor man you call Ishmael
of his smallest hoofs, counting even the cloven feet.”
“Asinus excepted;” muttered the Doctor, who
by this time was very coolly discussing his portion of
the hump, in utter forgetfulness of all its scientific
attributes. “Asinus domesticus Americanus excepted.”
“I am glad to hear that so many of them are saved,
though I know not the value of the animals you
it is that I have been out of the settlements. But
can you tell me, friend, what the traveller carries
under the white cloth, he guards with teeth as sharp
as a wolf that quarrels for the carcass the hunter
has left?”
“You've heard of it!” exclaimed the other, dropping
the morsel he was conveying to his mouth, in
manifest surprise.
“Nay, I have heard nothing; but I have seen the
cloth, and had like to have been bitten for no greater
crime than wishing to know what it covered.”
“Bitten! then after all the animal must be carnivorous!
It is too tranquil for the ursus horridus; if
it were the canis latrans, the voice would betray it.
Nor would Nelly Wade be so familiar with any of
the genus, feræ. Venerable hunter! the solitary animal
confined in that wagon by day, and in the tent at
night, has occasioned me more perplexity of mind
than the whole catalogue of quadrupeds besides:
and for this plain reason; I did not know how to class
it.”
“You think it a ravenous beast?”
“I know it to be a quadruped: your own danger
proves it to be carnivorous.”
During this broken explanation, Paul Hover had
sat silent and thoughtful, regarding each speaker with
eyes of deep attention. But, as if suddenly moved
by the confident manner of the Doctor, the latter
had scarcely time to utter his positive assertion, before
the young man bluntly demanded—
“And pray, friend, what may you call a quadruped?”
“A vagary of nature, wherein she has displayed
less of her infinite wisdom than is usual. Could
rotary levers be substituted for two of the limbs,
agreeably to the improvement in my new order of
phalangacrura, which might be rendered into the
perfection and harmony in the construction. But,
as the quadruped is now formed, I call it a mere
vagary of nature; no other than a vagary.”
“Harkee, stranger! in Kentucky we are but small
dealers in dictionaries. Vagary is as hard a word to
turn into English as quadruped”.
“A quadruped is an animal with four legs—a
beast.”
“A beast! Do you then reckon that Ishmael Bush
travels with a beast caged in that little wagon?”
“I know it, and lend me your ear—not literally,
friend,” observing Paul to start and look surprised,
“but figuratively through its functions, and you shall
hear. I have already made known that in virtue of
a compactum, I journey with the aforesaid Ishmael
Bush; but though I am bound to perform certain
duties while the journey lasts, there is no condition
which says that the said journey shall be sempiternum,
or eternal. Now, though this region may scarcely
be said to be wedded to science, being to all intents
a virgin territory as respects the inquirer into
natural history, still it is greatly destitute of the treasures
of the vegetable kingdom. I should therefore
have tarried some hundreds of miles more to the
eastward, were it not for the inward propensity that
I feel to have the beast in question inspected and
suitably described and classed. For that matter,”
he continued, dropping his voice, like one who imparts
an important secret, “I am not without hopes
of persuading Ishmael to let me dissect it.”
“You have seen the creature?”
“Not with the organs of sight; but with much
more infallible instruments of vision: the conclusions
of reason, and the deductions of scientific premises.
I have watched the habits of the animal,
young man; and can fearlessly pronounce, by evidence
that would be thrown away on ordinary observers,
torpid, of voracious appetite, and, as it now appears
by the direct testimony of this venerable hunter,
ferocious and carnivorous!”
“I should be better pleased, stranger,” said Paul,
on whom the Doctor's description was making a very
sensible impression, “to be sure the creature was
a beast at all.”
“As to that, if I wanted evidence of a fact, which
is abundantly apparent by the habits of the animal,
I have the word of Ishmael, himself. A reason can
be given for my smallest deductions. I am not troubled,
young man, with a vulgar and idle curiosity,
but all my aspirations after knowledge, as I humbly
believe, are, first, for the advancement of learning,
and secondly, for the benefit of my fellow-creatures.
I pined greatly in secret to know the contents of the
tent, which Ishmael guarded so carefully, and which
he had covenanted that I should swear, (jurare per
deos) not to approach nigher than a defined number
of cubits, for a definite period of time. Your jusjurandum,
or oath, is a serious matter, and not to be
dealt in lightly; but, as my expedition depended on
complying, I consented to the act, reserving to myself
at all times the power of distant observation. It
is now some ten days since Ishmael, pitying the state
in which he saw me, a humble lover of science, imparted
the fact that the vehicle contained a beast,
which he was carrying into the prairies as a decoy,
by which he intends to entrap others of the same
genus, or perhaps species. Since then, my task has
been reduced simply to watch the habits of the animal,
and to record the results. When we reach a
certain distance where these beasts are said to abound,
I am to have the liberal examination of the specimen.”
Paul continued to listen, in the most profound
silence, until the Doctor concluded his singular but
shook his head, and saw fit to reply, by saying—
“Stranger, old Ishmael has burrowed you in the
very bottom of a hollow tree, where your eyes will
be of no more use than the sting of a drone. I, too,
know something of that very wagon, and I may say
that I have lined the squatter down into a flat lie.
Harkee, friend; do you think a girl, like Ellen Wade,
would become the companion of a wild beast?”
“Why not! why not!” repeated the naturalist;
“Nelly has a taste for learning, and often listens with
pleasure to the treasures that I am sometimes compelled
to scatter in this desert. Why should she not
study the habits of any animal, even though it were
a rhinoceros!”
“Softly, softly,” returned the equally positive, and,
though less scientific, certainly, on this subject, better
instructed bee-hunter; “Ellen is a girl of spirit,
and one too that knows her own mind, or I'm much
mistaken; but with all her courage and brave looks,
she is no better than a woman after all. Haven't I
often had the girl, crying—”
“You are an acquaintance, then, of Nelly's?”
“The devil a bit. But I know a woman is a woman;
and all the books in Kentucky couldn't make
Ellen Wade go into a tent alone with a ravenous
beast!”
“It seems to me,” the trapper calmly observed,
“that there is something dark and hidden in this
matter. I am a witness that the traveller likes none
to look into the tent, and I have a proof more sure
than what either of you can lay claim to, that the
wagon does not carry the cage of a beast. Here is
Hector, come of a breed with noses as true and
faithful as a hand that is all-powerful has made any
of their kind, and had there been a beas in the
master.”
“Do you pretend to oppose a dog to a man! brutality
to learning! instinct to reason!” exclaimed
the Doctor in some heat. “In what manner, pray,
can a hound distinguish the habits, species, or even
the genus of an animal, like reasoning, learned, scientific,
triumphant man!”
“In what manner?” coolly repeated the veteran
woodsman. “Listen; and if you believe that a
schoolmaster can make a quicker wit than the Lord,
you shall be made to see how much you're mistaken.
Do you not hear something move in the brake? it
has been cracking the twigs these five minutes. Now
tell me what the creatur' is?”
“I hope nothing ferocious!” exclaimed the Doctor,
starting, for he still retained a lively impression
of his rencounter with the vespertilio horribilis.
“You have rifles, friends; would it not be prudent
to prime them, for my fowling-piece is little to be
depended on.”
“There may be reason in what he says,” returned
the trapper, smiling, and so far complying as to take
his piece from the place where it had lain during the
repast, and raising its muzzle in the air. “Now tell
me the name of the creatur'?”
“It exceeds the limits of earthly knowledge! Buffon
himself could not tell whether the animal was a
quadruped, or of the order, serpens! a sheep, or a
tiger!”
“Then was your buffoon a fool to my Hector!
Here; pup! What is it, dog? Shall we run it down,
pup—or shall we let it pass?”
The hound, which had already manifested to the
experienced trapper, by the tremulous motion of his
ears, his consciousness of the proximity of a strange
animal, now lifted his head from his fore paws and
of his teeth. But, suddenly abandoning his
hostile purpose, he snuffed the air a moment, gaped
heavily, shook himself, and then peaceably resumed
his former recumbent attitude.
“Now Doctor,” cried the trapper, triumphantly,
“I am well convinced there is neither game nor ravenous
beast in the thicket; and that I call substantial
knowledge to a man who is too old to be a spendthrift
of his strength, and yet who would not wish to
be a meal for a panther!”
The dog interrupted his master by a loud growl,
but still kept his head crouched to the earth.
“It is a man!” exclaimed the trapper, rising. “It
is a man, if I am a judge of the creatur's ways.
There is but little said atwixt the hound and me, but
we seldom make a blunder!”
Paul Hover sprang to his feet like lightning, and,
throwing forward his rifle, he cried in a voice of
menace—
“Come forward, if a friend; if an enemy, stand
ready for the worst!”
“A friend, a white man, and I hope a Christian,”
returned a voice from the thicket; which opened at
the same instant, and at the next, the speaker himself
made his appearance.
| CHAPTER IX. The prairie | |