Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860. No. XXXVI. - Various
Morning was well advanced when Walker arose, and began operations by
moving the furniture about in an excited manner, to attract the
attention of those in the bar below, and convey an idea of search.
Presently he went to the door of the room, and, uttering an Indian
howl, by way of securing immediate attendance, cried out,--
"Hullo, below! where's my pants?--bar-keeper, fetch along my
pants!--landlord, I don't want to be troublesome, but just take off
them pants, if you happen to have mistook 'em for your own, and oblige
the right owner with a look at 'em, will you?"
Puzzled at this address, which was couched in much stronger
language--according to old Quatreaux's version of it--than I should
like to commit to paper, the landlord and bar-keeper at once proceeded
to Walker's room, where they found him sitting, expectantly, on the
side of the bed, with his horse-pistols gathered together beside him.
Of course, they denied all knowledge of his pantaloons,--didn't steal
nobody's pants in that house, nor nothin'.
Walker looked sternly at them, and, playing with one of his pistols,
exclaimed, with the usual redundants,--
"You lie!--you've stole my pants between you; you've found out what
they were worth by this time, I guess; but I'll have 'em back, and
that in a hurry, or else my name a'n't Walker,--Peter Walker."
He added his Christian name, because a reminiscence of the mystery
belonging to his patronymic by itself flashed upon him.
Now the name of Pete Walker was potent along the frontier, because of
his influence with the wild mountain-men, who did reckless deeds on
his account, unknown to him and otherwise. Another vision than that of
last night overcame the landlord,--a vision of Lynch and ashes.
"So you're Pete Walker, be you?" asked he, in a tone of mingled
respect and admiration, slightly tremulous with fear. "How do you do,
Mr. Walker?--how do you find yourself this morning, Sir?"
"I didn't come here to find myself," retorted Walker, fiercely. "I
found my door open, though, when I woke up,--but I couldn't find my
pants. You must get 'em, or pay for 'em, and that right away."
"Them cusses that passed through here last night!" exclaimed the
landlord. "I guess the pants is gone on the sundown trail, stripes and
all."
Walker thought it was quite probable that they had; but they were
stolen from that house, and the house must pay for them.
Lynch and ashes again blazed before the landlord's eyes.
"How much might the pants be worth, now, at cost price?" asked he.
"All wool, you say, only the stripes; but, as they was nearly all
stripes, you needn't holler much about the wool, I reckon. How much,
now?"
"Two hundred and ten dollars," replied Walker, with impressive
exactness.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the landlord. "I thought they might be
fancy-priced, sure-ly, but that's awful!"
"Ten dollars, cash price, for the pants," proceeded Walker, "and two
hundred for that exact amount in gold stitched up in the waistband of
em."
"The Devil has got 'em, anyhow!" said the landlord,--"for I saw a
queer critter, in my sleep, flying about with 'em on. Wings looks
kinder awful along o' pants with stripes. There'll be no luck round
till they're paid for, I guess. Couldn't you take my best checkers for
'em, now, with fifty dollars quilted into the waistband,--s-a-ay?"
"My name's Walker,--Peter Walker," was the reply.
The landlord was no match for that name, so disagreeably redolent of
Lynch and ashes. Thorough search was made upon the premises, and to
some distance around, in the wild hope that the missing trousers might
have walked off spontaneously, and lain down somewhere to sleep; but,
of course, nothing came of the investigation, although Walker assisted
at it with his usual energy. All compromise was rejected by him, and
it was not yet noon when he rode proudly away from the lone hostelry,
in the landlord's best checkers, for which he kindly allowed him five
dollars, receiving from him the balance, two hundred and five dollars,
in gold.
I forget now what Walker did with that money, although Quatreaux knew
exactly, and told me all about it. Suffice it to say that he made a
grand _coup_ with it, in the purchase of a mill-privilege, or claim,
or something of the kind. Less than a year after the events narrated,
he again rode up to the lone hostelry, which was not so lonely now,
however; for houses were growing up around it, and it took boarders
and rang a dinner-bell, and maintained a landlady as well as a
landlord, besides. The landlord was astonished when Walker counted out
to him two hundred and five dollars in gold,--surprised when to that
was added a round sum for interest,--ecstatic, on being presented with
a brand-new pair of pantaloons, of the same pattern as the expensive
ones formerly so admired by him. But his features collapsed, and for
some time wore an expression of imbecility, when he learned the
details of the adventure, and found out that "some things"--landlords,
for example--"can be done as well as others."
It was with little reminiscences like the one just narrated that old
Quatreaux used to wile away the time, as we threaded the intricate
ditches of the marsh in his canoe, so hedged in by the tall reeds that
our horizon was within paddle's length of us. With that presumptive
_clairvoyance_ which appears to be an essential property of the French
_raconteur_, he did not confine himself to external fact in his
narratives, but always professed to report minutely the thoughts that
flashed through the mind of such and such a person, on the particular
occasion referred to. He was a master of dialects,--Yankee,
Pennsylvanian Dutch, and Irish.
"Where did you get your English, old man?" I asked him, as we scudded
across the lake in our canoe, with a small sail up, one red October
evening.
"In Pennsylvania," replied he. "I went there on my own hook, when I
was about twelve year old, and worked in an oil-mill for four year."
"In an oil-mill? Perhaps that accounts for the glibness with which
language slips off your tongue."
"'Guess it do," said the old _voyageur_, with ready assent.
We nearly got foul of a raft coming down the lake, manned with a
rugged set of half-breeds, who had a cask of whiskey on board, and
were very drunk and boisterous.
"Ugly customers to deal with, those _brules_," remarked I, when we had
got clear away from them.
"Some on 'em is," replied the old _voyageur_. "Did you notice the one
with the queer eye,--him in the Scotch cap and _shupac_ moccasons?"
I _had_ noticed him, and an ill-looking thief he was. One of his eyes,
either from natural deformity or the effect of hostile operation, was
dragged down from its proper parallel, and planted in a remote socket
near the corner of his mouth, whence it glared and winked with
super-natural ferocity.
"That's Rupe Falardeau," continued my companion. "His father, old
Rupe, got his eye taken down in a deck-fight with a Mississippi
boatman; and this boy was born with the same mark,--only the eye's
lower down still. If that's to go on in the family, I guess there'll
be a Falardeau with his eye in his knee, some time."
In the deck-fight in which old Rupe got his ugly mark Pete Walker had
a hand; and the part he took in it, as related to me by old Quatreaux,
who was also present, affords a good example of the tact and coolness
which gave him such mastery over the wild spirits among whom he worked
out his destiny.
Walker was coming down a lumbering-river--I forget the name of it--on
board a small tug-steamboat, in which he had an interest. He had gone
into other speculations beside furs, by this time, and had contracts
in two or three places for supplying remote stations with salt pork,
tea, and other staple provisions of the lumbering-craft.
Stopping to wood at the mouth of a creek, a gang of raftsmen came on
board,--half-breed Canadians of fierce and demoralized aspect,--men of
great muscular strength, and armed heavily with axes and
butcher-knives. The gang was led by Rupe Falardeau, a dangerous man,
whether drunk or sober, and one whose antecedents were recorded in
blood. These men had been drinking, and were very noisy and intrusive,
and presently a row arose between them and some of the boat-hands.
Fisticuffs and kicks were first exchanged, but without any great loss
of blood. Knives were then drawn and nourished, and matters were
beginning to assume a serious aspect, when Walker made his appearance
forward of the paddle-box, pointing a heavy pistol right at the head
of the ringleader.
"Rupe!" shouted he, in a voice that attracted immediate attention,
"drop that knife, or else I shoot!"
The crowd parted for a moment, and Rupe, standing alone near the bows,
wheeled round with a yell, and glared fiercely at the speaker.
"Drop that knife!" repeated Walker.--"One, two, _three_!--I'll give
you a last chance, and when I say _three_ again, I shoot, by thunder!"
The last word had not rolled away, when the gleaming knife flashed
from the hand of Rupe, glanced close by Walker's ear, and sped
quivering into the paddle-box, just behind his head.
"Good for you, Rupe!" exclaimed Walker, lowering his pistol, with a
pleasant smile,--"good for you!--but, _sacre bapteme_! how dead I'd
have shot you, if you hadn't dropped that knife!"
The forbearance of Walker put an end to the row. Rupe, disarmed at
once by the loss of his knife and the coolness of Walker, was seized
by a couple of the deck-hands, and might have been secured without
injury to his beauty, had not a Mississippi boatman, who owed him an
old grudge, struck him on the face with a heavy iron hook, lacerating
and disfiguring him hideously for life.
"But why didn't Walker shoot Falardeau, old man?" asked I of the
_voyageur_, wishing to learn something of the etiquette of life and
death among these peculiar people, who appear to be so reckless of the
former and fearless of the latter.
"Ah!" replied he, "Rupe was too valuable to be shot down for missing a
man with a knife. Such a canoe-steersman as Rupe never was known
before or since: he knew every rock in every rapid from the Ottawa to
the Columbia."
Some time after this I again fell in with young Rupe, under
circumstances indicating that his life was not considered quite so
valuable as that of the old gentleman from whom he inherited his
frightful aspect.
In company with a friend, one day, I was beating about for wild-fowl
in a marshy river, down which small rafts or "cribs" of timber were
worked by half-breeds and Canadians.
About dark we came to a small, flat island in the marsh, where we
found an Iroquois camp, in which we proposed to pass the night, as we
had no camping-equipage in our skiff. The men were absent, hunting,
and there was nobody in charge of the wigwam but an ugly, undersized
squaw, with her two ugly, undersized children.
We were much fatigued, and agreed to sleep by watches, knowing the
sort of people we had to deal with. It was my watch, when voices were
heard as of men landing and pulling up a canoe or boat. Presently
three men came into the wigwam, railing-men, dressed in gray Canada
homespun and heavy Scotch bonnets. The light of the fire outside
flashed on their faces, as they stooped to enter the elm-bark tent,
and in the foremost I recognized the hideous Rupe Falardeau, Junior.
This man carried in his hand a small tin pail full of whiskey. He was
very drunk and dangerous, and greatly disgusted at the absence of the
Iroquois men, with whom he had evidently laid himself out for a
roaring debauch.
I woke up my companion, and a judicious display of our
double-barrelled guns kept the three scoundrels in check. They
insisted on our tasting some of their barbarous liquor, however, and
horrible stuff it was,--distiller's "high-wines," strongly dashed with
vitriol or something worse. No wonder that men become fiends incarnate
on such "fire-water" as that!
By-and-by they slept,--two of them outside, by the fire,--Falardeau
inside the wigwam, the repose of which was broken by the hollow rattle
of his drunken breath.
In the dead of the night something clutched me by the arm. It was the
ugly squaw, who forced a greasy butcher-knife into my hand, pointing
towards where the raftsman lay, and whispering to me in
English,--"Stick heem! stick heem!--nobody never know. He kill my
brother long time ago with this old knife. Kill heem! kill heem now!"
I did not avail myself of the opportunity thus afforded me for the
improvement of river society: nay, worse, I connived at the further
career of the redoubtable Rupert Falardeau, Junior; for, on leaving in
the morning, I roused him with repeated kicks, thus saving him for
that time, probably, from the Damoclesian blade of the _vengeresse_.
_L'ete de Saint Martin_!--how blue and yellow it is in the marshes in
those days! It is the name given by the French Canadians to the Indian
Summer,--the Summer of St. Martin, whose anniversary-day falls upon
the eleventh of November; though the brief latter-day tranquillity
called after him arrives, generally, some two or three weeks earlier.
Looking lakeward from the sedgy nook in which we are waiting for the
coming of the wood-ducks, the low line of water, blue and calm, is
broken at intervals by the rise of the distant _masquallonge_, as he
plays for a moment on the surface. But the channels that separate the
flat, alluvial islets are yellow, their sluggish waters being bedded
heavily down with the broad leaves of the wintering basswood-trees,
which, in some places, touch branch-tips across the narrow straits.
The muskrat's hut is thatched with the wet, dead leaves,--no thanks to
_him_; and there is a mat of them before his door,--a heavy, yellow
mat, on which are scattered the azure shells of the fresh-water clams
to be found so often upon the premises of this builder. Does he sup on
them, or are they only the cups and saucers of his vegeto-aquarian
_menage_? Blue and yellow all,--the sky and the sedge-rows, the calm
lake and the canoe, the plashing basswood-leaves and the oval, azure
shells.
Also Marance, the _voyageur's_ buxom young daughter, who came with us,
today, commissioned to cull herbs of wondrous properties among the
vine-tangled thickets of the islands. Blue and yellow. Eyes blue as
the azure shells; hair flashing out golden gleams, like that of
Pyrrha, when she braided hers so featly for the coming of some
ambrosial boy.
"I must marry you, Marance," said I, jocularly, to the damsel, as I
jumped her out of the canoe,--"I shall marry you when we get back."
It is good to live in a marsh. No fast boarding-house women there,
lurking for the unwary; no breaches of promise; "no nothing" in the
old-man-trap line. Abjure fast boarding-houses, you silly old
bachelors, and go to grass in a marsh!
Marance laughed merrily, as she tripped away; then, turning, she
said,--
"But what if I never get back? I may lose myself in these lonely
places, and never be heard of again."
"Oh, in that case," replied I, hard driven for a compliment, "in that
case, I must wait until Gilette"--a younger sister--"grows up. She
will be exactly like you: I must only wait for Gilette."
"You remind me of Pete Walker," said the old man, as we shot away up
the channel, our canoe ripping up the matted surface like the cue of a
novice, when he runs a fatal reef along the sere and yellow cloth of
some billiard-table erewhile in verdure clad. "You are as bad as Pete
Walker, who thought one sister must be as good as another, because
they looked so much alike."
And then, as we loitered about in the bays, the old man told me the
story of Walker's honeymoon, which was a sad and a short one. This is
the story.
Near that wild rapid of the Columbia River known as the "Dalles,"
there was, years ago, a Jesuit mission, established in a small fort,
built, like that at Nez-Perces, of mud. The labors of the holy men
composing the mission involved no inconsiderable amount of danger,
devoted as they were to the hopeless task of reforming such sinners as
the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Gros-Ventres, the Flat-Heads, the
Assiniboines, the Nez-Perces, and a few other such.
Some of these missionaries had sojourned for a long time with a branch
of the Blackfoot tribe, among whom they found two young white girls,
remarkable for their exact resemblance to each other, and therefore
supposed to be twins. I say _supposed_, because of their origin there
was no trace. All that was known about them was, that they were the
sole survivors of a train of emigrants, attacked and murdered by the
Nez-Perces, who, actuated by one of those whims characteristic of the
red men, spared the lives of the two children, and adopted them into
the tribe. Subsequently, in a skirmish with the Blackfeet, they fell
into the hands of the latter, among whom they had lived for some time,
when they were ransomed by the missionaries, at the price of certain
trading-privileges negotiated by the latter for the tribe.
When adopted by the Jesuits, the children had lost all remembrance of
their parentage; nor had they any names except the Indian ones
bestowed upon them by their captors. The good fathers christened them,
however, arranging them alphabetically, by the names of Alixe and
Bloyse, and confiding them to the especial charge of the wife of a
trader connected with the station, who had no family of her own. They
were fair-haired children, probably of German or Norwegian origin, and
had grown up to be robust young women of seventeen, when Walker saw
them for the first time, as he stopped at the Dalles on his way from
Fort Nez-Perces about one hundred and twenty-five miles higher up the
Columbia.
Walker, whose business detained him for some time at the mission,
decided upon marrying one of the fair-haired sisters,--he did not much
care which, they were so singularly alike. Alixe happened to be the
one, however, to whom he tendered a share in his fortunes, which she
accepted in the random manner of one to whom it was of but little
consequence whether she said "Yes" or "No." Bloyse would have followed
him, and him only, to the end of all; but he never knew it at the
right time, though the women of the fort could have told him.
It was late one afternoon when he was married to Alixe, in the chapel
of the mission. That was the night of the massacre. Two hours after
the wedding, the Blackfeet, combined with some allied tribe, came down
like wolves upon the fort. There was treachery, somewhere, and they
got in. In the thick of the fight, and when all seemed hopeless,
Walker shot down a tall Indian who was dragging his bride away to
where the horses of the tribe were picketed. In a second he had leaped
upon a horse, and, holding the young girl before him, galloped away in
the direction of a stream running into the Columbia,--a stream of
fierce torrents, navigable only at one place, and that by
flat-bottomed boats or scows, in which passengers warped themselves
across by a grass rope stretched from bank to bank. Once over this
river, he could easily reach a friendly camp, where he and his bride
would have been in safety.
The moon had risen when he reached the ferry. Turning the horse
adrift, he lifted the young woman into the scow, and began to warp
rapidly across by the rope with one hand, while he supported his
fainting companion close to him with the other. Suddenly, a sharp
click sounded from the opposite bank: the rope gave way, and Walker
and his companion were precipitated violently into the water, the boat
shooting far away from beneath their feet. It ran a strong current
there, culminating in a furious rapid not two hundred yards lower
down. Retaining his grasp of the young woman, Walker fought bravely
against the stream, down which he felt they were sweeping, faster and
faster, until a violent concussion deprived him, for a moment, of
consciousness. When he came to himself, he was still swimming, but his
companion was gone. The current had driven them forcibly against a
rock, throwing her from his grasp. The wild rapid was just below them.
She was never heard of again; but Walker managed to reach the shore,
where he must have lain long in an exhausted condition, for it was
daylight when he awoke to any recollection of what had happened.
The ferry-rope had been cut, as he afterwards discovered, by an
Indian, in whose brother's removal by hanging he had been
instrumental, and who had been watching him, day and night, for the
purpose of wreaking a bitter vengeance.
Returning to reconnoitre, with some of his friends, Walker found the
mission a heap of ruins,--blackened walls, charred rafters, and
unrecognizable human remains.
Long afterwards, he learned that his bride was again living among the
Blackfeet;--for it was Bloyse, and not Alixe, with whom he had
galloped away to the fatal ferry, in the confusion of that terrible
night. It was poor Bloyse who went away from his arms down those
crushing rapids. It was Alixe, his bride, who shot back the bolts for
the entrance of the Blackfeet. She was secretly betrothed in the
tribe, and it was her betrothed whom Walker shot down as he was
rushing away in triumph with his supposed _fiancee_ of the pale-faces.
She married another Indian of the tribe, however; for she was a savage
woman at heart, and could live among savages only.
"Sisters may be as like as two walnuts, to look at," said the old
_voyageur_, when he had finished his narration. "Take any two walnuts
from a heap, at random, though, and, like as not, you'll find one on
'em all heart and the other all hollow."
"True," replied I; "but these be wild adventures for one whose boyhood
was passed in a peaceful and thoroughly whitewashed home on the banks
of the St. Francois."
"'Guess they be," said the old _voyageur_.
* * * * *
THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER AND ITS EDITORS.
The families of Gales and Seaton are, in their origin, the one Scotch,
the other English. The Seatons are of that historic race, a daughter
of which (the fair and faithful Catherine) is the heroine of one of
Sir Walter Scott's romances. It was to be supposed that they whose
lineage looked to such an instance of devoted personal affection for
the ancient line would not slacken in their loyalty when fresh
calamities fell upon the Stuarts and again upset their throne.
Accordingly, the Seatons appear to have clung to the cause of their
exiled king with fidelity. Henry Seaton seems to have made himself
especially obnoxious to the new monarch, by taking part in those
Jacobite schemes of rebellion which were so long kept on foot by the
lieges and gentlemen of Scotland; so that, when, towards the close of
the seventeenth century, the cause he loved grew desperate, and
Scotland itself anything but safe for a large body of her most gallant
men, he was forced, like all others that scorned to submit, to fly
beyond the seas. Doing so, it was natural that he should choose to
take refuge in a Britain beyond the ocean, where a brotherly welcome
among his kindred awaited the political prescript. It is probable,
however, that a special sympathy towards that region which, by its
former fidelity to the Stuarts, had earned from them the royal
quartering of its arms and the title of "The Ancient Dominion,"
directed his final choice. At any rate, it was to Virginia that he
came,--settling there, as a planter, first in the county of
Gloucester, and afterwards in that of King William. From one of his
descendants in a right line sprang (by intermarriage with a lady of
English family, the Winstons) William Winston Seaton, the editor,
whose mother connected him with a second Scotch family, the
Henrys,--the mother of Patrick Henry being a Winston. These last had
come, some three generations before, from the old seat of that family
in its knightly times, Winston Hall, in Yorkshire, and had settled in
the county of Hanover, where good estates gave them rank among the
gentry; while commanding stature, the gift of an equally remarkable
personal beauty, a very winning address, good parts, high character,
and the frequent possession among them of a fine natural eloquence,
gave them as a race an equal influence over the body of the people. In
William (popularly called Langaloo) and his sister Sarah, the mother
of Patrick Henry, these hereditary qualities seem to have been
particularly striking; so that, in their day, it seemed a sort of
received opinion that it was from the maternal side that the great
orator derived his extraordinary powers.
The Galeses are of much more recent naturalization amongst us,--later
by just about a century than that of the Seatons, but alike in its
causes. For they, too, were driven hither by governmental resentment.
Their founder, (as he may be called,) the elder Joseph Gales, was one
of those rare men who at times spring up from the body of the people,
and by mere unassisted merit, apart from all adventitious advantages,
make their way to a just distinction. Perhaps no better idea of him
can be given than by likening him to one, less happy in his death,
whom Science is now everywhere lamenting,--the late admirable Hugh
Miller. A different career, rather than an inferior character, made
Joseph Gales less conspicuous. He was born in 1761, at Eckington, near
the English town of Sheffield. The condition of his family was above
dependence, but not frugality.