skeert, air yur?”
“No,” firmly responded the boy, crossing over.
“I tuk him from a scoundrelly Crow thet I overhauled on a fork of the Yellerstone. He gin me a long pedigree, that is, afore I kilt the skunk. He made out as how his people hed tuk the boy from the Kimanches, who hed brought him from somewhar down the Grande. I know’d it wur all bamboozle. The boy’s white – American white. Who ever seed a yeller-hided Mexikin with them eyes and ha’r? Jack, this hyur’s Cap’n Haller. If yur kin iver save his life by givin’ yur own, yur must do it, de ye hear?”
“I will,” said the boy resolutely.
“Come, Lincoln,” I interposed, “these conditions are not necessary. You remember I was in your debt.”
“Ain’t worth mentioning Cap; let bygones be bygones!”
“But what brought you to New Orleans? or, more particularly, how came you into this scrape?”
“Wal, Cap’n, bein’ as the last question is the most partickler, I’ll gin yur the answer to it fust. I hed jest twelve dollars in my pouch, an’ I tuk a idee inter my head thet I mout as well double it. So I stepped into a shanty whar they wur a-playin’ craps. After bettin’ a good spell, I won somewhar about a hundred dollars. Not likin’ the sign I seed about, I tuk Jack and put out. Wal, jest as I was kummin’ roun’ this hyur corner, four fellers – them ye seed – run out and jumped me, like so many catamounts. I tuk them for the same chaps I hed seed parley vooin’ at the craps-table; an’ tho’t they wur only jokin’, till one of them gin me a sockdolloger over the head, an’ fired a pistol. I then drewed my bowie, an’ the skrimmage begun; an’ thet’s all I know about it, cap’n, more’n yurself.
“Let’s see if it’s all up with this’n,” continued the hunter, stooping. “I’deed, yes,” he drawled out; “dead as a buck. Thunder! ye’ve gin it him atween the eyes, plum. He is one of the fellers, es my name’s Bob Linkin. I kud sw’ar to them mowstaches among a million.”
At this moment a patrol of night gendarmes came up; and Lincoln, and Jack, and myself were carried off to the calaboose, where we spent the remainder of the night. In the morning we were brought before the recorder; but I had taken the precaution to send for some friends, who introduced me to his worship in a proper manner. As my story corroborated Lincoln’s, and his mine, and “Jack’s” substantiated both; and as the comrades of the dead Creole did not appear, and he himself was identified by the police as a notorious robber, the recorder dismissed the case as one of “justifiable homicide in self-defence”; and the hunter and I were permitted to go our way without further interruption.
Note. Craps is a game of dice.
Chapter Three.
A Volunteer Rendezvous
“Now, Cap,” said Lincoln, as we seated ourselves at the table of a café, “I’ll answer t’other question yur put last night. I wur up on the head of Arkansaw, an’ hearin’ they wur raisin’ volunteers down hyur, I kim down ter jine. It ain’t often I trouble the settlements; but I’ve a mighty puncheon, as the Frenchmen says, to hev a crack at them yeller-bellies. I hain’t forgot a mean trick they sarved me two yeern ago, up thar by Santer Fé.”
“And so you have joined the volunteers?”
“That’s sartin. But why ain’t you a-gwine to Mexico? That ’ere’s a wonder to me, cap, why you ain’t. Thur’s a mighty grist o’ venturin’, I heern; beats Injun fightin’ all holler, an’ yur jest the beaver I’d ’spect to find in that ’ar dam. Why don’t you go?”
“So I purposed long since, and wrote on to Washington for a commission; but the government seems to have forgotten me.”
“Dod rot the government! git a commission for yourself.”
“How?” I asked.
“Jine us, an’ be illected – thet’s how.”
This had crossed my mind before; but, believing myself a stranger among these volunteers, I had given up the idea. Once joined, he who failed in being elected an officer was fated to shoulder a firelock. It was neck or nothing then. Lincoln set things in a new light. They were strangers to each other, he affirmed, and my chances of being elected would therefore be as good as any man’s.
“I’ll tell yur what it is,” said he; “yur kin turn with me ter the rendevooz, an’ see for yurself; but if ye’ll only jine, an’ licker freely, I’ll lay a pack o’ beaver agin the skin of a mink that they’ll illect ye captain of the company.”
“Even a lieutenancy,” I interposed.
“Ne’er a bit of it, cap. Go the big figger. ’Tain’t more nor yur entitled to. I kin git yur a good heist among some hunters thet’s thur; but thar’s a buffalo drove o’ them parleyvoos, an’ a feller among ’em, one of these hyur creeholes, that’s been a-showin’ off and fencin’ with a pair of skewers from mornin’ till night. I’d be dog-gone glad to see the starch taken out o’ that feller.”
I took my resolution. In half an hour after I was standing in a large hall or armoury. It was the rendezvous of the volunteers, nearly all of whom were present; and perhaps a more variegated assemblage was never grouped together. Every nationality seemed to have its representative; and for variety of language the company might have rivalled the masons of Babel.
Near the head of the room was a table, upon which lay a large parchment, covered with signatures. I added mine to the list. In the act I had staked my liberty. It was an oath.
“These are my rivals – the candidates for office,” thought I, looking at a group who stood near the table. They were men of better appearance than the hoi polloi. Some of them already affected a half-undress uniform, and most wore forage-caps with glazed covers, and army buttons over the ears.
“Ha! Clayley!” said I, recognising an old acquaintance. This was a young cotton-planter – a free, dashing spirit, – who had sacrificed a fortune at the shrines of Momus and Bacchus.
“Why, Haller, old fellow! glad to see you. How have you been? Think of going with us?”
“Yes, I have signed. Who is that man?”
“He’s a Creole; his name is Dubrosc.”
It was a face purely Norman, and one that would halt the wandering eye in any collection. Of oval outline, framed by a profusion of black hair, wavy and perfumed. A round black eye, spanned by brows arching and glossy. Whiskers that belonged rather to the chin, leaving bare the jawbone, expressive of firmness and resolve. Firm thin lips, handsomely moustached; when parted, displaying teeth well set and of dazzling whiteness. A face that might be called beautiful; and yet its beauty was of that negative order which we admire in the serpent and the pard. The smile was cynical; the eye cold, yet bright; but the brightness was altogether animal– more the light of instinct than intellect. A face that presented in its expression a strange admixture of the lovely and the hideous – physically fair, morally dark – beautiful, yet brutal!
From some undefinable cause, I at once conceived for this man a strange feeling of dislike. It was he of whom Lincoln had spoken, and who was likely to be my rival for the captaincy. Was it this that rendered him repulsive? No. There was a cause beyond. In him I recognised one of those abandoned natures who shrink from all honest labour, and live upon the sacrificial fondness of some weak being who has been enslaved by their personal attractions.
