The Prairie (19 page)

"I come in amity," the stranger said, like one too much accustomed to
the sight of arms to be startled at the ludicrously belligerent attitude
which Dr. Battius had seen fit to assume. "I come as a friend; and am
one whose pursuits and wishes will not at all interfere with your own."

"Harkee, stranger," said Paul Hover, bluntly; "do you understand lining
a bee from this open place into a wood, distant, perhaps, a dozen
miles?"

"The bee is a bird I have never been compelled to seek," returned the
other, laughing; "though I have, too, been something of a fowler in my
time."

"I thought as much," exclaimed Paul, thrusting forth his hand frankly,
and with the true freedom of manner that marks an American borderer.
"Let us cross fingers. You and I will never quarrel about the comb,
since you set so little store by the honey. And now, if your stomach has
an empty corner, and you know how to relish a genuine dew-drop when it
falls into your very mouth, there lies the exact morsel to put into it.
Try it, stranger; and having tried it, if you don't call it as snug
a fit as you have made since—How long ar' you from the settlements,
pray?"

"'Tis many weeks, and I fear it may be as many more before I can return.
I will, however, gladly profit by your invitation, for I have fasted
since the rising of yesterday's sun, and I know too well the merits of a
bison's bump to reject the food."

"Ah! you ar' acquainted with the dish! Well, therein you have the
advantage of me, in setting out, though I think I may say we could now
start on equal ground. I should be the happiest fellow between Kentucky
and the Rocky Mountains, if I had a snug cabin, near some old wood that
was filled with hollow trees, just such a hump every day as that for
dinner, a load of fresh straw for hives, and little El—"

"Little what?" demanded the stranger, evidently amused with the
communicative and frank disposition of the bee-hunter.

"Something that I shall have one day, and which concerns nobody so much
as myself," returned Paul, picking the flint of his rifle, and beginning
very cavalierly to whistle an air well known on the waters of the
Mississippi.

During this preliminary discourse the stranger had taken his seat by the
side of the hump, and was already making a serious inroad on its relics.
Dr. Battius, however, watched his movements with a jealousy, still more
striking than the cordial reception which the open-hearted Paul had just
exhibited.

But the doubts, or rather apprehensions, of the naturalist were of a
character altogether different from the confidence of the bee-hunter. He
had been struck with the stranger's using the legitimate, instead of the
perverted name of the animal off which he was making his repast; and as
he had been among the foremost himself to profit by the removal of
the impediments which the policy of Spain had placed in the way of all
explorers of her trans-Atlantic dominions, whether bent on the purposes
of commerce, or, like himself, on the more laudable pursuits of science,
he had a sufficiency of every-day philosophy to feel that the
same motives, which had so powerfully urged himself to his present
undertaking, might produce a like result on the mind of some other
student of nature. Here, then, was the prospect of an alarming rivalry,
which bade fair to strip him of at least a moiety of the just rewards
of all his labours, privations, and dangers. Under these views of
his character, therefore, it is not at all surprising that the native
meekness of the naturalist's disposition was a little disturbed, and
that he watched the proceedings of the other with such a degree of
vigilance as he believed best suited to detect his sinister designs.

"This is truly a delicious repast," observed the unconscious young
stranger, for both young and handsome he was fairly entitled to be
considered; "either hunger has given a peculiar relish to the viand, or
the bison may lay claim to be the finest of the ox family!"

"Naturalists, sir, are apt, when they speak familiarly, to give the
cow the credit of the genus," said Dr. Battius, swelling with secret
distrust, and clearing his throat, before speaking, much in the manner
that a duellist examines the point of the weapon he is about to plunge
into the body of his foe. "The figure is more perfect; as the bos,
meaning the ox, is unable to perpetuate his kind; and the bos, in its
most extended meaning, or vacca, is altogether the nobler animal of the
two."

The Doctor uttered this opinion with a certain air, that he intended
should express his readiness to come at once, to any of the numerous
points of difference which he doubted not existed between them; and he
now awaited the blow of his antagonist, intending that his next thrust
should be still more vigorous. But the young stranger appeared much
better disposed to partake of the good cheer, with which he had been
so providentially provided, than to take up the cudgels of argument on
this, or on any other of the knotty points which are so apt to furnish
the lovers of science with the materials of a mental joust.

"I dare say you are very right, sir," he replied, with a most provoking
indifference to the importance of the points he conceded. "I dare say
you are quite right; and that vacca would have been the better word."

"Pardon me, sir; you are giving a very wrong construction to my
language, if you suppose I include, without many and particular
qualifications, the bibulus Americanus, in the family of the vacca. For,
as you well know, sir—or, as I presume I should say, Doctor; you have
the medical diploma, no doubt?"

"You give me credit for an honour I cannot claim," interrupted the
other.

"An under-graduate!—or perhaps your degrees have been taken in some
other of the liberal sciences?"

"Still wrong, I do assure you."

"Surely, young man, you have not entered on this important—I may say,
this awful service, without some evidence of your fitness for the task!
Some commission by which you can assert an authority to proceed, or by
which you may claim an affinity and a communion with your fellow-workers
in the same beneficent pursuits!"

"I know not by what means, or for what purposes, you have made yourself
master of my objects!" exclaimed the youth, reddening and rising with a
quickness which manifested how little he regarded the grosser appetites,
when a subject nearer his heart was approached. "Still, sir, your
language is incomprehensible. That pursuit, which in another might
perhaps be justly called beneficent, is, in me, a dear and cherished
duty; though why a commission should be demanded or needed is, I
confess, no less a subject of surprise."

"It is customary to be provided with such a document," returned the
Doctor, gravely; "and, on all suitable occasions to produce it, in
order that congenial and friendly minds may, at once, reject unworthy
suspicions, and stepping over, what may be called the elements of
discourse, come at once to those points which are desiderata to both."

"It is a strange request!" the youth muttered, turning his frowning eye
from one to the other, as if examining the characters of his companions,
with a view to weigh their physical powers. Then, putting his hand into
his bosom, he drew forth a small box, and extending it with an air of
dignity towards the Doctor, he continued—"You will find by this, sir,
that I have some right to travel in a country which is now the property
of the American States."

"What have we here!" exclaimed the naturalist, opening the folds of
a large parchment. "Why, this is the sign-manual of the philosopher,
Jefferson! The seal of state! Countersigned by the minister of war!
Why this is a commission creating Duncan Uncas Middleton a captain of
artillery!"

"Of whom? of whom?" repeated the trapper, who had sat regarding the
stranger, during the whole discourse, with eyes that seemed greedily to
devour each lineament. "How is the name? did you call him Uncas?—Uncas!
Was it Uncas?"

"Such is my name," returned the youth, a little haughtily. "It is the
appellation of a native chief, that both my uncle and myself bear with
pride; for it is the memorial of an important service done my family by
a warrior in the old wars of the provinces."

"Uncas! did ye call him Uncas?" repeated the trapper, approaching the
youth and parting the dark curls which clustered over his brow, without
the slightest resistance on the part of their wondering owner. "Ah my
eyes are old, and not so keen as when I was a warrior myself; but I can
see the look of the father in the son! I saw it when he first came nigh,
but so many things have since passed before my failing sight, that I
could not name the place where I had met his likeness! Tell me, lad, by
what name is your father known?"

"He was an officer of the States in the war of the revolution, of my own
name of course; my mother's brother was called Duncan Uncas Heyward."

"Still Uncas! still Uncas!" echoed the other, trembling with eagerness.
"And his father?"

"Was called the same, without the appellation of the native chief. It
was to him, and to my grandmother, that the service of which I have just
spoken was rendered."

"I know'd it! I know'd it!" shouted the old man, in his tremulous
voice, his rigid features working powerfully, as if the names the other
mentioned awakened some long dormant emotions, connected with the events
of an anterior age. "I know'd it! son or grandson, it is all the same;
it is the blood, and 'tis the look! Tell me, is he they call'd Duncan,
without the Uncas—is he living?"

The young man shook his head sorrowfully, as he replied in the negative.

"He died full of days and of honours. Beloved, happy, and bestowing
happiness!"

"Full of days!" repeated the trapper, looking down at his own meagre,
but still muscular hands. "Ah! he liv'd in the settlements, and was wise
only after their fashions. But you have often seen him; and you have
heard him discourse of Uncas, and of the wilderness?"

"Often! he was then an officer of the king; but when the war took place
between the crown and her colonies, my grandfather did not forget his
birthplace, but threw off the empty allegiance of names, and was true to
his proper country; he fought on the side of liberty."

"There was reason in it; and what is better, there was natur'! Come, sit
ye down beside me, lad; sit ye down, and tell me of what your grand'ther
used to speak, when his mind dwelt on the wonders of the wilderness."

The youth smiled, no less at the importunity than at the interest
manifested by the old man; but as he found there was no longer the
least appearance of any violence being contemplated, he unhesitatingly
complied.

"Give it all to the trapper by rule, and by figures of speech," said
Paul, very coolly taking his seat on the other side of the young
soldier. "It is the fashion of old age to relish these ancient
traditions, and, for that matter, I can say that I don't dislike to
listen to them myself."

Middleton smiled again, and perhaps with a slight air of derision; but,
good-naturedly turning to the trapper, he continued—

"It is a long, and might prove a painful story. Bloodshed and all the
horrors of Indian cruelty and of Indian warfare are fearfully mingled in
the narrative."

"Ay, give it all to us, stranger," continued Paul; "we are used to these
matters in Kentuck, and, I must say, I think a story none the worse for
having a few scalps in it!"

"But he told you of Uncas, did he?" resumed the trapper, without
regarding the slight interruptions of the bee-hunter, which amounted to
no more than a sort of by-play. "And what thought he and said he of the
lad, in his parlour, with the comforts and ease of the settlements at
his elbow?"

"I doubt not he used a language similar to that he would have adopted in
the woods, and had he stood face to face, with his friend—"

"Did he call the savage his friend; the poor, naked, painted warrior? he
was not too proud then to call the Indian his friend?"

"He even boasted of the connection; and as you have already heard,
bestowed a name on his first-born, which is likely to be handed down as
an heir-loom among the rest of his descendants."

"It was well done! like a man: ay! and like a Christian, too! He used to
say the Delaware was swift of foot—did he remember that?"

"As the antelope! Indeed, he often spoke of him by the appellation of Le
Cerf Agile, a name he had obtained by his activity."

"And bold, and fearless, lad!" continued the trapper, looking up into
the eyes of his companion, with a wistfulness that bespoke the delight
he received in listening to the praises of one, whom it was so very
evident, he had once tenderly loved.

"Brave as a blooded hound! Without fear! He always quoted Uncas and his
father, who from his wisdom was called the Great Serpent, as models of
heroism and constancy."

"He did them justice! he did them justice! Truer men were not to be
found in tribe or nation, be their skins of what colour they might. I
see your grand'ther was just, and did his duty, too, by his offspring!
'Twas a perilous time he had of it, among them hills, and nobly did
he play his own part! Tell me, lad, or officer, I should say,—since
officer you be,—was this all?"

"Certainly not; it was, as I have said, a fearful tale, full of
moving incidents, and the memories both of my grandfather and of my
grandmother—"

"Ah!" exclaimed the trapper, tossing a hand into the air as his whole
countenance lighted with the recollections the name revived. "They
called her Alice! Elsie or Alice; 'tis all the same. A laughing, playful
child she was, when happy; and tender and weeping in her misery! Her
hair was shining and yellow, as the coat of the young fawn, and her
skin clearer than the purest water that drips from the rock. Well do I
remember her! I remember her right well!"