The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [280]
“The tarms are onadmissible, woman; and though I feel for your losses, which must be hard to bear, the tarms cannot be accepted. As to givin’ you ven‘son, in case we lived near enough together, that would be no great expl’ite; but as for becomin’ your husband, and the father of your children, to be honest with you, I feel no callin’ thataway.”
“Look at this boy, cruel paleface; he has no father to teach him to kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl; what young man will come to look for a wife in a lodge that has no head? There are more among my people in the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer will find as many mouths to feed as his heart can wish for.”
“I tell you, woman,” exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination was far from seconding the appeal of the widow, and who began to grow restive under the vivid pictures she was drawing, “all this is nothing to me. People and kindred must take care of their own fatherless, leaving them that have no children to their own loneliness. As for me, I have no offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away, Sumach; leave me in the hands of your chiefs; for my color, and gifts, and natur’ itself, cry out ag’in the idee of taking you for a wife.”
It is unnecessary to expatiate on the effect of this downright refusal of the woman’s proposals. If there was anything like tenderness in her bosom—and no woman was probably ever entirely without that feminine quality—it all disappeared at this plain announcement. Fury, rage, mortified pride, and a volcano of wrath, burst out at one explosion, converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might be at the touch of a magician’s wand. Without deigning a reply in words, she made the arches of the forest ring with screams, and then flew forward at her victim, seizing him by the hair, which she appeared resolute to draw out by the roots. It was some time before her grasp could be loosened. Fortunately for the prisoner, her rage was blind, since his total helplessness left him entirely at her mercy; had it been better directed, it might have proved fatal before any relief could have been offered. As it was, she did succeed in wrenching out two or three handfuls of hair, before the young men could tear her away from her victim.
The insult that had been offered to the Sumach was deemed an insult to the whole tribe; not so much, however, on account of any respect that was felt for the woman, as on account of the honor of the Huron nation. Sumach, herself, was generally considered to be as acid as the berry from which she derived her name; and now that her great supporters, her husband and brother, were both gone, few cared about concealing their aversion. Nevertheless, it had become a point of honor to punish the paleface who disdained a Huron woman, and more particularly, one who coolly preferred death to relieving the tribe from the support of a widow and her children. The young men showed an impatience to begin to torture, that Rivenoak understood; and as his elder associates manifested no disposition to permit any longer delay, he was compelled to give the signal for the infernal work to proceed.
CHAPTER XXIX
“The ugly bear now minded not the stake,
Nor how the cruel mastiffs do him tear;
The stag lay still, unrousèd from the brake,
The foamy boar feared not the hunter’s spear;
All thing was still in desert, bush, and briar.”
Lord Dorset
IT WAS ONE OF the common expedients of the savages, on such occasions, to put the nerves of their victims to the severest proofs.
On the other hand, it was a matter of Indian pride to betray no yielding to terror or pain; but for the prisoner to provoke his enemies to such acts of violence as would soonest produce death. Many a warrior