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