The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
manifest in this howling wilderness—that should these Frenchers ever
trust themselves again within the range of a ragged bullet, there is one rifle
which shall play its part so long as flint will fire or powder burn! I leave
the tomahawk and knife to such as have a natural gift to use them. What say
you, Chingachgook,” he added, in Delaware; “shall the Hurons boast
of this to their women when the deep snows come?”
A gleam of resentment flashed across the dark lineaments of the Mohican chief;
he loosened his knife in his sheath; and then turning calmly from the sight,
his countenance settled into a repose as deep as if he knew the instigation of
passion.
“Montcalm! Montcalm!” continued the deeply resentful and less
self-restrained scout; “they say a time must come when all the deeds done
in the flesh will be seen at a single look; and that by eyes cleared from
mortal infirmities. Woe betide the wretch who is born to behold this plain,
with the judgment hanging about his soul! Ha—as I am a man of white
blood, yonder lies a red-skin, without the hair of his head where nature rooted
it! Look to him, Delaware; it may be one of your missing people; and he should
have burial like a stout warrior. I see it in your eye, Sagamore; a Huron pays
for this, afore the fall winds have blown away the scent of the blood!”
Chingachgook approached the mutilated form, and, turning it over, he found the
distinguishing marks of one of those six allied tribes, or nations, as they
were called, who, while they fought in the English ranks, were so deadly
hostile to his own people. Spurning the loathsome object with his foot, he
turned from it with the same indifference he would have quitted a brute
carcass. The scout comprehended the action, and very deliberately pursued his
own way, continuing, however, his denunciations against the French commander in
the same resentful strain.
“Nothing but vast wisdom and unlimited power should dare to sweep off men
in multitudes,” he added; “for it is only the one that can know the
necessity of the judgment; and what is there, short of the other, that can
replace the creatures of the Lord? I hold it a sin to kill the second buck
afore the first is eaten, unless a march in front, or an ambushment, be
contemplated. It is a different matter with a few warriors in open and rugged
fight, for ’tis their gift to die with the rifle or the tomahawk in hand;
according as their natures may happen to be, white or red. Uncas, come this
way, lad, and let the ravens settle upon the Mingo. I know, from often seeing
it, that they have a craving for the flesh of an Oneida; and it is as well to
let the bird follow the gift of its natural appetite.”
“Hugh!” exclaimed the young Mohican, rising on the extremities of
his feet, and gazing intently in his front, frightening the ravens to some
other prey by the sound and the action.
“What is it, boy?” whispered the scout, lowering his tall form into
a crouching attitude, like a panther about to take his leap; “God send it
be a tardy Frencher, skulking for plunder. I do believe ‘killdeer’
would take an uncommon range today!”
Uncas, without making any reply, bounded away from the spot, and in the next
instant he was seen tearing from a bush, and waving in triumph, a fragment of
the green riding-veil of Cora. The movement, the exhibition, and the cry which
again burst from the lips of the young Mohican, instantly drew the whole party
about him.
“My child!” said Munro, speaking quickly and wildly; “give me
my child!”
“Uncas will try,” was the short and touching answer.
The simple but meaning assurance was lost on the father, who seized the piece
of gauze, and crushed it in his hand, while his eyes roamed fearfully among the
bushes, as if he equally dreaded and hoped for the secrets they might reveal.
“Here are no dead,” said Heyward; “the storm seems not to
have passed this way.”
“That’s manifest; and clearer than the heavens above our
heads,” returned the undisturbed scout; “but either she, or they
that have robbed her, have passed the bush; for I remember the rag she wore to
hide a face that all did love to look upon. Uncas, you are right; the dark-hair
has been here, and she has fled like a frightened fawn, to the wood; none who
could fly would remain to be murdered. Let us search for the marks she left;
for, to Indian eyes, I sometimes think a humming-bird leaves his trail in the
air.”
The young Mohican darted away at the suggestion, and the scout had hardly done
speaking, before the former raised a cry of success from the margin of the
forest. On reaching the spot, the anxious party perceived another portion of
the veil fluttering on the lower branch of a beech.
“Softly, softly,” said the scout, extending his long rifle in front
of the eager Heyward; “we now know our work, but the beauty of the trail
must not be deformed. A step too soon may give us hours of trouble. We have
them, though; that much is beyond denial.”
“Bless ye, bless ye, worthy man!” exclaimed Munro; “whither
then, have they fled, and where are my babes?”
“The path they have taken depends on many chances. If they have gone
alone, they are quite as likely to move in a circle as straight, and they may
be within a dozen miles of us; but if the Hurons, or any of the French Indians,
have laid hands on them, ’tis probably they are now near the borders of
the Canadas. But what matters that?” continued the deliberate scout,
observing the powerful anxiety and disappointment the listeners exhibited;
“here are the Mohicans and I on one end of the trail, and, rely on it, we
find the other, though they should be a hundred leagues asunder! Gently,
gently, Uncas, you are as impatient as a man in the settlements; you forget
that light feet leave but faint marks!”
“Hugh!” exclaimed Chingachgook, who had been occupied in examining
an opening that had been evidently made through the low underbrush which
skirted the forest; and who now stood erect, as he pointed downward, in the
attitude and with the air of a man who beheld a disgusting serpent.
“Here is the palpable impression of the footstep of a man,” cried
Heyward, bending over the indicated spot; “he has trod in the margin of
this pool, and the mark cannot be mistaken. They are captives.”
“Better so than left to starve in the wilderness,” returned the
scout; “and they will leave a wider trail. I would wager fifty beaver
skins against as many flints, that the Mohicans and I enter their wigwams
within the month! Stoop to it, Uncas, and try what you can make of the
moccasin; for moccasin it plainly is, and no shoe.”
The young Mohican bent over the track, and removing the scattered leaves from
around the place, he examined it with much of that sort of scrutiny that a
money dealer, in these days of pecuniary doubts, would bestow on a suspected
due-bill. At length he arose from his knees, satisfied with the result of the
examination.
“Well, boy,” demanded the attentive scout; “what does it say?
Can you make anything of the tell-tale?”
“Well, boy,” demanded the attentive scout;
“what does it say? Can you make anything of the tell-tale?”
“Le Renard Subtil!”
“Ha! that rampaging devil again! there will never be an end of his loping
till ‘killdeer’ has said a friendly word to him.”
Heyward reluctantly admitted the truth of this intelligence, and now expressed
rather his hopes than his doubts by saying:
“One moccasin is so much like another, it is probable there is some
mistake.”
“One moccasin like another! you may as well say that one foot is like
another; though we all know that some are long, and others short; some broad
and others narrow; some with high, and some with low insteps; some intoed, and
some out. One moccasin is no more like another than one book is like another:
though they who can read in one are seldom able to tell the marks of the other.
Which is all ordered for the best, giving to every man his natural advantages.
Let me get down to it, Uncas; neither book nor moccasin is the worse for having
two opinions, instead of one.” The scout stooped to the task, and
instantly added:
“You are right, boy; here is the patch we saw so often in the other
chase. And the fellow will drink when he can get an opportunity; your drinking
Indian always learns to walk with a wider toe than the natural savage, it being
the gift of a drunkard to straddle, whether of white or red skin. ’Tis
just the length and breadth, too! look at it, Sagamore; you measured the prints
more than once, when we hunted the varmints from Glenn’s to the health
springs.”
Chingachgook complied; and after finishing his short examination, he arose, and
with a quiet demeanor, he merely pronounced the word:
“Magua!”
“Ay, ’tis a settled thing; here, then, have passed the dark-hair
and Magua.”
“And not Alice?” demanded Heyward.
“Of her we have not yet seen the signs,” returned the scout,
looking closely around at the trees, the bushes and the ground. “What
have we there? Uncas, bring hither the thing you see dangling from yonder
thorn-bush.”
When the Indian had complied, the scout received the prize, and holding it on
high, he laughed in his silent but heartfelt manner.
“’Tis the tooting we’pon of the singer! now we shall have a
trail a priest might travel,” he said. “Uncas, look for the marks
of a shoe that is long enough to uphold six feet two of tottering human flesh.
I begin to have some hopes of the fellow, since he has given up squalling to
follow some better trade.”
“At least he has been faithful to his trust,” said Heyward.
“And Cora and Alice are not without a friend.”
“Yes,” said Hawkeye, dropping his rifle, and leaning on it with an
air of visible contempt, “he will do their singing. Can he slay a buck
for their dinner; journey by the moss on the beeches, or cut the throat of a
Huron? If not, the first catbird[1]
he meets is the cleverer of the two. Well, boy, any signs of such a
foundation?”
[1]
The powers of the American mocking-bird are generally known. But the true
mocking-bird is not found so far north as the state of New York, where it has,
however, two substitutes of inferior excellence, the catbird, so often named by
the scout, and the bird vulgarly called ground- thresher. Either of these last
two birds is superior to the nightingale or the lark, though, in general, the
American birds are less musical than those of Europe.
“Here is something like the footstep of one who has worn a shoe; can it
be that of our friend?”
“Touch the leaves lightly or you’ll disconsart the formation. That!
that is the print of a foot, but ’tis the dark-hair’s; and small it
is, too, for one of such a noble height and grand appearance. The singer would
cover it with his heel.”
“Where! let me look on the footsteps of my child,” said Munro,
shoving the bushes aside, and bending fondly over the nearly obliterated
impression. Though the tread which had left the mark had been light and rapid,
it was still plainly visible. The aged soldier examined it with eyes that grew
dim as he gazed; nor did he rise from this stooping posture until Heyward saw
that he had watered the trace of his daughter’s passage with a scalding
tear. Willing to divert a distress which threatened each moment to break
through the restraint of appearances, by giving the veteran something to do,
the young man said to the scout:
“As we now possess these infallible signs, let us commence our march. A
moment, at such a time, will appear an age to the captives.”
“It is not the swiftest leaping deer that gives the longest chase,”
returned Hawkeye, without moving his eyes from the different marks that had
come under his view; “we know that the rampaging Huron has passed, and