University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
THE OLD TRAPPER'S JOKE.

The hut, cottage, shanty, or lodge—call it by what
name you will—of Sam Botter, was not remarkable
for either size, beauty, or cleanliness; and occupying
the central point of a large cluster of dwarfed trees,
brambles, and bushes, the view immediately around
it was hardly such as a poetical florist would have
desired. Still it suited the old trapper, and answered
the design for which it was erected; and in that, to
say the least, it had the advantage of many an edifice
of more cost and pretension. The old mountaineer
wanted concealment for himself, traps, furs, packs,
etc., and shelter from the mountain storms—which
are not unfrequently cold and severe, even in midsummer—and
his shanty, as he was wont to term it,
served him in every particular. Nothing short of
Indian cunning and sagacity could have found it;
and no one, without a special motive, would have
penetrated ten feet into such a tangled mass of brush
and briers.

It was quite primitive in its construction, and had
cost but little labor, and less brains. A number of
poles, set in a circle of ten feet in diameter, were
brought together at the top, fastened with stout
thongs, and the interstices filled with brush, sticks,

bark, and stones, and the whole nicely covered with
skins of bear, deer, and other animals. It was waterproof
overhead, and the door served the triple purpose
of admitting the tenant, light, and air. The
earth was the floor, covered with dried grass, sweet-scented
herbs, skins, and the ordinary utensils of a
trapper. The cooking was done in the open air; and
the beaver skins, first stretched on a hoop, were dried
in the sun; but the shanty was the general storehouse
of everything; and Sam, more than once,
showed me packs of furs ready for the market; and,
with a feeling of exultation, he several times declared,
that “old One-Eyed war a rich nigger agin, and all
on his own hook.”

Having, in a measure, forced me to inspect his
forest home and property, he at length said:

“Now, Freshwater, I knows you is tired and hungry;
and so you jest plant yourself down hyer, and I'll
desperate soon fotch you in some'at to tickle your
meat-trap with.”

Saying this, the old trapper went out; and, carefully
picking his way through the surrounding bushes,
disappeared—leaving me alone to my gloomy thoughts
and miserable reflections. I threw myself down upon
the litter, and was soon lost in a painful reverie.
From this abstracted state of mind I was presently
aroused, by hearing some one carefully part the bushes
and cautiously approach; but supposing it to be Sam,
I only thought that now I was about to get food to
strengthen my body, and turn my thoughts, for a

short time at least, into a more healthy channel, and
perhaps raise in some degree my prostrated nature
from the dark gulf of misanthropy and revengeful
desire into which it had been so suddenly plunged.
Imagine my surprise and astonishment, therefore, on
seeing a strange face presented at the door—the face
of a white man—accompanied with a body of small
stature, dressed in the mountain costume. The face,
however, was that of a young man, full of health and
energy; and in the dim light, I could discover nothing
savage or diabolical in its expression—though the
owner carried a rifle in his hand, and a brace of pistols
and a hunting knife in his girdle. My first impression
was, that he was the associate or partner of Botter;
but instantly I remembered having heard the
latter assert that he was “trapping on his own hook;”
and my next reasonable conjecture was, that he was a
mountain neighbor, who had come on a friendly visit
to the camp of Sam. From my position inside—being,
too, by this time, accustomed to the dim light, I could
see him much better than he could me; but he evidently
knew I was here; for he stopped at the door,
shaded his eyes with his hand, peered into the darker
part of the lodge, and said:

“Though armed, I am disposed to be friendly.”

“Well, sir, if disposed to be friendly, as you say,
pray enter, without fear,” I replied. “In the absence
of the host, Sam Botter, I take it upon me to say you
are welcome.”

“Why, how is this?” cried the stranger, springing

into the hut, and endeavoring to get a better view of
my face and person.

“Well, sir, is there anything wrong?” said I, getting
up and confronting him with an air of dignity,
composure, and self-assurance.

“Surely, you are not an Indian?” he exclaimed, in
some confusion.

“Who said I was, sir?”

“Why, no other than Sam Botter himself.”

“You have seen him, then?”

“Yes, not five minutes since—and he told me he
had just met an old Indian acquaintance, who had
done him a service in times past, and that he was now
his guest. He requested me to come up here, and
speak kindly to you—but said that, though you could
understand me, you spoke English so brokenly, that
I must be satisfied to comprehend one word in three.”

“Be assured, sir, it is one of Sam's jokes,” I rejoined—“of
which he is rather fond—as you doubtless
know, if as well acquainted with him as myself.
No, sir! I am no Indian; though I look like one, in
this costume and paint, and with this shaved head. I
am a white man from the States, who was captured,
more than a year ago, by the Crows; and I have been
their prisoner till recently, when I fortunately effected
my escape.”

“Ah! Sam, you rogue, you shall answer for this
trick!” apostrophized the stranger, good humoredly.

“Wagh! hagh! wagh!—wagh! hagh! wagh!”
roared Botter, who had drawn near enough to overhear

our conversation; and “wagh! hagh! wagh!”
resounded for several minutes—till, in spite of ourselves,
we were forced to join in his uproarious merriment.

“There is no great depth in the joke, after all,
Sam,” sung out the stranger at length, biting his lips,
and evidently feeling chagrined. “Any body who is
disposed to make a false statement, can play off a
similar trick on his fellows at almost any moment.”

“Sold!” roared Sam: “I knowed it—this hyer old
nigger'd hev gambled high on to it—sold, you is,
boys, or I'm a woodchuck—wagh! hagh! wagh!”

“Let him enjoy his laugh,” said I; “it seems to do
him good; and I am only sorry that circumstances
deprive me of the pleasure of a similar flow of joyous
spirits.”

As I said this, we heard the crackling of the
bushes; and the next moment the old trapper himself
appeared upon the scene.

“It's fun, ain't it?” he roared.

“Not so very remarkably funny either,” replied
the stranger.

“Ef it don't kill me, I'll live ten year longer fur
it—chaw me!” said Sam.

“If it will prolong your life, you are welcome to
my part in the performance,” said I.

“But the best of the joke you don't see—wagh!
hagh! wagh!” roared Sam again.

“It is very likely we do not,” returned the stranger,
a little testily; “since what we do see, appears too

stupid for a man of sense to laugh at.” Then turning
to me, he continued: “So you have just escaped from
a painful captivity?”

“I have, God be thanked!” I replied.

“You must have suffered a great deal?”

“No one knows how much!”

“Were you badly treated?”

“It was not so much the treatment I received, as
the fact of being a prisoner among a people between
whom and myself there was not a single link of sympathy,
and the thought that I might be doomed to
spend my days there, without ever again beholding
my friends, which caused my suffering and misery.
The torture of the body, sir, is as nothing compared
with the torture of the mind.”

“That is true,” sighed the other. “I have felt
both, and know your observation to be true.”

“Were you ever a captive?”

“Never; but I have known what it was to feel the
pangs and attendant miseries of a bodily disease,
supposed to be incurable; and at the very moment
when certain recovery had made my spirit buoyant
with bright and glorious anticipations, I have known
what it was to lose, by worse than ordinary death,
the only friend I truly loved save one on earth; and
the mental anguish caused by this, I do assure you,
threw far into the shade all I had before experienced
of wretchedness.”

“Yet better, far better, your friend should die, than
live to be lost to you for ever through sin and crime!”

said I, somewhat irrelevantly and abstractedly, as the
image of Adele floated up through my recollection,
like a beautiful picture covered with a black vail.

“I do not understand you,” said my new acquaintance.

“No! how should you? since it has probably never
been your misfortune to know the baseness and
wickedness of the human heart; but believe me, sir,
there can come no heavier blow—no keener pang—
to the upright, trusting, confiding, loving heart, than
to suddenly learn that the being he most trusted,
most confided in, most loved, has proved unworthy
of his regard; and that where he built his hopes of
happiness, in the expectation of finding the holy light
and virtue of an angel, he now stops to mourn above
a dismal wreck of sin and crime; and is led to doubt
if any can be true, since such an one has fallen. But
speaking of friends,” continued I, with a sudden start,
as, for the first time since meeting the old trapper, the
thought of poor Varney flashed upon my recollection
—“I too have, or had, a friend—and Heaven pardon
me for having, during the excitement of crushing
news, forgotten to inquire his fate. Botter —”

“Hush!” said Sam, who, his mirth having subsided,
was now standing by my side, and listening to our
conversation: “Hush!” and he put his finger to his
lips mysteriously, and drew me aside. “I knows who
you mean, Freshwater,” he whispered in my ear; “you
mean Shadbones; but hush! don't mention him! and
I'll tell you why afore long—I will—chaw me!”

“Sam,” returned I, nervously clutching his arn.,
and addressing him in a whisper also, “is he a villain
too?”

“Nary once.”

“What then?”

“Gone under!” was the doleful rejoinder.

“Ah! poor fellow! poor fellow! it is then as I
feared;” and the tears rushed to my eyes. “But why
do you not wish me to speak of him, Sam?”

“Hush, now—do—I'll tell you afore long—ef I
don't, you kin chaw me up fur a liar.—Augh!”

“Very well, I will wait,” said I, giving vent to my
grief in tears that I could not repress.

For some time the conversation dropped on all
sides; but evidently finding the silence somewhat
embarrassing, and perhaps with the view also of withdrawing
my thoughts from a painful subject, the
young stranger resumed, in a tone that showed his
heart was alive to sympathy, although he might not
intrude it upon my private grief.

“You say you are from the States—do you think
of returning soon?”

“Such was my intention, sir, till I heard, from my
friend Botter here of the villainy of one I had supposed
my friend; but since then I have hardly been
myself, and really do not know what I shall decide
upon when I reach a point where I can learn more of
the real facts of the case. I am not naturally of a
revengeful disposition—and would, as a general thing,
much rather leave the guilty to the punishment which

is sure to follow, either soon or late, the transgression
of God's moral law; but, in the present instance, I
have not only been wronged irreparably—but a being,
whom I loved more than life, has been ruined, body
and soul; and I feel it would only be justice to rid
the earth of a demon incarnate, and send him to his
eternal reckoning.”

“Them's my sentiments,” rejoined Botter, with an
oath.

“And yet,” said the other, “it is a fearful thing to
take human life, except in self-defence. Have you
duly considered that, by such an act, your own peace
of mind would be for ever destroyed? to say nothing
of the penalties attached to the transgression of
human laws?”

“I have hardly considered anything,” I replied;
“but as to my peace of mind, I feel it is destroyed
already.”

“You think so now—but time will bring a change.
Grief may be assuaged; but remorse has a barbed
point, which once buried in the soul may rankle forever.”

“I shall doubtless be guided by circumstances; and
at present I am not in a condition to say, positively,
what I shall, or shall not, do.”

“Are you certain of all the treachery and deceit to
which you allude?”

“All I know, I have gathered from Botter here—
let him answer.”

“All I've told him, I've powerful good reason fur

believing ar' true as that this hyer old hoss is a —
bad sinner hisself,” replied Sam, emphatically.

“In such a case, one should not only believe, but
know!” rejoined the other.

“It is my intention to visit St. Vrain's Fort,” said
I, “and act upon the evidence which I may there receive;
though, after all, it may be necessary for me
to first return to the States, in order to procure the
means to carry out my half-formed design. It is true,
I left some money in the hands of Bent, when I
stopped at his fort, on the Arkansas, something more
than a year ago; but if that was not safely trusted, I
have nothing in this part of the world I can claim,
except what you see upon me—the Indians have despoiled
me of all the rest.”

“You will find William Bent an honorable man,
and kind-hearted,” replied my new acquaintance, with
something like enthusiasm. “If you left money in
his possession, my life on it, it will be returned the
moment you call for it. I was there, a year ago last
summer, in very bad health, on my way to the mountains;
and being compelled by sickness to remain
there for two or three weeks, I can testify to the goodness
of his heart, from the kind, almost fatherly,
treatment which I received at his hands, and those of
his immediate household.”

“It is something of a curious coincidence,” I rejoined,
“that I was there, a year ago last summer,
and left a sick friend under his charge, who was also
on his way to the mountains for the recovery of his

health; and of whom your voice, and manner, and
style of conversation, forcibly remind me. But my
friend, I have just learned from Botter, is dead; and
as you are living, and apparently in good health, the
coincidence ends with what I have stated. Sam,” continued
I, turning to Botter, who now had his back
toward me, and was looking out through the door,
“you may as well speak now, and tell me how and
where my dear friend met his end! Did he reach the
mountains? or did he die at the fort?”

“He got to the mountains alive, and lived to see
sights, I reckon,” answered the trapper.

“Did the half breed go with him?”

“Expect.”

“Was he with him when he died!”

For some reason, which will soon be apparent,
Botter did not reply to this question; but the muscles
of his face seemed to work convulsively—and more
than once, I noticed, he covered his mouth with his
hand, in a manner somewhat mysterious.

“He has a kind heart,” I thought, “and is really
affected at the loss of poor Varney;” and with a feeling
of gloom and grief, I was about to throw myself
down upon the litter, resolved to break off the conversation
and commune only with my own sad
thoughts for the present, when my attention was
arrested by the singular conduct of the stranger.

Springing suddenly to Botter, he seized and turned
him round; and for a moment, looked eagerly, almost
wildly, into his face; and then, bounding to me, he

caught me by the arm, and fairly dragged me to the
door; where, in the stronger light, I underwent the
same rapid and eager scrutiny. Wondering what all
this portended, and half inclined to think the stranger
demented, I looked full into his bronzed face and
dark eyes. It was the first time I had done so in a
light sufficient to distinctly reveal every lineament;
and I started to perceive an expression there peculiar
to one I was mourning as dead.

“Your name?” he gasped.

“Roland Rivers.”

“Great God! is it possible? and I am Alfred Varney!”

The next moment we were locked in each other's
embrace, and stood trembling, and almost overpowered,
with emotions which no language might
express.

“Wagh! hagh! wagh!” roared Sam; “d'ye see the
joke now, boys?—d'ye see it now, like old One-Eyed
does?—wagh! hagh! wagh!”