The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
explode, as much in compliment to the listeners, as from the deference he
usually paid to his white associate.
“You saw our capture?” Heyward next demanded.
“We heard it,” was the significant answer. “An Indian yell is
plain language to men who have passed their days in the woods. But when you
landed, we were driven to crawl like sarpents, beneath the leaves; and then we
lost sight of you entirely, until we placed eyes on you again trussed to the
trees, and ready bound for an Indian massacre.”
“Our rescue was the deed of Providence. It was nearly a miracle that you
did not mistake the path, for the Hurons divided, and each band had its
horses.”
“Ay! there we were thrown off the scent, and might, indeed, have lost the
trail, had it not been for Uncas; we took the path, however, that led into the
wilderness; for we judged, and judged rightly, that the savages would hold that
course with their prisoners. But when we had followed it for many miles,
without finding a single twig broken, as I had advised, my mind misgave me;
especially as all the footsteps had the prints of moccasins.”
“Our captors had the precaution to see us shod like themselves,”
said Duncan, raising a foot, and exhibiting the buckskin he wore.
“Aye, ’twas judgmatical and like themselves; though we were too
expart to be thrown from a trail by so common an invention.”
“To what, then, are we indebted for our safety?”
“To what, as a white man who has no taint of Indian blood, I should be
ashamed to own; to the judgment of the young Mohican, in matters which I should
know better than he, but which I can now hardly believe to be true, though my
own eyes tell me it is so.”
“’Tis extraordinary! will you not name the reason?”
“Uncas was bold enough to say, that the beasts ridden by the gentle
ones,” continued Hawkeye, glancing his eyes, not without curious
interest, on the fillies of the ladies, “planted the legs of one side on
the ground at the same time, which is contrary to the movements of all trotting
four-footed animals of my knowledge, except the bear. And yet here are horses
that always journey in this manner, as my own eyes have seen, and as their
trail has shown for twenty long miles.”
“’Tis the merit of the animal! They come from the shores of
Narrangansett Bay, in the small province of Providence Plantations, and are
celebrated for their hardihood, and the ease of this peculiar movement; though
other horses are not unfrequently trained to the same.”
“It may be—it may be,” said Hawkeye, who had listened with
singular attention to this explanation; “though I am a man who has the
full blood of the whites, my judgment in deer and beaver is greater than in
beasts of burden. Major Effingham has many noble chargers, but I have never
seen one travel after such a sidling gait.”
“True; for he would value the animals for very different properties.
Still is this a breed highly esteemed and, as you witness, much honored with
the burdens it is often destined to bear.”
The Mohicans had suspended their operations about the glimmering fire to
listen; and, when Duncan had done, they looked at each other significantly, the
father uttering the never-failing exclamation of surprise. The scout ruminated,
like a man digesting his newly-acquired knowledge, and once more stole a glance
at the horses.
“I dare to say there are even stranger sights to be seen in the
settlements!” he said, at length. “Natur’ is sadly abused by
man, when he once gets the mastery. But, go sidling or go straight, Uncas had
seen the movement, and their trail led us on to the broken bush. The outer
branch, near the prints of one of the horses, was bent upward, as a lady breaks
a flower from its stem, but all the rest were ragged and broken down, as if the
strong hand of a man had been tearing them! So I concluded that the cunning
varments had seen the twig bent, and had torn the rest, to make us believe a
buck had been feeling the boughs with his antlers.”
“I do believe your sagacity did not deceive you; for some such thing
occurred!”
“That was easy to see,” added the scout, in no degree conscious of
having exhibited any extraordinary sagacity; “and a very different matter
it was from a waddling horse! It then struck me the Mingoes would push for this
spring, for the knaves well know the vartue of its waters!”
“Is it, then, so famous?” demanded Heyward, examining, with a more
curious eye, the secluded dell, with its bubbling fountain, surrounded, as it
was, by earth of a deep, dingy brown.
“Few red-skins, who travel south and east of the great lakes but have
heard of its qualities. Will you taste for yourself?”
Heyward took the gourd, and after swallowing a little of the water, threw it
aside with grimaces of discontent. The scout laughed in his silent but
heartfelt manner, and shook his head with vast satisfaction.
“Ah! you want the flavor that one gets by habit; the time was when I
liked it as little as yourself; but I have come to my taste, and I now crave
it, as a deer does the licks[1].
Your high-spiced wines are not better liked than a red-skin relishes this
water; especially when his natur’ is ailing. But Uncas has made his fire,
and it is time we think of eating, for our journey is long, and all before
us.”
[1]
Many of the animals of the American forests resort to those spots where salt
springs are found. These are called “licks” or “salt
licks,” in the language of the country, from the circumstance that the
quadruped is often obliged to lick the earth, in order to obtain the saline
particles. These licks are great places of resort with the hunters, who waylay
their game near the paths that lead to them.
Interrupting the dialogue by this abrupt transition, the scout had instant
recourse to the fragments of food which had escaped the voracity of the Hurons.
A very summary process completed the simple cookery, when he and the Mohicans
commenced their humble meal, with the silence and characteristic diligence of
men who ate in order to enable themselves to endure great and unremitting toil.
When this necessary, and, happily, grateful duty had been performed, each of
the foresters stooped and took a long and parting draught at that solitary and
silent spring[2],
around which and its sister fountains, within fifty years, the wealth, beauty
and talents of a hemisphere were to assemble in throngs, in pursuit of health
and pleasure. Then Hawkeye announced his determination to proceed. The sisters
resumed their saddles; Duncan and David grapsed their rifles, and followed on
footsteps; the scout leading the advance, and the Mohicans bringing up the
rear. The whole party moved swiftly through the narrow path, toward the north,
leaving the healing waters to mingle unheeded with the adjacent brooks and the
bodies of the dead to fester on the neighboring mount, without the rites of
sepulture; a fate but too common to the warriors of the woods to excite either
commiseration or comment.
[2]
The scene of the foregoing incidents is on the spot where the village of
Ballston now stands; one of the two principal watering places of America.
CHAPTER XIII.
“I’ll seek a readier path.”
—Parnell
The route taken by Hawkeye lay across those sandy plains, relived by occasional
valleys and swells of land, which had been traversed by their party on the
morning of the same day, with the baffled Magua for their guide. The sun had
now fallen low toward the distant mountains; and as their journey lay through
the interminable forest, the heat was no longer oppressive. Their progress, in
consequence, was proportionate; and long before the twilight gathered about
them, they had made good many toilsome miles on their return.
The hunter, like the savage whose place he filled, seemed to select among the
blind signs of their wild route, with a species of instinct, seldom abating his
speed, and never pausing to deliberate. A rapid and oblique glance at the moss
on the trees, with an occasional upward gaze toward the setting sun, or a
steady but passing look at the direction of the numerous water courses, through
which he waded, were sufficient to determine his path, and remove his greatest
difficulties. In the meantime, the forest began to change its hues, losing that
lively green which had embellished its arches, in the graver light which is the
usual precursor of the close of day.
While the eyes of the sisters were endeavoring to catch glimpses through the
trees, of the flood of golden glory which formed a glittering halo around the
sun, tinging here and there with ruby streaks, or bordering with narrow edgings
of shining yellow, a mass of clouds that lay piled at no great distance above
the western hills, Hawkeye turned suddenly and pointing upward toward the
gorgeous heavens, he spoke:
“Yonder is the signal given to man to seek his food and natural
rest,” he said; “better and wiser would it be, if he could
understand the signs of nature, and take a lesson from the fowls of the air and
the beasts of the field! Our night, however, will soon be over, for with the
moon we must be up and moving again. I remember to have fou’t the Maquas,
hereaways, in the first war in which I ever drew blood from man; and we threw
up a work of blocks, to keep the ravenous varmints from handling our scalps. If
my marks do not fail me, we shall find the place a few rods further to our
left.”
Without waiting for an assent, or, indeed, for any reply, the sturdy hunter
moved boldly into a dense thicket of young chestnuts, shoving aside the
branches of the exuberant shoots which nearly covered the ground, like a man
who expected, at each step, to discover some object he had formerly known. The
recollection of the scout did not deceive him. After penetrating through the
brush, matted as it was with briars, for a few hundred feet, he entered an open
space, that surrounded a low, green hillock, which was crowned by the decayed
blockhouse in question. This rude and neglected building was one of those
deserted works, which, having been thrown up on an emergency, had been
abandoned with the disappearance of danger, and was now quietly crumbling in
the solitude of the forest, neglected and nearly forgotten, like the
circumstances which had caused it to be reared. Such memorials of the passage
and struggles of man are yet frequent throughout the broad barrier of
wilderness which once separated the hostile provinces, and form a species of
ruins that are intimately associated with the recollections of colonial
history, and which are in appropriate keeping with the gloomy character of the
surrounding scenery. The roof of bark had long since fallen, and mingled with
the soil, but the huge logs of pine, which had been hastily thrown together,
still preserved their relative positions, though one angle of the work had
given way under the pressure, and threatened a speedy downfall to the remainder
of the rustic edifice. While Heyward and his companions hesitated to approach a
building so decayed, Hawkeye and the Indians entered within the low walls, not
only without fear, but with obvious interest. While the former surveyed the
ruins, both internally and externally, with the curiosity of one whose
recollections were reviving at each moment, Chingachgook related to his son, in
the language of the Delawares, and with the pride of a conqueror, the brief
history of the skirmish which had been fought, in his youth, in that secluded
spot. A strain of melancholy, however, blended with his triumph, rendering his
voice, as usual, soft and musical.
In the meantime, the sisters gladly dismounted, and prepared to enjoy their
halt in the coolness of the evening, and in a security which they believed
nothing but the beasts of the forest could invade.