第17章
Our companions' tent, with an air of forlorn and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner, drenched and woe-begone, stood not far off.The captain was just returning from his morning's inspection of the horses.He stalked through the mist and rain, with his plaid around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an antiquarian relic, projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother Jack at his heels.
"Good-morning, captain."
"Good-morning to your honors," said the captain, affecting the Hibernian accent; but at that instant, as he stooped to enter the tent, he tripped upon the cords at the entrance, and pitched forward against the guns which were strapped around the pole in the center.
"You are nice men, you are!" said he, after an ejaculation not necessary to be recorded, "to set a man-trap before your door every morning to catch your visitors."Then he sat down upon Henry Chatillon's saddle.We tossed a piece of buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment.
He spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid countenance, at his brother's side.
"Exhilarating weather, captain!"
"Oh, delightful, delightful!" replied the captain."I knew it would be so; so much for starting yesterday at noon! I knew how it would turn out; and I said so at the time.""You said just the contrary to us.We were in no hurry, and only moved because you insisted on it.""Gentlemen," said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an air of extreme gravity, "it was no plan of mine.There is a man among us who is determined to have everything his own way.You may express your opinion; but don't expect him to listen.You may be as reasonable as you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the roost and he'll set his face against any plan that he didn't think of himself."The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his grievances; then he began again:
"For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that time I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and nonsense, as since I have been on this cursed prairie.He's the most uncomfortable man I ever met.""Yes," said Jack; "and don't you know, Bill, how he drank up all the coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!""He pretends to know everything," resumed the captain; "nobody must give orders but he! It's, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there; for nobody knows as well as he does."We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not aware of their extent.The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be "hard," when the emergency requires it.
"For twenty years," he repeated, "I have been in the British army, and in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man.Oh, 'anything for a quiet life!' that's my maxim."We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put a period to the nuisance that disturbed it.But again the captain's easy good-nature recoiled from the task.The somewhat vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of grumbling about them."Oh, anything for a quiet life!" he said again, circling back to his favorite maxim.
But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic confederates.The captain had sold his commission, and was living in bachelor ease and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin.He hunted, fished, rode steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits.He was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and gun; the walls were plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose-horns and deer-horns, bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain's double-barreled rifle had seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had killed salmon in Nova Scotia, and trout, by his own account, in all the streams of the three kingdoms.But in an evil hour a seductive stranger came from London; no less a person than R., who, among other multitudinous wanderings, had once been upon the western prairies, and naturally enough was anxious to visit them again.The captain's imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a hunter's paradise that his guest held forth; he conceived an ambition to add to his other trophies the horns of a buffalo, and the claws of a grizzly bear; so he and R.struck a league to travel in company.Jack followed his brother, as a matter of course.Two weeks on board the Atlantic steamer brought them to Boston; in two weeks more of hard traveling they reached St.Louis, from which a ride of six days carried them to the frontier; and here we found them, in full tide of preparation for their journey.
We had been throughout on terms of intimacy with the captain, but R., the motive power of our companions' branch of the expedition, was scarcely known to us.His voice, indeed, might be heard incessantly;but at camp he remained chiefly within the tent, and on the road he either rode by himself, or else remained in close conversation with his friend Wright, the muleteer.As the captain left the tent that morning, I observed R.standing by the fire, and having nothing else to do, I determined to ascertain, if possible, what manner of man he was.He had a book under his arm, but just at present he was engrossed in actively superintending the operations of Sorel, the hunter, who was cooking some corn-bread over the coals for breakfast.