The Deerslayer | Page 7

not frequent your
society long, friend Natty, unless you look higher than four-footed beasts to practice your
rifle on."
"Our journey is nearly ended, you say, Master March, and we can part to-night, if you see
occasion. I have a fri'nd waiting for me, who will think it no disgrace to consort with a
fellow-creatur' that has never yet slain his kind."
"I wish I knew what has brought that skulking Delaware into this part of the country so
early in the season," muttered Hurry to himself, in a way to show equally distrust and a

recklessness of its betrayal. "Where did you say the young chief was to give you the
meeting!"
"At a small round rock, near the foot of the lake, where they tell me, the tribes are given
to resorting to make their treaties, and to bury their hatchets. This rock have I often heard
the Delawares mention, though lake and rock are equally strangers to me. The country is
claimed by both Mingos and Mohicans, and is a sort of common territory to fish and hunt
through, in time of peace, though what it may become in war-time, the Lord only
knows!"
"Common territory" exclaimed Hurry, laughing aloud. "I should like to know what
Floating Tom Hutter would say to that! He claims the lake as his own property, in vartue
of fifteen years' possession, and will not be likely to give it up to either Mingo or
Delaware without a battle for it!"
"And what will the colony say to such a quarrel! All this country must have some owner,
the gentry pushing their cravings into the wilderness, even where they never dare to
ventur', in their own persons, to look at the land they own."
"That may do in other quarters of the colony, Deerslayer, but it will not do here. Not a
human being, the Lord excepted, owns a foot of sile in this part of the country. Pen was
never put to paper consarning either hill or valley hereaway, as I've heard old Tom say
time and ag'in, and so he claims the best right to it of any man breathing; and what Tom
claims, he'll be very likely to maintain."
"By what I've heard you say, Hurry, this Floating Tom must be an oncommon mortal;
neither Mingo, Delaware, nor pale-face. His possession, too, has been long, by your tell,
and altogether beyond frontier endurance. What's the man's history and natur'?"
"Why, as to old Tom's human natur', it is not much like other men's human natur', but
more like a muskrat's human natar', seeing that he takes more to the ways of that animal
than to the ways of any other fellow-creatur'. Some think he was a free liver on the salt
water, in his youth, and a companion of a sartain Kidd, who was hanged for piracy, long
afore you and I were born or acquainted, and that he came up into these regions, thinking
that the king's cruisers could never cross the mountains, and that he might enjoy the
plunder peaceably in the woods."
"Then he was wrong, Hurry; very wrong. A man can enjoy plunder peaceably nowhere."
"That's much as his turn of mind may happen to be. I've known them that never could
enjoy it at all, unless it was in the midst of a jollification, and them again that enjoyed it
best in a corner. Some men have no peace if they don't find plunder, and some if they do.
Human nature' is crooked in these matters. Old Tom seems to belong to neither set, as he
enjoys his, if plunder he has really got, with his darters, in a very quiet and comfortable
way, and wishes for no more."
"Ay, he has darters, too; I've heard the Delawares, who've hunted this a way, tell their
histories of these young women. Is there no mother, Hurry?"

"There was once, as in reason; but she has now been dead and sunk these two good
years."
"Anan?" said Deerslayer, looking up at his companion in a little surprise.
"Dead and sunk, I say, and I hope that's good English. The old fellow lowered his wife
into the lake, by way of seeing the last of her, as I can testify, being an eye-witness of the
ceremony; but whether Tom did it to save digging, which is no easy job among roots, or
out of a consait that water washes away sin sooner than 'arth, is more than I can say."
"Was the poor woman oncommon wicked, that her husband should take so much pains
with her body ?"
"Not onreasonable; though she had her faults. I consider Judith Hutter to have been as
graceful, and about as likely to make a good ind as any woman who had lived