CHAPTER I.
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THE SPORTSMAN'S DRAG.
When land and rent are gone and spent,
Then driving is most excellent;
For if all other fortunes fail,
You still at least can drive the mail.
Old Song.
In one of the south-western counties of New York,
one of those, I mean, which lie between the Hudson
and the Delaware, and along the eastern or Mohawk's
branch of the latter river, there is a great tract of wild
and thinly settled land, well watered and well wooded,
and well peopled by those tribes of fur and feather
which are so keenly sought by the true sportsman,
though, for the most part, human habitations are few
and far between.
In the heart of this wild tract, among the huge,
round-headed hills, some stone-ribbed, bare, and
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crowned with circlets of primeval rock, others feathered
with luxuriant woodland from the base to the summit,
there lies a beautiful and lonely dell. The mountains,
for they indeed merit that name, fall down to it on every
side abruptly; and the stream to which it owes its existence,
winds to and fro, so deviously, and in such sudden
curves, that the eye can scarce detect the point at
which it enters or departs from that small verdant basin.
Through this soft lap of ground there sweeps an excellent,
though narrow road, dividing it into two parts
nearly equal; that up the stream, to the right hand as
you travel westward, being occupied by a sweet green
meadow, as level and luxuriant as an English lawn; that
downward, to the left, much narrower and deeper, and
filled with dense and thriving timber.
There was no house, however, on the meadow, nor,
with the exception of the winding road, any sign of
civilization in the place at all.
The green savannah lay some forty feet above the
bed of the stream, at the point where the bed crossed it,
and was fringed on every side, but the lowest, with an
even and regular belt of willows, aspens, and maples,
now clad in their most gorgeous hues, by the first frosts
of autumn. Across the lowest end of this basin there
was a long green mound, now forming the fence of the
road on that side, partially overrun with brushwood and
briars; but in the centre it had been cut or broken
down abruptly, in order to give egress to the stream,
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which plunged down to its lower level by an irregular,
foaming descent, half cataract, half rapid, of nearly forty
feet in height.
It needed but one glance to discover the origin of
that smooth, natural meadow; it had been once a beaver-pond,
and that low, grassy mound, all overrun with
weeds and thick shrubbery, had been, long years ago,
the work of the industrious amphibii. The hand of
man, it is probable, had broken it, when the beavers
disappeared from their old haunts; and the small woodland
lake, drained by the outlet of its feeding stream,
had become the woodgirt savannah which we see before
us.
Immediately in front of the fall, searce ten yards distant
from it, the bridge spanned the brook; and often-times,
when the wind blew from the northward, its
planks were slippery with the driven spray. Beneath
the single arch, there was a deep black pool, wherein
the foam-wreaths of the water-fall wheeled round and
round in sullen eddies; but within ten yards the
water became somewhat shallower, leaving an awkward,
stony ford, between the bridge and a second descent,
longer and steeper than the upper fall, down
which the mountain rivulet fretted and chafed, till it
was lost both to ear and eye far in the dingle to the
left.
It was past five o'clock one lovely autumn evening,
and the sun had already sunk behind the crest of the
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western hill, though long slant rays of yellow light
streamed through each gap and broken hollow of its
ridge, filling the walley with a transparent, hazy lustre,
which half revealed the scenery, half veiled it from the
dazzled eye.
The woods were in their flush of autumnal glory, for
the air was keen and hard and bracing. There had
been a sharp frost on the previous night, and the washed
road, and brimful, turbid stream, showed that it had
succeeded heavy and continuous rains. Not a leaf,
therefore, had yet fallen from the earliest of the deciduous
trees; yet not a leaf upon the hardiest, except the
evergreens alone, but had already undergone “a change
to something new and strange,” and no imagination,
unused to the effects of an autumnal frost in America,
can fancy its unrivalled beauty.
A beautiful wild-deer had come out of the wood to
drink, and was standing beside the ford, having
quenched his thirst, gazing about him lazily, and undecided
what to do.
Suddenly he raised his head, snuffed the air eagerly,
as if he caught a taint on its breezy current, tossed his
wide antlers proudly, and dashed through the flooded
ford.
He was a tall and stately beast, yet for three times
his length in the middle of the brook he was swimming,
nor was it without something of an effort that he reached
the bank on the further side, up which he bounded with
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long, graceful strides, and disappeared immediately in
the thick woods beyond.
It was some minutes ere any human sense could have
discerned the approach of that, whatever it might be,
which had alarmed the stag.
But, in a little while, the clatter of quick hoofs might
have been heard on the hard-beaten road, and the rapid
roll of a well-built and easy-running carriage, forming
as it were an accompaniment to a fine, manly voice,
trolling the stanza, which I have prefixed to this chapter,
until the wild woods rang to the jocund sound.
In a minute or two the vehicle which bore the singer
came rapidly into view, over the brow of the eastern
hill, drawn by four capital horses at a slapping pace.
It was rather a singular-looking carriage, half mail-phaeton,
half dog-cart, yet nothing could have been
contrived more suitable for a sporting conveyance, combining
at once room, lightness, strength, and beauty.
In front, it was neither more nor less than a high-seated,
open phaeton, with a tall, square dash-board,
and a seat so elevated that the driver was almost in a
standing posture as he sat, having thus the greatest possible
command over his horses. Behind this was a box
body, with a slight rail along the top, and a comfortable
seat, much lower than that in front, as far aft as possible.
The whole body, which was supported upon three
long elliptic springs, and well furnished with wings of
patent leather, to ward off the mud splashed from the
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wheels, was painted of a deep, rich tea-colour, picked
out with black, and ornamented only by a small crest,
surrounded with a garter, painted in relief of the same
colours.
It had three lamps, one under the foot-board, so
placed as to throw its light under the horses' feet, far
forward; the other two, one above each fore-wheel,
with powerful reflectors. No baggage was in sight,
except a small trunk of tawny leather, on the rack behind.
But there was a profusion of fine bear-skins
hanging over all the seats, and covering the legs of the
travellers in the guise of aprons, all of the richest and
most costly fur.
The four horses, which came trotting over the gentle
slope as if they had nothing behind them, were as clean
and powerful cobs as ever wore a collar. None of them
were above fifteen hands and an inch in height, with
capital forchands, high clean withers, small heads well
set on, and blood-like ears. No one could look at them
without being struck by their perfect similarity in shape,
size, symmetry, and style of action. But here the similarity
ended; for two, the offside wheeler and the nigh-hand
leader, were as black and as glittering as polished
jet; the other two were beautiful silver grays.
Such were the team, which, stepping out at the rate of
ten miles an hour, all together, at a square handsome trot
came clattering down the road, snapping at their long
bright curbs, or nibbling in play at one another, without
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a fleek of foam, or a spot of sweat on their shining coats,
whirling the heavy drag along as if it were a plaything.
For the load was indeed a heavy one. The fore seat
held two persons. The driver was a tall, well-made,
athletic young man, with light hair, and a keen quick
eye, dressed in a blue box-coat with many capes, which
disguised his whole figure. But it could not disguise
the graceful ease combined with firmness of his seat,
the quick delicate strength of his fingers as he mouthed
his high-mettled cattle, or the thorough coachman-like
skill with which he handled the long English four-horse
whip, which he carried athwart his neighbour's person.
That neighbour was as different a person as can well
be imagined from his companion. He was a man of
about fifty years, not above five feet six in height, by
about four feet in breadth across the shoulders, and six
in girt about the waist, weighing at least three hundred
pounds of solid flesh, yet lithe withal, and active. His
face was excellent, sun-burned and ruddy, yet with
fine small features, a lip curling with a perpetual smile
of humour and benevolence, an eye gleaming with
mirth and kindliness, and untaught intellect. That man
had the heart of a million. You could not look at him
for half a moment and doubt it. Ay! and a soul, too,
that would do honour to a prince—though the rich
men, the would-be aristocrats of our cities, would sneer
at him, forsooth, and perhaps cut him in town after
sharing his hospitality in the country, because he is
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rough and not a gentleman! A gentleman!—Heaven
save the mark! I should like to see one of them that
could vie with him in any of those points which make
the real gentleman; kind heart, and open hand; unwillingness
to hurt the feelings of the humblest; respect
for everything that is honourable, great, and noble; and
contempt for everything that is not so, however well it
may be gilded; promptness to fight for himself, or for
his friend, when aggrieved; unblemished honesty, and
undaunted courage; the strength of a lion, added to
the [1]stomach of a man.
But to return to our party. The body of the carriage
was occupied by four dogs, as perfect specimens
of the camine, as were the nags which drew the vehicle
of the equine genus. Two of these were red Irish setters,
with coats as soft as silk, deeply feathered and
curly on the sterns and about the legs, with soft large
dark eyes, and lips and noses black as jet. The others,
pointers, were very high-bred, one black as a coal,
without a speck of white, the other white as snow, with
liver-coloured ears and eye-spots, with a small dot of
tan over each eye, and a tan-shadowing round the muzzle—
not your coarse, raw-boned, bull-headed, thick-tailed,
double-nosed Spaniards, but the true thoroughbred
English pointer, with tails thin, tapering, and
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whiplike; feet round as a cat's, strong loins, thin flanks,
deep chests—built both for speed and power, their coats
as sleek as satin, and the outline of their arched ribs just
showing through the skin, as if to tell the perfection of
their condition.
Two persons now made up the complement, seated in
the back part of the wagon, both smoking, the one a Manilla
cheroot, and the other a short, very dingy-looking
clay pipe. The former was a gentleman a year or two
younger and three or four inches shorter than the driver,
with a countenance singularly expressive of fun, kindness,
and good humour. The other, as was clearly shown
by the silver hat-band and the crest buttons of his gray
frock coat, was the groom, a stout, short, hard-faced,
knowing-looking Yorkshireman, broad-shouldered and
duck-legged, with his black hair clipped bowl-fashion
round his bullet-head, and that so closely, that had you
laid your hand on it suddenly, it would have pricked you
like the bristles of a shoe-brush.
There was yet, to make up the company of bipeds and
quadrupeds, another of the latter order, in the shape of a
superb Scotch deerhound, of the tallest stature, shaped
like a greyhound, but of three times the weight and size,
shaggy and wire-haired like a terrier, and of a deep
tawny brindle, with coal-black eyes and muzzle. This
splendid animal trotted along quietly under the hinder
axle of the carriage, keeping up, as it would seem without
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the slightest effort, with the slapping pace of the well-bred
trotters.
That was a metry party, and though the wagon,
splashed with the mud of some half-dozen different soils,
indicated that they had travelled many a mile since day-break,
there was nothing of fatigue or wearmess to be
seen either in the bipeds or quadrupeds of the company.
The latter, as I have said, were trotting along merrily,
full of play and spirit; and it was evident, by the cleanness
and brightness of their coats, that they had been
well rubbed down and polished at their mid-day halting-place.
Their harness, too, which was of the slightest
make, compatible with strength, plain black with covered
rings and buckles, and not a particle of metal visible,
except a small crest on the blinkers, had evidently been
cleaned likewise. The road had become dryer during
the afternoon, moreover, and the cattle were not splashed
at all in the same proportion with the vehicle which they
drew.
The men were singing, jesting, and laughing all the
way, and the wild woods had rung for many a league with
their sonorous music; while ever and anon, at his master's
bidding, the Yorkshire varlet would produce a key bugle,
which hung in its leather case beside him, and wake full
many an echo with points of war, or hunting-calls, wildly
symphonious.
“Halloo! Tom,” cried he who was handling the ribbons
suddenly, as he brought his strain to an end—“you
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are falling asleep, you fat devil you! come, wake up,
man, and tell us how far it is to this Dutchman's tavern,
you were telling us about.”
“Well! well!” responded the fat man, shaking himself;
“it's four miles arter you git across the bridge there.
We'll be there torights. Why, Aircher, what is't? 'Taint
half an hour nohow since we drinked—are you so dry
already you earn't wait a mile or two? But I can tell
you, you'll be jest disappinted if you counts on gittin'
anything to drink at Dutch Jake's.”
“Why not?” asked the young man from the back
seat; “why not? Is Dutch Jake temperance?”
“Jest about as much as you be, little Wax-skin!” answered
the fat man, laughing. “No, no! Dutch Jake
arn't temperance, nohow; but if he was we'd have a
better chance, for I never did know yet a temperance
man, but he would licker on the sly like, and they doos
always keep the first best rum, I tell you. But bless
you, Forester, Dutch Jake don't keep nothin' as a pig
could drink; leastwise I carn't, nohow.”
“A very clear proof that a pig cannot!” said the
other, laughing joyously.
“Jest see now, lad, if I don't pay you for that ere
when we git out of this here rattletrap,” replied Tom;
but suddenly changing his note, he cried out sharply—
“But what the devil's been to do hereaways? By the
etarnal! Aircher, the bridge has fotched away! One of
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the joists is gone, and three of them darned sleepers.
We'll niver git acrost it.”
“That we shall not, indeed,” said Archer, pulling his
horses up. “What the dence is to be done now? It is
eighteen miles back to the tavern, where the other road
branches off. We cannot get back there to-night, that's
clear enough; besides, it's off our road. This is all your
fault, you old stupid porpoise! You swore that this was
the best road.”
“So it be,” growled the fat man. “I niver see a
prettier nice road in all my life, nor you nuther, and I
couldn't tell nothin' about the darned bridge.”
“Well! hold the ribbons, while I jump out and look
at the ford. The brook is devilish full! Sit still, all
the rest of you; don't let the dogs jump out, Tim.”
And with the words he sprang to the ground, ran down
the steep pitch, by the bridge side, and examined the ford
and the further shore with a practised and wary eye.
The deerhound followed his master to the brink, and as
he reached it feathered his long stern sharply, threw up
his head and snuffed the air greedily, and the next instant
would have plunged into the stream, had not his
master's rate checked him, before he had even wet his
fore feet in the turbid current.
The party in the wagon were too busily engaged in
thinking about the road to observe the action of the
dog; and when Archer returned, Frank Forester asked
eagerly,
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“Will it do, Harry?”
“I think so,” returned Archer; “at all events we'll
try it—but it is full and strong—there's no denying it.”
“It's a darned hole, anyways!” said the fat man,
doubtfully.
“I know it is, Tom,” said Harry, “but there is no
help for it, that I see. There's one thing in our favour,
a deer has gone across it within half an hour—”
“Then we'll go clear, sure enough,” said Frank.
“That's not so sartain, nuther,” replied Tom; “a
deer harn't got no dog-cart at his heels.”
“Had we not better all of us jump out, and make it a
lighter pull?”
“Not by any means, Frank,” answered Harry.
“The weight is the only thing that will save us. If we
were empty, the stream would sweep us over the falls in
a moment.”
“What do you say, boys, shall we try it? I will not
deny that we shall have a squeak for it; but if we do
not, we must give up our trip.”
“Oh! try it, I say!” answered Forester. “One must
die some day, and some one must die every day—as well
to-day as to-morrow. I say try it, by all means.”
“I say so tew!” Tom took up the word. “But I
arn't a goin' to be killed yit awhile, now I tell you—
there arn't no stream hereaways that can begin to
dreawn me!”
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“I should think not,” said Harry. “It might as we
undertake to drown a whiskey-barrel.”
“T' rocks moight be bre-aking thee, ay reckon, tho',
interposed Timothy with perfect gravity; “ay've seed
pooncheon stove in, vary quickly.”
“You never saw a feather-bed broken, did you, Timothy?”
asked Forester.
“Noa, sur!” replied Timothy, with a grin; but his
face changed as they came down the summit of the
pitch, and looked down upon the red turbid stream, and
the steep rocky cleft below it, down which the water
were raving fiercely. “Ey deary me! but there's a heavy
fresh on! ay doot we'se never win across't.”
“We shall soon know,” said Archer, gathering the
horses well in hand, and shaking loose the thong of the
four-horse whip. His face was grave, for he knew that
there was danger; but his eye was bright, and his lip
firm.
The stream was about twelve yards over. The leader
entered quietly, and for two or three steps the water
did not reach their knees. But in the middle there was
a strong current, with a heavy swirl.
“Come, come! it is nothing, after all!” shouted
Frank, joyously.
“Arn't it though?” replied Tom. And as he spoke
the leaders were weltering up to the saddle-laps, and
scarcely able to keep their footing. The next moment
they were swimming, and the wheelers plunged into
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the deep hole, the wagon following them. The broad-side
of the carriage was now opposed to the full weight
of the torrent, for such indeed it almost was, just as all
the horses had relaxed their pull, and were floundering
heavily in the water. The hind wheels were swept
round, and the whole carriage began to yield sensibly,
and drive towards the rocks.
By this time the leaders were on sounder ground, and
in shallower water, and their pull dragged the wagon
deeper into the hole, but at the same time helped the
wheelers somewhat, and enabled them to touch bottom
with their fore feet, at least. At this critical moment,
Harry rose quickly to his feet, gave his reins a shake,
uttered a shout, and brought his sharp lash down in a
figure of eight, striking all the four horses nearly simultaneously,
and that so keenly that the blood sprang from
the leaders.
Together they all bounded to the lash with snort and
plunge, amid the flashing water. Everything strained
and creaked about the wagon and the harness, as if it
must have gone to pieces. Had anything broken at that
moment, they must have been swept down the fall.
But nothing failed at the pinch. The next moment
the leaders were straining up the further bank—the
wheelers had found good foot-hold on the gravel-bank.
A violent jolt followed, as the fore-wheels were dragged
over a block of stone at the water's edge, when crack—
crack—both the traces of the near-leader parted; and
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almost at the same moment, with a shivering crash, the
off horse's bar broke in the eye. The leaders were
loose but for the reins; and for a moment, though happily
the wagon was stuck fast, and out of the stream's
way, all was in confusion.
Not a word had been spoken since Harry's shout, but
now all was merriment and bustle.
“Jump out, Tim! Jump out quick; to the leaders'
heads! Never mind the water.”
The hardy groom was out in a moment. He scrambled
through the water, and up the bank, as fast as his
duck legs could carry him.
He had the horses by the bits in a second, and Harry
flinging loose the leaders' reins, which were unbuckled,
they were led off and tied to a tree, in less time than it
takes to describe it.
“What's to be done now, Harry?” asked Frank.
“How the deuce is this to be righted?”
“You'll see! Sit still, that's all! Get away, lads!”
he added, touching the wheelers gently with the whip.
A steady pull released the wagon from the stones
and drew it up the bank to the spot where Tim stood
with the leaders.
“Now look alive, lads. Forester, just unhitch that
spare set of bars from the back of your seat—there
don't you see them? Get out the spare traces, Timothy
and the wrench from the harness-trunk—that's it, look
alive, for it's growing dark apace.”
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And by dint of deliberate activity, and well directed
exertion, not ten minutes had elapsed before the broken
bars were removed, and the spare set substituted;
fresh traces buckled on, and the fragments of the old
onces thrown into the bottom of the wagon.
Within a quarter of an hour they were rattling away
along the road all a-taunto, and without a trace of their
recent accident, merry and noisy, through the fast-fading
twilight which waned betimes, in the deep gorges of
those woodland hills.
eaf152.n1[1]—leonis Vim stomacho apposuisee nostro.
Horace.
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CHAPTER II. THE NIGHT-DRIVE.
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The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.
Campbell.
The sun had entirely set before Archer's gallant
team had whisked the shooting wagon over the summit
of the first ridge beyond the scene of their quickly-repaired
accident.
There was still, however, a lingering crimson flush
on the western sky, against which the broad-backed
mountains stood out erect, massive in purple majesty
as if they had perpendicular ramparts of granite. High
overhead, the stars were twinkling clear and bright in
the dark azure vault, up which the thread-like crescent
of the young moon was climbing, with one large lustrous
planet at her side.
The atmosphere was pure and breathless, and so still
that not a sound of any kind was to be heard, except
the quick clatter of the hoofs on the frozen road, and
the slight rumbling noise of the well-built carriage.
About a mile distant from the broken bridge, the
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by road which crossed it entered a broader and more
beaten way, lying at right angles, or nearly so, to its
previous course, and running through a glen of the
same character with that through which the travellers
had been journeying, though somewhat wider, and
watered by what might be called a river.
In order to reach this valley, the road they had been
following, which hitherto had wound in and out among
the hills, through twenty little dells and basins, crossing
at most but the lower spurs of the wooded ranges, here
breasted by the main western ridge, scaled it boldly in
a series of steep zigzags, partly scarped in the hill-side,
partly supported by piles and breastworks of
timber.
The branches of the trees crossed overhead, forming
a roof like that of a gothic aisle; and, as is usual, the
frosts of autumn had taken much less hold on the foliage
where the upland soil was dry, although rich, than
it had done in the sour and watery swamps of the
valley.
Not a ray, therefore, penetrated the dense canopy of
boughs, and the road was as dark as a closed room at
midnight.
Harry was laughing and talking merrily as they left
the line of the valley, and, to say the truth, took no note
of the darkness so long as the road continued straight.
But after it had ascended, perhaps a hundred yards in
a right line, there was a sharp and awkward angle.
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The leaders, as is usually the case, tried to turn too
quickly, and as the side of the road to which they were
bearing was that which fell abruptly down into the valley,
Harry met them with a firm hand, holding them to the
hill, though unable to see a foot in front of the wheels.
Luckily, at this moment, the fore wheels rose over a
little mound, plunged down on the other side, and were
followed by the hind wheels, with the same uneasy jerking
motion. The next instant, Archer pulled up the
horses, backed them the least in the world, and they
stood motionless, with their traces slackened, and the
vehicle prevented from backing down hill by the jog, as
it is called, or little gully, made to prevent the wintry
rains from washing the steep roads, as is generally the
case in those mountain regions.
“Tim!” exclaimed Harry, quickly, almost before
the wagon bad become motionless.
“Ay! ay! sur,” answered the sharp-witted Yorkshireman.
But to Tom Draw's huge amazement, and
something, he it added, to that of his master likewise,
the short sonorous response came from the heads of the
horses, and not, as both had expected, from the back
seat of the dog-cart.
“Tim, we must have the lamps,” said Harry, well
knowing that in the nil admirari lies half the secret of
being well and promptly served. “The road is as dark as a black dog's mouth. I cannot see the gray
wheeler's ears, let alone the leader's.”
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“Ay's warrant it,” replied the groom. “Ay kenned
that varra weel, afore at you quit t' valley. Soa thinks
ay to mysen, there's be a fash enow, wi' t' leaders, an'
ay'll be needed at t' heads on 'em laike. Soa I joost
slipped out ahint t' wagon, and well it is, ay wot, ay
thought on't, for t' leaders wud hae been doon t' bank
in anoother minnit.”
“Quite right, Tim, quite right!” said his master,
approvingly. “I was thinking of something else, or I
would have lighted up before we got into the woods.
Now look alive, man; you have got candles in the
lamps, I hope?”
“Ay! ay! sur; two i' t' great lamp unner t' foot-board,
and one in each of t' others. Boot t' matches
are i' t' tool-chest, yonner. Now, Measter Forester,
gin you'll please joost joomp out, an' stand to t' leaders
whaile ay get 'em, we'll have laight enoof enow.”
“Good Lord! jump out, indeed! I shall break my
neck, and go head-over-heels down the crags,” he responded,
half in fun, half in earnest, and with a sort of
dolorous tone, that showed he was far from being sure
that his words would not be realized.
“Get out on the off-side, Frank, between the wagon
and the hill; you'll do well enough there. That is it.”
“What you say right is perfectly true, Harry,” replied
Frank, scrambling out of the bearskins, in which
he was rolled up so snugly, and making for the horses'
heads, which he reached in a minute. “But what the
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plague have you done with old Tom? I haven't heard
a word—no, not an oath, even—since we stopped.
Punch him in the ribs, Harry.”
“No! no!” shouted the fat man, lustily. “Don't
you dew that—don't you dew that, I say. I swan, I'll
fix you, little Wax-skin, when we gits to Jake's.”
“Oh! you're awake now, are you?” replied the
other, laughing. “Was he asleep, Harry?”
“I rather think not, Frank,” answered Archer, “for
I have heard a noise for the last ten minutes, not quite
so loud as Niagara, it is true, but about as loud as
Paterson Falls, I should say—a constant, gurgling fall,
as if of a good strong river; and there's a devil of a
smell of rum here now.”
“ 'Taint rum,” responded the fat man, indignantly,
“it's good old apple-jack. Little Wax-skin, there, would
give his eyes for a sup of it. That's good; there comes
the lamps,” he added, as Timothy, after bustling about,
and jingling for some minutes in the tool-chest, made
his appearance with a small glass lanthorn, and some
matches, by aid of which he soon lighted the lamps;
and these, with their strong magnifying-glasses, made
the whole road as clear as day, and cast a broad white
glare upward upon the many-coloured leaves, which
formed the vault overhead.
“Don't put it out, Tim,” said his master, “we'll
blow a cloud directly. That will do, Frank, lad. Just
turn their noses into the road again, and then jump in
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and make yourself comfortable. The big cigar-case is
under your seat, there; just hand it out and help yourself,
and then pass it forward; I have not one left in
my pouch.”
“Now, then!” he added, after a minute's pause, during
which three Manilla cheroots were kindled, and a
rich odour of the Indian weed diffused through the
cold still atmosphere.
“All's right!” responded Timothy, and sprang in a
moment into his seat, just as Archer, gathering his reins,
and reaching his whip from the socket, uttered a low
soft whistle, and a “Get away, lads!”
There was a rattling of bars, a clash of hoofs, and a
pebble or two flew high into the air; and then, without
more ado, the four fleet horses were in merry motion.
The clear light flashed along the road, silvered the
mossy bolls of the huge trees, and cast strange wavering
sheets of alternate shade and lustre through the deep
forest-aisles. Several times, as they were whirled along
at ten miles an hour, a heavy flapping of huge wings,
and a wild dolorous screech from some tall tree, announced
that their lamps had aroused some large nightbird
from its slumbers; and once, just as they cleared
the woods and issued into an open field on the mountain's
brow, a long protracted howl rose fearfully into
the silence, not, as it would seem, above fifty yards behind
them.
“What in the devil's name is that?” said Frank,
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hastily, laying his hand almost instinctively on the but
of one of the long duelling-pistols, a brace of which, in
leathern holsters, were attached to each seat ready for
instant service.
“Yon's a varra oogly noise, is yon!” exclaimed Timothy,
astonished, which by the way was for him a
rare state of mind.
“I swan that's a wolf!” shouted Fat Tom, answering
the question and the observation at the moment of their
utterance. For all three spoke simultaneously.
“A woll, is it?” said Forester, quietly removing his
hand from the weapon, for be knew the habits of the animal,
though he had never seen one, too well to anticipate
any danger. “I did not know you had any of the varmints
here.”
“A wolf!” exclaimed Timothy, making a plunge
under the bearskins for his master's rifle; “heart aloive!
we's be all eaten oop i' noa time.”
“Nonsense, Tim,” replied Harry, laughing, “there's
no danger. Wolves never meddle with men here nowadays.
But I did not think there were any left in this
quarter.”
“Nor I nuther,” interposed old Tom, scratching his
head and cogitating. “Nor there aint been none hereaway
these six or eight year. We're a goin' to have a hard
winter now, I reckon. Leastwise they say hard weather
to the norrad brings down the tarnal critters this away.
But I'm right glad to hear him howl, hows'ever.”
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“Glad! why the deuce are you glad, Tom?” asked
Harry. And this again was rather an unusual occurrence;
for so well did Archer understand the bent of the
fat worthy's genius, that he but rarely asked an explanation.
“'Caze when you hears a wolf howl, Aircher,” he
made answer, “you may be sure game is either very
plenty or very scace, one or other. Now it aint nohow
possible as that chap should be druv by hunger to make
that 'ere dismal screechin', for everybody here knows
that the woods is full o'possums and rabbits. So it must
be 'caze deers is plenty that he's hollering; that's why
I says I'm glad, Aircher. I'd a thought, too, you'd have
had sense enough to a knowed it.”
“May it not be that it's because possum's plenty that
he's `Kollering'?” asked Frank slyly.
“No!” answered Tom very gruffly, as he inhaled a
long puff of smoke, and blew it out again slowly. “No,
and you knows it.”
“Indeed I do not, Tom,” replied Frank, with a laugh
which he vainly endeavoured to stifle. “I know nothing
about wolves nor possums either. Do tell us.”
“You lie, boy! you dew know. And you'll raise no
foolin' out o'me, I can tell you. So quit. Now, Timothy,
git out your old bull's horn and blow up. Them
lights as you see down yonder is at Jake's, and I can
see by the way they're a fixin' and manœuvrin' that
they're a gittin' things fixed to go to bed torights. Put
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on, Harry! put on, boy; it's all good road now, though
it be's down hill a leetle.”
It certainly was down hill a little, for the road lay at
an angle of some forty-five degrees. Yet Harry took
the old Trojan at his word, and put the nags along, and,
holding them well in hand, it was with the jingling of
trace and curb-chains, the clatter of the bars, rattling
against the wheelers' houghs, and the roll of the rapid
wheels, that they thundered down the slope; while loud
above all the din rose the clear mellow notes of Tim
Matlock's well known bugle, making the gorges of the
Blue Hills to resound with the unusual cadences of “God
save the king.”
As they came wheeling round the angle, into the
broader valley, they passed a foaming mill-dam, barring
the little river, overhung by a dozen large weeping willows,
the foliage of which was still full and verdant.
A large, calm pool, reflecting the bright starry skies
and the dark tufted masses of the precipitous hill which
walled its further side, lay close to the left hand of the
road, and was but slightly separated from it by a rough
fence of unbarked cedar poles from the mountain. On
the right, all the level space between the road and the
other hill, not exceeding fifty yards in width, was covered
with a beautiful second-growth of oak, hickory, and
maple, overhanging a thick underwood of cranberry
and wintergreens, interspersed with the glossy leaves of
the calmia, the azalia, and the rhododendron.
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Among this rich woodland was the little tavern, to
which they were bound, nestled so closely that its existence
might have remained unsuspected until the traveller
was almost in front of its long, low, Dutch portico,
formed by a projection of the shingled eaves, and of its
stately signpost.
Harry, however, knew the locale right well, and had
his horses in hand; and as he shaved the trunk of a
huge chesnut, which formed the boundary post of the
little green before the door, he pulled up instantly, amid
the light of a dozen candles and lanthorns; for the well-known
sound of his key-bugle had roused all the inhabitants,
and it was in the midst of a deafening shout of
cacophonous laughter, and of “Ky! Masser Harrys!”
announcing half the company, at least, to be Dutch
negroes, that the friends jumped to the ground, their
night-drive pleasantly concluded.
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CHAPTER III.
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THE HUNTER'S YARN.
By night I heard them on our track,
Their troop came hard upon our back,
With their long gallop, which can tire
The bound's deep hate and hunter's fire.
Mazeppa.
The room, into which our sporting friends were introduced
by Dutch Jake, himself, was a long and narrow
apartment occupying the whole breadth, and one-third
of the length of the whole house. It was lighted by
day by six small windows, three on each side, and by
two narrow glass-doors, that through which our sportsmen
had gained admittance, and a second directly
opposite to it; and by night, as in the present instance,
by half a dozen sconces, with marvellously dirty
tin reflectors, attached to the wall, each containing one
large home-made tallow candle. Had this been all the
illumination, however, of the long, dingy, low-ceiled
room, it would have barely sufficed to make the darkness
visible; but, as it was, a huge pile of hickory logs, blazing
and snapping in a vast open fire-place, sending broad
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sheets of flame up the wide-throated chimney, and great
volumes of smoke, at intervals, into the room, diffused
both warmth and lustre through the place.
At the right hand of the door by which they entered,
was the bar itself, with a narrow, semicircular counter,
protected by stout wooden bars, and a sliding-door.
The shelves of this sanctum were garnished with sundry
kegs of liquor, painted bright green, and labelled
with the names of the contents, in black characters on
gilded serolls. These, with two or three dull-looking
decanters of snakeroot-whiskey, and other kinds of
“bitters;” a dozen heavy-bottomed tumblers, resembling
in shape the half of an hour-glass, set up on the
small end; a wooden box of whity-brown crushed sugar,
which professed to be white, and a considerable array
of tobacco-pipes, constituted all the furniture of Jake's
bar, and promised but little, as Tom Draw had forewarned
his young associates, for the drinkableness of
the Dutchman's drinkables.
Unpalatable, however, as they appeared, and as they
would probably have turned out on a trial, to the refined
tastes of our sporting epicures, it seemed that they
were looked upon in a very different light by the assembled
magnates of the neighbourhood, who, in great
numbers, and great glee, came thronging towards the
door to gape at the new-comers.
They had just ceased from a regular breakdown
Dutch dance, which they had been plying most
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uproariously and most industriously to the obstreperous braying
of a fiddle, worked by a fifty-horse-power coal-black
white-headed negro, assisted by a shrill squeaking flute
and a jingling tambourine, shrieked on and hammered,
with proportionate energies by his sons, as it was easy
to perceive by their precise similarity in hue and feature
with the old fiddler.
All the three, despite the difference of hue and race,
appeared to be on the best and most intimate footing
with all present; and the whole crowd, seeing that the
new-comers were neither friends nor acquaintances,
crowded to the bar, and took advantage of the temporary
cessation of the breakdown, to liquor on the largest
scale and in the most promiscuous fashion, men and girls,
black and white, altogether.
“Hallo! Jake!” exclaimed Fat Tom, as he entered,
affecting to stare about as if he could hardly see, “what
in creation makes it so all-fired dark in here? why, I
carn't see my way to the bar, if so be there be one.”
“Vell, Mishter Traw,” responded the old Dutchman,
“I ton't see tat it pe so tark—put to teyfil! it most pete
shmokes, for de tamn'd chimbly”—
“No! no! it arn't, Jake,” interrupted Tom, “it arn't
the smoke nor the chimney, nohow. I'll nose it out
torights, I tell you. It's the darned niggers, I guess.
It's the niggers, sartin! why, there's enough on 'em to
make the moonshine dark!”
This most characteristic speech on the part of the
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jolly publican, called forth a burst of good-humoured
and resounding laughter from the black portion of the
company, the blackest of whom are wont in mirthful or
angry objurgation to vituperate one another as “brack
niggas;” but it was by no means so complacently received
by the white company, many of the younger members
of which were aware that out of the Dutch settlements
it is looked on as a reproach to hold the slightest
intercourse in hours of relaxation with the free negro,
much more to eat at the same board, or drink in company
with him; and several of these were not a little
disposed to resent the bold jest of the bluff speaker.
Little cared jolly Tom for that, however; but seeing
the bended brows and lowering looks of some of the
gigantic Dutchmen, he would in all probability have
proceeded in a strain yet more offensive, and would very
likely have produced a general row, if Harry, who
entered the room a moment after him, had not interposed
promptly and effectively to preserve the peace.
“The poor old man's very drunk, gentlemen,” he
said, with his frank and cheery smile; “a thing. I'm
sorry to say, that happens to him very often; but he's
mad now into the bargain, which I don't wonder at, for
he wanted to kiss a very nice young wench as we came
along, and she wouldn't have him on any terms!”
“Kiss the dev—” Tom began to reply, furiously
indignant, but he was interrupted by about a dozen
voices, eager and loud in inquiry into particulars; for so
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seriously had Harry spoken, that half the young men
believed him to be in earnest.
“Do tell,” said one; “where was't?”
“I ton't know of no naice yong venches on de roat
to York,” cried another.
“I cannot exactly tell you, gentlemen,” replied Harry,
still preserving his gravity admirably; “as I am not
well acquainted with your country, or with the names
of places. But I think I can describe it to you. You
all know the old beaver-dam, I fancy, and the bridge;
well, just beyond that there's a big hill; and, beyond
that again, a deep wet swamp; and across that a mountain,
with a toll-gate on the far side—”
“Yes, yes—I know—I know ferry vell. Dat's
Hans Schneider's dole-gate. Vell! dere's no yong vench
dere!”
“No, no—not there—but in a little hovel about two-thirds
up the mountain. The road was so steep that I
made the fat man get out and walk up, and just as he
got opposite the door, she came out with a tin pail to
fetch some water, and he tried—”
“Mein Got! It's old Shuno dat he meansh; old
Tave's fraw!”
“Tousand teyfils! She pe olter nor a huntert year.”
“Ant oglier as de ferry Olt Nick!”
“Tid he, py Cot! vant to kish olt Shuno? Donder
ant teyfil! vat a peasht!”
“Ant she voultn't haf him no vays. By Got! I
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ton't vonter as he pe mat mit de colour peoples, arter
tat.”
What were Fat Tom's emotions, at this strange invention
of Harry's, it would be difficult to say; for in the
first instance his face turned as red as fire, and his eyes
gleamed angrily from beneath the overhanging pent-house
of his heavy gray eyebrows; but at the numerous
wondering expressions of the credulous and astonished
Dutchmen, at the abhorrent and disgusted looks of the
girls, many of whom were very young and plump and
pretty, and above all at the intense delight of the negroes,
who stamped, and yelled with laughter, and
positively rolled on the floor in their mad glee, the old
man's face relaxed. A joke was always too much for
him, even if it were, as in the present instance, at his
own expense.
“Well, well,” he said, “boys, t'aint jist right to
tell tales on the party. See if I beant quits with you
afore long! But so be you has told, I don't see but
I've got to stand treats for the company. Jake, you
darned old cuss, look alive, carn't you? and make a
gallon of hot Dutch rum, torights; and if that ar'n't
enough for all hands, make two. If I carn't kiss
wenches, I'd be pleased to see if some of these all-fired
pretty white gals won't be a-kissin' me, afore the
night's done, anyhow.”
“I von't den, anyhow, for fon!” said a very pretty
little blue-eyed girl, with a profusion of long light brown
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curls, who had been listening with her bright eyes distended
to their utmost.
“For fun!” exclaimed Fat Tom, intentionally misunderstanding
her meaning, and making at her with a
moment's hesitation. “By the Etarnal! 'tarn't for fun
I kisses, I'd have you to know—it's in right down most
all-fired airnest.”
“No, no, old man!” interposed Harry, stepping
between Tom and the girl. “Don't be afraid, my
pretty lassie, he shall not touch you, he's too old altogether
for such a pretty girl as you.”
“Ant ferry moche too ogly!” answered the girl,
laughing joyously.
“Here's metal more attractive, perhaps,” said Harry,
seizing Frank Forester, and dragging him forward as
he spoke.
“No, no. He mosen't mettle mit me neider,” said
the girl, still laughing. “I'd all as fon pe a kissing te
old cat, mit all tat nashty hair on his lip, shost as pad,
mine Got, nor fon olt racoon!”
A fresh burst of laughter, from the whole room, now
followed this peculiarly acceptable repartee, in allusion
to the thick yellow moustache which covered the whole
of Frank's upper lip; and under cover of the laugh,
Harry snatched a hearty kiss from the laughing lips of
the little coquette, saying, as he did so—
“It's hard if one of the lot won't suit you!”
“It ain't you den, mit your imputence,” she answered,
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blushing a good deal, and fetching him a crack on the
side of the head, which made his cheek tingle, and his
ear burn for half an hour. “Kiss me again, den, von't
you?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Harry, nothing
daunted—and suiting the action to the word, he caught
her in his arms, and bestowed upon her, not one, but
half a dozen long and sonorous busses; which, as he
afterward asseverated, though she affected to struggle
and resist with all her might, she returned with good
interest.
Most of the company laughed loudly at this interlude,
which seemed to pass as a matter of course; but one rawboned
young Dutchman, who had been dancing with the
girl half the evening, began to look something more than
minacious, when the Dutch rum made its appearance,
and the rich, spicy odour dissipated in a twinkling his
fast-rising choler.
The strange compound of Santa Cruz rum, boiling
water, allspice, brown sugar, pepper-corns, and—start not,
gentle reader, when I add—butter, passed around with
clattering of glasses, gurgling imbibition, and loud laughter,
under cover of which our friends stole away, by a
door close to the fireplace, leaving the rustic ball to recommence
with new din and spirit, after an interruption
which had turned out so acceptable to all parties present.
“Now, Jake,” said Harry to the landlord, who had
ushered them into a sort of sanctum, in a projecting wing
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of the old stone tavern, which had a separate communication
with the rest of the house—“you can get
us something to eat, I suppose; we have not had a
mouthful since one o'clock, and are half dead with hunger.
You got my letter, I suppose, to tell you we would
be here to-night?”
“Sartin,” replied old Jake. I cot it yeshtertay.
Mein Cot! yesh. I can kive you fresh eggs and ham,
and de shmoke peet, petter as nothink!”
“Well, look you here, we have brought up some cold
meat with us. Do you have some potatoes roasted in
the ashes, and let us have some of your best butter, and
brown bread, and let my man Timothy do whatever he
wants to do in the kitchen. Send a couple of your boys
to take care of the horses; and let another run over to
Dolph Pierson's, and tell him we are here, and want
him to come up to supper.”
“Tolph vas here not an hour since, ant I dolt him as
you vas a comin'; ant he'll pe here mitout my sendin de
poy. Vell! I'll ko stret avay, ant pid de women volks
purn de potatoes, ant sent de pooter ant de preat, ant
make de hot vater for de poonch—you'll pe a vantin
poonch—anyting elshe, Mishter Archur?”
“Yes! have you got any ice?”
“A plenties!”
“Send in a good big tub full of it, broken small. Do
that first—will you, Jake?”
“I fill,” answered the old man, “and see, here cooms
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de man Dimoty. You tell him vat you'll pe a vanting,
ant fe'll pe a doing it raight any vays.”
And as he spoke he left the room—while the little
Yorkshireman entered it from the offices, clean-rigged,
and washed already, and followed by two negroes, carrying,
the one a couple of champagne baskets, and the
other a large and apparently heavy chest of live-oak
board with iron at the corners. Timothy himself bore
a smaller case of Russia leather, which he deposited on
a side table, the negroes arranging their burthens on
either side the fire-place.
“Noo, bring t' goon caases in,” said Timothy, “and
t' little leather troonk wi t' shot and t' powther,” and
then turning to Harry, he continued—“T' horses is
sorted doon bonnily, and all four on 'em are tooking into
t' oats laike bricks, Measter Aircher. You'll be a wantin'
soopper noo, ay reckon, at least, ay sure mysen,
ay's varra hoongry.”
“So are we, Timothy; and I trust you have something
eatable in the travelling-case; for there is nothing
to be got here but bread and butter.”
“Ay've got twa brace o' t' cauld larded partridges—
a brace o' t' soommer dooks ready for broiling—a cauld
ham simmered i' champagne—and a goose-paie, 'at ay
maad mysen, fit for t' Queen, God bless her!”
“Excellent well, indeed, Timothy. You are a caterer
worth a thousand. Ah! here comes the ice. Now
look sharp, get out four bottles of champagne, and stick
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them into that tub. We'll keep the wood-duck and
the goose-pie for to-morrow. We'll have a brace
of the larded grouse, and the ham to-night. You go
and see to the roasting of the potatoes, and make a
good big omelet. Have you brought any parsley with
you?”
“Lots on't, sur—and a doozen or twa little ingans,
and soom tarragon. Ay's mak a first-rate omelet, ay's
oophaud it.”
“Very well, then look quick about it, and leave us
the keys. We'll get the things out, and lay the table,
this time, for it's growing late. What liquor have you
brought, beside champagne?”
“A gallon demijohn o' t' paine-apple room, 'at Measter
Forester aye laikes sae weel, and anither o' t' auld pale
Cognac; and anither yet o' t' Ferintosh to fill t' dram
bottles.”
“Let us have the pine-apple rum, and some water
screeching hot. Now, mizzle. Come, Frank, pull that
big round table into the middle of the room; I'll open
the boxes.”
And suiting the action to the word, he unlocked the
large chest, which displayed at the top a shallow tray
containing a supply of cutlery and napkins; a coffee-pot
and spirit-lamp, and a small breakfast service, with a
silver stew-pan and gridiron. This tray removed, several
tiers were discovered of bright tin boxes of various
sizes, piled one above the other, such as are used
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by restaurateurs for sending out hot dinners to their
customers.
Just as this was done, the door opened and a buxom
Dutch serving-girl entered with a large table-cloth of
very coarse but very clean home-made linen, followed
by another carrying several plates and dishes empty, in
addition to a magnificent brown loaf, and butter, like
that set before Sisera, in a lordly dish.
“That's my good lasses,” exclaimed Harry. “Now
if you'll get us the big punch-bowl and ladle, and bring
us a kettle of hot water, we'll see to all the rest. Now,
Frank, the big dish. It will just hold the ham. Look
you here, is it not a fine one? Pure Yorkshire, and how
beautifully brazed! There, set it at the head of the
table; and give me that other dish for the larded grouse;
we shall sup as well as if we were at home, at my
shooting-box. Now, then, I'll open the leather case,
and get out the glass and siller; do you fetch the napkins
and cutlery, and see that you fold the napkins in right
form, or Timothy will laugh at you. It's no lark to me
to eat a good supper with two-pronged steel forks, or to
drink champagne out of their vile glass an inch thick.”
“I'd be all-fired sorry,” interposed Tom, “to be a
bottle of champagne afore you, if so be that you were
a bit dry, in a quart pewter mug, or an earthen—”
“How should you like to be a pea, Tom,” Frank
interrupted him, “and he with a two-pronged pitchfork?”
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“It 'ud take a most onmighty pitchfork to hoist me,
if I war a pea.”
“You'd make a tolerable marrow-fat, I think, Tom.
I'd bet on your taking a premium at the agricultural.”
“It would require an infernal gizzard to digest him,”
said Archer, laughing.
“Why, yes,” said Frank; “I don't think he'd agree
very well with the man who ate him; as poor Sidney
Smith wished the new Bishop of Zealand that he might
do, when he was on the eve of sailing for his diocese.”
“Better a darned sight be in a diocess, whativer it may
be, nor on the pint of a pitchfork,” said Tom grinning.
“But come, boys, come—I could eat—I could eat—”
“Could you eat a young child with the small-pox,
Tom, as Alick Bell says, when he's peckish?” asked
Frank.
“You darned etarnal little beast,” replied Tom,
aiming a back-handed lick at him, which would have
felled an ox, much more little Frank, if he had not
dodged it. “You'd spile a horse's stomach, with your
all-fired filthy talking.”
“Hear! hear!” exclaimed Harry. “If that does
not beat Satan preaching against sin, I will say no more,
now or for ever. But I do wish Tim would come, and
that Dutch hunting fellow.”
“Shall you wait supper for the hunting Dutchman?”
“Wait h—!” cried Tom, savagely. “I'd see every
Dutchman out of all Jarsey, and Pennsylvany arter that,
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in the tother place, afore I'd wait a minute. Wait
supper! The boy's mad! This comes o'what he calls
breedin'! Darn all sich breedin', I say. It'll breed nothin'
I knows on, if it beant maggots in a body's brain.”
By this time, Frank had disposed four plates in orderly
array, with upon each a neatly-folded napkin, and a
thick hunch of brown bread in its snowy bosom; had
placed the ham and cold grouse, with their carving-knives
and forks in bright symmetry beside them, and
was looking on with an air of extreme satisfaction, while
Harry drew out of the leathern casket a set of neat
castors, replenished with every sauce and condiment
that Bininger can furnish, each bottle secured, like a
smelling-flask, by a screw top of silver. These placed
on the centre of the board, he produced next two silver
salt-cellars, a dozen table-spoons, and as many forks of
the same metal, and last not least, four tall pint beakers
of clear crystal, and four yet more capacious tumblers
of New-Castle cut glass.
A moment or two afterward, the bowl made its appearance;
the kettle was hung upon the crane above
the glowing pile of hickory; and the lemons and loaf-sugar
were disposed near the China bowl, whose vast
gulf was destined soon to entomb them.
Then the door was again thrown open, and Tim
Matlock made his entrée, bearing a tray with four wax
candles lighted, the hot potatoes, and the omelet aux
fines herbes, sending forth volumes of odoriferous steam,
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which alone could have won an anchorite from his
fasting.
It was a curious scene—such a scene as never before
had that small room, with its narrow casements, and
dark wainscoting, and home-made rag carpet, witnessed.
Cookery which Ude would not have despised; game,
such as Hawker would have given five years of life to
shoot; wine, that would have been called excellent at
Crockford's; silver, of Storr and Mortimer's best fashion;
glass, such as might glitter worthily on the queen's
table; and wax candles, shedding over the whole their
pure strong lustre.
And then for the guests—the two elegant, well-formed,
high-bred gentlemen, who would have been
esteemed an acquisition to the most courtly company;
and the grotesque, original, rotund, rough-visaged,
tender-hearted yeoman; who had the racy wit of Jack
Falstaff without his abject cowardice, his sensuality
without his selfishness, his honest bearing without his
hollow heart—that king of native sportsmen!—that
trump of trumps!—honest, brave, witty, kind, eccentrical
Tom Draw of Warwick.
And now, just as the supper was all ready, and the
appetites of all still readier, the door communicating
with the bar-room, or ball-room rather, was thrown
open, and thereat entered one whom I must stop a moment
to describe—Dolph Pierson, the Dutch Hunter.
It might be almost sufficient to say, that this man was
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in all external parts, and in many mental qualities, the
very converse of Tom Draw—but he is a real picture,
and as such, I will paint him.
He was three inches above six feet in height, and of
bone and frame which were almost gigantic, whereas
honest Tom was nearly a foot shorter than his rival
sportsman, and so light of bone, that it was difficult to
understand on what principle the vast mass of flesh
which he bore about with him was supported; much
more how it was moved, at times, with so much agility
and sprightliness. Then again it appeared, at first sight,
that there was no flesh at all between the angular massive
bones, and the parchment-like skin, of the new-comer—
while honest Tom's hide was distended almost
unto bursting, by the preternatural bulk of “too, too
solid fat,” which cushioned his whole form, and made
every line about him, if not precisely a line of beauty,
at least a line of sinuous rotundity.
Dolph Pierson's face and features were as sharp and
as angular as the edge of an Indian tomahawk; his
brow was low, but neither narrow nor receding; on the
contrary, it displayed considerable amplitude in those
parts which phrenologists are pleased to designate as
the seats of ideality; and some prominence in the point
which the same learned gentry assert to contain the
organs whereby man appreciates the relations between
cause and effect. Across this forehead the skin was
drawn as tight as the parchment of a drum, indented
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only by one deep furrow, running from temple to temple.
His hair was thin and straggling, and what there
was of it was as white as the drifted snow, as were also
two tufts of ragged bristles, which stood out low down on
the jaw-bone, a little way below his mouth, alone relieving
the monotonous colour of his otherwise whiskerless
and beardless physiognomy.
As if to set off the whiteness of his hair, however,
and of those twin tufts, his eyebrows, which were of
extraordinary thickness, were as black as a crow's
wing, running in a straight line, without any arch above
the eyes.
The eyes, themselves, which were very deeply set,
and, in fact, almost entombed between the sharp projection
of the brow, and the almost fleshless process of
the cheek-bones, were dark, twinkling, restless, never
fixed for a moment, but ever roving, as if in quest of
something which he was anxiously seeking. His nose
was of the highest and keenest aquiline, starting out
suddenly at one acute angle from between his eyes, and
then turning as abruptly downward, in a line parallel
to the face, the point at the curvature, or summit, appearing
as if it would pierce through the skin.
The nostrils were rather widely expanded, and their
owner had a habit of distending them, as if he weresnuffing
the air; so that many of his neighbours believed
that he actually was gifted with the hound's instinct of
following game by the scent.
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His mouth, to conclude, was wide, straight, thin-lipped,
and so closely glued down upon his few remaining
stumps of teeth, that it seemed as if it had never
been intended to open; and indeed it was the abode of
an organ, which, if not endowed with great eloquence,
had at least a vast talent for taciturnity.
Such were the features of the man who entered the
room, walking in-toed, like an Indian, with long noiseless
strides, with a singular stoop, not of his shoulders,
but of his neck itself, and with his eyes so riveted to
the ground, that it appeared very difficult for him to
raise them to the faces of those he came to visit.
He was dressed in a thick blanket coat, of a dingy
green colour, with a sort of brown binding down the
seams, and a sash of brown worsted about his waist.
On his head he wore a sort of skulleap of gray fox-skin,
with the brush sewed across it, like the crest of a dragoon
helmet, about four inches of the white tag waving
loose like a crest from the top of the crown. Two cross
belts of buckskin were thrown across his shoulders, that
on the right supporting an oxhorn, quaintly, carved, and
scraped so thin that the dark colour of the powder could
be seen through it in many places; and that on the left
garnished with a long wooden-handled butcher-knife in
a greasy scabbard. A tomahawk was thrust into his
sash, its sharp head guarded by a sort of leathern
pocket, and from the front of the girdle was suspended
a pouch of otter-skin, containing balls, bullet-mould,
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charger, greased wadding, and all the apparatus necessary
for cleaning the heavy rifle which he carried in his
hand, and which, at least in his waking hours, he was
seldom, if ever, known to lay aside.
To complete his costume, his feet were shod in Indian
moccasins, and his legs encased in stout buckskin
leggins, supported by garters rich in embroideries of
porcupine-quills, and laced over his rough homespun
pantaloons.
Archer was standing at the head of the table whetting
his carving-knife on an ivory-handled steel, preparatory
to an attack on the ham, when the old hunter
entered; but as he saw the gaunt raw-boned figure, he
laid it down instantly, and stepped forward with extended
hand to greet him.
“Ah! Dolph, how are you? I am glad to see you,
man; I was afraid you would not have come in time for
supper.”
The hunter raised his eyes for a moment to the expressive
face of the speaker, but before it had dwelt
there a moment perusing the well-known features, it
had wandered away to decipher the visages of the other
tenants of the seats at the table. A pleasant smile,
however, dimpled his cheek and twinkled for an instant
in the dark eye, as he pressed Harry's hand cordially,
and made reply.
“Middlin' well, Mister Aircher. I supped six hours
ago—how is't with yourself?”
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“What if you did, boy?” interrupted Fat Tom, before
Archer could reply. “You must have got ongodly
hungry in six hours, I guess. Sit by—sit by—darn all
sich nonsense.”
“I niver eats only twice of a day,” replied the hunter,
without a smile, and without moving a muscle of his
face. “And I niver eats hog, nohow, nor birds neither,”
he added, quietly, after a moment's pause, during
which he had looked over the fire, the gun-cases, and all
the baggage in the room, not excluding Timothy, whom
he seemed to regard as the greatest curiosity of the
whole. No one, however, had seen him look toward
the table, the burthen of which he named so accurately.
“Do you drink iver, Dolph?” asked Tom, half jeeringly,
in the intervals of masticating the wing of the
cold ruffed grouse, with a modicum of the thin-shaved
ham.
“When liquor's good, and I'm adry!”
“Niver, when you're not adry, Dolph?”
“Niver!”
“Then you're the darnedest stupid Dutchman I iver
comed acrost,” replied the fat man. “Leastways onless
you're always dry, like I be. Another glass of that'ere
champagne, Timothy.”
“Come, sit down, sit down, Dolph,” said Harry,
“and if you really will not eat anything, at least take a
drink with us.”
“Well, I don't care if I do!” responded the man of
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few words, depositing his rifle in the corner of the room,
and taking his seat, quietly, between Archer and Tom,
who was already steeping his soul in the third beaker
of dry champagne.
“What will you have, Dolph? Champagne, or—”
“Some of the rum, Mr. Aircher,” answered the man,
with perfect readiness, while Timothy stared at him
with inexpressible astonishment, more than suspecting
him to be what he would have called in his native dialect,
a “waise mon,” meaning thereby, neither more
nor less than a wizzard.
At a glance from his master, however, the Yorkshireman
so far recovered himself, as to hand a square casebottle
to the hunter, who forthwith decanted about half
a pint into the largest tumbler, and, disdainfully waving
away the water, which Tim offered to him, made a circular
nod to the company, muttered “Here's luck!”
and swallowed it at a gulp.
Then he shook his head approvingly, winked his eye
hard, and snuffed the air repeatedly, and after that
mute but expressive pantomime, held forth the empty
tumbler to Timothy, with a gesture towards the pitcher,
indicating that he desired it filled with water.
When he had received, however, the pure element,
he paused, as if unwilling to remove the delicious aroma
from his palate.
“I knowed it,” said he, thoughtfully, as he again
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shook his head; “jest as I'spected, adzactly. Them's
prime sperrits.”
At this unusually long speech, Harry smiled, knowing
his man, and made answer—
“Since you like it, had you not better repeat the
dose?”
“Not this night, if I knows it.”
By this time, Frank, who had never before met this
original, and who had been studying his characteristic
answers, inquired, with a view to drawing him out—
“Pray, Mr. Pierson, if you never eat hog or birds,
may I be allowed to ask what you do eat—if it's not
impertinent?”
“It's not imperent at all,” said Dolph. “I eats
a'most any wild crittur what runs; deer, or bar meat,
or possum, may be.”
“Did you ever eat a skunk, Dolph?” asked Harry.
“A skunk killed dead at the fust lick, and well cleaned,
's not bad eatin',” interposed Tom. “Say, Dolph,
did you iver eat wolf?”
“Niver—nor no dog nuther, Mister Draw!” replied
the hunter, somewhat testily, as if he fancied they were
quizzing him—“No, nor no calf, nuther. I don't think
much,” he added, looking at Tom, as if to pay him off,
“of a man, what eats calf, nohow.”
“Nor I, Mr. Pierson, nor I,” put in Frank with
great alacrity, delighted to find an auxiliary in one of
his crotchets, which was an absolute contempt for veal
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in all its combinations. “I never eat it myself; in fact,
I had about as soon eat dog.”
“I niver knowed a raal sportin' man as wouldn't!”
answered the hunter, evidently gratified by Frank's adherence
to his opinion; whereupon that worthy resumed,
filling his glass with champagne—
“Well, if you will not join us, allow me to drink your
health. I have heard of you from Mr. Archer, often.”
“Yes, Mr. Aircher knows me,” said the hunter,
quietly, and apparently unaware of the intended compliment.
“Do tell, Dolph—” Tom put in, at this moment,
what my poor friend, J. Cypress, Jr., was wont to call
his lingual oar, with the evident intent of kicking up a
row, “Do tell us, Dolph—you said you niver eat no
wolf—did no wolf niver eat you?”
“Niver!—whar's your eyes? Don't you see me?”
“Guess you'd a made 'em sick. They couldn't eat
you, nohow.”
“They comed darned nigh to it oncet, inyhow.”
“Did they? By George! you never told me that,”
said Harry.
“I'm no great things at talking. If you want to hear
bragging, you must set Draw agoin'. Well! well!
there was wolves them times.”
“There are wolves now,” replied Forester.
The hunter looked at him doubtfully, yet with a
wistful eye.
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“Not hereaways,” he said, at length. “Leastwise I
hain't heerd none, nor seen no track of none, this six
year. Yet I some thought to-day they mout a gotten
back, like.”
“They have got back,” said Frank earnestly. “We
heard one howl, to-night, scarcely a mile hence.”
Doubtful, perhaps, as to the certainty of Frank's information,
and science in wood-craft, Dolph cast a quick
glance of inquiry at Harry; and on receiving his affirmative
nod in reply, brought down his hand with a heavy
slap on his sinewy thigh, and cried aloud, in tones far
more apimated than he was wont to use—
“Darnation, if I isn't glad on't!”
“Why?” exclaimed Forester, hoping to detect old
Draw in some blunder, as to his previous reasoning.
“Caze I hates, wust kind, to be mistaken—and I half
thought last night they'd got back agin.”
“And pray, what made you think so?”
“Why, I camped out nigh the Green Pond last
night, seein' I'd sot some lines for pickerel; and bein'
it was sorter cold, I kinneled up a fire, and sure enough,
an old doe, with two well-grown fa'ans at her side,
comed right up into the circle of the blaze, and
scrouched down in the fern, not ten yards from my
camp-fire. I knowed they must a' been skeart orfully
to come down on a man o' purpose.”
“How do you know that they came on purpose?”
asked Frank, more intent on fathoming this man's, to
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
him, incomprehensible sagacity, than even on gaining
information.
“How did I know?—Didn't they come up wind on
me? They knowed I was there a mile off—and they
did right, by thunder! I'd not a hurted a hair on 'em for
a hundred dollars.”
“I'm sure you would not, Dolph,” replied Harry,
“But come—Timothy has cleared away the eatables,
and I am going to brew a bowl of hot rum punch. You
must break your rule for once, Dolph, and take another
glass to oblige me; and blow a cloud, and spin us a yarn
about the wolves coming nigh to eating you.”
“I'd do a'most anything to obleege you, Mister Archer,
and you knows it. But I'd ruther not drink, nohow—
and that's along o' the wolves comin' so nigh as
they did to eatin' me, too, I tell you.”
“Well—I'll press no man to drink against his better
judgment,” said Harry, as he brewed the fragrant
compound.
“I knowed you wouldn't, when I telled you I'd ruther
not.”
“Well, as I do not, you will blow a cloud with us,
and spin us the yarn,” said Archer. “Forester and I
are dying to hear it.”
“Sartin I will,” replied Pierson; “and I'll blow a
cloud too; but the yarn's like to be a short 'un.”
“Pass up your glasses, boys; let me help you. This
is prime, and after a cold night-ride and a cold supper,
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it will do none of us a thought of harm. Hand the
cheroots round, Timothy. Those are good, Pierson.”
“I smokes in an Injun pipe allus, with Kinnekinninck.
I larnt that, when I hunted years and years
agone with the Mohawks in these hunting-grounds.
Ah! they was hunting-grounds in them days!”
“Now then for your story,” said Harry, when the
pipes were all lighted, and the punch tasted and approved.
“Begin as quick as you can, and after that we will to
bed instantly—for we must be afoot early.”
“Sartin we must, if we means venison. Well, well!
It's nigh forty years agone, it is, and I could shoot some
then, and was right and smart and strong, I tell you—
but I did spree it oncet in a while like—not to say that
I was a drunkard—for sometimes I'd go weeks and
months on cold water; but then, agin, I'd git right hot,
I tell you, for a week, maybe, and spend half my airnin's
like, and be good for nothing for a month arterward.
Well, well! there was few houses in them days, nor no
clearin's nigher than the Coshocton turnpike. There
was no village here, nor no store nigher than Jess
Wood's, clear away beyant Hans Schneider's toll-gate.
I lived here all alone, where I lives now. I'd a putty
nice log house, and a log stable for old Roan, and a leanto
for my dogs, jest on the pond's edge. Well—it was
winter time, and winters in them days was six times as
cold as they is now. There was nigh six foot of snow
on the level, and in the hollows it was drifted twice as
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deep, all on it, I reckon. Well—deer was a hundred
where you'll find ten these times, and bar a thousand on
'em. I'd had good luck all winter, and it was nigh the
holydays, and I'd got out o' lead ean a'most, and putty
short of powder. It fruz ivery night sharper nor nothin,
and there was sich a crust as mout ha' borne an elephant—
but there warn't elephant them days—seems to me
they grows plentier as bar grows scacer, and beaver
ain't none left. Well—I rigged up a jumper, and loaded
it with peltry, and hitched up old Roan, and offed to Jess
Wood's—twenty mile, I guess—through a blazed wood
road, meanin' to git me a keg or two of powder and
some bars of lead, sell off my plunder, and be back
same night. Off I went sartin—but when I comed to
Jess's, there was a turkey-shoot you see, and a hull
grist o' boys, and we shot days, and drinked and played
nights—and to be done with't, 'twas the third day, putty
well on for night, when I started, and I putty hot at that
Well—it was moonlight nights, and I got along smart
and easy, till I got on the hill, jest above the beaver dam.
The beaver dam warn't broke then, and the pond was
full, but it was fruz right sharp and hard, and I went
over it, at a smart trot, and was thinkin' I'd be hum in
an hour, when jest as I was half ways over I heerd a
wolf howl, and then another, and then another, and in
less time than I can tell you, there was thutty or fawty
of them devils a jabberin' as fast as iver you heerd
Frenchmen, on my trail; and afore I was well acrost, I
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could see them comin', yelpin' and screechin' all in a
black snarl like, all on 'em together, over the clear ice.
Well—I whipped up old Roan, and little whip he needed,
for when he heerd them yell, he laid down his ears, and
laid down his belly to the snow, and by thunder! didn't
he strick it though! Over rough, over smooth, up hill and
down hollow—and oncet I thought we should a run clear
out of hearin' on 'em. But goin' up the big mountain,
when we was nigh the crown, I carn't tell how it was
adzactly, but pitch down we went into a darned rocky
hole, and the fust thing I knowed I was half head over in
the snow, and the jumper broke to etarnal smash, and old
Roan gone ahead like the wind—and I left alone to fight
fawty howlin' devils, and putty hot at that. Well, I tuk
heart, and fixed my rifle, and as they come a yelpin' up the
hill, I drawed stret, and shot one down, and run like thunder,
aloadin' as I went, for I knowed as the bloody devils
would stop to tar' the one I'd wounded into slivers, and
while they was a tar'ing him for sartin, their screeches
mout a' made a body's hair stand up on his head like—but
they soon quit that fun, and took my trail agin in airnest.
Well, I got loaded, and I went to prime, and darned if
my flint hadn't got smashed to pieces. I felt in my
pouch, in my pockets—not a flint! I was hot, as I telled
you, when I quit Jess's, and left them on the bar. Oh,
warn't I in a fix! and there warn't no big trees nuther;
and if there had a been, it was so bitter cold I thought
a man must a' died afore it was mornin'. But I thought
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it warn't no use to say die, no how—so I run for the
biggest tree and clum it. It warn't thicker nor my body
much, a stunt hemlock, not over fifteen feet, or eighteen
at most to the fust limb, and none higher that would
bear my weight, and a tight match if that would. Well,
I clum it—and there, from eleven o'clock of a winter's
night, I set perishin' with cold and a'most dead with
fear—I arn't easily skeart nuther—with them fawty
devils howlin' under me, and lickin' their bloody chaps,
and glarin' with their fiery eyes, and ivery now and then
a big 'un jumpin' within three feet of the limb I sot on,
and the limb crackin' and the tree bendin', 'at I thought
it 'ud go ivery minnit. Day broke at last, and then I
hoped they'd a quit—but not they. The sun riz—still
thar they was a circlin' round the tree, madder nor iver,
foamin' and frothin' at their jaws, and oncet and agin
fightin' and tearin' at one another. Gentlemen, I was a
young stout man, when I clum that hemlock, and my
hair war as black as a crow's back. When I fell down,
for come down I didn't, I was as thin and as bent, ay!
and as white-headed as you see me. Since then, I
niver drinked only when I war dry, and then niver over
oncet in the mornin' and oncet agin at night.”
“But how, in Heaven's name! did you escape them?”
asked Forester, who was interested beyond measure in
the wild narrative.
“By Heaven's help!” answered the hunter, solemnly.
“Some chaps chanced on old Roan's carcass in
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the woods, arter they devils killed him, and knowed
whose horse he war, and tuk the back track, and come
down on the mad brutes from to leeward, with seven
good true rifles. They killed five on 'em at the
fust shot, let alone what they wounded; and the rest
made stret tracks; but I didn't see it. For at the crack
of the fust shot, my head went round and round, and I
pitched down right amongst them. But they was
skeart as bad as I was, and hadn't no time to look arter
me. Well, Mister Aircher, my tale is telt, and my
pipe smoked, so I'll go lie down on my barskin by the
kitchen fire, and you'll be for bed, I guess—for we
must rouse up bright and airly. I telled Jake to have
breakfast two hours afore sunrise.”
“We will go to bed. Thank you for your tale. I
will never ask you to drink again. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
And catching up his rifle, he left the room without
any further words.
“That is a singular and superior man,” said Forester,
as he closed the door.
“Yes, indeed is he!” replied Archer.
“Putty smart for a Dutchman,” said Tom.
“He speaks better English than you, Tom,” answered
Forester.
“Better H—! He's as Dutch as thunder! Goodnight,
boys.”
And so they broke up the sederunt.
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CHAPTER IV. THE STILL-HUNT.
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
Mark! How they file adown the rocky pass,—
Bright creatures, fleet, and beautiful, and free,—
With winged, bounds that spurn the unshaken grass,
And swan-like necks sublime,—their eloquent eyes
Instinct with liberty,—their antlered crests,
In clear relief against the glowing sky,
Haught and majestic!
The autumnal morning was yet dark as midnight,
when Dolph Pierson, arising from his bearskin, awoke
Harry, who ere long had the whole house afoot and
stirring. The kitchen clock was striking four, when
the party assembled in the little parlour in which they
had supped but a few hours before; yet so smartly had
Timothy bestirred himself, that not only had all the
relies of the supper been removed, but a hearty extemporaneous
breakfast had replaced it on the large round
table.
There was the Yorkshire ham, which had not suffered
so deeply by the last night's onslaught, but that enough
remained to furnish forth sundry meals even for hunters'
appetites. There was the huge brown loaf; the dish
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of golden butter; the wooden bowl, full to the brim
with new-laid eggs, wrapped in a steaming napkin;
and last, not least, two mighty tankards smoking with
a judioious mixture of Guinness's double stout, brown
sugar, spice, and toast; for to no womanish delicacies
of tea and coffee did the stout huntsmen seriously incline.
As they entered the room, the old hunter, who was
busily employed drying a pound of rifle-powder on a
pewter plate, heated on the wood embers, raised his
eyes from his occupation, and kept them riveted on the
figure of Harry Archer, for a far longer period than it
was his wont to bestow on anything of mortal mould.
After gazing at him for some moments thus, he
nodded his head approvingly, as who should say “Not
such a bad turn-out, after all!” and then resumed his
somewhat perilous occupation of stirring the powder in
the plate with the point of his long wood-knife, as he
held it an inch or two only above a glaring bed of
hickory embers; but neither on Frank Forester, nor on
old Tom Draw, did he youchsafe to bestow one second's
observation.
And in truth, Harry in his hunting-dress was an object
worthy of some consideration, so perfect was every
part of its equipment, both in its fashion, and its adaptation
to its peculiar use.
On his head he wore a cap exactly like that of an English
whipper-in, or huntsman, with this exception only,
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
that it had a projecting rim behind, to shelter the back
of his neck from rain, or the dewdrops which might fall
from the branches, and that in lieu of being black, it
was of a deep umber-brown, to correspond with the
colour of the autumnal leaves.
The black silk handkerchief, knotted about his
sinewy neck, displayed not an inch of white linen above
it, and was itself partially concealed by a buckskin
hunting-shirt, exquisitely wrought by the hand of some
Indian maiden, far in the forests of the west. Prepared
with skill peculiar to those wild tribes, this garment
combined the suppleness, the warmth, and the durability
of leather, with the high finish and rich colour of
the best broad-cloth. That colour was a nameless hue,
between brown and purple, approaching nearly to the
tints of the copper beech, or rather to something between
that and the cinnabar brown of the buckeye, or horse-chesnut.
It was fringed handsomely, and embroidered
in places with black porcupine-quills; and was girt
about his waist by a black leather girdle, with a
buckle of blue steel, supporting a pouch of martin skin,
and a hunting-knife with a buckhorn hilt, and a blade,
a foot in length, of the best Sheffield steel. He wore
no tomahawk; but his powder-flask, made of a buffalo
horn mounted with dark blue steel, was slung across his
left shoulder by a plaited whip-thong of black leather.
His nether man was clad in a pair of Pike and Elphick's
elaborate buckskins, which had bestridden the
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pig-skin many a day in Leicestershire, and soared in flying
leap over the bankfull Whissendine. Not now, however,
were they resplendent as of old in the glory of white pipe-clay,
but wore a more harmonious if less striking hue of
dull olive-green, as did the leggins of the same material,
which reached to his knee and covered the fastenings of
his firmly-wrought Indian moccasins.
Two things only remain to be noticed of all his
accoutrements—that in the buckskin garter which secured
the buskin of his right leg he had a short strong
two-edged dirk, the knee-knife of the Highlander; and
that he bore a superb double-barrelled rifle by Moore,
that prince of makers, warranted, at two hundred yards,
when held by a steady hand, to put both balls through
the same bull's eye; a feat many a time and oft performed
by its present owner.
In spite of its weight, which was nearly twenty
pounds, it was both a manageable and handy weapon;
for not being very long, and the metal being heaviest at
the breech, it was so admirably balanced in the hand, as
to fatigue the arm far less, whether at a trail or a present,
than the much less ponderous but longer rifle of
the Dutch hunter.
The barrels were browned to a nicety, and all the
mountings tempered in wood-ashes to so deep a blue,
that, like all the rest of Harry's dress, there was no
fear of a stray sunbeam glistening from any brilliant
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point, and so betraying his approach to the fearful
quarry.
Tom Draw wore as usual his dark home-spun suit,
with heavy boots, and a dark gray felt hat, which garb,
if it possessed no beauty, had at least this advantage,
that it was inconspicuous and quiet. His buckshot cartridges—
for he eschewed the rifle—and copper flask
were buried in the vast pockets of his voluminous unmentionables,
and from a slit in the side of these, like
that in which a carpenter carries his wooden rule, peered
the stout haft of a gigantic butcher-knife.
His other weapon was the huge ten-pound double-barrelled
shot-gun of twelve-guage, with which he was
wont to exterminate all genera of game, from the minute
sandpiper to the huge brown bear.
Frank had as usual been exceedingly elaborate, but
as usual also somewhat unfortunate in his attire, for,
inclining somewhat at all times to the kiddy in the style
of his dress, he had unluckily leaned to it at the very
time of all others when it is least admissible, and had
mounted a hunting-shirt and cap, the latter adorned
with a waving bucktail, of the brightest pea-green
plush, with fringes of the same colour. His buck-skin
breeches were of as fair a white as he would have
donned to meet the Quorn at Billesdon Coplow; and
his legs were encased in stout russet gaiters, and his feet
shod in strong ankle-shoes. His knife was silver hilted;
his rifle, which was of much smaller calibre and lighter
-- 075 --
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fashion than his friend's, and his powder-horn, were
silver-mounted; and, in a word, his whole appearance
was much fitter for a fancy ball, than for a still-hunt in
the forest.
Archer knew all this, it is true, quite as well as the
hunter, and felt its absurdity quite as keenly; yet,
though with Forester he had been for years on terms of
more than brother's intimacy, he had given him no hint
on the subject, and as they sat down to the sociable
breakfast, he suffered his eye to run over Forester's gay
dress, when he knew that Dolph was observing him, and
then catching the eye of the latter, addressed to him an
almost imperceptible motion of the head, which the old
hunter understood as well as if a volume had been
spoken, though he could not conceive the reason of it.
The fact was simply this, that Harry was so well
acquainted with his friend's character, that he did not
doubt for the moment, that if Frank should be advised
to don a graver garb, his pride of wooderaft would take
alarm, and he would swear that deer were attracted by
gay colours, and would persist in wearing them as de
rigueur; whereas, if left to himself, he would probably
discover his error in one day's hunting, and learn by his
own experience that which he would surely refuse if
urged by another.
All this, at an after period, Harry explained duly to
the old hunter, who merely shook his head in reply, and
marvelled to his heart's content; but at the moment,
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beyond the glance and slight gesture, no sign or word
was exchanged between them.
The ham and eggs were speedily despatched, and the
tankards drained to the lees by all except old Pierson,
who quietly addressed himself to a bowl of milk, produced
by mine host at Dolph's especial desire. This
done, some sandwiches were prepared, the dram-bottles
filled, the rifles and shot-guns loaded and capped, the
contents of powder-flasks and pouches investigated, and
then all was pronounced to be ready for a start, and that
before they had been half an hour out of their beds, and
while the stars were yet shining brightly in the cerulean
sky, and ere one flash of dawn had appeared in the
eastern horizon.
“Tim,” said his master, “it will be of no use for you
to go with us to-day, and it will make too many. So
look well to the nags, will you? and see if you cannot
get us something eatable for dinner. Did you not say,
Dolph, that you had some venison?”
“I telled my boy to bring 't down the fust thing.
He'll be here afore it's light. Yes, its a prime saddle;
two inches of fat all over 't.”
“Divide it into haunches, Timothy, and roast it yourself.
You know how—covered with puff-paste.”
“Ay! I ken brawly. But what o'clock must I
have t'haunch ready? It winna do to keep't waiting
loike.”
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“No, indeed, it will not. What time shall we be
back, Dolph?”
“Not afore seven, if then; there's no saying.”
“At eight, then, we will dine; make some soup, if
you can get either beef or mutton. And hark you, I
daresay you can catch some yellow bass, or pickerel;
there are both in the pond here—you can take my
tackle. If you cannot, see and buy some eels, and let
us have a matelot. With the soup and the haunch,
that will do. Have the champagne frozen to-night.
And now go and let Smoker loose.”
“What's Smoker?” asked the hunter.
“The best deer-hound American eyes ever looked
upon. Fresh from the Highlands—a present from Mr.
Scrope, by the way—almost as great a deerstalker as
yourself, Dolph.”
“Do you mean to take him along?”
“Not, if you say `No.' But if we wound a buck,
he'll pin him certainly before he's gone a mile.”
“I dar' say; but his yell will lose us ten for every one
he catches. Beside, the Dutchmen hereaway will shoot
him sartin. They're death on all hounds, and wun't
have no huntin' here nohow, 'less it's still-huntin'.”
“Smoker never hunted except still in his life. If
you catch him speaking once to the hottest scent, I'll
give the Dutchmen leave to shoot him. If they shoot
him without leave, Brown Bess here,” and he tapped
the breach of his ponderous rifle as he said the words,
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“will take part in the conversation; and when she
barks, she is apt to bite, you know.”
“I know. But that wouldn't bring the dog back,
nuther. Hows'ever, if he runs mute, and fights mute,
they won't harm him, nor carn't, nuther. What breed
is he?”
“He will run mute, fight mute, and die mute, I'll
warrant him; though I hope not the last, yet awhile.”
“Well, what you says, you says; and what you says
you knows; so I'm agreeable. But you haven't telled
me what breed he is.”
“You shall see; you shall see. Here, Smoker, Smoker!”
and at the word, the door, which had been left
ajar, flew violently open, and a noble Scottish wire-haired
deer-greyhound came bounding into the room,
and at a gesture from its master, reared erect, laying
his shaggy paws upon his shoulders, and gazing into
his eyes, face to face.
“By thunder! he's a beauty,” cried the impassive
hunter, for once moved by surprise and admiration out
of his wonted quietude. “He could a'most pull down
a heifer, single-handed.”
“He has done that same! and no deer can stand
before him one half mile in the open.”
“I dar' be sworn on't. Great Jehu! what a leg!
my old arm's a fool to it. And for his chest, it'll out-measur
ar' a man here.”
“Not forgetting Tom Draw,” said Harry,
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laughing, “who only measures sixty-two inches round his
chest, while Smoker is just sixty-seven.”
“I niver see sich another.”
“Nor I. Yet I have seen scores of the breed—I
might almost say hundreds. No, indeed, Smoker is a
non-such, and he's as good as he's handsome. Well,
shall we take him?”
“'Twould be a sin to have him hurt, I swan; and
sartin as death, if he hollers on a trail, some of them
Dutch fellows will make him smell H—!”
“They may, if he hollows!”
“Take him, then, sure! I'd give ten dollars to see
him pull one down.”
“If we wound one, you shall see it.”
“By thunder! then I'll wound the very fust one I
shoots at this good day.”
“Then you won't bring home nauthen,” sneered
Tom Draw.
“Jest twice what you will, with t'other gentleman,
I'll stand treats,” cried Dolph.
“Done!” shouted the fat man.
And “Done!” replied the hunter, confidently; and
then he added, “but we'll git nothen, none of us, if we
stays here much longer. Let's up traps, and track it.”
No sooner said than done; five minutes more and
they were all in the open air, under the calm, cold
azure canopy of heaven, with its myriads of bright stars
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twinkling with that peculiar brilliancy which they at all
times derive from a slight touch of frost.
The mountains, on either side the narrow glen,
loomed up superbly dark, like perpendicular walls, of
the deepest purple hue, opaque, solid, earthfast, against
the liquid and transparent blackness of the starry firmament.
The broad, clear mill-pond at their base lay
calm and breezeless, with no reflection on its silvery
breast, save the faint specks of purer whiteness which
mirrored the eternal planets, motionless, sad, and silent,
yet how beautiful. The dews were still falling heavily,
and there was in the air, among the trees, on the waters,
that undefinable soft rustling sound, which yet is
scarce a sound, which we cannot determine, even when
sensible of it, whether we hear or feel; but other sound
of man or beast there came none through that deep and
narrow valley. Ever near morning, although before
the earliest east has paled, the accurate observer will
find in nature the deepest stillness.
The shrill cry of the katydid, the cicala of the west,
which carols so exultingly all the night long over her
goblets of night-dew, has lulled itself at last to rest.
The owls that hooted from every dell and dingle, so long
as the moon rode the heavens, have betaken themselves
to their morning slumbers. The night-frogs have ceased
to croak from the wooded hill; the very cocks, which
have crowed twice, are silent; and the watch-dogs,
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feeling that their sagacity will be required but a few hours
longer, have withdrawn to their cozy kennels.
There is in this stillness something peculiarly grand,
solemn, and affecting. Involuntarily it reminds one of
the morning sleep of the young child, which, perturbed
and restless during the earlier watches of the night, falls
ever into the soundest and most refreshing slumber,
when the moment is nearest at which it shall start up,
reinvigorated and renewed, to fresh hope, fresh life,
fresh happiness.
And in the mind of Harry, ever alive to thick-coming
fancies, thoughts such as there were awakened, during
their swift walk up the vale on that clear still autumnal
morning, far more than the keen sportsman's eagerness,
or the exciting ardour of the chase.
After they had walked, however, some twenty minutes
in complete silence, the whole programme of the
day's sport having been abandoned to the old hunter's
sagacity, Harry became curious to know what were his
arrangements for the contemplated still-hunt.
Withdrawing, therefore, from his mouth the cigar
which he had been sedulously cultivating, he said to
the hunter in a low voice—
“Well, Dolph, how is it to be?”
“You goes with me, in course. We'll take the birch
canoe at the bridge, and follow the crick down, still as
death, to Green's Pond. It's like we'll cotch them as
they come down to drink, at gray daybreak. Then,
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when we reach the pond edge, we'll round the western
eend, and so creep up the brook that comes down
through the cedars, clear from the mountain top, and
work up that to leeward, 'till we strikes Old Bald-head
yander;” and as he spoke, he designated the huge
crest of a distant hill, crowned, far above its robe of
many-coloured foliage, with a gray diadem of everlasting
granite. “There's a green feedin'-ground jest
under yan bare crag, with nothen only a few stunted
yellow birches and a red cedar here and there, where
there's a herd a'most allus; and if so be we happen on
'em there, they've no chance to wind us, nor to see us,
nuther, unless they've got a doe set out, sentinel-like,
up the rocks; and then we'll stalk the whole west
mountain down to the outlet, where we'll meet the rest
on 'em, and take a bite and sup at something, maybe;
and then we'll send the boys with the ponies to fetch
up the game, if so be we've the luck to kill any on't;
and we'll all paddle up the crick agin at night, and so
take chance to git 'em at the evenin' drink. The flies
has quit botherin' 'em, since the cold has sot in, and
we wunt find none in the pond, I'm a thinkin'.”
“But what will you do with Draw, and Mr. Forester?
You must remember that old Tom cannot foot it
now—”
“Not as he used to could,” replied Dolph, “not as he
used to could, I allow; still it 'ud take more nor a slouch
to worry the old critter down. And that green-coated
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
chap; I guess he ar'n't no great shines at travellin', no
how—”
“Ah! that's just where you're out, Dolph, and you're
not out very often either. He can travel like a hunted
wolf, I tell you; and he's a prime sportsman, and a
crack shot at small game, though not much used to
work of this kind. But you must send them where
they'll get shots, or they'll be mad at us; and it would
not be fair either, to throw them over.”
“In course not; I counts to put them on the best
easy ground. When we take the canoe, three of my
boys will meet them with two ponies, so they can ride
down to Cobus Vanderbeck's mill, on the outlet, where
it's broad, and full of islands like, and channels.
They'll git canoes there sure, and two o' the boys will
paddle them, and the t'other, why he'll follow with the
ponies. It'll be all they'll do to git to the pond by the
time we strikes it, though we've got fourteen miles to
walk, not countin' what we crosses over and agin' in
beatin' like. Oh! that's prime feedin'-grounds, them
islands, and the boys, they knows every inch on 'em;
and they'll come on the deer quarterin' upwind, too, so
they won't smell 'em. I wouldn't wonder, not one
mite, if they was to git ten shots this day. But, Lord,
heart alive! we'll beat 'em some.”
“Why, how many do you count upon our getting?”
“I'll be most mighty onsatisfied, now I tell you, if
we don't git six fair ones.”
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“Six won't beat ten.”
“You knows better nor that; you and I'll kill five
out of six, sartin.”
“So will Tom, easy.”
“Yes; if they stand still and wait for him. Don't
you tell me; if we get six, and they ten shots, we'll
beat them to etarnal smash.”
“I hardly think we shall get sixteen shots among
us.”
“I do, Mister Aircher. Deers is as plenty this fall,
as they's been scace these six years agone.”
“Here we are at the bridge; but I don't see the boys
or the ponies.”
“Oh! they'll be here torights. I'll call 'em.” And
putting his fore-finger into his mouth, he produced a
long shrieking whistle, which rang through the hills
more like the cry of some fierce bird of prey than any
sound of the human voice.
Such as it was, however, it found a reply in a second,
and directly afterward the clatter of horses' hoofs was
heard coming rapidly down the hard road; and a minute
after the boys, represented by one white lad of some
eighteen years of age, Dolph's second son, and two of
what Tom Draw called stinkin' black buck niggers,
came in sight, with a couple of rough, hardy-looking,
low, round-barrelled ponies.
“Here we leave you, Frank. You and Tom go to-day
with Dolph's son,” said Harry Archer. “You
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
will ride about three miles and then take the canoes.
You have the best ground and the easiest walking—or
I should rather say the least walking; for yours will be
almost all boat-work. Dolph says that you will get ten
shots to our six; so look sharp, that we don't beat you.”
“I wisht to heaven you may git ten and we six, boy,”
cried Tom, “and then you'd see who'd beat, I reckon.
Oh! I am most onmighty glad to see them ponies.
You've been comin' too fast for the old man, altogither—
another mile would have busted me up clean. I am glad,
by Cin! to see the pony.”
“It's more than the pony is to see you, if he has any
nous at all,” said Archer, and so they parted.
And weary work was before them, ere they met again
at the outlet of the lake, at which they were to arrive
from two diametrically opposite quarters.
Harry stepped lightly into the birch canoe, which lay
moored in very shallow water, and the sagacious hound,
accustomed of yore to every variety of field sport, crept
into it, as gingerly as if he were treading upon eggs,
and coiled himself up in the very centre of the frail
vessel, as if he knew exactly how to balance it, in a
position from which nothing could have disturbed him
short of the absolute command of his master.
Last Dolph the hunter entered, and assumed his place
in the stern, Harry occupying the bow, but with their
faces toward the head of the canoe, and the gripes of
their rifles ready to be grasped at the shortest notice.
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“Ready!” said Dolph, in that low guarded tone which
is peculiar to the forester of North America.
And “Ready!” responded Archer, in the like wary accents.
And at the word each dipped his paddle in the
clear water, and away shot the light vessel, propelled
almost without an effort on the part of the rowers; and in
two or three minutes at farthest they had lost sight of the
rustic bridge, and the group assembled to watch their
departure. The stream was in this place very narrow,
in no spot above twelve or fourteen feet across, but
proportionably deep and rapid, flowing over a bottom
of yellow sand and gravel, through a wide boggy
meadow.
“Are there trout here, Dolph?”
“Lots on 'em, clear down to the pond. But no one
niver cotched none in the pond; nor no pickerel,
which is plenty in the pond, up hereaways in the crick;
and that seems to me cur'ous.”
“Not at all, Dolph. Not at all curious. The pond
water is too warm for the trout, and this spring brook is
too cold for pickerel.”
“Likely. I ar'n't no fisherman, nohow.”
“How far do you call it down to the pond? I have
forgotten.”
“Six mile.”
“And how far to the first chance for deer?”
“That's it,” he answered, pointing forward to a low
tract of scrubby brush wood, at about half a mile's
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distance, into which, some twenty minutes afterward, the
cance was borne by the rapid current of the brook
under a deep arch of emerald verdure.
“Lay by your paddle, and take up the rifle now,
and lie flat on your face. I'll keep her goin' as slick
as can be.”
No sooner had he spoken than Harry did as he was
directed, and making his rifle ready for the most sudden
emergency, he stretched himself out horizontally in the
bottom of the boat, with his keen eye alone gleaming
out watchfully above the sharp bows, and lay there as
quietly as if he had been a statue carved in wood.
At this instant the birch canoe shot under the arch
of dense umbrage, for the most part still verdant, where
it was composed principally of alders, but in places
coloured by the autumnal frosts with almost every hue
of the rainbow, and varying from the deepest crimson
to the most brilliant orange and chrome yellow.
By this time the sun had risen, and a pale yellow
lustre had crept inch by inch, as it were, over the pale
horizon, till the stars were all put out, cach after each,
according to the various degrees of their intensity, and
the whole universe was laughing in the glorious sun-light.
Mile after mile, they floated on in silence—silence
unbroken except by the dash of the mute hunter's padple—
now darting across lonely pools, encircled by tall
trees, clad in all gorgeous tints, and carpeted with the
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broad smooth green leaves of the water-lily—pools
from which the gay summer-duck, or the blue-winged
teal flashed up on sudden wing before their glancing
prow—now shooting down swift rapids, overarched by
bushes so densely umbrageous that it was difficult to
force a way between their tangled masses.
Still no sight or sound met their eyes or ears which
betokened in any sense the vicinity of the wild cattle
of the hills, and Archer was beginning to wax impatient
and uneasy, when suddenly, bursting from out a thick
heavy arbour, the canoe shot into a little pond, as it
were, below which was a quick-glancing rapid, divided
into three channels by a small green island, nearly before
the boat's head, and a huge block of granite, a vast
boulder, which had been swept down in some remote
period from the overtopping hills, farther to the left.
The island was not at the utmost three yards across,
yet on it there grew a tall silver-barked birch, and under
the shade of the birch stood two beautiful and graceful
deer, one sipping the clear water, and the other gazing
down the brook in the direction opposite to that from
which the hunters were coming upon them.
Neither of the three channels of the stream was above
twelve or fourteen feet across, and that to the right was
somewhat the deepest; it was, therefore, through this
that the hunter had intended to guide his boat, even
before he saw the quarry.
No breath of air was stirring in those deep, sylvan
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haunts, so that no taint, telling of man's appalling presence,
was borne to the timid nostrils of the wild animals,
which were already cut off from the nearer shore
before they perceived the approach of their mortal foes.
The quick eye of Archer caught them upon the
instant, and almost simultaneously the hunter had
checked the way of the canoe, and laid aside his
paddle.
He was already stretching out his hand to grasp the
ready rifle, when Archer's piece rose to his shoulder
with a steady slow motion; the trigger was drawn, and
ere the close report had time to reach its ears, the
nearer of the two bucks had fallen, with its heart cleft
asunder by the unerring bullet, into the glassy ripple
out of which it had been drinking, tinging the calm
pool far and wide with its life-blood.
Quick as light, as the red flash gleamed over the
umbrageous spot, long before it had caught the rifle's
crack, the second, with a mighty bound, had cleared
the intervening channel, and lighted upon the gray
granite rock. Not one second's spade did it pause there,
however, but gathering its agile limbs again, sprang
shoreward.
A second more it had been safe in the coppice. But
in that very second, the nimble finger of the sportsman
had cocked the second barrel; and while the gallant
beast was suspended in mid air, the second ball was
sped on its errand.
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A dull, dead splash, heard by the hunters before the
crack, announced that the ball had taken sure effect,
and, arrested in its leap, the noble quarry fell.
For one moment's space it struggled in the narrow
rapid, then, by a mighty effort rising again, it dashed
forward, feebly fleet, keeping the middle of the channel.
Meanwhile the boat, unguided by the paddle and
swept in by the driving current, had touched upon the
gravel shoal and was motionless.
Feeling this as it were instinctively, Harry unsheathed
his long knife, and with a wild shrill cheer to
Smoker, sprang first ashore, and then plunged recklessly
into the knee-deep current; but ere he had made
three strides, the fleet dog passed him, with his white
tushes glancing from his black lips, and his eyes glaring
like coals of fire; as he sped mute and rapid as the wind
after the wounded game.
The vista of the wood through which the brook ran
straight was not at the most above fifty paces in length,
and of these the wounded buck had gained at least ten
clear start.
Ere it had gone twenty more, however, the fleet dog
had it by the throat. There was a stern, short strife,
and both went down together into the flashing waters.
Then, ere the buck could relieve itself, or harm the noble
dog, the keen knife of Archer was in its throat—
one sob, and all was over.
“I swon,” cried the hunter, “them was two smart
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[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
shots inyhow—and that 'ere dog's hard to beat. Let's
liquor.”
Liquor they did accordingly—and after that proceeded
to disembowel the two deer, to flesh the gallant Smoker,
and then to hoist their quarry up into the forks of two
lofty maples, where they should be beyond the reach
of any passing quadruped or biped plunderer.
This done, they again paddled onward, and shortly
after ten o'clock reached the Green Pond, without
obtaining any other shot. An hour more carried them
around the head of that great forest lake, but without
moving any worthier game than a team or two of wild
ducks, and two or three large blue-winged herons.
At the lake's head, they moored their little skiff, and
thence struggled up the difficult and perilous chasm of
its head waters, through brakes of tufted cedars, over
smooth, slippery rocks, up white and foamy ledges to
the gray summit of the mighty hill.
Three hours had been consumed in this strong toil;
and though every tuft of moss, every sere leaf that
might bear a footprint, had been wistfully examined—
though every trunk against which a stag might fray his
antlers had been noted, no trail had been found, and
their hearts began to wax as faint as their limbs were
weary.
Both were toil-worn and broken when they reached
the summit, but even so the hunter declined the proffered
cup of Ferintosh; and, content with bathing his brow
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and hands in the cold element of which he dared not
drink, so weary was he and so faint, he soon announced
that he was ready to proceed.
A few steps brought them to the very crest of the
huge mountain, and there casting himself down on the
bare rock, he wormed his way like a serpent to the
brink, which overhung the valley, and signed Harry to
follow his example.
For nearly ten minutes they dragged themselves painfully
over the rough gray stones, before they reached
the abrupt ledge of the rocky platform. A moment
before they did reach it, however, Dolph Pierson paused,
took off his cap, and laid it on the rock, looked to the
caps of his rifle, and made a gesture of his hand, indicating
the necessity of the greatest caution.
Ten seconds afterward they had reached the extreme
verge, and carefully advancing their heads beyond the
brink, they gazed anxiously down into the valley at
their feet.
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CHAPTER V. THE DEATH OF THE STAG.
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It was a stag, a stag of ten,
Bearing his branches sturdily;
He came stately down the glen,
Ever sing hardily, hardily.
Lady of the Lake.
Gods! what a view was there! The sheer and perpendicular
precipice fell down at once above two hundred
feet, in one vast wall of primitive rock, with here
and there the stem of a bleached and thunder-splintered
pine, thrusting its ghastly skeleton forth into the mid
air, from some crevice or fissure wherein its roots had
found a little casual mould to support its precarious and difficult existence.
Beneath this gigantic mountain wall, the hill-side
sloped away, very steep and abrupt, but unbroken by
any knoll or crag, for several miles in length, to the
margin of the clear lake, which lay embosomed in its
pine forests, like a mirror surrounded by a wreath of
evergreens, to so small a size had it dwindled from the
distance; with the bright brook which rushed into it,
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rapid and turbulent, from the westward, and the pellucid
brimful river which stole forth from it in the opposite
direction, winding among the verdant meadows, and
many-coloured woodlands, like a long silver ribbon.
Beyond the little lake stretched miles and miles of
gorgeous autumnal woodland to the south ward, miles
and miles of dark piny forest, with here and there a
cultivated clearing laughing out among the foliage, its
white-walled cottages and village steeple glinting
back the long sunbeams; and farther yet aloof, still
other lakes isledotted, and other streams blue glimmering;
and leagues away on the horizon a long line
of blue mountains, scarcely distinguishable from the
azure of the sky, veiled as they were by the thin golden
haze of an American autumn, and flooded by the unrivalled
splendour of its shimmering sunshine.
Glorious as was that scene, however, and rich with
all accidents of light and shadow, sweet to a painter's
eye, and well adapted to call forth all the latent romance
of a young and imaginative intellect, and such preeminently
was the intellect of Harry Archer, it must be
confessed that for once his eye strayed over it unconscious
of its beauties, or, if not unconscious, at least
careless.
The hill-side, between the rocky wall and the lake,
had been swept by fire not many years before, and was
now covered with a rich growth of tall grass, and low
bushy shrubs, with here and there the black scathed
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trunk of some gigantic cedar towering up, a monument
of past devastation, from its verdant slope, and here
and there a group of young graceful trees, which had
shot up vigorously from the ashes of their sires towards
the clear skies, and bright sun, which they could
now behold, no longer cowed and opposed by the
tyrannous verdure of their gigantic ancestry.
This was the famous feeding-ground, to overlook
which our hunters had toiled so painfully to the summit
of that towering precipice; and, as Dolph had observed,
rarely was it, indeed, that its rich and succulent pasture
could not display one herd, at least, to the sportsman's
ken.
The gentle south-west wind blew full and fresh into
the faces of Harry and the hunter, so that no taint could
be carried from the persons, by the nimble atmosphere,
to the delicate organs of their intended. It was the
quick eyes, therefore, of the sentinel does only, that it
was necessary for them now to avoid.
The first glance was enough to fill a hunter's heart
with rapture, for, close below the crags, and within easy
shot of the platform on which they lay, a noble herd was
pasturing; three gallant bucks, one of the first head,
and twice the number of slim and graceful hinds; besides
a seventh, which stood a few hundred paces from the
rest on a little knoll, or gentle elevation lower than
what we should term a knoll, with head erect, ears
pricked up and expanded to catch the smallest sound,
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widely distended nostrils snuffing the breeze, as anxious
to detect some taint on its fresh balmy breath, and eyes
keenly and warily roving over the whole expanse of
rock, wood, pasture, lake, and river.
No rash or boyish excitement at the view prevented
those skilful foresters from taking an accurate survey
of all that lay within the range of their vision; no burst
of eager impulse led them to discharge their rifles at
the nearer herd until such time as they should have
accurately scanned the whole pasture range, to see if
there might not be some other deer within reach, which
it might be possible to circumvent before pulling trigger
on these; which might be considered as completely
within their power.
Their scrutiny was speedily and well rewarded; for
in three several points of the landscape did they detect
the noble animals of which they were in quest, tranquilly
feeding on the long grass, and incumbent branches of
the underwood, entirely unconscious of the vicinity of
their deadly enemies.
In one little open glade about a mile to the eastward,
there was a noble hart of the largest size, with a yearling
buck, or prickhorn, and two barren hinds. Among
the dense coppice-wood, yet half a mile farther to the
east, the wood-brown backs and hornless heads of
several more hinds might be distinguished by a practised
eye, though it was not easy to make out their
exact number. Far away, to complete the tale, on the
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margin of the woods skirting the lake, a yet larger herd,
than any of those nearer to the sportsmen, were lying
down to rest, licking their glossy coats, or scratching
their ears with their cloven hoofs, in perfect security
and fearlessness.
In a word, from the elevated station on which they
lay overlooking the wide valley, not less than forty or
fifty head of deer were visible at once, among which
the hunters had been at the first glance able to detect
with certainty two harts of the first head, or what in the
Scottish forests would be called harts royal, and two
other stags of six or eight branches, besides the yearling
prickhorn. The farthest herd was too distant to admit
of their distinguishing the age or even the sex of the
animals which composed it.
Ten minutes were perhaps devoted by the hunters
to this survey of their scene of action, during which
neither of the two moved hand or foot, or indeed gave
any sign of life except by the keen glances of their
watchful and roving eyes. At length, when each was
apparently satisfied with that which he had himself seen,
their eyes met, with a look of mutual intelligence; and
drawing back their heads as warily as they had thrust
them forward, they wormed their way backward foot
by foot over the craggy platform, until they reached a
little hollow of the rocks at about a hundred yards'
distance from the brink, and then, safely out of eyeshot
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and earshot of the wary herds, they paused in consultation.
“Well, Mister Aircher,” the old hunter began, “yanis
a noble sight for a hunter's eye, is yan! You niver
seed jest sich another, I'm a thinkin'. There's fawty
head of deer on the range, if there's one. Do tell now,
did you iver see the like?”
“Many's the time, Dolph, many's the time, on Braemar,
and from the craigs of Ben-y-Ghoil. But never
mind that now. How do you mean to work them? and
how many can we get? I make four parcels, within
eye-range, that may be worked up to; but one of the
four is all hinds, and of no account.”
“Four passels,” replied the hunter, doubtfully.
“Four passels there be, sure enough; but how the
heavens and airth you'd work up to the big lot by the
pond edge, is more nor I can calkilate. No, no, boy.
There's three passels, only, 'at can be shot at by this
party; and, as you says right, one of them's all does,
and of no account. That nighest bunch to the eastward
has got one fine biggest sort of buck in it; but if we
goes to shoot it fust, and I won't say as it can't be
shot, cause the rocks is a plaguy sight lower thereaway
than they is here; if we goes, I say, to shoot it
fust, I'm afeard that the wind, which takes a swirl like,
oncet and agin, amongst these big gray stones, will
bring down the scent of us, and mayhap the crack of
the rifles too, and so skear these away. I guess it's
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best to pick the three bucks out of this nighest passel,
and let the others go.”
“I think not, Dolph,” replied Archer, confidently;
“and I assure you that there are four parcels, beside
that by the lake. Your eyes, good as they are, have
failed you for once. You know the deep narrow gully
that forks from the glen we came up to the mountain,
and cuts right across the pasturage from the west,
eastward—”
“Katycornered like,” interrupted the hunter. “Yes,
I knows it, and knowed it afore iver you was thought
on; what on't, Aircher?”
“Why, about twenty yards below it, there lies a great
round-headed gray rock, what I call a boulder, which
must have fallen from these crags ages since; and a
hundred yards again, or thereabout, below that, there
stands a tall black half-burnt cedar, with a thicket of
briars and wild raspberry-bushes about its foot—look
here, Dolph,” he continued, pointing to the scathed top
of a pine projecting from the face of the crags, “bring
that white pine top into a range with the spot where the
feeder comes into the Green Pond, and you will have
rock, cedar-stump, and all, in one range. Well, that
done, look close in at the bottom of the cedar; and
among the briars you will see a monstrous stag, couched
all alone. I do think, Dolph, it is the big mouse-coloured
hart you wounded last fall on the northern
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slope; the hart, I mean, that we tracked thirty miles in
the snow, and lost after all.”
“Do you though, Aircher? By H— we must have
him, if so be, it be he. He had twelve branches on his
horns then, and he'll have thirteen now—don't you
mind that, for sartin?”
“Surely I do; but he is too far off now for me to
mark that distinctly; and, as we lay, I could not get
my glass out. Here it is, fit it to your focus, and creep
forward and examine him; I would rather have your
judgment than my own, by one-half.”
“I dun' know—I dun' know,” replied the old hunter,
gazing at him with not a little of admiration, and
perhaps a slight shade of half good-humoured envy;
“them eyes o' yourn is young, and I thinks as how
they grows younger like and keener ivery year; and
mine's a failin' me for sartin. I'll go, though, I'll go,
boy. But fust tell a feller how you thinks to do with
them—so I'll be able to make out and settle all slick
and to rights. We moun't be creepin' any more to the
edge like, if we don't warnt to skear 'em. What's your
plan, say?”
“My plan's soon told, Dolph. It is that you should
lie here on the brow, keeping that royal hart under your
rifle all the time. That I should creep down the ravine,
or gully, to the gray stone; and if I can once get to
that, I can fetch him sure. There's a strong run of
water in the gully, and the ripple of that will drown
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the noise of my feet; and the ravine is so deep, and its
face on this side is so steep and broken, that I think
this light wind will sweep right over it, without bringing
any taint of me to the nostrils of that knowing doe.
Then, if I can manage it rightly, and shoot the big hart
before he bounces, there'll be nothing but the rifle-crack,
which will only sound like a squib in the open,
and a puff of smoke, which, if they neither see nor smell
me, will scarce alarm them. But if it do, and you
shoot down the old stag, as you can do certainly, the
herd will either strike down hill toward the east end of
the gulley, where I can race for it under cover, and
perhaps get another double shot at them; or, they will
dash directly eastward along the base of the crags, taking
that other big hart, the prickhorn, and the two does
along with them; and in that case you must head them
along the cliff-tops, where they trend northerly away;
when you will probably drive the whole of the two parcels
down to the outlet, where Tom and Frank Forester
will he ready by that time to give an account of them.
Again, if none of them take the alarm, I'll steal up the
gorge back to you, without bleeding him or breaking
him up, till after we have done with all the other parcels.
Then I can creep along the summit here, till I
get opposite the big stag, and the prickhorn, when perhaps
I can get both of them, while you knock over this
chap here below you. That's all; what do you think
of it, Dolph?”
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“I dun' know yit awhiles,” replied the old forester,
as he brought Harry's glass to the right focus for his
eye. “I'll go off and see how 't looks, and be back
torights, and we'll fix it one way. Seems to me the wind
is kind o' breezin' stronger up, and drawin' westerly
more, and that'll be agin your not skeerin' 'em. But
we'll see.”
And off he crawled for the second time, leaving his
rifle and his cap behind him, and carrying Harry's fine
Dolland telescope carefully in his right hand, while with
the left he wormed himself along the surface of the
ground.
Archer, thus left alone, applied himself to a careful
examination of his rifle. He took off the caps, to see
that the powder was well up in the nipples; and, satisfied
that all was right, wiped the cones with a piece of
greased leather, renewed the caps, ran his rod down
the barrels, and finding that everything was in right
working order, drew out his dram-bottle, ate a sandwich,
and washed it down by a moderate sup of the
old Ferintosh.
This done, he shook himself, with a well satisfied air
and expression; raised the heavy rifle two or three
times to his eye, and as he laid it aside muttered to
himself: “I'll have that hart royal for a thousand!”
As he spoke, Dolph returned from his reconnoissance,
and as he thrust the joints of the telescope together between
the palms of his horny hands, “All's right,” he
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said, “Mr. Aircher. Your plan is the best, I think.
We'll git the two best bucks so, inyhow, and maybe another.
But, as it is, I'd rayther have that 'ere big 'un of
all, than three common-sized. The wind has hauled a
pint more to the westward nor it was; and its kind o'
freshenin' up, so I kind o' thinks as your shot 'll skear
this passel; but I'll keep well ahead on 'em to the eastward,
when I shoots, and show myself like, and if you
hears me shout, then strick it down like anything along
the holler. Now, be off with you. That big fellow lies
still yet awhiles. But if I shoots afore you git to the
gray rock, then you may know as he's bounced, and
come stret back to me. I'd like to git a good shoot to-day
like, for I'm afeard it'll rain to-night or to-morrow.”
“Let it rain,” replied Archer, cheerily. “I'll have
that mouse-coloured fellow, anyway. I say, Dolph,
keep you Smoker here, and after you shoot at this herd,
point them to him, and wave your hand well eastward
as he starts, and ten to one he'll course them right
down to me. Good-bye, old boy!”
And with the word, he dropped the telescope into his
pocket, snatched up his rifle, donned his cap, and after
motioning Smoker to lie quiet, until such time as he
should return, stole away quietly for a few yards, till
he had cleared the plateau of rocks, and then dashed
down the mountain gully, at a pace widely different from
the toilsome labour by which they had dragged themselves
to the upper from the lower elevation within half
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an hour. Now racing rapidly down the soft peaty
margin of the brook, where it spread out into marshy
swales; now bounding fearlessly from rock to rock,
where it flowed among big round boulders; now swinging
himself by the pendulous arms of hemlocks and cedars
from ledge to ledge, where it fell in mimic cataracts
and rapids, over long rifts of slaty limestone; he effected
in less than twenty minutes the descent of the gorge,
to ascend which it had cost him and Dolph Pierson
above two hours of difficult and painful labour.
By this time, he had reached the point at which a
large fresh spring boils up from the bottom of the bed
of the brook, and leaving the old stream to persist in a
direct course to the lake below, shoots off at an acute
angle between two shoulders of black dripping rock,
and forms the ravine, of which I have spoken as diagonally
crossing the green pasturage, or as it is generally
termed in that part of the country, “The burnt feeding
grounds.”
At this spot the view does not extend fifty yards in
any direction; for the new stream turns a second angle
before it strikes the open ground, and the whole space
about the forks is covered with so dense a forest of pine,
hemlock, and cedar, with a few tamarack about the
edges of the brook, that the sight is circumscribed
within very narrow limits.
Here Archer paused for a moment to recover his
breath; bathed his face and hands in the cool stream,
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and then turned down the gorge to his left, with a wary
and crouching step, very different from the free bounding
pace at which he had dashed down the precipitous
hill-side.
Within five minutes he reached the jaws of the ravine,
where the wood broke off in sparse masses to the
right hand and the left, and the little torrent, rushing
through a scarped natural pass, plunged down a pitch
of some forty feet into the deep gravelly trench through
which it seethed and chafed on its way to join the distant
outlet.
Here again Archer paused, and looked warily abroad.
From his altered position he could now see only three
of the separate lots, or parcels, as they are more correctly
termed, five of which he had noted from the
summit: The large solitary hart, which had arisen from
his lair, and was now browsing lazily among the boughs
which had of late afforded him their shelter—the great
herd in the bottom of the valley by the lake's edge—and
the lot composed of three bucks and seven does, which
had moved, though without taking the alarm, some
hundred yards nearer to himself.
This was of course all in his favour, since, if his
taint, or the smell of his powder, should reach them, it
would find them embayed, as it were, in the angle between
the crags and the gorge, so that Dolph would
have every opportunity of heading them again, and
driving them down to the mouth of the ravine.
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A minute sufficed him wherein to observe all this,
and throwing his rifle, half-cocked and ready, to a long
trail, he stole down the centre of the streamlet's bed,
above knee-deep in water, stooping low and with every
sense on the alert, toward the well marked point, directly
opposite the big gray boulder, which was his
guide and landmark.
Before he struck the water-course, however, he took
his bearings accurately, well knowing that he could
not lift his head above the verge of the ravine to ascertain
his whereabout, without the certainty of terrifying
the animal of which he was in pursuit from the place
at which he was likely to fall an easy victim to his
rapid and unerring aim.
This was soon done, for a stunted oak grew on the
left side of the water-course, exactly opposite to the
rock, so that he had nothing to do but to steal silently,
keeping his head low, to that tree; with the certainty
of success should he reach it undiscovered.
Meanwhile, old Dolph, with Smoker crouching at his
heel, had again crawled to the brink, and, with his rifle
ready for instant service, was watching with anxious
eye the movements of his young comrade.
The deer which it was his peculiar duty to keep
under his aim had indeed moved a little further to the
westward, but he cared not for that; well knowing that
on the sound of Harry's rifle below them, they would
come, if alarmed, directly toward him; since, lying to
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the leeward of him, they could not discover him by the
exquisite acuteness of their olfactory organs, any more
than the great hart could discover Harry, his lair being
farther yet to windward.
The same cause, however, militated against Harry;
for crawling, as he was, down a gorge midway between
the little pack and the solitary stag, the same wind
which favoured him in regard to the latter was directly
adverse to him in respect of the former, so that the
operation in which he was engaged was as nice a one
as any that can be imagined in the whole range of
deerstalking.
And admirably well did he perform it. The eye of
the veteran marked him, as he appeared and disappeared,
and reappeared again, among the sinuosities
of the wild gorge, never raising his head sufficiently to
let the keenest eye catch a glimpse of it above the
grassy banks, or exposing his person to the gusts of
wind, which were now beginning to sweep fitfully
across the open and bleak hill-side.
Dolph rubbed his hands in ecstacy as he observed
the care, the toil, the active yet deliberate patience,
with which his pupil made his way toward the goal, at
which he aimed. “Ah! he's a great 'un,” he muttered
to himself inaudibly, “for all he's a Britisher. I niver
seed his like nohow, for quickness at kitchin' inything.
I wisht one of my boys 'ud take arter him, but Lord!
they ar'n't half a beginnin'. He'll git that stag yit, I
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swon; and not start them long-yeared sluts o' does
nuther, and that's what I'd not a' promised to a' done,
in my youngest and spryest days. He's as 'cute all for
one as a Feeladelfy lawyer, as true as a good hound
dog's nose, and as quick—as quick as a greased bullet
out on a smart-shootin' rifle.”
But while he was yet speaking, Harry had reached
the point where the most care and management was
needed, to escape discovery.
The banks had for some time been gradually becoming
lower and less abrupt; and the brook, instead
of flowing on a declivity parallel to the top of the
ravine, had found so hard and even a bottom that it
ran over it tranquilly for above a hundred yards in length,
scarcely a foot below the level of the surrounding slope—
at the end of this hundred yards, there was a deep
rapid by which it burst down to a yet lower level, some
sixty feet beneath.
Should the young hunter once succeed in crossing
the hundred level yards unseen, and conveying himself
to the lower level, his success might be esteemed
certain; but to do so appeared well nigh impossible,
since through the whole of that distance he was all but
exposed to the quick glances of the does above, and of
the hart below; while it seemed almost certain that the
wind must strike his person, and carry the tell-tale odour
up hill to the pasturing herd at the crag's foot.
But he had decided on all his measures beforehand,
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and they were executed in an instant. His heavy rifle
was secured in its sling on his shoulder—and his copper
caps and greased patches transferred to the crown of
his skull-cap; his powder-flask he secured about his
neck by the thong, and held it up in his teeth; then
turning his head to the source of the stream, he worked
his way down the centre of the current, which was
some eight or ten inches deep, flat upon his belly, until
he reached the verge of the fall, down which he suffered
himself to slide, retarding the rapidity of his descent
by clutching at the ledges with his hands; a perilous
attempt even for a practised cragsman, but in his case
fully successful; for in less than five minutes from his
entering the dangerous pass, he stood at the bottom of
the cataract unseen and unsuspected.
Dolph clapped his hands in ecstasy and seeing that
Archer's success was now certain, looked to his own
rifle, and prepared himself for his share of the action.
Harry, meanwhile, as he stood dripping from his ice-cold
bath, shook himself like a water-dog, drew a long
breath, imbibed a deep draught of Ferintosh, unslung
and examined his trusty rifle, and then, having reached
the spot opposite to the gray boulder, as indicated by
the gnarled oak stump, crawled up the western bank,
with his thumb on the rifle-cock, and the nail of his
fore-finger close pressed on the trigger-guard.
Now he attained the brink, crouching low, and keeping
his whole form concealed among the long grass and low
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bushes which crowned the abrupt steep. Only his eye
glanced quickly through the dry stems and sere leaves.
For a moment, he fancied that his quarry had escaped
him; for it no longer occupied the station at which he
had previously observed it; but just as he was beginning
to despair, a quick rustle caught his ear from the right
hand, or the direction opposite to that in which he had
been gazing, and turning his head quickly, he saw the
noble beast standing within twenty paces of him, tossing
his “beamed frontlet to the sky,” and snuffing the
atmosphere eagerly, as if he suspected the presence
of a foe, though ignorant as yet of his exact whereabout.
With the speed of light the rifle rose to Harry's unerring
eye, a quick flash gleamed through the brushwood,
a small puff of smoke rose into the cloudless air,
a flat quick crack without an echo followed it; and before
the small puff had cleared away, so truly was that
snap-shot aimed, the gallant hart had fallen lifeless,
literally without a struggle, on the green sward.
Lowering his but instantly, Harry poured the measured
powder into the muzzle, drove down the well
patched ball, applied the cap, and was ready for another
shot in less time than it has taken to describe the operation.
The next moment another rifle exploded on the hill
above him; but this time its sharp crack was reverberated
and repeated in a hundred ringing echoes from
the rocks and the gnarled trunks among which the shot
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was fired; and instantly a long clear whoop, in the
well known stentorian voice of Dolph, announced that
the upper herd was in motion.
At this sound, Harry raised his head the least in the
world; and looking back, perceived the two second-rate
stags, with the seven does preceding them, coursing at
all their speed along the base of the crags due eastward;
while along the summit he could descry the tall
gaunt form of the Dutch hunter bounding forward with
what seemed almost supernatural agility, with the dog
Smoker at his heels, in the hope of yet cutting them off
and forcing them toward the ravine in which Harry
stood, half doubtful, half expectant.
“Well!” Archer soliloquized, “he has shot the stag.
That is two royal harts in one day's stalking; not so
bad, faith! but we shall not get a chance at the others.
Come, since there's no hope left of them, I'll e'en bleed
this fellow.”
And with the word his keen blade was out, and buried
in the weasand of the superb animal, which lay out-stretched
lifeless and motionless on the greensward,
which it had trod but a little while before, so full of
graceful life and fiery vigour.
“A splendid hart, by heaven! twenty stone, horseman's
weight, I'll warrant him, after he's gralloched.
He never stirred after the ball struck him. It must have
pierced the cavity of the heart. Halloo! What the
devil's that?” he continued, as the deep bay of a hound
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struck his ear. “It's Smoker's tongue, for a million!
but surely, surely, he is not going to run musical, and
get himself shot nowadays by these cursed Dutchmen!”
The cry was not repeated, but Harry's telescope was
out in a moment; and by its aid, he saw the fleet deer-hound
dashing down a fissure in the rocks, and heading
the two stags, which he had cut off from the hinds, direetly
down upon the ravine within which he was still
standing.
In his impatient joy at finding a pass by which he
could deseend upon his quarry, the staunch hound had
given vent to his pleasure in that one wild cry, and was
now running, as was his wont, fleet as the wind, and
silent as the night, upon the track of the game.
Now came the tug of war, the rapid and exciting
ace, which renders deerstalking in the Scottish High-lands
the most severe and toilsome of all field sports.
Not once in years does such an opportunity occur in
the woodland tracts of North America, wherein deer-stalking,
or still-hunting as it is appropriately termed,
is almost invariably practised in forests so dense that
the eye can rarely distinguish objects at above thirty or
forty yards distant, and that craft, wariness, and patience
are of far more avail than the eagle eye, the unfailing
breath, and the iron sinew of the mountaineer.
Nor is it probable that standing, as Harry Archer
stood, even as the two stately harts came bounding
down the slope, with the fleet hound hard upon their
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haunches, right toward the lower end of the ravine, one
man in fifty, who had not been used to Scottish deer-stalking,
would have so much as thought of being able
to obtain a shot.
But as the fleet and graceful animals came dashing
down the hill, clearing the scattered bushes and blocks
of rifted stone, which were strewn here and there on
their course, with long and easy bounds, Harry almost
instinetively perceived that they had not as yet scented
him on the wind, though they were well to leeward of
him, owing to his position in the deep channel of the
stream.
At about a mile's distance below him to the eastward,
the gorge of the stream melted away into the level plain
on the border of the lakelet; and it was at this point
evidently that the deer intended to cross the water.
If therefore by dint of his utmost speed Harry could
reach that point, ere they should cross it, he was sure
of at least one shot. And instantly, as he noted the
direction of their course, he dashed, reckless of all
impediment, at the top of his pace down the gully.
There was no space of level ground on either side
the brook; for wherever it had not cut its way sheer
through the solid rock, the gravelly or peaty banks,
washed by the rains of spring and autumn, fell steep
and sheer from the plain above to the water's level.
The channel of the stream was his course, therefore,
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and a right difficult course for such a headlong race it
was.
Yet he sped fearlessly and fleetly onward; he could
not of course now see anything of the chase he was
pursuing; but he needed not the aid of the eye to know
that they would hold their course straight and unaltered
to their point.
Here he leaped with long active bounds from block
to block of granite, as they peered with their slippery
white heads above the chafing current; here he splashed
recklessly through the swift rippling shallows, seeing
the swift brook-trout dart through the eddies from before
his feet; there, again, he floundered almost waist-deep
in the dark pools, where it flowed through peat-bogs,
and tussocks, springing the English snipe with its sharp
shrill cry, and the mallard with its hoarse note of alarm,
from the rushes by the margin.
Onward he sped, still onward, long-breathed, and
unwearied; and ever and anon, he learned by the long
cheery huzzas of the old hunter on the hill, that he was
holding his own at least; if not gaining on the chase.
It must be understood that the lines on which Archer
and the two harts were running, lay nearly at right
angles to each other; Harry having about one mile to
run, and the deer about twice that distance, before
their courses should intersect one another.
Harry had now cleared above two-thirds of the distance,
and without slackening his pace had pitched up
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his rifle into the hollow of his left hand, and was examining
the caps as he ran, to see whether they had
been damaged by the water dashed up from his feet in
his headlong career.
The banks grew gradually lower, and the stream,
spreading over a wider bed and running on a bright
gravel bottom, afforded him a better foothold than he
had hitherto encountered.
At this moment a long piercing yell from Dolph, who
from his station on the crags could see everything that
was passing, gave him notice that the crisis was at hand.
An instant more, and before he had even checked
his pace, scarce twenty feet apart, with their proud
heads aloft, their wild eyes glancing fearfully around
them, and their nostrils distended to the utmost, the
two harts dashed across the gorge.
It almost seemed that they were no sooner in sight
than they disappeared; so rapid was their transit, and
so completely did the bold bank conceal them, after
they had once cleared the channel of the stream.
But swift as was their transit, swifter yet was the
motion of hand and eye, which brought the ponderous
rifle truly and surely to the runner's shoulder, and discharged
both barrels, in such quick succession that the
two reports were almost blended into a single sound.
No eye of man, however near or quick-sighted, could
have noted that either of the balls had taken effect;
but the deerstalker had another sense by which he was
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assured that neither of his messengers had failed to perform
its erraud. For a dull flat thud met his ear almost
simultaneously with each discharge, which he recognised
at once as the sound of the ball plunging into its
living target.
Before he had lowered the weapon from his eye,
Smoker had swept across the stream at one long swinging
leap, and was away on the traces of the quarry,
still mute, although the slaver on his lip, the glare in
his fierce eye, and the wiry bristles erect on his back
and shoulders, proved clearly how earnest and how
fiery was his excitement.
Scarce was he out of sight over the ridge, before his
master scrambled up out of the gorge, and, scaling the
right-hand bank, found one of the two harts prostrate
and struggling in the death agony, which his sharp
knife soon mercifully terminated; while he might see
the other, now some three hundred yards away, striving,
with desperate but useless efforts, to escape the pursuit
of the stanch deer-hound. Casting down his unloaded
rifle by the side of the slain hart, and fixing the spot in
his memory by a marking glance, he now bounded onward,
over the open, to the aid of the gallant hound;
who, he perceived, would ere long overtake the wounded
stag, and would in all probability receive some injury,
should he attack it single-handed.
Fast as he ran, however, exerting himself till every
sinew in his frame appeared to crack, and till the sweat
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rolled in big drops down his face, despite the coldness
of the weather, his speed was put forth to no purpose.
For, wearied soon by its gigantic efforts, and weakened
by the loss of blood which flowed freely from the large
wound made by the ounce-ball of Harry's rifle, the hart
turned to bay.
But it was all too late, for, as he turned, the fierce dog
sprang, fastened his sharp white tusks into his gullet,
and bore him to the ground in a moment, before he
had time to strike with his cloven hoofs, or aim a thrust
with his formidable brow-antlers.
Then followed a desperate and confused struggle.
The hart, strong in its last extremity, rose to its knees
again; tossing its antlered head frantically in fruitless
endeavours to break the hold of its cruel enemy, bleating
and braying piteously the while, with the big tears
rolling down its hairy cheeks, and the blood and foam
issuing from its distended jaws.
For a second's space, it seemed that the stag had
the advantage; but it was for a second only. Again,
with a sharp angry growl, the dog tore him down; and
ere he could struggle up again, the man was added to
the strife, with all his pitiful and tender feelings absorbed
for the time in the wild fury of pursuit, and the
fierce joy of capture.
His foot was on its neck, his knife in its gullet—one
sharp gasp, one long heaving shudder, and the bright
eye glazed, and the wide nostril collapsed; and for the
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fourth time, since the dawn of that sweet autumnal
morning, had Harry Archer, as tender-hearted and as
kindly-souled a man as ever trod on greensward, taken
that life, which but One can bestow, unpitying and
relentless.
And now, weak himself with the violence of his exertions,
and overcome with toil, he waved his cap in
the air above his head, and sent forth his note of triumph
in a long-drawn “Who-whoop—” to which a
cheery shout replied from the lips of Pierson, who was
now running toward him, midway between the cliffs
and the streamlet.
But ere the shout had well died from his tongue,
Harry staggered and sank down beside the slaughtered
game, half fainting and almost insensible.
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CHAPTER VI. THE GRALLOCHING.
The raven sat nigh, with her sullen croak,
Waiting her bone when the deer was broke.
Two minutes had not passed between Archer's sinking
to the ground exhausted, and Pierson's arrival on
the scene of action. For, seeing his young companion
fall, as it seemed to him, so suddenly, he imagined that
he had received some hurt from the antlers of the
wounded stag, in its death-struggle, and in consequence
redoubled his pace down the uneven slope, throwing
away his rifle in order to reach the place more speedily.
During the few seconds that Harry's insensibility
lasted, Smoker had applied himself assiduously, in the
height of his dog-affection, to licking the face and
hands of his master, over and over again, until he had
communicated to them no small quantity of the blood
which had flowed from the hart's death-wound, and
which he had been lapping greedily. So, that when
Pierson came up, he presented a singularly ghastly and
almost appalling spectacle; for, between fatigue, loss
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of breath, and excitement, his face was ashy pale, and
the streaks of frothy arterial blood which crossed it in
many places, gave it exactly the resemblance of the
countenance of one violently slain.
A loud exclamation of dismay and grief burst from
the lips of the rude forester, as he knelt down by
Harry's side, raised his head upon his knee, and gazed
wistfully into his face.
At this moment, however, the brief fit of exhaustion
and faintness passed away; and, as Archer's eyes reopened
and fell full upon the hard angular features of
the Dutch hunter, grotesquely distorted from the effects
of sorrow and apprehension, he burst at once into a loud
hearty laugh, which instantly reassured his friend, and
satisfied him that he was not seriously endangered.
“That's right; that's right, Mr. Aircher!” cried the
good fellow cheerfully, though a big tear, the offspring
of strangely mingled feelings, was rolling down his
dry withered cheek—“laugh at the old fool e'en as much
as you will; right glad I am to hear you laugh inyhow.
I niver thought to hear you laugh agin, I didn't.”
“Why, what the deuce ails you, Dolph?” eried
Harry, springing to his feet, as brisk as ever; “or what
should ail me, that I should never laugh again? The
devil's in it, if, after running two miles over such ground
as I have just run, and at such a pace too, a fellow
may not lie down on the grass and rest himself. I was
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dead blown, old fellow, nothing more. A good pull at
the Ferintosh will bring me about in a jiffy.”
“But what's all that 'ere blood comed from, say?”
“Blood! what blood? man-alive, I believe you're
drunk or dreaming!”
“On your face, Mister Aircher. Arn't it your blood?
well, I thought it was, for sartin!”
“I do not know,” said Areher. “No, it's not my
blood, I'm not hurt;” and as he spoke he raised his
handkerchief to his face, and with the aid of a little
water from the brook soon washed away the filthy witness
from his face. Then seeing Smoker, who, relieved
from all anxiety about his master, had buried his sharp
muzzle in the wide death-wound of the buck—“There
is the culprit,” he added; “poor devil, I suppose he
fell to licking my face, when he saw me lie down.”
“Well, yes, he was a kind o' nuzzlin' at you, when I
seed him, and I'm an old fool, inyhow, not to have
thought of that afore. But do you call that lyin' down?
It looked a darned sight liker fallin'.”
“Well, well, never mind which it was, Dolph. All's
right now; so don't say a word about it, when those
chaps come up; Fat Tom would crow for a whole
month, if he got hold of such a story on me.”
“Niver a word, I,” replied the hunter. “But come,
it's past now, and we've got e'enamost more nor we
we can do, to git these four bucks broken and hung up,
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so as we can jine old Tom and that 'ere fancy chap
down at the outlet.”
“Well, let's be doing,” answered Harry; “but first
run to the brook, Dolph, won't you? and fetch us up
your big tin-cup full of water. For all the water's so
cold, I want a long drink, I tell you.”
“Here 'tis,” replied old Dolph, as quick as light.
“I've drinkt out on't, myself. But I guess you won't
stand for that.”
“Not I, indeed,” said Harry, bolting the liquor. “Now
I'm your man for anything—what's to be done first?”
“Fust! why fust we've jest got to go and find our
rifles, and load up. Where's yourn?”
“By the other hart, on the brook's edge. I threw it
down that I might help Smoker with this fellow, who
would, I thought, prove too tough a match for him.
Where's yours?”
“Somewheres on yan hill-side; I throwed it down
when I seed you fall. I dun' know wheres—but I can
find it, inyhow, by taking the back track.”
“Look here, then, let us gralloch this hart first, and
hang him somewhere. We'll have to carry him a hundred
yards, to that tree; and as we have got four to
look after, we must lose no time, and take no steps
twice over. I'll break him up,” he added, tucking up
his sleeves and drawing his long knife. “Do you run
and cut a ten-foot pole, stout enough to carry him, in
the coppice yonder.”
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No sooner said than done; and before Harry had
cleared the carcass of the offal, on which Master Smoker
blew himself out till he could hardly stir, Dolph
returned bearing a young straight dog-wood tree, of
some three inches diameter at the but, by ten or twelve
feet in length, which he had hewn down, and shaped
radely with his keen tomahawk.
“That's your sort, Dolph!” cried the young Englishman,
who had by this time interlinked the legs of the
hart through the perforated sinews, as cooks will do
those of a partridge before roasting. “Shove it through
here. Put your shoulder to that end, and I'll hoist this.
Oh-he-ave!”
And, with the word, they raised the noble buck, pendent
from the pole, back and head downward, and
walked away cheerily under the heavy load, to the spot
where the other had fallen close to the ravine's edge.
Here Archer's rifle was recovered, and duly loaded;
and the operation of breaking, or butchering, having
been performed on that hart likewise, Harry mounted
to the fork of a young hickory which grew hard by, and,
with Pierson's assistance, hoisted one up on either side
the stem, and left them hanging there, a noble trophy,
the one with six points, the other with seven, to its
widespread and formidable antlers.
Thence they had a long and tedious walk up hill to
the spot where Dolph had east down his rifle, and a
weary search ere they found it. A search rewarded
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only by success at last, in consequence of the extreme
sagacity of the Dutch hunter, and the houndlike instinctive
skill with which he tracked the light prints, invisible
to any eye less practised than his own, of his own
bounding footsteps on the dry grass, and among the
leafless bushes.
Archer, who had attained not a little of that Indian
art of following the trail, had long been at fault utterly;
and, quite unable to discover any sign where Dolph
asserted positively that he could see clearly his whole
footstep, heel and toe, had given up all hope of finding
the weapon.
This task at last accomplished, and the unerring
piece loaded with the minute and patient exactness
which is so perfectly characteristic of the true back-woodsman,
the hardy pair set forth again; and after
scrambling up the tangled and broken slopes of the burnt
pasturage for something better than half an hour, reached
the foot of the cliffs at about half a mile's distance from
the mouth of the ravine through which Harry had descended.
Here the same ceremony was performed on
Dolph's stag which they had already completed on the
others, and when he had been drawn up by the heels to
a dwarf oak, which shot out of the crag's face, nothing
remained for them to do, but to descend leisurely by
the brook's edge to the scathed tree, at the foot of
which lay the great mouse-coloured hart, which had
rewarded Archer's toilsome descent of the gully.
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“It's him, by the Etarnal!” cried old Dolph, the
moment his eye fell on the carcass of the monstrous
animal. “It's him, Aircher, else I'll niver pull a trigger
arter this day! Give us your hand, boy; you've
done that this day, as 'll be talked on hereaways, arter
we're both cold and under the green sod. Yes, yes,
it's him, sartin. There's the crook horn, and there's
the white spot on his hither side, whar' poor Jim Buckley's
bullet went clar through him, as I've heern say by
them that was alivin' them days, these fourscore year
agone, and better. And they do tell as he was then,
what you dalls a hart royal, with a full head I means.
There's not a hunter in the range, as his father and his
grand'ther hasn't run this fellow, as lies here now
so quiet, with hounds, and on snow-shoes, in light
snows and on deep crusts fifty times, and niver got
within rifle range, 'ceptin Jim Buckley, and he lied in
wait for him like, over ten nights in May, up in the
crotch of a big tree, whar' he come bellin' for his hinds,
nigh whares he'd seen the frayin' of his horns like, on
the ragged stems, and so he shot him through and
through, with an ounce-bullet from an old-fashioned
yager, as was tuk from them Hoosian chaps at Trenton
in the Jarseys—but Lord a' massy, Mr. Aircher, he
stopped no mores for that ounce-bullet, than you'd stop
for a darned musquito bite when the hounds was makin'
music in a run way. He rared right stret an cend, and
shuck himself, and looked kind a savage like at Jim,
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and went off through the woods jest the same as though
nauthen ailed him—and nauthen did ail him, likely.”
Here the old hunter paused, looked about him with a
furtive and uneasy eye, and then added in a low voice,
as if he were half ashamed of the thoughts to which
he was about to give utterance, or fearful of uttering
them. “But su'thin ailed Jim Buckley arterward, they
doos say, Mr. Aircher, for that same day one year arter
a rifle went off of itself like in his partner's hand, and
the ball struck him nigh the blade-bone of his right
shoulder, and quartered through him, and comed out jest
in his flank under the lowest rib—jest the identical shot
as he gave the stag—but Jim was a dead man in five
minutes; and the ball, it warn't nauthen but a little
triflin' fawty to the pound slug. I'm kinder sorry arter
all that you shot him; they doos tell 'at no one niver
had no luck arterward that had so much as chased him,
let alone shot him.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Archer merrily—“Why,
Dolph, old lad, are you beside yourself this fine morning!
Why, to my certain knowledge, you have hunted him
with me three several times yourself, and shot at him
once, and I never heard yet of any very bad luck that
had befallen you—”
“Nor of none very good, nuther, I'm athinkin';”
interpolated Dolph, with an incredulous shake of the
head. But Harry proceeded as if he had not heard him,
“And for the rest, Dolph, you may be perfectly easy
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for this time, I think. For you had certainly no hand
in this job from the beginning to the end. It was I,
who viewed him from the crags with my naked eye,
when you overlooked him; it was I who recognised
him for the old crookhorn, with my glass; I who
stalked, I who shot, I who bled him; and I, Dolph,
who will bear the brunt right merrily of anything that
is like to befall me in consequence. Come, man alive,
don't look so wo-begone after the best morning's work
that has been done on the burnt pasture, these ten
years or better.”
“These twinty year, I guess. But I ar'n't downcast
none, nor I don't believe the one-half of their parleyin'.
But you keeps a askin' me ivery now and then to tell
you the old talk of our wood-lads hereaways, and then
when I doos, you laughs at me.”
“Not I! not I!” said Archer, who had been busy
cleaning the carcass, while Dolph was ruminating on
the old-time superstition—“By the Lord Harry! four
inches of clear fat on the brisket!” he ejaculated on a
sudden. “I will dissect a dozen or so of these short
ribs, Dolph, and with a bit of salt and pepper out of
my pouch, we will make a broil down by the lake-shore,
yonder, and with the hard biscuit and cold pork and
onions, and the drop of Ferintosh, we will have a feast
fit for kings, by the time those fellows come along. I'd
ber a trifle they haven't beat us yet awhile.”
“There ar'n't no two men on this airth as kin,”
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replied the old hunter, looking with an admiring eye at
his companion. “For I will say that afore your face,
as I've said many's the time ahind your back, yourn
is the quickest eye, the steadiest hand, the coolest
heart, and the fastest foot, I iver see on hill or in valley.
Mine ar'n't so quick, or sure, or cool, by many
a sight, nowadays. I dun' know as they iver was; and
for fastness, why when I was a boy, you'd have outrun
me jest as I kin a mud-turkle; and then for knowin' sign
and followin' trail, and specially for puttin' things together,
and seein' what the hull sum of them tells—
though you was green as grass, and helpless as a year-old
babby when I seed you fust—there's not a many
as kin beat you hereaways, nor in the far west nuther.
Now, if I'd bin and done a wrong thing inyhow, and
kivered it up close so's no one should find it out who
dun it, and then med tracks, I'd rather fifty times have
fifty Feeladelfy lawyers, and half the woodmen in the
range arter my heels, as jest you onaccompanied like.”
“Hush! hush! Dolph, you'll put me to the blush,
old boy; whatever little I may know of the woods and
woodcraft, I owe it all to you.”
“There ain't nothin', Aircher, in hearin' the truth,
or in tellin' the truth, right out, up and down, as should
make no gal blush, let alone no man. And it's truth
that I tell you. Hallo! what's that—?” as the distant
crack of a rifle came up the light air to their ears, from
the lake-shore.
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Both turned their eyes instantly toward the point
whence the sound came, and a thin wreath of bluish
smoke was seen to curl lazily above the underwood and
to melt into the transparent skies. A moment afterward,
at about two hundred paces' distance from the spot
where the smoke was disappearing, a noble buck darted
from the covert at full speed, and plunging into the
lake, oared himself with his fleet limbs gallantly across
the limpid sheet, his graceful neck and antlered crest
showing like the prow and figure-head of some stately
galley, with the blue water rippling before the smooth
velocity of his motion.
A minute afterward, a man showed himself, rifle in
hand, examining the bushes and the grass under foot,
in search of blood or hair, or the track of the bullet,
thereby to judge whether his shot had been effective.
“Ay! ay!” said Archer, laughing, as he recognised
the gay garb of his friend by aid of his telescope, “you
may look there these ten years, Master Frank, and
find no sign. That was a clear miss; hey, Dolph?”
“In course it was. Who iver see a man in sich
fancy garments as them are, do anything but miss?”
“He does not always miss, I can tell you, by a long
way, Dolph,” said Harry. “But come, let's be
tramping. They are nigher to our meeting-place than
we are.”
“But we'll do the distance in jest half the time.”
“True. But let's do it easy.”
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CHAPTER VII. THE TRYSTING-TREE.
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Hail, cool, refreshing shade! abode most dear
To the sun-wearied traveller, wandering near.
Within a gunshot, or less, of the lake's brink, at a
point where the open ground meets the water without
any intervening fringe of wood or coppice, there stands
a gigantic pin oak, alone and older far than any of its
neighbours, and so immense in the spread of its
branches that it is commonly said by the foresters and
woodmen of that region to overshadow more than an
acre of land. Its limbs do not, however, sweep so low
to earthward as to prevent the growth of a soft and
mossy greensward even to its roots, or to exclude entirely
the play of the sunbeams, or the currents of air
which are ever vocal among its branches.
To this delightful canopy it was, that Harry Archer
and his comrade now bent their way, down the long
declivity of the burnt pasture, taking it easy indeed, as
the former had proposed to do, but still clearing the
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ground at a very respectable rate, favoured as they were
by the descending surface.
The consequence was that they reached it, as Pierson
had predicted, long enough before Frank Forester and
Fat Tom had made their appearance; and had already
set about their culinary preparations, while the jolly
Boniface, sorely overdone and discomfited, was plunging
and crashing through the thickets of wild raspberry
and cat-briars, and stumbling over the burnt logs, barking
his shins, and stubbing his toes at every step,
among oaths, imprecations, and obscenities which
might have been heard at half a mile's distance.
“I swon!” said Pierson suddenly, stopping short in
the act of transfixing a fat venison collop with a thin
stick of red cedar, which was destined to supply the
place of a spit, as an appalling burst of execrations came
down the wind from the eastward, “that 'ere Tom
Draw's a buster inyhow! I'd as lieve take a steam
ingyne a still-huntin' with me as that chap. Why,
Lord a'massy, he'd skear ivery buck 'twixt here and
the beech-woods with his cursin'.”
“You don't catch him cursing, as you call it, Master
Dolph,” replied Harry coolly, exposing the third steak
he had spitted to the fire, which was beginning to burn
up brisk and clear, “when there's the least likelihood
of getting a shot. The old man knows, as well as you
do, that we are down here on the shore, and that we
have swept the whole of the burnt pasture ahead.”
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“ 'Taint no ways, nohow,” muttered Dolph, “to be
amakin' sich a racket in the woods; I'm eenamost
ashamed to be seen companyin' with sich an awkerd
squad.”
“Tush! tush! shut up, we have done well enough,
I should think, to satisfy you for one day. Look to that
steak, too; it wants turning, if I'm not mistaken.
You've let it burn, Dolph, while you have been scolding
about nothing.”
“Hilloah! hilloah!” at this moment, there arose a
clear cheery halloo from the wood, at some hundred
yards' distance, through which the new comers were
advancing.
“Who-whoop!” responded Archer; and thereupon
a merry laugh succeeded, and a loud exclamation in
Frank Forester's blithest tones: “Come, come on,
you old villain! I told you I'd back my nose against
your eyes and ears, any day. Don't I smell the fat of
venison dripping down on the brown crisp biscuits?
Come along, do!”
“Nose—I'll be sworn you do; nose out anything to
eat, or to drink either, you little gormandizin' cuss, a
mile off and better—but I'll fix you, boy, I'll fix you
torights.”
And therewith, bursting through the green boughs,
the two worthies made their appearance, neither of
them, to tell truth, looking a great deal the better or
the livelier for their tramp; for Forester's gay verdant
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toggery was sorely besmirched, and the fine broadcloth
of his jacket torn into ribbons by the thorns and jagged
branches: while poor Tom, sweating beneath his load
of lesh, literally “larded the lean earth,” as he shook
it with his ponderous strides, and blew, as Forester
said, who in spite of all his disasters was in tip-top
spirits, like a grampus in shoal water.
“How be you, boys?” exclaimed the fat man, as
soon as he could recover breath enough to speak.
“Which on you'll do a good thing jest for oncet like,
and give a chap a drop o' suthin'? That little cuss
has bin and drinkt up the hull of his own liquor, and
then hooked mine and drinkt it dry. He got so darned
drunk, Archer, now I tell you, that he missed the etarnal
biggest, fattest, nicest, first-rate, six-year old buck,
in the brush thereaways, not ten yards off on him, the
most all-fired easiest shot I iver did see.”
“No! did he, though?” said Archer, winking to
Dolph to hold his tongue, as he handed the big flask
of Ferintosh to old Draw, who incontinently applied
the neck to his mouth, in utter contempt of the silver
cup which covered the bottom—“What do you say to
that, Frank? I can hardly believe such things of you.
We heard the shot; did you not fetch him?”
“I can't lie, Harry,” replied Frank, with a sort of
bashful grin. “I believe I did miss him clean; and
he gave me a pretty fair shot, too; though not at ten
yards, as that most mendacious of all mankind, if he
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should not rather be called devillcind, says; but at some
thirty or forty. Yes, I did miss him clean. I looked
out sharp enough, but the deuce a drop of blood, or bit
of cut hair could I find; nor could I even trace where
the ball had barked the bushes.”
“We saw you, Frank! we saw you,” said Harry,
laughing heartily. “It is well for you that you stuck
to the truth, for if you'd told the least bit of a story,
we'd have fined you champagne for a dozen. But what
sport have you had? what have you done?”
“Torn my new jacket into ribbons; scratched my
hands so that I shall be obliged to wear gloves for the
next three months; and got a most furious appetite!”
“No doubt about the last item,” said Harry, laughing,
“but what in the shooting line?—How many pair
of antlers?”
“I'll trouble you, Mr. Pierson, for that steak nearest
to you. Exactly! Upon the biscuit, if you please, with
a pinch of the salt, and just one dash of the red pepper,”
said Master Frank, turning a resolutely deaf ear
to all questions in relation to vert or venison.
“Well, Tom, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nauthen much, nohow,” responded the fat man,
scratching his head, doubtfully; “that 'ere darned little
Wax-skin, atween his peagreen jacket and his silver
rifle, and his etarnal awkard ways, and his hollering,
wheniver he got a little ways off in the woods, for all the
world like a peacock in rainy weather, skeart all the
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deer clean off the range. We might have had ten nicest
kind of good fair shots, for we've seen more nor that,
but he got jest one shot, and that, as you sced, he missed
shameful, and I—I—”
“Well, you?—what next? out with it, or it'll choke
you—what did you do?”
“I kilt one, as he skeart, and it comed kind o' quarterin'
acrost my track. It war a plaguy long shot, tew,
but I downed it.”
“One! ah! that was the first, you mean. Well, and
how many since?”
“Why one, I tells you—darn your etarnal stupid
head! earn't you so much as understand a chap, when
he speaks right down English?”
“Oh! one more. Well, how did you kill him? was
it since you struck the burnt pasture?”
“I telled you afore. It was one as he skeart, and it
comed kind o' quarterin' like acrost my track. It was
a plaguy long shot, tew, but I downed it—”
“Confound you! that is the same you told us about
first of all. The second, I mean—how did you get the
second?”
“There ar'n't no second.”
“No second! why you said one; and when I asked
you how many since, you said one; that makes two, as
I learned when I went to school.”
“One's one; and you knows it, darn you! You
carn't make two out of one, nohow.”
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“And you, I think, can scarce beat us two, with
one buck between you. We'll treat all the town tonight,
and Dolph, here, will have to get drunk, wolves
or no wolves!”
“How many have you got, Aircher? More nor one?
say!”
“Tell him, Dolph. He's such a Turk, he won't believe
me, if I tell him the truth.”
“Well! we've got six, I reckon. And if I'd only
a' had two barrels, it might jest as well a' been siven!
But it's a good day as it is, inyhow; and so,” he
added gravely, “we'll be thankful, and not swear none,
if you please, Mr. Draw.”
“Sartin?” replied Tom interrogatively, his eyes
glistening eagerly, between envy and admiration; for,
having in view the Dutch hunter's well known veracity,
he did not for a moment question his assertion. “Six!
Did you for sartin, though? and how many on 'em did
that plaguy critter git?”—and he pointed to Harry as
he spoke.
“Pretty nigh all on 'em, for that,” responded the
Dutchman. “He's too much for me, Mr. Draw, iny-ways;
and I guess that means for you too—we're
gittin' old and stiff, and you're gittin' fat—”
“Getting fat!” shrieked Frank, who, by aid of the
fat juicy venison steak, and two or three deep libations
of the Ferintosh, had recovered his impudence at least,
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if not his equanimity—“I wonder what the devil he
will be, when he has got fat!”
“Fat be darned!” replied the Falstaff. “Fat niver
hinderad no one of doin' nauthen yit, as I knows on;
and I can tell you, I can outwalk, outdrink, outshoot,
outrun, out—”
“Lie!” interposed Frank.
“Out-do—” continued Tom, “these cussed Yorkers
at iverything; let alone lying, which iverybody knows
Forester here whips creashun at. Didn't you niver
hear, Dolph, how he was brought up to give evidence
at Newark, in the Jarseys, and he swore right stret up
and down, and sticked to what he swore uncommon
hard; and the more the lawyers they tried to bother
him, why the more little Wax-skin couldn't be bothered
nohow; but kind o' bothered them back wust kind, so
as they couldn't make nauthen on him; nor nauthen on
the case nohow! For you see jest this time, kind o' for
fun like and to make folks wonder, Frank he wor tellin'
pretty nigh the truth—'s nigh as he could tell't, inyhow—
and his ividence was a raal stumper; there warn't no
gittin' over it, and the defendant's attorney seed that
too—a darned etarnal 'cutest kind o' small chap he
was—a leetle mite of a chap to have sich an ungodly
sight of brains—I'll stand treats twenty times for him,
if iver we comes togither—well, he upped, and he
summed up to the jury; and he made an all-fired long
talk on the other witnesses, and showed as all they said
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warn't nauthen; and so it warn't nauthen, inyhow; and
the jury they didn't want tellin' that, I reckon. Well,
when he got to Frank here, he says, `Now, gentlemen,
we come to Mister Forester's ividence, gentlemen; and
mighty darned strong ividence it is tew; if only so be as
one could believe one word on it.'—Then Forester here,
he beginned to twist up thim darned long moustaches,
and tried kind o' not to laugh, and to look savage tew;
and the jury they beginned to stare, and to wonder,
likely, what was acomin' next. Then torights he
went on agin, and says he—`But the trouble is, one
carn't believe a word on it; and nobody won't nor nobody
don't believe a word on't—bekase how's they
agoin' to believe, or how's you agoin' to believe, gentle
men, intelligent and enlightened and idicated men as
you be, as a man what makes his livin', what airns his
daily bread, gentlemen, and his daily brandy tew—and
a darned lot of the last, I reckon—by doin' no one thing
but writin' G—d d—n lies, kin tell the truth if he wants
to? Gentlemen may say what they pleases about
oaths, and the sanctity of oaths; but I tell you that habit
are stronger and more sancterfied than oaths allus, and
if a man airns his bread by writin' lies, why it stands
to reason as he carn't help tellin' lies tew, and the more
he'll try not to lie, why in course the more he will lie,
gentlemen” And so he sot down; and the jury they riz
up; and gave a vardict for the defendant stret away.
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You harn't got nauthen' to say agin' that, Forester, no-how.”
“Nothing whatever,” replied Forester, gravely.
“Nothing. It is quite true, upon my honour. And
the foreman of the jury said afterwards, I believe, that
it didn't matter so much for Pet—that was the lawyer's
name—showin' as Mr. Forester wrote lies—for his part,
he thought no one shouldn't be believed on his oath, as
could write at all, leastways more nor to keep a set o'
books, or make out a bill of sale.”
“Be that true though?”—asked Dolph, who had
been listening very attentively, and who in his plain
untutored common-sense had been able to discover no
fun in such petty low-minded iniquity—“be that true,
sure enough?”
“True that the lawyer made those remarks, and that
the jury gave that verdict? perfectly true, upon my
honour!” replied Archer. “I was staying with Frank,
at the Cedars, at the time, and heard it.”
“And what did the Newark chaps dew to that ar'
jury? We'd a' ridden 'ern on rails, I guess, here, iny-ways;
and gin 'em a lick o' tar, and a dash of feathers.”
“They did not. `They werry much applauded wot
they had done,'—because Mr. Forester is something
of a gentleman, and gentlemen are not popular in those
diggings; and because he can read and write, which
is esteemed very vulgar by the rich would-be's, who for
the most part cannot.”
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“It's a darned shame, inyhow,” said Dolph.
“You must remember that small countryfied cities
are not the country—the free open honest independent
country, Dolph; and that pedlars, and traders, and
petty manufacturers are not yeoman and landholders,
any more than they are merchants, or gentlemen.”
“They think they is, I guess,” responded Dolph.
“At least to judge from the airs they take on with us
countrymen.”
“Who could buy and sell the whole of them—both
for means and for manners—both for intelligence and
uprightness! but away with them! give me a cup of
Ferintosh, I must wash the taste of hats and sole-leather
out of my mouth, before I shall be worth a farthing for
the rest of the day.”
“That's all quite right, as you says, Harry,” put in
old Tom; “but how many o' them six deer did you kill,
Harry, I'd be pleased to larn?”
“I killed five, Tom. Two double shots—and one
single. And what's better yet, I fetched the big
crooked-horned mouse-coloured hart, that they talk
about so much here; the old fellow, I mean, which
they say has been known on this range, these hundred
years.”
“These hundred and fawty years,” said Dolph,
quietly. “I wish you hadn't killed him, Mr. Aircher,
though. There'll be blood come on't afore the year's
through—I knows.”
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“Tush! tush! Dolph. Take a drop of Ferintosh,
man, and drive such nonsense out of your noddle.
We've done stalking, for this day, I fancy. For Tom
and Frank, here, seem to be pretty thoroughly done
over, and I don't know whither we should go, to look
after more game.”
“Nor I nuther; leastwise, onless we was to cross
for the range beyond the black crick; and that's ten
mile away.”
“And if it were not one, I would not meddle with it,
for it is to be our to-morrow's beat, is it not, Dolph?”
“I reckon so.”
“Well, then, we'll cook another round of steaks and
biscuits, and take another pull at the flasks, and then
we'll have a smoke; and by that time it will be none
too early that we should think of starting on the homeward
track.”
“But whar's the boys, Tom?” inquired Dolph. “I
hopes you harn't left them down at the mill, like.
Leastways, if you have, I don't know how the plague
we'll get the deer home as we've killed; and I wouldn't
like to let them be out hereaways all night, I tell you.”
“No, no. They'll be here torights; black Jake he's
a bringin' one o' them ponics along the skirt o' the
wood where the ground is the smoothest, and your boy's
fetchin' the big batteau from the mill, and a canoe at
the tail on't. They'll be here torights; I swon. Look!
here's black Jake acomin' now!”
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“So he be, so he be,” returned Dolph. “Well, I'll
stop and give him his orders, for I guess he won't
understand you so slick as he will me; and then, while
he's bringin' the deer, what we've killed and cleaned,
down from the hill, I'll away down to the cedar crick
and bring up our canoe what we came in, Mr. Aircher.”
“And how are we to work our cards after that,
Dolph?” inquired Frank, who, having partaken heartily
of the second steak, had lighted his pipe, and stretched
kimself out in the full autumnal sunshine, with a cup
of delicately tempered Ferintosh at his hand, a picture
of the dolce far niente.
“Why, Mr. Forester, I've bin athinkin' that this fat
man, what doos iverything better nor no one else, is
pretty much used up; and you, I guess, would jest as
leeves set still upon your hinder eend, as walk another
five miles through them pine woods—”
“What you say right is perfectly true, Dolph. I
honour you for the acuteness and correctness of your
views.”
“There's nauthen so very cute's I see, in knowin'
when two chaps is nigh dead beat. But 's I was sayin',
I've bin athinkin' that the best way'll be to let Jake
ride the pony back, arter he's brought all the deer
down from the hill, to the road at the mill; and Ben 'll
take the batteau with the four bucks we've got hereaways
down the inlet, and I'll tell him whar' he'll find the
other two 's Mr. Aircher shot at the fust go to. And
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then I'll paddle one on you and Mr. Aircher paddle the
t'other along the lake to Cobus's mill; and then you
and Tom 'll take the ponies, and I and Mr. Aircher,
why we'll foot it.”
“A capital plan, Dolph,” said Harry, “all but one
thing. Ben will never get the batteau up the inlet to
the bridge, while the world lasts, with those six deer in
it. No, no. Put two of the four we've got here into
the batteau, and let him pick up the other two on the
way; he will have work enough, I'll take my oath of
it, to pole them up, and he won't get through so without
touching. Jake can load the last two I shot on the
pony, as he goes home, take it through the woods to
the main road, and so to Dutch Jake's tavern. For the
rest, Tom can ride, and Master Frank must foot it down
with the rest of us!”
“Well, well, if he kin,” replied the Dutch hunter,
with a dubious shake of his head, “if he kin, I'll not
gainsay as it's the best plan. But I dun' know—”
“You don't know what? that I can walk six miles
this fine evening?” cried Frank, indignantly. “Let
me tell you, Mister Pierson, I can walk sixty of them,
if I take a fancy to it! Six miles! why, bless your heart,
I'll bet you five to four, I'll do it in an hour!”
“Don't you bet, Dolph; don't you bet!” cried
Harry, quickly. “He can do it like a shot. He's as
lazy as anything can be, when he's not driven to it, but
shove him, and he can put, I tell you.”
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“The tallest kind, he can,” interrupted Tom. “I
won't hear no one sayin' nauthen' agin little Wax-skin,
for all I tucks it into him myself, a little. He'd walk
you into fits, you long Dutchman, any time. I'll go
you a single X on it.”
“For quickness he might, maybe, but not for hold
on, old as I be.”
“Speedy's a good dog, but Holdfast's a better,” said
Frank, merrily. “But I can hold on a few, for all
that, Mr. Pierson.”
“I've known him walk twelve miles, five minutes
within two hours; and a hundred, between five o'clock
on Saturday night and twelve on Monday night, without
training,” said Archer. “Don't bet with him, Dolph;
he's hard to beat, I tell you, any way that you take
him.”
“He's half hoss!” said Tom, clapping his protegé
on the back, “though he did skear all the deer with his
gimcrackery to-day.”
“Well, how does my plan suit?” asked Archer,
looking to Frank.
“Oh! I'm agreeable, provided only we go home the
same road we came,” said Frank; winking his eye
knowingly at Tom.
“Why? what the devil do you care, by which road
you go home?”
“I want to have another look at something I saw
this morning.”
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“A woman, hey, Frank?—By George! you've got
ahead of me! I never heard of anything attractive in
this quarter.”
“Have you not? ah! what do you say, Tom?”,
“The prettiest piece of gal's flesh I've laid eyes on,
since I see that gal you was asparkin' down to York,
Aircher—that time as you wouldn't know old Tom in
Broadway.”
“It's false, you old thief! I never cut you at all!
Though, heaven knows, it is not for the want of your
deserving it oftentimes enough. But was the girl so
pretty, Frank?”
“Pretty, no! not at all! That's not the word. She
was beautiful—lovely—exquisite.—The loveliest thing
I ever saw, except Lady Ellenborough, Harry. A profusion
of golden hair, large soft dark-blue eyes, a Grecian
profile, a mouth that you would die, ten years
before your time, to kiss once—a complexion like snow;
and a figure not to be equalled by anything I ever saw
alive or in marble.”
“A lady, Frank?”
“Decidedly, not a lady!”
“Where did you see her?”
“At the door of a small but very pretty cottage, a
mile or so beyond the mill on the homeward side.”
“Ah! I don't know, indeed. A good hunter used
to live there, when I was up here last, two years ago;
but there were no womenfolk about the house then.
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Holloa, Dolph,” he continued, turning to the hunter,
who was busy instructing his negro where he would
find the carcasses of the slaughtered deer—“who is this
beautiful girl, these two noodles are half mad about?”
“How should I know?” replied Dolph, rather shortly.
“Now then, Jake, you understand me, make tracks,
and keep the pony goin', for we've no time to be alosin'.
Now, Mr. Aircher”—he added, turning round to that
worthy, having seen the negro depart, “what's this
about gals? I niver knowed as you was a gal man.”
“Thunder!” exclaimed Tom. “I'd be pleased to
know who is, if so be Aircher isn't!”
“What gal is't, inyhow?” added Dolph. “I knows
o' no gal oncommon pretty. There's quite a chance
o' good-lookin' ones, but none 's I know oncommon.”
“They saw her at the door of the house, as far as I
can make out, that used to be Harry Barhyte's, but he
has got no sister, that ever I heard tell of. Who can
she be, Dolph?”
“Other than a good 'un,” responded Dolph with a
sort of groan, his whole countenance changing as he
spoke.
“What! what! a naughty woman up in these wild
woods?” cried Forester, laughing, for he had not seen
the bold hunter's face, or noticed his expression, as he
spoke. “I had no idea such things were to be found
so far from cities.”
“They're to be found, Mister Forester, wherever
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women are found!” replied Pierson very shortly. “And
it will be well for you, if you don't learn as much some
day.”
“Or rather,” interposed Archer, “wherever men are
found to make them evil. Before God, and on my
honour, I believe that the worst woman that ever lived
was better in many points, and those the finest of our
nature, than the best man. But who is this girl, Dolph
Pierson?”
“The wife of Harry Barhyte.”
“Indeed!”
“Ay! indeed; and she's half crazed, and hull ruined,
the finest lad in this quarter; and all for a mean,
cringin' cuss, as isn't to be talked of alongside of
Harry, more nor a shot-gun is alongside of a true-grooved
rifle.”
“Ah! I am sorry to hear this,” replied Harry,
thoughtfully. “Harry Barhyte was a fine fellow, and
did me a great service once. What is it? Taken to
rum, hey?”
“I'm afeard so. And she, as should hold him back,
eggs him on, hopin', I'm athinkin', as he'll drink himself
dead one of them houts, so's she can folly her own
wicked notions.”
“A very fiend! Who was she, Dolph?”
“Why, you've seen her fifty times, and more; and
held her on your knee in past days, Mr. Aircher. She's
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barly seventeen now. You'll remember pretty Mary
Marten?”
“Great God! that sweet, merry, innocent little child!
How horrible! how horrible!—but sit down, sit down,
Dolph, and tell us all about it. You have said too much
to stop now.”
“I ar'n't got time now; look ye here, Ben's confin'
down the pond like a strick, and Jake's got the deer
from the cliffs, and the big mouse-colour, and 's makin'
tracks this away. I must be off arter the other canoe,
or we'll niver git started, nohow. But don't you be
afeard, I'm not agoin' to shirk off. I'll tell you all as I
knows on it, arter supper, at Dutch Jake's tavern. I
will, Mister Aircher. You knows what I says I'll do,
I doos.”
“I know it,” said Harry; and lighting a cheroot, he
too stretched himself out on the turf, and began to
smoke diligently. But a damp had been thrown over
the spirits of the party, even more by Pierson's manner
than by his words, and little more conversation passed
until Dolph returned, and almost simultaneously Ben
arrived with the batteau, and the negro, with the two
finest harts.
The rest of the arrangements were speedily made;
and in less than ten minutes the whole company was
afloat. Ben Pierson sweeping the big batteau, loaded
with the noble quarry, toward the inlet of the pond;
Dolph paddling Frank Forester, to carry whom Archer
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had absolutely refused; and Harry piloting old Tom
toward Cobus Vanderbeck's mill, with the gallant
Smoker swimming along as staunchly and as fleetly in
the wake of the canoe, as if he had not run a mile since
daybreak.
The sun, now near its setting, poured a flood of intense
golden lustre over the transparent lakelet, among
which floated the clear shadows, purple and emerald
green, of the near woods and distant mountains. Not
a breath of air rippled the bosom of the serene water,
or waved one branch of the loftiest trees on its wood-girdled
shores. Not a sound was to be heard, but the
measured dash of the paddle, and the gurgling of the
foam heaped before the bows of the sharp, fleet vessel;
and now and then, the caw, mellowed by distance into
a pleasing murmur, of the homeward crows. It was an
evening in itself all peaceful, and such as would have
inspired thoughts of peace to any soul that could mark
its beauties, and be penetrated by its delicious influence.
But how many are there not, even of those whom the
world calls good and wise and great, who cannot spare
the time from their all-engrossing race after sublime
imaginations, which are in truth less than nothing, to
mark the beautiful sublimity of nature, and learn the
love of the Creator even from the loveliness of his created
things?
What wonder, then, that the rude and ignorant and
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lowly, whose life is one fierce struggle against suffering
and sorrow, should dwell among such scenes unconscious,
and creep from their cradles to their graves,
unsoftened by the influences which move the poet's
soul even to tears—though not of sadness!
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CHAPTER VIII. THE HOUSEHOLD CURSE.
The very fiend's arch mock—
To lip a wanton and suppose her chaste.
Shakspeare.
It was already dark when the hunters arrived, travelworn
and hungry, at the hospitable portico of the
country tavern, where they were received by the indefatigable
Timothy with tidings, that there were “no but
faive minnits to spare afore 't dinner's be upon t' teable;
so it behooved them look raight sharp an if they
thought to shift themselves.”
“I think to shift myself, for one, Tim,” said his master,
good-humouredly; “so bring up some hot water
to my room as quick as you can.”
“Ditto,” said Frank, before Tim had time to reply.
“T'het wathur is bin i' boath your ro-ooms this 'our
and better,” he replied, half disgusted as it would seem
by the insinuation that a valet of his discretion should
have been guilty of such a solecism as to allow
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gentlemen to retire to their dressing-rooms unprovided with
the first requisite of the toilette.
“It is pretty cold water, I should fancy, then, by this
time, Timothy,” said Frank, with a laugh at his own
sharpness as he conceived it.
“Noo, Measter Forester, did you iver ken me to do
a varry simple thing?”
“I cannot say that I ever did, Tim.”
“Weel, and ay reckon 'at you niver will, gin you
were to live mair nor a hoondred years, and a hoondred
upon 't back o' them. And ay think it wud be a varry
simple thing i'deed to tak t' hot wathur oop into twa
cauld chammers. Nay, nay, Measter Frank, that's not
the way as things is doon i' t' West Raiding. There's
twa good blazing fires i' t' stoves, laike, and t' kettles
boiling atop on 'em. But gang your gait, gentlemen,
or t' dinner 'll be overdoon, and then ay's be bla-amed
for 't, ay's oophaud it.”
Within ten minutes, however, their ablutions performed,
and fully rigged from head to foot, Harry and
Frank made their appearance in the little parlour, where
the table awaited them, spread with its clean white linen
and decorated with its glittering glass and silver, and
its four tall wax-lights.
Here they were speedily joined by Tom Draw, who
had contented himself with a wash under the pump,
Dolph declining to form one of the party, but promising
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to join them as soon as they should have got through
dinner.
Then, without further delay, Timothy set upon the
table a large tureen full of the strongest and most
delicious mutton broth, as hot as lava, and as perfectly
concocted as the most fastidious palate could desire.
This capital potage was followed by a matelote of
eels from the neighbouring mill-pond, which Frank,
having imbibed a large bell-glassful of dry straw-coloured
sherry after his soup, pronounced equal to
anything that he had ever tasted, even at the Rocher de
Cancale, the house par excellence of all the world, be it
known, for fish.
“I don't think much of eels, nohow,” grumbled Fat
Tom, holding out his plate for a second helping, “but
that ar' rich gravy with the onions and spices and
Madeira wine doos help them some, I swon. Now,
then, Tim, ar'n't you agoin' to open one of them long-necks?”
Tim glanced a doubtful eye toward his master.
“Not for your life, you varlet, until the venison's on
the table. Champagne with fish, indeed!—It's as bad
almost as Tom Dragon, who would eat ham with his
canvass ducks at Snedecor's. It spoiled my appetite
for the day, and I could drink nothing for a week afterward.
Another such shock to my gastronomic nerves
would surely kill me. No! no champagne; give him
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a tumblerful of whiskey, if he wants it, and me a
thimbleful—”
“And me ditto!” chimed in Frank Forester.
“And then bring us the haunch! and that done, Tom
shall be gratified with a dash at the Sillery see! Upon
my word!” he added, as the smoking haunch made its
appearance, covered with two inches of fat, crisply
embrowned to the most delicate golden hue; “it is as
fine a one as I have seen these three years. Fill up the
glasses, Tim; we'll drink Dolph's health for this, at all
events in his absence. Another slice, Tom?—It eats
short, don't it, Frank?”
“As short as puff-paste—a glass of champagne with
you, Harry?”
“With pleasure.”
“And what the d—l have I ben adoin' that I carn't
be let into that 'ere party? With only three men, it's
a burnin' shame for two on 'em to be guzzlin' by themselves
selfish like! Besides, 'taint fair noways, for
when we all gits tight, you'll be aswearin' I was drunk
fust, or some sich thunderin' lie.”
“Help yourself, man alive; but don't think, much
less talk about getting drunk, there's no such work as
that to be done to-night. Let me give you another
slice, Frank; I've got a prime cut yet, with a beautiful
streak of fat.”
“You are irresistible, Harry. But won't you keep
me company?”
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“To be sure I will. I am only beginning to eat.
I'm a whale at venison, as poor Mac used to say.”
“Poor Mac, indeed!”
“Fust-rate stuff that creawn wine o' his was. I hain't
niver tasted nothin' like that, niver since,” said Tom
with a sigh of regret, not for the excellent fellow who
had departed, but for the excellent wine the memory
of which yet dwelt on his palate.
“Nor ever will, I fancy,” said Harry. “The taste
for champagne in this country is as bad and as false as
it can be, and I think the wine gets worse every day.
If it is tolerably dry it is as thin as vinegar, if fruity and
strong it is as sweet as molasses. This is about the
best in the market, but it is poor thin stuff to my fancy.”
“What is it?”
“They call it the Thorn.”
“Let them call it the Thorn! What else have you
got for dinner, Timothy?”
“Some Stilton cheese and caviar, sir.”
“Fill round the end of that champagne, then; and
let us have a bottle of the old port with the cheese.”
“Ay, ay, sur! It's been doon afore t' fire airing laike
sin' you set doon to t' teable!”
“I hope not too near. If it is too warm it will be
all day with it.”
“Nay! nay! sur, ay's oophaud it's raight. Noo,
mun ay get t' poonch-bowl?”
“Of course you must, and the devilled biscuits, and
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the pipes; and that done, see if you can't scare up old
Dolph somewhere or other.”
“He's waiting i' t' bar-room whaile you've got dean.”
“That's well. What the deuce is the matter with
you, Tom? Don't be sick upon the table, man alive!
What ails you, spitting and sputtering in that way?”
But up got the old man, in spite of all exhortations,
rushed to the window, heaved it open might and main,
and spit out a mouthful of the caviar which he had
taken, utterly unconscious what he was absorbing—an
action which was followed by a burst of most vehement
imprecations, and by a reiterated appeal to Timothy for
brandy, a tumbler full of brandy without the darned
drop of water, to wash out the taste of that ere filthy
pison stuff, what Aircher 'd sot upon the table jest to
kill a fellow with.
It was a long time before Frank and Harry could
pacify him at all, for their enormous and irrepressible
laughter at first confirmed his idea that a premeditated
trick had been played off upon him, and that he had
been induced to eat what he styled “some all-fired
ongodly nastiness, of Aircher's fixin'.” And it was
only on seeing Frank and Archer apply themselves to
the odious dish with the gusto of genuine epicures, that
he transferred his abuse from the filthiness of the caviar
to the bestiality of them that could eat such “stinkin'
trash.”
A brimming bumper or two of port did much,
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however, to mollify his indignation, and by the time that
the punch made its entree, accompanied by pipes, Turkish
tobacco, and devilled biscuits, the serenity of his
visage and the amiability of his demeanour were perfectly
restored.
By this time, also, Dolph had come upon the scene;
and, having filled his pipe with kinnekinninck, and
accepted a single rummer of the fragrant punch, at
Harry's bidding he began the narrative anent Harry
Barhyte and his handsome wife:—
“Well, Mr. Aircher, there ar'n't much of a story no-how,
and what there is, is right sad and dismal. It's
two year since, no longer, that Harry Barhyte, as you
knowed him in them days, the smartest and likeliest of
all the young chaps hereaway, and the best with the
rifle a great sight, began to be afollowin' and hangin'
round like, arter Mary; she was scarce fifteen year old,
and the purtiest gal the sun shone down upon; but she
was wild and flighty then, and I niver thought no good
would come on't; seein' I'd noticed how, the year afore,
she carried on with black Ned Wheeler, till old Marten
he concaited as things had gone far enough that
away, and turned Ned out o' doors; and arter that he
turned wickeder, and wilder, and more drunkener than
iver, and it 'ud well nigh make your hair rise stret on
eend to hear how he'd rave and rip and roar, and call
down cusses on the gal and all her kin, and swear vengeance
on any one as should so much 's look at her,
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let alone like her. Well, arter a spell like, he 'listed
and went off South some wheres, Florida ways, I reckon,
and warn't heerd tell of for a many a day. And
Mary she did nothen but laugh and jeer like, and grew
wilder and merrier and flightier than iver; and carried
on wusser nor afore, only she carried on jest alike with
all the boys now, where afore she only carried on with
Ned like. Still I concaited as she liked Ned, as well
as her triflin', vain charakter 'ud let her like iny one;
and so I telled Harry Barhyte. But bless you, Mr.
Aircher, he was as crazy as a loon, and rared right up
on eend, and swore she wor the best and modestest and
lovin'est gal in the hull range; and hollered at me so
as I couldn't stand it nohow. So he and I kind o'
cooled off like, and hain't niver bin right friends since.
Well, for six months, or better, Harry and she wor one
day sparkin' it the sweetest kind, wanderin' about in
the woods, with his arm about her waist, and her hand
clasped in hisn, or sittin' down by some clear brook-side,
with her head leanin' on his shoulder, and her big
blue eyes lookin' up into hisn as tender and as melancholy
as a faan's. And the next day agin, she'd start
right round, and likely carry on jest as free with some
other chap, and not so much as throw a word to Harry,
or give a civil answer when he'd speak to her. But it
warn't no use, nohow. He seemed to be all the keener
arter her, the wuss she used him, and what should
a' turned him right agin her, sot him the stronger on her
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side. And I dun' know how 'twas at last, but she
made Harry believe as she loved him, and it warn't
nothin' but her youth, and light heart, and merriness;
but I knowed—I did—that them was signs of a bad
heart, not a light one, and of a devilish character. But jest
so it was sot to be, and so it had to be, and so it was;
and arter quite a spell of sparkin' and foolin', off and
on, why they got married; and Harry tuk her home;
and he had iverything fixed nice about her; and provided
raal well for her; and niver went to the tavern
like, but passed his evenin's to hum allus, and was the
steadiest, best-doin'est, and fondest husband in the
country. And for awhile she seemed to be contint,
and happy, and proud of Harry as he wor of her, and
with more cause, I tell you, for if she had good looks,
he had good natur'; and what's raal is better nor what's
seemin', inyhow. Arter awhile, agin, she kind o' got
weary, it seemed, and uncontint at hum, and kept on
the run to the neighbour's houses like, and carried
on agin with the young boys, like as if she hadn't bin
a married woman; but Harry he wouldn't see no harm
in it, though it was plain to see as he was sad bytimes,
and thoughtful, and grieved badly, that she couldn't
stay to hum like and be happy by her own fireside.
And then black Ned come hum, with his discharge;
for he'd got wounded pretty smartly by them Injuns,
down in Florida—the wuss luck as they didn't kill
him!—and then there was H— in the house right
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away! For she'd be mopin' haaf the time, and cryin'
and sulkin' like a hurt she-bar, and the next minnit
agin, she'd be quarrellin' and hollerin', and vexin'
Harry's heart out. So that he tuk to comin' down to
Jake's, and spendin' all his time there pretty nigh; and
drinkin' till all's blue; and what's wuss yet, he got
friends with black Ned; for he couldn't work none, for
his wound like, but loafed round the bar, and now and
agin 'ud hunt or fish a spell, and so H— to hum drew
Harry into idleness; and idleness, that led him into
drinkin' and drinkin' into friendship with black Ned;
and whereaway that ar' will carry him, it's easier
guessin' nor knowin!”
“A sad story, indeed,” said Harry, with a sigh. “I
am sorry for Barhyte; the other fellow was a scamp
always, and I have little doubt a very ruffian. Are
Harry and he friends yet?”
“Bless you, yes! Friends! why she's persuaded him
to take black Ned to hum, into the very house; and he
lives there all as if he wor Harry's brother; while
iverybody else can see what Harry's eyes is sealed to.
and haaf of his old friends is droppin' off from him;
and some says he's a fool, and some says he's poor-hearted,
and lowminded, and that he winks hard at his
own disgrace. But iny man as says so lies, Mr. Aircher.
For Harry's blinded by his own trustiness and his own
honest natur', and he loves that blackhearted jade with
his whole soul; and I'd not hint to him, what we all
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of us knows her to be, no, not for a thousand dollars,
leastways if I didn't want a rifle-bullet driven through
my brain-pan.”
“What strange infatuation! how deplorable! and
yet he used to be a clear-headed, rational, strong-minded
man,” said Archer thoughtfully.
“I've heern say oftentimes, Mr. Aircher, that it is jest
them very men, cl'ar-headed, and strong-minded, as
men carn't fool with nohow, as is the easiest and wust
fooled by women. How is't? I dun know much about
them she-critters, nor doosn't want to know. How is't?”
“I fancy that you are not far wrong, Dolph,” replied
Archer, with a smile. “But what will be the end of
it? Harry must be undeceived some day or other, and
then—”
“And then, I dreads to think what'll turn up.
Harry'll kill him sartin if he should catch him, and I
doubt somehow he'd not live hisself long arter.”
“And she?” asked Harry Archer, with an expression
of strong interest, as he investigated this strange and
tortuous plot of rural crime and passion.
“She! she's as safe from him, as if she wor in heaven,
where she won't niver be! Why he'd not harm a hair
of her head, nor say a word agin her black wickedness,
though he knowed all about it. But she's a drivin' him
to death and to desperation, and means, I guess, to drive
him. I'd not wonder not a mossel, to see Harry Barhyte
dead, and Ned Wheeler married to his wife, afore the
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leaves is green agin upon them hills. He's failin' ivery
day, I see that cl'arly. But it's agittin' late, and I've
told my tale, and now I'll be movin'. For if we
means to scour the black brook range to-morrow, we'd
needs be afoot by daylight or afore.”
“And that is precisely what we do mean,” said
Archer. “So good-night, old friend, and rouse us up
before the sun to-morrow. I'll away to my bed, myself,
shortly.”
But, notwithstanding his expressed intention, he did
not move, but sat there with his head buried in his
hands, evidently pondering deeply on what he had
heard, until Frank Forester, who, knowing nothing of
the parties, was less deeply moved than Archer, asked
him half jocularly what ailed him, that he pondered so
gravely on the sins and sorrows of this rustic Mars and
Venus.
“Do not joke, Frank,” he answered; “it is no joking
matter. I know both of these unhappy people well.
Barhyte once saved my life, or something very like it,
when my foot had slipped, and I had fallen on my back
within six paces of a wounded bear, my rifle empty,
and neither knife nor tomahawk at hand. The girl, as
old Dolph told you, has set on my knees a hundred
times, when she was an innocent and lovely child. I
cannot think of these things, look first upon this picture
then on that, without being deeply moved. Beside
which, I know the character of these people so well,
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that I anticipate the occurrence, even in this secluded
valley, of some terrible domestic tragedy.”
“Pshaw! Harry, you look too gravely on these matters.
People of this kind rarely or never have so keen
sentiments of honour, or feel so much abased by degradation
of this sort as to have recourse to any very sanguinary
vengeance, much less to suicide, which you seem,
I think, to apprehend.”
“It is you who are in error, Frank, not I. What
you say may be very true, probably is true of the small,
paltry, peddling burghers of the cities, of the toilworn
and brutalized artisans of the factories, nay, even of the
dull drudging peasants of the open country. But these
men, independent yeomen, wild free foresters, living a
life of continual excitement, incurring constant peril,
familiar with the use of arms, their whole lives from the
cradle to the grave one wild and strange romance,
these men, I say, feel wrongs done to their sense of
honour as keenly, and avenge such as ruthlessly, as the
red Indian whom they have supplanted in these hunting-grounds;
and for this poor fellow in particular, this
Harry Barhyte, I am as sure that he will not survive, as
that he will avenge the loss of his honour, and the robbery
of his wife's affections. It makes me sad, and it
makes me sick, to think of it, and yet I do not see what
can be done.”
“Nothing can be done, Harry,” replied Forester, who
was now as grave as his friend. “Interference in such
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matters only makes them worse; and involves those who
would do good in the catastrophe, if there be one.
Nothing can be done, Harry; except what I think the
best for both of us, to take one more glass of punch,
tumble into bed, and wake up with brighter thoughts,
please God, to-morrow morning.”
“I believe so,” said Archer, with a sad smile at his
friend's quaintness; and in a moment or two afterward
the night-lamps were lighted, and they retired to rest,
tired enough to make it nearly certain that sleep would
not long avoid their pillows.
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CHAPTER IX. THE DISCOVERY.
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He lay where he had fallen. Slain outright,
No parting struggle had convulsed his limbs,
Nor changed the grave composure of his face,
Languid and melancholy.
MS. Poem.
The sun was just rising on the morrow, when Dolph
Pierson aroused the friends from the unusually heavy
slumbers, which had fallen upon them in consequence
of the severe fatigue and excitement of the past day.
But once awakened, they were on foot and alert on the
instant, and having speedily despatched the ample cold
breakfast which was set before them, Harry and Forester
got under way with the Dutch hunter. Old Tom,
who was completely overdone by the tramp he had
undergone, and by the disgust he had encountered in
being beaten so disgracefully in spite of all his bragging,
prepared to lie by, and try his luck at the Pickerel
and Pearch, for which the lake above was famous.
Taught by his yesterday's experience, Master Frank
had donned, in lieu of his bright pea-green hunting-shirt,
a dingy fustian shooting-jacket, with breeches of
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the same material; nay! he had even concocted some dark-coloured
composition with which to dim the bright silver
mountings of his rifle. Dolph looked at him for a moment
with one of his grun approving smiles, and then turned toward
Archer with a wink so inexpressibly ludicrous, that
he could not restrain himself, but burst into a fit of obstreperous
mirth; whereat Frank, wheeling upon the culprits
unexpectedly, took them both in the fact, and shaking his
fist at them good-humouredly—
“You villains!” he, exclaimed, “what deuced trick are
you playing off upon me now? Out with it, instantly, and
I'll forgive you; but if I find it out hereafter, my name is
not Frank Forester, if I don't pay you back, with interest.”
“No trick, upon my honour, Frank,” replied Archer.
“Nor much joke, either, for that matter. At least what
joke there was is past and over. But come, let us get into
the drag, which Timothy has got at the door, and I'll tell
you all about it as we drive to the bridge over the Black
Creek.”
“Yes! yes!” said Pierson, who had resumed all his habitual
gravity; “we've got no time to lose, for it's gittin'
to be broad day, now, and we should be in the woods afore
the dew's off, inyhow.”
Within two minutes, one of which was consumed in
donning upper benjamins and lighting pipes or manillas,
according to the various tastes of the sportsmen, the two
friends were mounted on the front seat, Dolph and Timothy
occupying that in the rear. The horses sprang at Harry's
cheerful whistle, and away rattled the light vehicle, over
the well-made limestone road, in the same direction which
had been taken by Forester and Tom Draw on the previous
morning.
“Now then, the joke, Harry!” said Forester.
“Pshaw! it was mere nonsense. Dolph wanted to put
you out of conceit yesterday with your fine toggery and
bright gun-mountings and I begged him not. That's all,
upon my honour!”
“That's all, upon your honour! and a very modest all,
too! So you spoiled my day's sport, and won Tom's bet,
just to poke fun on me! By Jove, that's too bad! I
should not have expected that, at your hands!” and Frank's
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face flushed even to the roots of his hair, as he spoke, from
very anger.
“Nor I this at yours, Forester,” replied Archer, gravely.
“But it is of no use minding what you say, you little wasp.
I would not let him tell you, because I knew right well that
if your costume or your skill in woodcraft were attacked,
you would defend them, like Decatur, right or wrong, and
wear them, to the ruin of your sport, for a week, perhaps
for ever, from the sheer love of paradox. Whereas, by
letting you alone, I knew that one day's experience would
teach you the truth, and that you would adopt it, as you
have done. I think it was the friend's part.”
“By gin! that's jest what he telled me, Mr. Forester,”
put in Dolph Pierson, “and jest what I could a' telled you,
only he's worded it some better nor I could. So don't be
vexed with him, noways.”
“It was but a poor compliment to my reason, at all
events,” said Forester, who had been too much discomposed
to resume his equanimity on the instant.
“But a very good one to your aptitude at taking hints
from experience,” replied Harry. “Come, don't be sulky,
old boy; between you and me, that would be something
too inexpressibly absurd.”
There was no resisting this; so Frank gave his friend
an amicable dig in the ribs, that would have pretty nearly
knocked the wind out of a rhinoceros, and said, “All right,
old fellow; but do you really think I never take advice?”
“I think that if you did you would be a prodigy. I
never saw a man who asked for advice until he had made
his mind fully up how he should act, at all events. Now,
you had not asked advice, but thought you knew, as you
said when you drove poor McTavish ten miles above the
saw-mill turn to Warwick, responding only `Don't I
know?' to all his suggestions that you were out of the road,
all his entreaties that you would inquire your way. `Don't
I knew?' carried you that night to Coffee's Tavern, in the
Cove, when you would surely have discovered your mistake
at the bridge, if he had not pointed out your error, and so
roused your spirit of resistance and set you on the defensive.
`Don't I know?' would have kept you in green and silver
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to-day, if I had let Dolph speak to you. You ought to be
very much obliged to me, for now you do know!”
“And I am very much obliged to you; and, faith! I
believe, after all, that one lesson learned of that hard
teacher, Experience, is better than a dozen from that soft
persuader, Good Advice. For my part, I only hope that
you will always stick to your new system; for in very
deed I think good advisers are the most odious persons in
the universe.”
“I will; depend upon it, Frank. So far at all events as
you are concerned. I made my mind up to that long
enough ago.”
“Look here, Harry; this is the cottage, I spoke of to you
last night, that we are just coming to, on the right-hand side.
Cannot you frame some excuse to stop? I have a curiosity
to see something farther.”
“And I. Look quietly behind, and see if Dolph's pipe is
out; Timothy is not smoking.”
“It is. He has just put it into his pouch,” replied Forester,
after casting a furtive glance behind him.
“And I threw mine away, half a mile back. Drop yours,
as if by accident, get out another, and ask Dolph for a light;
and, as I know he has got no flint for his tinder, apply to
me in the second place, and as I have forgotten my matches,
we shall have to pull up and ask for what Dolph would
term a coal of fire.”
No sooner said than done. The cigar was dropped as
if accidentally, and the next moment Forester took out his
cigar-case, selected a cheroot, and, turning his head to old
Pierson, said aloud,
“Give us a light, old fellow. I have lost mine.”
“My pipe is out too,” replied the old hunter; “it has
not been alight these ten minutes.”
“Ah! we must try a match, then. Come, Harry, out
with the Lucifers, lad!”
For a minute or two Archer affected to search in the
various pockets of his great box-coat for the desired matchcase,
but at length, with a negative shake of the head, he
made answer—
“It is no go, Master Frank. I have forgotten my matchcase
at home; and a devilish stupid forget it is; for I don't
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see how the plague we are to get lights, any how. No
more smoking at all for this day.”
“I never can stand that,” said Frank; “I can as well
get along without a drink. Oh! look you, here's a cottage,
Harry; pull up, and we'll beg for a light there. By
Jove!” he added, as if he had been surprised, “it is the
place where the pretty woman lives, about whom we were
speaking.”
“It is so,” answered Harry, gravely. “Well, we will
get a light; but mark me, no chaffing.”
“Chaffing!” replied Frank, quickly, “I should think
not of that, indeed; what the deuce should have put such
a thought as that into your head?”
“You know you're good at it sometimes, Frank,” replied
Archer, with a grave smile. “But don't get savage; I did
not mean to offend your high mightiness!”
And as he spoke he pulled up the horses at the door of
the cottage, which had once evidently been extremely neat
and pretty, with a portico of rustic make, all overrun with
evergreens and flowery creepers. It had, however, although
still comparatively a new building, already fallen into partial
decay, and exhibited those symptoms by which a keen
observer would easily judge that the master of the house
was a drunkard, or the mistress a slattern.
“What ails you, to be stoppin' here, Mister Aircher?”
asked the old hunter shortly, and in a tone which indicated
anything but pleasure at the occurrence; “we hain't no
business here, none on us—this is whar' Harry Barhyte
lives, as I telled you on.”
“I know it, Dolph,” replied Archer, “but we have all
lost our fire, and we have brought no matches with us,
and Frank here for the life of him can't walk the day
through without smoking.”
“There won't come no luck on it, nohow,” responded
the hunter. “If so be I'd a knowed this, I'd a brought
you by the other road.”
“Pshaw! nonsense!” replied Archer; “what harm can
come of it, any way? Halloa!” he added, raising his
voice, “is there any one at home?”
Almost as quickly as he spoke, the woman came to the
door. She was, as Frank had described her on the previous
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day, a singularly beautiful, and, for her class in life, a singularly
delicate-looking creature, with a quantity of soft light
brown hair falling in dishevelled, and, to speak the truth,
somewhat disordered masses down her neck; large blue
eyes; a fair complexion; and a figure of slender yet symmetrical
proportion.
For all this, however, her appearance and the impression
she produced on the minds of the young men were the very
reverse of attractive or agreeable. There was a bold eager
look in her eye when it met theirs directly that struck them
as immodest and offensive, and a sidelong glance yet more
obnoxious, as she lowered her lids in a sort of affected medesty
as Archer addressed her.
Her dress, moreover, was unseemly, at least when viewed
in relation to her place of abode in a remote rural district
amid wild mountains, and to her condition in life, for it had
been originally of expensive materials, and rather tawdry
colours, and had been fashioned to display the shape, and
reveal far more of the neck and bosom than is usual among
country maids or matrons.
“Pardon us for troubling you, madam,” said Harry, removing
his hunting-cap; “but we have lost our light, and
called to see if you would have the goodness to let us have
a coal of your fire?”
“No trouble, sir, I assure you!” she replied, with a very
peculiar glance, and a still more peculiar expression of
voice. “I shall always be too glad to oblige you in anything
which you can ask me.”
And, without waiting for an answer, she tripped into the
house, and returned almost instantly, bearing in the tongs
a piece of a blazing brand of wood, which she handed to
Archer, who passed it over to Frank, and, as if in reply to
her last speech, said, in a friendly familiar voice,
“I am glad to see that you recollect me, Mrs. Barhyte,
for it is a very long time since you sat on my knee when
you were pretty little Mary Marten. I fancied you must
have quite forgotten me.”
“I do not forget so easily, Mr. Archer,” returned the
woman, with the same disagreeable sidelong look—“you
especially;” and then, as if aware that she had gone something
too far, she hesitated a moment or two, and added—
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“for those were very happy days; and, whatever folks may
say about it, I think that it is easier to forget sorrow than
happiness.”
“It is a merciful gift of Providence that it is so,” replied
Archer, gravely. “But I am sorry to hear you speak as
if you were not happy. I was quite glad when I heard
you were married to Harry Barhyte, Mary, and thought it
such a nice match. For you were always quite a pet of
mine, and he was my friend—a man I was proud to call
my friend,” he added with marked emphasis.
“That was when he was his own friend, Mr. Archer,”
replied the woman, a little sharply.
“And is he not so, now?”
“He is very much changed; very much, since you knew
him, sir.”
“Ay! is he?” cried the old hunter sternly, and with
more vehemence than he was wont to exhibit; “but what
changed him? Tell us that, Mary Barhyte—tell us what
changed him?”
The woman blushed fiery red, from the very roots of her
hair to the edge of her dress, and drooped her eyes and
kept silence, abashed and humbled.
In her eagerness to coquette with the two gay young men
who sat on the front seat, she had not spared a glance to
the inferior personages behind, and consequently had not
discovered the presence of Dolph Pierson.
“And where is Harry Barhyte, now?” said Archer, who
while observing everything closely, had pretended to be engaged
solely in lighting his cheroot. “I should like to see
him, before I leave the country.”
“He is out with his rifle after deer,” she said, raising her
eyes again to Archer's, with a half look of invitation; “I
scarce know which way he is gone. I think he said toward
the Eagle Rock. But if you call in after dark this evening,
you'll be pretty like to find him.”
“And is Ned Wheeler away with him, too?” asked the
old hunter, with a peculiar intonation.
“What would I know about Ned Wheeler?” she asked,
very angrily, instead of answering directly; but then,
after a moment's pause, as if something flashed upon her
mind, she added, quickly: “No, he is not away with him;
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Henry's been gone since daylight, and Ned passed the door,
with his gun in his hand, not ten minutes since; you'll
overtake him, I reckon.”
“Passed the door, did he?—he don't often do that, doos
he, Mary?”
“I told him Henry wasn't in.”
“Hum-hum! and that was the cause why he passed it,
hey? I'd a thought now as he'd likely a comed in and sot
a spell, to git a light for his pipe like, or a drink—”
“We don't keep no drink here, Mr. Pierson; and you
know that as well I do.”
“I don't know nothen on the airth about it, nor don't
warn't to, Mary. You can't say as I iver was inside your
doors.”
“Nor I don't wont to see you there!” she replied almost
fiercely, with a gleam of flashing anger in her bold eyes;
but then turning to Harry, “but you, sir, I shall be glad
to see at any time; and so will Henry, for he speaks of
you very often.”
“I thank you; I will call if I do not meet him to-day.
Good-morning to you!” and once more touching his cap,
he gave his good steeds their head, and away they bowled
up the road toward the base of the wooded hills that towered
above them in huge billow-swells of many-coloured
foliage.
They had driven perhaps a couple of miles at a slashing
trot, not holding much conversation among themselves, for
the past interview had set them all to thinking pretty deeply,
and a sort of inexplicable gloom hung over the whole
party, when they overtook a tall slouching shambling-gaited
fellow, carrying a long rifle in his hand, and proceeding
in the same direction with themselves.
“Who have we here, Dolph?” asked Archer, who having
his eye well forward on the road, was the first to catch
sight of him.
“Black Ned! don't you see how he snoops along, like
no honest man would?”
Harry smiled at the rough hunter's attributing the trick
of the man's gait, the result probably of the wound to which
he had himself alluded, to certain mental qualities; but
knowing the uselessness of arguing such points with one
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at the same time so single-minded and so prejudiced as
Pierson, he made no reply.
A moment afterward, however, as he ran alongside of
the stranger, he checked his horses for the instant, partly
to observe his features, and partly to gain some information.
The first were villanous enough; a low, receding brow,
partially overshadowed by tangled elf-locks of uncombed
black hair, a broken-backed hawk nose, a pair of keen,
cunning, cruel, down-looking black eyes, a thin-lipped,
compressed mouth, with a constant stream of tobacco-juice
oozing from its corners. He had not turned his head to
see who were the new-comers, though the clattering trot of
such a team, and the even roll of such a vehicle, were
sounds most unfamiliar to any ear in that tract of country,
nor did he now raise his eyes as the horses shot past him,
and immediately moderated their speed under the guidance
of a master hand.
“Mister Wheeler, I believe?”
“Ned Wheeler is my name; but I don't know yourn, no
how,” was the surly answer.
“Mine is Archer,” replied the young man; “but that
will not help you. I heard you were before us on the
range, and as we shall pass you with our horses, I thought
it fair to inquire, as you have the start, which side of the
road you mean to hunt; I would not wish to interfere with
any man.”
“Well, that's fair, anyhow,” answered the other, though
he looked as if he half suspected a trap. “I did think as
I'd drive over to the right hereaways, toward the black
swamp in the Indian holler. Harry Barhyte, he's gone
along the top to the Eagle Rock, and so he'll be sendin' the
deer down to the swamp, I reckons.”
“We will keep to the left, then,” said Archer. “Goodmorning!”
And away he drove, at the same slapping pace as before.
“Now, if I might be so bold, Mister Aircher,” said the
hunter, who had maintained a dogged silence during the
whole of this brief colloquy, “I'd be right well pleased,
anyways, to know why you did that 'ere?”
“Did what, Dolph?”
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“Spoke to that ere darned scoundrel at all, fust—and
next, guv him his chice of beats.”
“I wanted to look at him, first, Dolph!”
“You must be tarnal fond of seein' humly sights, then,”
replied Pierson. “You'd be hard set, I guess, to find a
humlier picter atween this and York.”
“He is most villanously ugly, of a truth,” said Harry,
musing. “And is it possible that handsome creature prefers
this vile, low-bred, hideous brute, to so gallant and
tight a lad as Harry Barhyte?”
“Wimen goes pretty much by contraries,” replied Pierson.
“Them as is good to them, they behaves wust to; and
them as conducts wust to them, they niver can love hard
enough. But Harry's e'ena'most as bad as Ned be, now.
But why give him his chice of ground?”
“I had my reason for that, too, Dolph.”
“So I 'xpect—most men has some reason for all the
darned things they do—leastwise they thinks they has, and
that's a'most the same thing. But I'd like to know what
yourn mought 'a bin.”
“I wanted to be sure whither Barhyte has gone; and
whether this dog was going to join him.”
“And do you reckon you're sure now?”
“Pretty sure that Barhyte has gone to the Eagle Rock.
Where is the Eagle Rock, Dolph?”
“Right stret ahead on us, up the big hill yonder. You
see them big black pines up three-parts to the top,” he
added, pointing with his hands; “well, it is right over
them, jist high enough that you can see clear over the tops
on 'em.”
“Is it good laying ground for deer, now?”
“None in the whole range better. All along there the
mountain side is full of springs, and the sile's moist, and
the fern grows up four and six feet high. 'Tain't such
very bad walking nuther, for it's in sort of terraces, one above
another, pretty level like.”
“Well, if you think it good, Dolph, we'll bear off here a
mile or so to the left, that I may keep my word with that
scoundrel, and then we'll strike right up the crags, and
beat those terraces you speak of to the eastward. Will
that suit you?”
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“Bravely,” answered the hunter, “though we shan't
see nothin' in the bottom. But a mile off to the left there's
a grand waterfall comes down the hill in a sort of gorge
we can climb pretty easy, and oncet up, thar's three terraces,
one right above the other; so there'll be just one for each
on us, within hailin' distance.”
“All right, then. How much farther have we to go,
Dolph?”
“One mile to the Old Mill corner.”
“Look back, Forester, and see what that scamp is doing;
the road is so straight, he must be in sight still.”
“He is just turning into the covert to the right-hand,”
said Frank. “What the devil do you care about the brute
for?”
“That's more than I can tell you, Master Frank; but
some how or other I've a fancy that something's going to
happen out of the common way to-day. It's all infernal
stuff, I know; for Heaven be thanked, I am not in the least
superstitious, nor do I believe in presentiments; but I cannot
get it out of my head that something horrible is in the wind,
and that this fellow Wheeler is at the bottom of it. It hangs
over me like a black cloud. I never felt so in my life
before.”
“I should think not,” said Forester laughing; “nor I
neither. If I were you, I'd take a good pull at the Ferintosh,
and feel so no more.”
“I don't know but you're right, Frank; and here we are
at the Old Mill, so while Tim is getting out the traps I'll
follow your advice.”
“What you say right is very true; so'll I,” said Forester,
and incontinently they both imbibed moderately; but when
Dolph was invited to follow suit, he shook his head gravely,
and made answer solemnly—
“A warnin' is a warnin', and shouldn't niver be made
light of, no how. I dreamed of nothin' else but blood all
night, and I thought when I riz up this mornin' that blood
there would be; but now that Aircher's got a warnin' tew,
I'm sure on't. God send it mayn't be some of us.”
Forester stared at the man in mute admiration. At first
he thought he was jesting, then he began to imagine that
he had gone mad, but there was as little of insanity in the
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and even old Pierson himself, moulded as he was of castiron,
was flushed and blown with the fatigue.
All three were glad to lie down for half an hour on the
mossy margin of the water to rest them before climbing
the hill, and this time Pierson did not refuse his share of
the moderate cup. Then Harry's match-box having been
discovered in an unusual pocket, all the three smoked a
quiet pipe, and that done, arose, refreshed and ready for a
steep mountain scramble.
Ten minutes' walk thereafter brought them to the mouth
of the gorge in the hills whence the stream issued; and
just before they reached it, Dolph whispered to the two
young men to have their pieces ready, for that the cataract
was close at hand, just round the first angle in the path,
and that there was often a chance of a shot there, when the
run was well up, as it was at this time, the deer coming
down to the cool water to avoid the pursuit of the tormenting
flies.
The gorge itself was bold and fine, the stream rushing
out in a broad sheet of snow-white foam between two great
gray limestone rocks, which towered on either side to the
height of at least a hundred feet, crowned with feathery
crests of hemlock, forming in this place the first step of the
mountain ridge which soared away, clothed to the very top
with forests, well nigh three thousand feet in air.
Following the motions of the wary forester, the sportsmen
entered the pass, thridding a narrow ledge of rock
which ran like an abutment along the base of the mountain
wall, elevated only a few inches above the whirling
foam-flakes.
Within, the gorge wheeled directly to the right, and
along, the right-hand side they stole carefully, with their
fore-fingers on the triggers of their rifles, holding their
breaths in the intensity of their eagerness, and feeling their
hearts knocking hard against their bosoms.
Two more steps brought them to the angle; and facing
them, as the gorge wheeled again upward to the left at
some fifty yards distance, thundered the foaming waterfall.
It was indeed a grand and striking scene; for, although the
height was inconsiderable, not exceeding fifty feet, the volume
of water was considerable, and the fall, dashing on a
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flat rock at the foot, flung off a glancing sheet of broken
water in all directions, like the fragments of a crystal mirror.
The accessories too of the wild scene, the black
rocks, the richly feathered evergreens, relieved by the
white spray, and illuminated by one stray sunbeam which
fell almost perpendicularly on the very shoot of the fall,
were all perfect in their colouring and keeping. Add to
this that the roar of the fall, reduplicated by the echoes of
that enclosed amphitheatre, boomed with ten times the
majesty of sound which the same cascade would have
emitted in an open space.
Short time, however, had they to gaze at that moment
on the wonders or the beauties of the spot; for there, on
the very summit of the cataract itself, upon a crag which
split the falling waters into two parts, although at a few
feet below they joined again and descended in one common
volume, there stood as fine a hart as ever gladdened the
eye of deerstalker.
The noble animal was gazing up the glen as Forester
and Harry entered the amphitheatre below him, and consequently
saw nothing of his enemies, whose footsteps were
drowned by the roar of the fall, while the taint of their
presence was swept away from him by the rush of cool air
from the water.
“Hist! hist!” whispered the hunter in low tones.
“Now, Frank,” said Archer in his ear, and with an eye
glistening with excitement, he raised the light Manton rifle
to his eye, took a quick aim, and drew the trigger.
Simultaneously with the crack and flash of the piece, the
noble animal made a quick involuntary plunge, and the soft
thud of the ball, as it struck him, reached the ears of the
sportsmen.
He turned his soft liquid eyes towards his foemen, with
a hoarse, plaintive bleat, and gathered his slender sinewy
limbs to spring across the channel of the fall; but ere he
had time to rise, Harry's unerring weapon flashed, for he
saw that, although Frank's ball had taken effect, the wound
was not mortal.
The heavy ounce ball clove his heart asunder, and in the
very act of leaping, he fell dead upon the very summit of
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the cataract, and the next instant was swept down by the
tumultuous waters to the very feet of his conquerors.
The sharp crack of the rifle-shots, in that deep rock-bound
chasm, bellowed almost like the roar of ordnance,
and soaring upward were repeated by the mountain tops,
each after each, till they died away in the far distance, but
not till they had reached the ears of a man who stood on
the lower ridges of the same chain of hills at about one
mile's distance eastward of the Eagle Rock.
It was no other than Ned Wheeler, who, notwithstanding
his assertion that he was about to beat the level ground
along the base of the hills, had ascended the slope at once,
and, having wandered so far as to the first terrace of the
mountain, was leaning on his rifle and listening eagerly for
some sound which should indicate to him the whereabout
of the party, which—strange to say—he held in deadly
apprehension.
A fierce smile illuminated his villanous features with a
sinister light, as he heard the often re-echoed shots, and he
muttered between his teeth, “Ah! that will do, that will do!
They have shot a deer in the Devil's Hollow! Now, they
will bear off to the left. What fools them darned gentlemen,
as they calls themselves, be! They're far enough now,
anyways; and I must hurry, or I'll sca'ce be in time.”
And with the words he threw his rifle to the trail, and,
hurrying up the mountain side, made the best of his way
toward the Eagle Rock.
Meanwhile our party also, having gralloched the hart
which they had slain, and hoisted him up into the branches of
a tail hemlock which shot out of a crevice at the foot of the
fall, set themselves to climb the rocky path by the cataract's
edge, and soon gaining the three terraces mentioned
by Dolph, took each his own line, Harry following the topmost,
which, as Pierson informed him, would lead him
direct to the often-mentioned rock, Dolph taking the next
below him, and Forester pursuing the lowest.
These terraces were in fact irregular slopes on the hill
side, comparatively level, but still descending at a considerable
angle to the southward, each bounded by a sheer
step or cliff of shaly limestone rock, varying from ten to
fifty feet in height, below which lay the next in succession.
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These slopes were in some places two hundred yards in
width, in some less than fifty, but all three were covered
with a dense growth of gigantic fern, interspersed here with
swales of soft rich green grass, and there with patches of
wintergreen and cranberries, or with thickets of calmia,
rhododendron, and azalia. Overhead they were canopied
by the many-coloured foliage of the huge forest trees, and
above the topmost terrace, to Archer's left hand, as he was
wending his way eastward, the mountain rose abrupt, steep,
and stony, and clothed for the most part with a dense
growth of evergreens.
Along these terraces they made their way slowly, communicating
from time to time one with the other, so as to
keep all in accurate line, watching every brake, surveying
the bark of every gray trunk against which the wild deer
might have frayed their antlers, gathering tokens from
every turned leaf, whether the wild cattle of the hills had
passed in their direction—but in vain. No sign met their
eyes; and they had traversed half the distance to the rock,
when the sharp crack of a rifle was heard in the woods
ahead of them.
“Hist! Dolph!” cried Harry, springing to the verge of
the terrace, “where was that shot fired?”
“Within two rod of the Eagle Rock, or my ears beant
what they used to be.”
“It must be Harry Barhyte?”
“Likely.”
“Let's on. I want to speak with him.”
Onward they went then, quickening their pace a little,
and neglecting many of those precautions, which they had
previously taken to discover the game of which they were
in pursuit; for, though he said little, it was evident that there
was something on Archer's mind that day far different from
the mere killing of red deer, and that he had resolved on
some course with regard to Barhyte, whom he regarded as
the saviour of his life.
Before they reached the Eagle Rock, however, while they
were all walking each on his own line at the rate of perhaps
three miles and a half an hour, a brace of fine does bounced
suddenly out of the long fern, scarce thirty yards ahead
of Archer, and bounded across his face down the mountain
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side. With the speed of light he tossed the heavy rifle to his
shoulder, shouting as he did so, “Mark deer! Dolph,
ma-ark!” and his shout was followed by the quick-succeeding
crack of both his barrels, fired one after the other.
The first doe sprang six feet into the air, and fell dead
before she had made six bounds from the brake whence she
had started, but the second had crossed the little terrace
and was springing down the crag, at that place not above
ten feet in descent, when he fired, so that he overshot her.
“Now, Dolph!” he shouted, “it's your turn; give it her,
old fellow!”
But instead of the report of the rifle, the sharp explosion
of a cap alone was heard, followed by a stifled execration,
and then,
“Hilloh! Look out, Forester.”
A shot followed, and a loud whoop from that worthy,
who had at length pinned a deer, after two day's hard
walking.
“Look here, Dolph,” cried Archer, as he looked down
upon the hunter, who was coolly recapping his gun. “I
wish you'd come up and bleed this doe for me, and then
follow me as quickly as you can; I'm afraid I shall miss
Barhyte.”
“All right, Aircher,” answered the old hunter, looking
up earnestly in the young man's face; “I'd like you to see
him. For it's fit he should know, and you'll tell him stret
and easily at oncet.”
Harry nodded gravely, and hurried on, loading his rifle
as he went; and scarcely had he done so, before the gray
rifted precipice with a table rock on the summit, and a
small glade of smooth grassy land at its base, below which
grew on the declivity of the mountain a dense grove of giant
pines, rose full in view before him.
He had never been on the spot before, yet was there no
possibility of mistaking it. For, if the scene had not spoken
for itself, there on the summit of a tall white-oak which
shot a hundred feet heavenward above the hoary rock, was
the immemorial nest of the bald-headed eagle.
Archer looked around him eagerly, as if he had hoped
to find some one at that very place, so strongly had his
imagination acted on him. But, seeing nothing like a
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human form, he half smiled at his own credulity, and, bending
his eyes downward, began to search for the track of the
man he sought, on the moist soil of the little mountain
meadow.
He had not taken twenty paces, however, before he
started back, as pale as death, in ghastly horror.
For there, directly in front of the Eagle rock, flat on his
back, with his grim unshaven face, and wide staring eyes,
and a small gory spot in the centre of his forehead, all
turned heavenward, rigid and cold as the earth on which
he lay, was the man whom he sought—Harry Barhyte.
So awful and appalling was the intonation of the shout
which burst from Archer's lips at this discovery, that Forester
and Dolph Pierson were convinced, as it struck their
ears, that something fearful had occurred; and, leaving the
deer unbroken, they came rushing up at full speed, Frank
leading in the race, breathless and blown, and found their
comrade pale as the corpse itself, yet nothing all the circumstances
with the precision and self-composure of a calm
brave man.
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CHAPTER X. WOODCRAFT AND EVIDENCE.
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The body lay, as I have said, flat on its back, with the
head down hill, and the feet toward the gray crag above.
The left hand was firmly clinched, but the right was wide
open. It was evident, in an instant, that the fatal shot had
slain him outright, for not a blade of grass was disturbed
around him; he lay, as he had fallen, as he had died, unconvulsed,
and without a struggle.
He must have been standing, therefore, with his face toward
the rock, when the shot took effect which slew him.
When Forester and Pierson came up, Harry was standing
close to the corpse with a small note-book and a pencil
in his hand; five minutes had perhaps elapsed since he
uttered that wild shout, and neither of the new-comers were
aware that he had stirred from the spot.
“Good God!” exclaimed Forester, “who is this?”
“Harry Barhyte!” cried Dolph, “sure's my name's
Pierson. Well—well! my dream's out!”
“Have a care,” cried Archer, sharply, as Frank began
to move restlessly about. “Don't stir a step. This ground
has got to be searched, step by step.”
The hunter, who had just picked up a long rifle which
lay on the grass beside the body, and was examining it with
a jealous eye, looked quickly up to Archer's face, as if to
catch his meaning. But all there was blank and inscrutable.
Again he looked to the rifle, the hammer of which was
down on the nipple, with the cap recently exploded; drew
the ramrod, tried the barrel, and finding it discharge,
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shook his head, saying: “No, no, Aircher, 'tain't no use
sarching; he's done it his own self. God send it was by
accident, but I doubt it, sorely.”
“He did it not himself, Dolph Pierson,” replied Archer,
solemnly, “either by accident or intent.”
“It's his own rifle—fresh fired, Aircher—there hain't
ben but one shot fired since we came on the range, and
that's two hours, if it's a minnit, except those we fired. The
poor lad's warm yet. Sure as death the shot we heard did
the deed!”
“True, every syllable,” said Archer; “yet he did it not—
that is certain,” and as he spoke, he closed the book, in
which he had made several memoranda, and returned it to
his pocket.
“Are you in earnest, Harry?” asked Forester, all whose
mercurial spirits and quick life had passed from him at
that dread sight.
“In earnest!” exclaimed Archer, half indignant at the
question; “in most solemn and dread earnest!”
“He must be right, then,” muttered the old hunter; “but
I can't see into it, nohow.”
“See now, then,” said the other, solemnly—“and see
you, Frank, and what you see, that note, for it is evidence,
and on it hangs another life!”
“Look here!” and he pointed to the hole by which the
bullet had entered, nearly in the centre of the forehead, but
a little to the right, about half an inch above the inner corner
of the right eyebrow.
“Well.”
“And then here!” and, as he spoke, he kneeled down
and raised the head gently by the hair—the cap had fallen
off—and laid his finger on the spot, just above the roots of
the hair at the nape of the neck, where, after passing
through the brain, it had issued.
“I don't see,” said Frank, musing.
“But I do,” said Pierson, after a moment, during which
he had bowed his own head over the muzzle of his own
rifle, which he placed in several different directions, with
the butt on the ground. “He did not shoot hisself.”
“Why not?”
“If he had done so, with that rifle, the ball must have
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come out of the back of his head at a point higher than that
at which it entered. It has come out two inches lower.”
“True, if it were accidental—but if intentional, might
not he have held the piece, from above, at arm's length?”
“Impossible! It is a four-foot barrel—no earthly arm
could have done it. What do you say, Dolph?”
“What you says. He didn't shoot hisself, neither accidental,
nor a purpose; and I thank God for't!”
“Amen!” replied Harry. “Now, look there!” and he
pointed to a freshly-cut white spot on the trunk of one of
the great pine trees, at about three feet from the ground,
directly in the rear of the corpse; “there is the bullet!”
Two minutes had not passed before the woodman had
dug the fatal ball out of the soft bark of the pine-tree
with the point of his knife.
“It's Barhyte's own bullet, too, Aircher,” said the hunter,
examining the deadly missile; “here's his own mark on't.”
“The deeper and more damnable the craft of the murderer!”
said Harry.
“The murderer!” repeated Forester.
“Ay! the murderer!” repeated Archer. “Now, kneel
down, Dolph, lay your eye to the level of that shot-hole in
the tree, and take your range past the collar of my coat,
as I stand at poor Barhyte's feet. I am a trifle taller than
he, but that's near enough. Now, old man, where does
your line strike? where was he shot from?”
The old hunter rose from his knees and gazed for a moment
wonderingly in the face of the young man.
“You're a merickle, you be! You knows iverything,
you do! I've said it, often; but I sees it now. Harry
Barhyte was shot by some one who stood at top o' the
Eagle rock, alongside the trunk of the tree with the knob
on't.”
“Are you sure of that?” asked Archer, gravely.
“As sure as that's the sun yonder!”
While this colloquy was going on, Frank knelt and
took the same eye-line, and saw that in effect the range
was true from the point where the bullet had cut the tree,
through the elevation of a tall man's head to a level about
five feet above the table-rock, close to the body of the
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white-oak tree; and marvelling greatly at the strange sagacity
of his comrades, he kept his peace and listened.
“Would you swear it?”
The hunter paused. “I would!” he said, at last.
“Yet that is his own gun, and it was his own bullet that
killed him.”
“Some one must have changed guns with him.”
“When, Pierson?”
A light seemed to flash on the old man, for his eye kindled,
and he smote his hand upon his thigh.
“Twice!” he replied; “oncet afore he was shot, and
again arterward. We'll be on the trail of him afore ten
minutes. Ned Wheeler, you shall swing for this!”
“You have hit my very thought, Pierson,” said Archer.
“He must have come down from the rock after doing it—
yet I can find no track of him.”
“Let's try again,” said the old man; and to work they
went, and searched the ground almost foot by foot, but no
track could they find, except their own prints coming from
the westward, and those of the murdered man from the east.
“This is very strange,” said Harry. But at that very
moment Frank pointed to a piece of flat flag-stone, which
he had been contemplating closely for above a minute—it
lay about a yard distant from the dead man. And lo! upon
its dry surface, visible enough, was the “sable score,” not
of fingers four, but of five naked human toes, which had
left the print thereon of the dark peaty soil on which they
had last trodden.
“Right, Frank!” cried Archer, exultingly. “We will
have him now; and you will make a woodman!”
The clue once taken was followed easily; a large piece
of loose half-decayed pine bark lay on the ground at about
four feet from the flag-stone; it was lifted, and beneath it
were two distinct impressions in the deep loam of a naked
human foot, one coming, one returning. Other indications
were discovered, though less distinct than these, which
made it perfectly clear that since the death of poor Barhyte
a man had come from the Eagle Rock, and returned to it,
barefooted; concealing, moreover, the evidence of his visit
by strange, Indian-like expedients.
Harry again drew out his note-book, and showed to his
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companions a rude map which he had already made of the
localities, with the exact positions of the rock, the body, and
the trees, and thereupon he now inserted the places of the
marked stones and foot-prints.
Forester and the hunter examined and verified it, and
then affixed, the former his signature, and the latter his mark.
“Now, Dolph,” said Archer, quietly; “you and I know
who the murderer is; but we have got one thing to do yet—
to prove it! and to that end you and I must take him, and
that to-day!”
“We can do't, Aircher!”
“And you must help us, Frank.”
“Of course, Harry, to the utmost—but I do not know
how I can, for it seems to me, as Dolph says, that you do
know, or at least see everything. How can I help you?”
“Do you think you can find your way to Timothy, and
the wagon?”
“I am not sure. I'll try though.”
“Look ye here, Mister Forester,” said Dolph, leading
him forward to the brow of the hill, and pointing out to him
a towering bare crag across the valley, “keep your line
stret to that 'ere, and it'll bring you out at the fork of the
road, where Tim's waitin'.”
“Have you got your pocket compass, Harry?”
“Here it is.”
“I'll set the line, and then all's certain. Now, then,
what am I to do?”
“Go, and find Timothy first; then follow the road half
a mile, and you'll come to a country store. Get help
there—buy a ladle, and a few pounds of lead—come hither—
melt the lead, take a cast of those two footprints, which
I have covered over again. Then take them, and the body,
and the rifle, down to the store, and wait until we come to
you. Use my name and Dolph's, and do not let them hold
an inquest until we come up.”
“Let me look at the rifle first.”
“Certainly; what of it?”
“I think I have seen it before.”
“Indeed! when?”
“This morning.”
“Ay!” replied Harry, catching his meaning on the
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instant—“that was but a passing glance. You cannot be
certain.”
“I may be made so.”
“Well! time will show, and we have no time to lose,
not a moment. This deed had not been done twenty minutes
when I got here, for I heard the shot which did it, and
the assassin may well have been within earshot when we
reached the ground; he could not have been many hundred
yards distant, for all these stratagems must have taken
time. Now, if he have heard us, he will be desperate, and
may lie in wait for you, or try to intercept you. If he do,
shoot him like a dog, and I'll bear you out.”
“I have got two barrels here, and a good stout knife
too,” answered Forester, “and if I had none of them,
barehanded I would not fear a cold-blooded murderer—he
must be a coward.”
“But a cornered coward is a dangerous thing.”
“Be it so. I am on my guard. Fare you well.” And
he set off at a round trot down the hill, in the direction
indicated, and was soon lost to view among the thick trees
on the hill-side.
There was a momentary silence, which was broken, at
length, by the hunter inquiring in a low voice,
“What next, Aircher?”
“To hunt him by the foot-track till we find him.”
“And then?—”
“If we can follow him by the foot, I'll arrest him on my
own authority.”
“And I'll back you. Come.”
And leaving the fatal spot, they ascended the Eagle Rock,
where, on searching the circumference of the flat table of
stone where it was surrounded by soft grassy soil, they
easily found the track of a man's foot coming up to it from
the eastward.
“Run down, Dolph, and measure the dead man's shoe,
length and breadth, mark it with nicks on your ramrod—
be quick.”
This was done in the space of two or three minutes, and,
as was expected, the tracks were found to be different—
shorter and broader—they too were measured and marked.
Some minutes were spent, thereafter, but the pursuers of
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blood could not discover any track leaving the rock, till, at
length, remembering the trick practised below, Archer
turned over a flat stone which lay on the soft mire of the
swaly ground, and there was the stamp of a booted foot—
the same boot.
“He's ben larned this by the Injuns in Floridy,” said
Dolph.
“Doubtless!” replied Archer. “But this must have
taken him many minutes. He cannot be far before us.
Ha! here's a foot-print not covered; he has thought himself
safe here. But I cannot see another.”
“He's tuk up the bed of the little stream!” cried the old
hunter, delighted at finding himself able to add his quota to
the discovery of the criminal; “and what's more, he's
travellin' up it still—see how muddy the water comes
down, and there hain't ben a drop o' rain to rile it these
three days.”
“Forward, then!” exclaimed Harry. “We have nothing
to do, but to follow it along till it gets clear again. We
have him now.”
And away they dashed as hard as they could run, following
the banks of the brook, which came down muddier
and more muddy, the higher they traced it toward the source—
they were gaining upon their man.
But ere they came to clear water, they met him unexpectedly
coming to meet them, face to face. He had heard
them, doubtless, as they crashed through the brake and
underwood; and, seeing the danger of being detected flying,
had resolved to brazen it out.
As they surmised, it was Ned Wheeler. Guiltier than
usual he could not look, for the assassin and the dastard
were ineradically branded on his vile features by the hand
of nature.
“You run hard to-day, my men,” he said, sneeringly.
“What are you chasing, anyhow?”
“Ned Wheeler, you!” said Archer, steadily, halting
within six feet of him.
“Chasing me!” said the ruffian. “You'll find that tough
work, I guess.” And he cocked his rifle.
“Edward Wheeler,” repeated Archer, “you are my
prisoner. I arrest you, for the murder of Henry Barhyte.”
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The wretch turned pale as death, but still he raised his
rifle to the shoulder, and levelling it full at Archer's head,
cried, in a hoarse voice—
“Stand off, or by J—s you're a dead man!”
At the same instant Pierson levelled his piece too, exclaiming,
“Down with your gun, Ned, down with it, or I
fire!”
The coward's eye wandered from Archer to the new
speaker, and as Harry's quick glance perceived that he
wavered, he leaped in at one bound, and mastering his rifle,
which went off harmlessly in the scuffle, with his left hand,
caught him by the throat with his right, and tripping him
at the same time with his foot, cast him heavily to the
ground. The next moment he was disarmed, and his hands
were securely fastened behind him.
“It only remains, now, Dolph,” said Harry Archer, “to
take his back track to-the place where he left the brook,
and then we have the whole clue made good.”
“We'll do't,” said Dolph. “Come, Wheeler, you must
go along with us; so you'd as well go easy.”
“You'll live to be sorry for this,” said the wretch, doggedly;
but he shuddered as he spoke the words, for he
perceived the ability and perseverance with which he had
been pursued, though he could not conceive how he had
been taken.
The rest was easy work. The track was clear in the
deep mud of the swamp, and within twenty paces it led
them to the banks of the little stream, which had already
subsided into almost its natural clearness.
“Now, Wheeler,” said Archer, gravely, “it seems a
cruel thing to do—but we have no choice or help for it—
we must take you down to the place where the body lies,
and detain you there until assistance arrives to remove you
and it.”
“Don't be alarmed for nuthen',” answered the callous
wretch; “I'd jest as lieves set by Harry Barhyte's body
as anywheres else! Ef he be dead I didn't shoot him; my
gun hain't ben shot off-to-day; you can try it, ef you like.
I'll make you pay for this, I tell you!”
“Wheeler,” said Archer, yet more solemnly than
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before, “beware! I tell you, you are committing yourself.
Who said anything about shooting? or how know you that
Barhyte was shot? I warn you. I was Barhyte's friend,
and I will be his avenger. I know you to be guilty, and I
will pursue you to the utmost; but no advantage shall be
taken of you. If you would take your only chance of
saving your neck, do not say one word, or answer any
question, until you have got a lawyer. Now, come on.”
And without farther words they led him back by the
very way along which they had followed him. They pointed
out his foot-prints to him, one by one, uncovering those
which he had concealed, and replacing the stones and bark
as before, and then they set him face to face with the dead
body.
That was a fearful trial, but the wretch bore it with a
degged hardihood, that in a good cause would have been
noble resolution. His features worked a little, but he gazed
fixedly on the face of the dead, and then said, in a quiet,
sullen voice,
“Ay! he is dead, but I did not kill him!”
“We shall see,” replied Archer, and leading away their
prisoner to the foot of the rock, and making him sit down,
they sat down themselves beside him, and patiently awaited
the return of Forester with aid.
Within an hour—so eagerly had Forester bestirred himself,
and such was the excitement created by the dreadful
tidings, in that peaceful neighbourhood—voices were heard
coming up the hill, and a few minutes afterward, Forester
appeared on the ground, followed by Timothy, carrying the
ladle and the lead, and half a dozen decent-looking farmers
and countrymen.
“Where is the body, sir?” said one of these, stepping
a little forward, with a small air of authority—it was the
coroner of the county, who was aceidentally present in the
store when Forester entered, and had accompanied.
“There, sir,” said Archer, rising from the place where
he was sitting—“There, sir, is the body of the murdered
man, and here is the murderer!”
No one had noticed the little group at the foot of the rock
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till he spoke, all eyes being turned in the opposite direction,
and his words made quite a commotion.
“And pray, who are you, sir?” asked the coroner.
“I am Henry Archer, at present of New York—the person
who discovered the body, and who have taken the murderer,
whom I now deliver into your custody.”
“On what authority, or evidence did you arrest him?”
“On the authority which rests in every citizen to arrest
a felon taken in the fact, and on the evidence which I shall
show you.”
And in a few words he recounted the facts as they occurred,
pointed out the mute evidence given by the direction
of the shot, and the naked foot-prints coming and returning
from the rock, and then led the officer over the whole
ground, to the place where the prisoner was taken.
“It is all clear enough, sir. It is all as clear as day,” said
the coroner, “I can see that myself now that you point it
out. But it is all owing to you. Had any one of us found
that body, had any one man, I am bold to say, out of five
thousand, found it, he would have taken it for granted Barhyte
had killed himself, and the only question would have
been accidental death, or felo de se, and I fancy it would
have been the latter. And then the murderer would have
gone clear, and the murdered man been murdered doubly,
in his reputation as well as in his body. Pray, sir, are
you a lawyer?”
“No, I am not, sir,” replied Archer, with a smile.
“No, he ain't,” said old Dolph, “but he's a darned sight
better thing, he's the very best and 'cutest woodman I iver
did see.”
“To what, pray, do you attribute your own very singu
lar acuteness in this matter, sir?” persisted the coroner,
paying no heed to Dolph, but looking very eagerly at
Archer. “I never heard of anything like it in all my
life?”
“I am not conscious of anything so very particular about
the matter, but if there be anything, I can only attribute it
to a habit of observing closely, and, as my friend here says,
to the NOBLE SCIENCE OF Woodcraft!”
“It is very strange!” said the coroner; then turning to
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Wheeler, who was in charge of a constable, “Now, prisoner,
we must look to this. Observe, you need answer no questions
unless you choose it. Constable, take off the boot of
his right foot.”
It was done, and lo! the foot was black with the very
hue of the mire around.
“Set his right foot in that foot-print!”
The prisoner turned as pale as ashes, when this mandate
was given, and struggled impotently to resist, but it was all
in vain. Point for point the naked foot fitted the naked
foot-print.
“Now take his boot up above the rock, two or three of
you, and try that. We will have all clear.”
This too was done, and in a few minutes three or four
witnesses returned, all ready to swear to the perfect coincidence.
“I think this is enough, sir,” said the coroner, turning
to Archer, “although your suggestion of the lead is an
admirable one, wherever foot-tracks, either of men or
beasts, are to be brought in evidence.”
“Quite enough, sir,” replied Archer. “I only intended
using it, in case of not taking the prisoner on the spot.
This actual comparison before witnesses is of course better,
because positive.”
“Tain't no use, none of it!” muttered the prisoner, doggedly.
“It's his own rifle that he's shot with; there it lies
now, alongside of him. Tain't likely, I could a' shot the
man with his own gun!”
The bystanders stared a little at this speech; and one
of them, taking up the rifle, said, “ 'Tis Harry Barhyte's
rifle, sartin!”
But just then Forester advanced, and asked to see
Wheeler's piece. It was given to him, and, after a single
glance at it, he said,
“We passed Wheeler on the road this morning; he was
carrying his rifle at a trail in his right hand, and the outer
side was toward me. I will swear that it was not this
rifle which he carried then; whether this be his own or no.”
“It is his own,” cried two or three voices from the
crowd.
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“How can you swear to that, Mr. Forester? You could
have had but a very cursory view of it.”
“The rifle he carried had a brass-lidded patch-box in
the stock—this, which is said to be his, has none.”
“And Henry Barhyte's?” asked the officer.
“Has a brass patch-box!” answered the man who held it.
“Take him away, constable, take him away; and some
of you make a hand-barrow of some of these branches—you
have got an axe or two, I see, among you—and bring the
body down, will you not? To Dutch Jake's, you know,
that's the nearest public house; the prisoner and the body
both. You will attend there, gentlemen; we shall want
your evidence.”
“We are staying there for the present,” answered
Archer. “My wagon and horses are at the foot of the
hill; I can offer you a seat, if you will accept one.”
“I thank you, much, sir. Shall not I crowd you?”
“By no means. I will leave my servant.”
“No, Aircher, best leave me,” interposed Dolph. “I
must break up them ere does, and hyst them into the trees
till mornin'; the wolves'll git 'em else. And I'll bring
down a suddle with me. Don't be feared, coroner, I'll be
thar afore you've got your jury sot.”
“There is nothing to detain us any longer, is there?'
“Nothing.”
“Let us go then.”
A few minutes' walk brought them to the carriage, and
driving rapidly down the road, they soon reached Barhyte's
cottage. Here Harry pulled up, and giving the reins to
Forester, apologised to the coroner, who was a lawyer of
good standing in the county town, for detaining him a few
seconds, and entered the house, closing the door carefully
after him.
The most fearful suspicions were at work in his mind,
whether this woman, evidently in minor matters guilty,
were not in this last damning crime an accomplice likewise;
and, between his friendship for Barhyte, his resolve
to prosecute the matter to the utmost, his reluctance to injure
a woman, and some remains of lurking tenderness to
the young creature whom he had so often fondled when a
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child, his mind was in a terrible state of anxiety and
turmoil.
The beautiful young woman, who was now very becomingly
and very coquettishly attired, evidently in expectation
of this visit, had heard the wheels, and was coming to the
door to meet him, when he entered.
There was a bright flashing glance in her blue eye, and
a smile of wanton invitation on her lip, as she addressed
her visiter.
“Henry has not come home, Mr. Archer,” she said.
“But you need not mind that, you can sit down, and talk
over old times with me till he returns.”
And she put out her small white hand to lead him to a
chair, as she spoke.
But he took it not, nor advanced, but stood still, and
gazed at her fixedly.
“No, Mrs. Barhyte,” he said in a slow solemn voice.
“Henry has not come home, and what is more, he never
will come home again.”
She looked surprised for a moment, and then tossing her
head saucily, “It is no great loss,” she said. “He has
run away, I suppose, Mr. Archer. He has been a lost
man these nine months past.”
“No, madam, he is dead.”
She gazed at him for a moment, and then bursting into
a sort of hysterical laugh—“Dead!” she cried; “Oh! you
are joking with me; dead drunk! you mean.”
“Indeed, I do not. He is dead! Shot dead, through
the brain. I found him.”
“Good God!” she exclaimed, turning ashy pale, and
glaring at him, as if her eyes would have started from their
sockets—“Good God! How terrible!” and then sinking
her voice into a whisper, she added, “Who shot him?”
“It was supposed,” he replied, “that he shot himself.
We were but a short way off, when the gun was fired—
there was but one—and when we found him, he was lying
on his back quite dead, with his own gun, just discharged,
beside him.”
“His own gun!” she shrieked; “his own gun! Oh!
villain, villain, villian! Can it be, that after all, you have
done this thing?”
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“It can, indeed! nay, it is, Mary. He is a prisoner. I
took him, redhanded, in the fact; there is evidence enough
to hang twenty men; and he shall hang, or my name is
not Henry Archer. But I thank God, Mary, that you are
innocent, at least, of this.”
“Of this—of this—you did not believe, Archer, that I—
I—was a murderess?”
“I feared it, Mary.”
“My God! my God! to what have I fallen! What
have I done? how am I humbled?” She buried her face
in her hands, and for several minutes wept bitterly. At
length, and as it would seem by a great effort, mustering
courage, she raised her eyes to his, now melancholy and
subdued, and cried in a plaintive tone—
“Oh! you are good—you are good, Henry Archer. Tell
me, tell me, what must I do?” she paused; and then, an old
recollection of innocent and happy days breaking upon her,
she added, “What shall I do to be saved?”
“Repent!” the young man answered solemnly. “Repent,
and be forgiven.”
“I will, I will,” cried the beautiful sinner; “God help
me, I will!”
“God will help you!” replied Archer. “Now, tell me,
what know you of this awful business?”
“He—you know whom I mean, I will never name his
name again—pretended to be drunk last night, and carried
away Barhyte's rifle, and left his own in place of it. So,
Harry went out early, before he came—of course he was
late on purpose—and took his gun to hunt. Oh! my God,
it will kill me to think of it.—Harry! poor, poor, dear
Harry! how he loved me, and I—I—oh! what will become
of me!” and again she burst into a bitter paroxysm of tears.
“I must leave you now, Mary,” said Archer, kindly.
“Heaven keep you in your good resolves. I will return,
when they bring him home. Shall I”—he hesitated for a
moment—“shall I bring a clergyman with me?”
“Yes!” she cried, clasping her hands together eagerly,
“Oh, yes—God bless you for the thought, I will confess,
and be good, if I can, hereafter. Oh! Heaven bless you,
Mr. Archer!”
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“Good-night, Mary;” and with the words he left the
room, and, mounting his driving-seat, took the reins, and
drove rapidly to the tavern, whither hot rumour had preceded
them already, and where the fat man awaited them,
half crazy between excitement and anxiety.
What need of many words?
If there were any, the excitement of my tale is ended.
The conclusion must be anticipated.
The coroner's inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful
murder was returned instantly against Edward Wheeler;
but the miserable wretch spared this world any farther
trouble with his concerns, or his crimes; for he contrived,
that night, to anticipate his doom, hanging himself by his
neckcloth from a clothes' pin, on the wall of the room in
which he was confined, previous to his removal to the
county gaol.
So resolute was he, even to the last, that, the peg from
which he was suspended being scarce six feet from the
ground, he fell on his knees, and so strangled himself, till
his was extinct. He died and made no sign.
Mary Barhyte did indeed repent, and gave proof of repentance
in an amended and secluded life; but she lived not
long, dying of what was called consumption, which is so
often but another name for a grieved and broken heart.
And, after she was gone, some palliation for her sin was
discovered in the fact, that she had loved, and would have
married Wheeler, when both were young and innocent, but
for her parents' opposition. She believed him dead when
she wedded Barhyte. The first lover returned — He was
wicked, she weak; he tempted, and she fell.
Judge not, that ye be not judged!
Archer and Forester returned home, for the time, much
saddened and subdued; and even Fat Tom neither swore
nor jested, on the homeward route.
In process of time, however, the dark shadow left on
their minds by these terrible events passed away, and left
them, as of old, light-hearted, joyous, and carefree; and
perhaps both felt somewhat raised in their own opinion, by
the feeling that, in circumstances requiring great exertion,
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both of physical and moral courage, they had done their
duty.
Harry Archer loved not to speak of this subject afterward;
but whenever he did so, he was wont to cite it as a proof,
that there is not only much practical, but much moral
utilitv, in the Gentle Science of Woodcraft.
THE END.
Back matter
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[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
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Herbert, Henry William, 1807-1858 [1849], The deerstalkers, or, Circumstantial evidence: a tale of the south-western counties (Carey & Hart, Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf152].
