The Pathfinder, James Fenimore Cooper [top reads .TXT] 📗

“You’re over boastful this morning, Pathfinder; but you’ll find you’ve no green boy fresh from the settlements and the towns to deal with, I will assure ye!”

“I know that well, Quartermaster; I know that well, and shall not deny your experience. You’ve lived many years on the frontiers, and I’ve heard of you in the colonies, and among the Indians, too, quite a human life ago.”

“Na, na,” interrupted Muir in his broadest Scotch, “this is injustice, man. I’ve no’ lived so very long, neither.”

“I’ll do you justice, Lieutenant, even if you get the best in the potato trial. I say you’ve passed a good human life, for a soldier, in places where the rifle is daily used, and I know you are a creditable and ingenious marksman; but then you are not a true rifle-shooter. As for boasting, I hope I’m not a vain talker about my own exploits; but a man’s gifts are his gifts, and it’s flying in the face of Providence to deny them. The Sergeant’s daughter, here, shall judge between us, if you have the stomach to submit to so pretty a judge.”

The Pathfinder had named Mabel as the arbiter because he admired her, and because, in his eyes, rank had little or no value; but Lieutenant Muir shrank at such a reference in the presence of the wives of the officers. He would gladly keep himself constantly before the eyes and the imagination of the object of his wishes; but he was still too much under the influence of old prejudices, and perhaps too wary, to appear openly as her suitor, unless he saw something very like a certainty of success. On the discretion of Major Duncan he had a full reliance, and he apprehended no betrayal from that quarter; but he was quite aware, should it ever get abroad that he had been refused by the child of a non-commissioned officer, he would find great difficulty in making his approaches to any other woman of a condition to which he might reasonably aspire. Notwithstanding these doubts and misgivings, Mabel looked so prettily, blushed so charmingly, smiled so sweetly, and altogether presented so winning a picture of youth, spirit, modesty, and beauty, that he found it exceedingly tempting to be kept so prominently before her imagination, and to be able to address her freely.

“You shall have it your own way, Pathfinder,” he answered, as soon as his doubts had settled down into determination; “let the, Sergeant’s daughter — his charming daughter, I should have termed her — be the umpire then; and to her we will both dedicate the prize, that one or the other must certainly win. Pathfinder must be humored, ladies, as you perceive, else, no doubt, we should have had the honor to submit ourselves to one of your charming society.”

A call for the competitors now drew the Quartermaster and his adversary away, and in a few moments the second trial of skill commenced. A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been first touched with paint, and the marksman was required to hit it, or he lost his chances in the succeeding trials. No one was permitted to enter, on this occasion, who had already failed in the essay against the bull’s-eye.

There might have been half a dozen aspirants for the honors of this trial; one or two, who had barely succeeded in touching the spot of paint in the previous strife, preferring to rest their reputations there, feeling certain that they could not succeed in the greater effort that was now exacted of them. The first three adventurers failed, all coming very near the mark, but neither touching it. The fourth person who presented himself was the Quartermaster, who, after going through his usual attitudes, so far succeeded as to carry away a small portion of the head of the nail, planting his bullet by the side of its point. This was not considered an extraordinary shot, though it brought the adventurer within the category.

“You’ve saved your bacon, Quartermaster, as they say in the settlements of their creaturs,” cried Pathfinder, laughing; “but it would take a long time to build a house with a hammer no better than yours. Jasper, here, will show you how a nail is to be started, or the lad has lost some of his steadiness of hand and sartainty of eye. You would have done better yourself, Lieutenant, had you not been so much bent on soldierizing your figure. Shooting is a natural gift, and is to be exercised in a natural way.”

“We shall see, Pathfinder; I call that a pretty attempt at a nail; and I doubt if the 55th has another hammer, as you call it, that can do just the same thing over again.”

“Jasper is not in the 55th, but there goes his rap.”

As the Pathfinder spoke, the bullet of Eau-douce hit the nail square, and drove it into the target, within an inch of the head.

“Be all ready to clench it, boys!” cried out Pathfinder, stepping into his friend’s tracks the instant they were vacant. “Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I can hit, at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito’s eye. Be ready to clench!”

The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead.

“Well, Jasper, lad,” continued Pathfinder, dropping the butt-end of his rifle to the ground, and resuming the discourse, as if he thought nothing of his own exploit, “you improve daily. A few more tramps on land in my company, and the best marksman on the frontiers will have occasion to look keenly when he takes his stand ag’in you. The Quartermaster is respectable, but he will never get any farther; whereas you, Jasper, have the gift, and may one day defy any who pull trigger.”

“Hoot, hoot!” exclaimed Muir; “do you call hitting the head of the nail respectable only, when it’s the perfection of the art? Any one the least refined and elevated in sentiment knows that the delicate touches denote the master; whereas your sledge-hammer blows come from the rude and uninstructed. If ‘a miss is as good as a mile,’ a hit ought to be better, Pathfinder, whether it wound or kill.”

“The surest way of settling this rivalry will be to make another trial,” observed Lundie, “and that will be of the potato. You’re Scotch, Mr. Muir, and might fare better were it a cake or a thistle; but frontier law has declared for the American fruit, and the potato it shall be.”

As Major Duncan manifested some impatience of manner, Muir had too much tact to delay the sports any longer with his discursive remarks, but judiciously prepared himself for the next appeal. To say the truth, the Quartermaster had little or no faith in his own success in the trial of skill that was to follow, nor would he have been so free in presenting himself as a competitor at all had he anticipated it would have been made; but Major Duncan, who was somewhat of a humorist in his own quiet Scotch way, had secretly ordered it to be introduced expressly to mortify him; for, a laird himself, Lundie did not relish the notion that one who might claim to be a gentleman should bring discredit on his caste by forming an unequal alliance. As soon as everything was prepared, Muir was summoned to the stand, and the potato was held in readiness to be thrown. As the sort of feat we are about to offer to the reader, however, may be new to him, a word in explanation will render the matter more clear. A potato of large size was selected, and given to one who stood at the distance of twenty yards from the stand. At the word “heave!” which was given by the marksman, the vegetable was thrown with a gentle toss into the air, and it was the business of the adventurer to cause a ball to pass through it before it reached the ground.

The Quartermaster, in a hundred experiments, had once succeeded in accomplishing this difficult feat; but he now essayed to perform it again, with a sort of blind hope that was fated to be disappointed. The potato was thrown in the usual manner, the rifle was discharged, but the flying target was untouched.

“To the right-about, and fall out, Quartermaster,” said Lundie, smiling at the success of the artifice. “The honor of the silken calash will lie between Jasper Eau-douce and Pathfinder.”

“And how is the trial to end, Major?” inquired the latter. “Are we to have the two-potato trial, or is it to be settled by centre and skin?”

“By centre and skin, if there is any perceptible difference; otherwise the double shot must follow.”

“This is an awful moment to me, Pathfinder,” observed Jasper, as he moved towards the stand, his face actually losing its color in intensity of feeling.

Pathfinder gazed earnestly at the young man; and then, begging Major Duncan to have patience for a moment, he led his friend out of the hearing of all near him before he spoke.

“You seem to take this matter to heart, Jasper?” the hunter remarked, keeping his eyes fastened on those of the youth.

“I must own, Pathfinder, that my feelings were never before so much bound up in success.”

“And do you so much crave to outdo me, an old and tried friend? — and that, as it might be, in my own way? Shooting is my gift, boy, and no common hand can equal mine.”

“I know it — I know it, Pathfinder; but yet — “

“But what, Jasper, boy? — speak freely; you talk to a friend.”

The young man compressed his lips, dashed a hand across his eye, and flushed and paled alternately, like a girl confessing her love. Then, squeezing the other’s hand, he said calmly, like one whose manhood has overcome all other sensations, “I would lose an arm, Pathfinder, to be able to make an offering of that calash to Mabel Dunham.”

The hunter dropped his eyes to the ground, and as he walked slowly back towards the stand, he seemed to ponder deeply on what he had just heard.

“You never could succeed in the double trial, Jasper!” he suddenly remarked.

“Of that I am certain, and it troubles me.”

“What a creature is mortal man! He pines for things which are not of his gift and treats the bounties of Providence lightly. No matter, no matter. Take your station, Jasper, for the Major is waiting; and harken, lad, — I must touch the skin, for I could not show my face in the garrison with less than that.”

“I suppose I must submit to my fate,” returned Jasper, flushing and losing his color as before; “but I will make the effort, if I die.”

“What a thing is mortal man!” repeated Pathfinder, falling back to allow his friend room to take his arm; “he overlooks his own gifts, and craves those of another!”

The potato was thrown, Jasper fired, and the shout that followed preceded the announcement of the fact that he had driven his bullet through its centre, or so nearly so as to merit that award.

“Here is a competitor worthy of you, Pathfinder,” cried Major Duncan with delight, as the former took his station; “and we may look to some fine shooting in the double trial.”

“What a thing is mortal man!” repeated the hunter, scarcely seeming to notice what was passing around him, so much were his thoughts absorbed in his own reflections. “Toss!”

The potato was tossed, the rifle cracked, — it was remarked just as the