The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [296]
“Craig is covering us with benedictions,” observed this person to his young ensign, with an air of indifference, as he shut the glass and handed it to his servant; “to say the truth, not without reason; it is certainly more agreeable to be here in attendance on Miss Judith Hutter, than to be burying Indians on a point of the lake, however romantic the position or brilliant the victory. By the way, Wright, is Davis still living?”
“He died about ten minutes since, your honor,” returned the sergeant, to whom this question was addressed. “I knew how it would be, as soon as I found the bullet had touched the stomach. I never knew a man who could hold out long, if he had a hole in his stomach.”
“No; it is rather inconvenient for carrying away anything very nourishing,” observed Warley, gaping. “This being up two nights de suite, Arthur, plays the devil with a man’s faculties! I’m as stupid as one of those Dutch parsons on the Mohawk—I hope your arm is not painful, my dear boy?”
“It draws a few grimaces from me, sir, as I suppose you see,” answered the youth, laughing at the very moment his countenance was a little awry with pain. “But it may be borne. I suppose Graham can spare a few minutes, soon, to look at my hurt.”
“She is a lovely creature, this Judith Hutter, after all, Thornton; and it shall not be my fault, if she is not seen and admired in the parks!” resumed Warley, who thought little of his companion’s wound. “Your arm, eh! Quite true. Go into the ark, sergeant, and tell Dr. Graham I desire he would look at Mr. Thornton’s injury as soon as he has done with the poor fellow with the broken leg. A lovely creature! and she looked like a queen in that brocade dress in which we met her. I find all changed here; father and mother both gone, the sister dying, if not dead, and none of the family left but the beauty! This has been a lucky expedition all round, and promises to terminate better than Indian skirmishes in general.”
“Am I to suppose, sir, that you are about to desert your colors, in the great corps of bachelors, and close the campaign with matrimony?”
“I, Tom Warley, turn Benedict! Faith, my dear boy, you little know the corps you speak of, if you fancy any such thing. I do suppose there are women in the colonies that a captain of light-infantry need not disdain; but they are not to be found up here on a mountain lake; or even down on the Dutch river where we are posted. It is true my uncle, the general, once did me the favor to choose a wife for me, in Yorkshire; but she had no beauty—and I would not marry a princess unless she were handsome.”
“If handsome, you would marry a beggar?”
“Ay, these are the notions of an ensign! Love in a cottage—doors—and windows—the old story, for the hundredth time. The 20th———don’t marry. We are not a marrying corps, my dear boy. There’s the colonel, old Sir Edwin———, now; though a full general, he has never thought of a wife; and when a man gets as high as a lieutenant-general, without matrimony, he is pretty safe. Then the lieutenant-colonel is confirmed, as I tell my cousin, the bishop. The major is a widower, having tried matrimony for twelve months in his youth; and we look upon him, now, as one of our most certain men. Out of ten captains, but one is in the dilemma; and he, poor devil, is always kept at regimental headquarters, as a sort of memento mori to the young men as they join. As for the subalterns, not one has ever yet had the audacity to speak of introducing a wife into the regiment. But your arm is troublesome, and we’ll go ourselves and see what has become of Graham.”
The surgeon who had accompanied the party was employed very differently from what the captain supposed. When the assault was over, and the dead and wounded were collected, poor Hetty had been found among the latter. A rifle bullet had passed through