Part 6

"You surprise me," said Mr. Carteret, wholly without shame. He bowed, started his horse, and jogged along for five minutes, then he turned to the right upon a crossroad and suddenly found himself upon the hounds. They were feathering excitedly about the mouth of a tile drain into which the fox had evidently gone. No master, huntsmen nor whips were in sight, but sitting, wet and mud daubed, upon horses dripping with muddy water were Grady dressed in cowboy costume and three naked Indians. Mr. Carteret glanced about over the country and understood. They had swum the brook at the place where it ran between steep clay banks and the rest of the field had gone around to the bridge. As he looked toward the south, he saw Lord Ploversdale riding furiously toward him followed by Smith, the first whip. Grady had not recognized him turned out in pink as he was, and for the moment he decided to remain incognito.

Before Lord Ploversdale, Master of Fox-hounds, reached the road, he began waving his crop. He appeared excited. "What do you mean by riding upon my hounds?" he shouted. He said this in several ways with various accompanying phrases, but neither the Indians nor Grady seemed to notice him. It occurred to Mr. Carteret that although Lord Ploversdale's power of expression was wonderful for England, it, nevertheless, fell short of Arizona standards. Then, however, he noticed that Grady was absorbed in adjusting a kodak camera, with which he was evidently about to take a picture of the Indians alone with the hounds. He drew back in order both to avoid being in the field of the picture and to avoid too close proximity with Lord Ploversdale as he came over the fence into the road.

"What do you mean, sir!" shouted the enraged Master of Fox-hounds, as he pulled up his horse.

"A little more in the middle," replied Grady, still absorbed in taking the picture.

Lord Ploversdale hesitated. He was speechless with surprise for the moment.

Grady pressed the button and began putting up the machine.

"What do you mean by riding on my hounds, you and these persons?" demanded Lord Ploversdale.

"We didn't," said Grady amiably, "but if your bunch of dogs don't know enough to keep out of the way of a horse, they ought to learn."

Lord Ploversdale looked aghast, and Smith, the whip, pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming.

"Many thanks for your advice," said Lord Ploversdale. "May I inquire who you and your friends may be?"

"I'm James Grady," said that gentleman. "This," he said, pointing to the Indian nearest, "is Chief Hole-in-the-Ground of the Olgallala Sioux. Him in the middle is Mr. Jim Snake, and the one beyond is Chief Skytail, being a Pawnee."

"Thank you, that is very interesting," said Lord Ploversdale, with polite irony. "Now will you kindly take them home?"

"See here," said Grady, strapping the camera to his saddle, "I was invited to this round-up regular, and if you hand me out any more hostile talk--" He paused.

"Who invited you?" inquired Lord Ploversdale.

"One of your own bunch," said Grady, "Lord Frederic Westcote. I'm no butter-in."

"Your language is unintelligible," said Lord Ploversdale. "Where is Lord Westcote?"

Mr. Carteret had watched the field approaching as fast as whip and spur could drive them, and in the first flight he noticed Lord Frederic and the Major. For this reason he still hesitated about thrusting himself into the discussion. It seemed that the interference of a third party could only complicate matters, inasmuch as Lord Frederic would so soon be upon the spot.

Lord Ploversdale looked across the field impatiently. "I've no doubt, my good fellow, that Lord Westcote brought you here, and I'll see him about it, but kindly take these fellows home. They'll kill all my hounds."

"Now you're beginning to talk reasonable," said Grady. "I'll discuss with you."

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the hounds gave tongue riotously and went off. The fox had slipped out of the other end of the drain and old Archer had found the line.

As if shot out of a gun the three Indians dashed at the stake and bound fence on the farther side of the road, joyously using their heavy quirts on the Major's thoroughbreds. Skytail's horse being hurried top much, blundered his take-off, hit above the knees and rolled over on the Chief, who was sitting tight. There was a stifled grunt and then the Pawnee word "Go-dam!"

Hole-in-the-Ground looked back and laughed one of the few laughs of his life. It was a joke which he could understand. Then he used the quirt again to make the most of his advantage.

"That one is finished," said Lord Ploversdale gratefully. But as the words were in his mouth, Skytail rose with his horse, vaulted up and was away.

The M. F. H. followed over the hedge shouting at Smith to whip off the hounds. But the hounds were going too fast. They had got a view of the fox and three whooping horsemen were behind them driving them on.

The first flight of the field followed the M. F. H. out of the road, and so did Mr. Carteret, and presently he found himself riding between Lord Frederic and the Major. They were both a bit winded and had evidently come fast.

"I say," exclaimed Lord Frederic, "where did you come from?"

"I was cured by the Broncholine," said Mr. Carteret.

"Is your horse fresh?" asked Lord Frederic.

"Yes," replied Mr. Carteret, "I happened upon them at the road."

"Then go after that man Grady," said Lord Frederic, "and implore him to take those beggars home. They have been riding on the hounds for twenty minutes."

"Were they able," asked Mr. Carteret, "to stay with their horses at the fences?"

"Stay with their horses!" puffed the Major.

"Go on, like a good chap," said Lord Frederic, "stop that fellow or I shall be expelled from the hunt. Was Lord Ploversdale vexed?" he added.

"I should judge by his language," said Mr. Carteret, "that he was vexed."

"Hurry on," said Lord Frederic. "Put your spurs in."

Mr. Carteret gave his horse its head and he shot to the front, but Grady was nearly a field in the lead, and it promised to be a long chase, as he was on the Major's black thoroughbred. The cowboy rode along with a loose rein and an easy balance seat. At his fences he swung his hat and cheered. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and Mr. Carteret was anxious lest he might begin to shoot for pure delight. Such a demonstration would have been misconstrued. Nearly two hundred yards ahead at the heels of the pack galloped the Indians, and in the middle distance between them and Grady rode Lord Ploversdale and Smith vainly trying to overtake the hounds and whip them off. Behind and trailing over a mile or more came the field and the rest of the hunt servants in little groups, all awestruck at what had happened. It was unspeakable that Lord Ploversdale's hounds, which had been hunted by his father and his grandfather, should be so scandalized.

Mr. Carteret finally got within a length of Grady and hailed him.

"Hello, Carty," said Grady, "glad to see you. I thought you was sick. What can I do? They've stampeded. But it's a great ad. for the show, isn't it? There's four reporters that I brought along."

"Forget about the show," said Mr. Carteret. "This isn't any laughing matter. It's one of the smartest packs in England. You don't understand."

"It will make all the better story in the papers," said Grady.

"No it won't," said Mr. Carteret. "They won't print it. It's like a blasphemy upon the Church."

"Whoop!" yelled Grady, as they tore through a bullfinch.

"Call them off," said Mr. Carteret, straightening his hat.

"But I can't catch 'em," said Grady, and that was the truth.

Lord Ploversdale, however, had been gaining on the Indians, and by the way in which he clubbed his heavy crop, loaded at the butt, it was apparent that he meant to put an end to the proceedings if he could.

Just then the hounds swept over the crest of a green hill, and as they went down the other side they viewed the fox in the field beyond. He was in distress, and it looked as if the pack would kill in the open. They were running wonderfully together, a blanket would have covered them, and in the natural glow of pride which came over the M. F. H., he loosened his grip upon the crop. But as the hounds viewed the fox, so did the three sons of the wilderness who were following close behind. From the hill-top fifty of the hardest going men in England saw Hole-in-the-Ground flogging his horse with the heavy quirt which hung from his wrist. The outraged British hunter shot forward scattering hounds to right and left, flew a ditch and hedge and was close on the fox, who had stopped to make a last stand. Without drawing rein, the astonished onlookers saw the lean Indian suddenly disappear under the neck of his horse and almost instantly swing back into his seat waving a brown thing above his head. Hole-in-the-Ground had caught the fox.

"Most unprecedented!" Mr. Carteret heard the Major exclaim. He pulled up his horse, as the field did with theirs, and waited apprehensively. He saw Hole-in-the-Ground circle around, jerk the Major's five hundred guinea hunter to a standstill close to Lord Ploversdale and address him. He was speaking in his own language.

As the Chief went on, he saw Grady smile.

"He says," says Grady, translating, "that the white chief can eat the fox if he wants him. He's proud himself, bein' packed with store grub."

The English onlookers heard and beheld with blank faces. It was beyond them.

The M. F. H. bowed stiffly as Hole-in-the-Ground's offer was made known to him. He regarded them a moment in thought. A vague light was breaking in upon him. "Aw, thank you," he said. "Smith, take the fox. Good afternoon!"

Then he wheeled his horse, called the hounds in with his horn and trotted out to the road that led to the kennels. Lord Ploversdale, though he had never been out of England, was cast in a large mold.

The three Indians sat on their panting horses, motionless, stolidly facing the curious gaze of the crowd; or rather they looked through the crowd, as the lion, with the high breeding of the desert, looks through and beyond the faces that stare and gape before the bars of his cage.

"Most amazing! Most amazing!" muttered the Major.

"It is," said Mr. Carteret, "if you have never been away from this." He made a sweeping gesture over the restricted English scenery, pampered and brought up by hand.

"Been away from this?" repeated the Major. "I don't understand."

Mr. Carteret turned to him. How could he explain it?

"With us," he began, laying an emphasis on the "us." Then he stopped. "Look into their eyes," he said hopelessly.

The Major looked at him blankly. How could he, Major Hammerslea, know what those inexplicable dark eyes saw beyond the fenced tillage--the brown, bare, illimitable range under the noonday sun, the evening light on far, silent mountains, the starlit desert!

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Copyright, 1905, by the Metropolitan Magazine Company.

A BOSTON BALLAD

BY WALT WHITMAN

To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early; Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

Clear the way there, Jonathan! Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon! Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes--I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle.

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping, Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth! The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see! Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist! Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums? Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for fire-locks, and level them? If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's marshal; If you groan such groans, you might balk the government cannon.

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white hair be; Here gape your great grand-sons--their wives gaze at them from the windows, See how well dressed--see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating? Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then! Pell-mell! To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers! I do not think you belong here, anyhow.

But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of Boston?

I will whisper it to the Mayor--he shall send a committee to England; They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault--haste! Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes, box up his bones for a journey;

Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper, Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston bay.

Now call for the President's marshal again, bring put the government cannon, Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons.

This centre-piece for them: Look! all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women!

The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay, Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull. You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is come to its own, and more than its own.

Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from this day; You are mighty cute--and here is one of your bargains.

THE CHIEF MATE

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

My first glimpse of Europe was the shore of Spain. Since we got into the Mediterranean, we have been becalmed for some days within easy view of it. All along are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a bloom on them at sunset like that of a ripe plum. Here and there at their feet little white towns are sprinkled along the edge of the water, like the grains of rice dropped by the princess in the story. Sometimes we see larger buildings on the mountain slopes, probably convents. I sit and wonder whether the farther peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the rusty saw) of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall be, and am content. Surely latitude and longitude never showed me any particular respect, that I should be over-scrupulous with them.

But after all, Nature, though she may be more beautiful, is nowhere so entertaining as in man, and the best thing I have seen and learned at sea is our Chief Mate. My first acquaintance with him was made over my knife, which he asked to look at, and, after a critical examination, handed back to me, saying, "I shouldn't wonder if that 'ere was a good piece o' stuff." Since then he has transferred a part of his regard for my knife to its owner. I like folks who like an honest bit of steel, and take no interest whatever in "your Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." There is always more than the average human nature in the man who has a hearty sympathy with iron. It is a manly metal, with no sordid associations like gold and silver. My sailor fully came up to my expectation on further acquaintance. He might well be called an old salt who had been wrecked on Spitzbergen before I was born. He was not an American, but I should never have guessed it by his speech, which was the purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects. Nor was he less Americanized in all his thoughts and feelings, a singular proof of the ease with which our omnivorous country assimilates foreign matter, provided it be Protestant, for he was a man ere he became an American citizen. He used to walk the deck with his hands in his pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eyes. _How_ he saw I could never make out, though I had a theory that it was with his elbows. After he had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, he took care that I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a landsman. Without looking up, he would say, suddenly, "There's a whale blowin' clearn up to win'ard," or, "Them's porpises to leeward: that means change o' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear, and paces the deck during his watch much as one of those yellow hummocks goes slumping up and down his cage. On the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale from the northeast, and it was cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers, without stockings. But lest you might fancy this to have chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean, when the evening is so hot that Adam would have been glad to leave off his fig-leaves. "It's a kind o' damp and unwholesome in these ere waters," he says, evidently regarding the Midland Sea as a vile standing pool, in comparison with the bluff ocean. At meals he is superb, not only for his strengths, but his weaknesses. He has somehow or other come to think me a wag, and if I ask him to pass the butter, detects an occult joke, and laughs as much as is proper for a mate. For you must know that our social hierarchy on shipboard is precise, and the second mate, were he present, would only laugh half as much as the first. Mr. X. always combs his hair, and works himself into a black frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waist-coat) before he comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to the social proprieties. The second mate, on the other hand, who eats after us, enjoys the privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man of the two. We do not have seats above and below the salt, as in old time, but above and below the white sugar. Mr. X. always takes brown sugar, and it is delightful to see how he ignores the existence of certain delicates which he considers above his grade, tipping his head on one side with an air of abstraction so that he may seem not to deny himself, but to omit helping himself from inadvertence, or absence of mind. At such times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar manner, inscrutable at first as a cuneiform inscription, but as easily read after you once get the key. The sense of it is something like this: "I, X., know my place, a height of wisdom attained by few. Whatever you may think, I do _not_ see that currant jelly, nor that preserved grape. Especially a kind Providence has made me blind to bowls of white sugar, and deaf to the pop of champagne corks. It is much that a merciful compensation gives me a sense of the dingier hue of Havana, and the muddier gurgle of beer. Are there potted meats? My physician has ordered me three pounds of minced salt-junk at every meal." There is such a thing, you know, as a ship's husband: X. is the ship's poor relation.

As I have said, he takes also a below-the-white-sugar interest in the jokes, laughing by precise point of compass, just as he would lay the ship's course, all _yawing_ being out of the question with his scrupulous decorum at the helm. Once or twice I have got the better of him, and touched him off into a kind of compromised explosion, like that of damp fireworks, that splutter and simmer a little, and then go out with painful slowness and occasional relapses. But his fuse is always of the unwillingest, and you must blow your match, and touch him off again and again with the same joke. Or rather, you must magnetize him many times to get him _en rapport_ with a jest. This once accomplished, you have him, and one bit of fun will last the whole voyage. He prefers those of one syllable, the _a-b abs_ of humor. The gradual fattening of the steward, a benevolent mulatto with whiskers and ear-rings, who looks as if he had been meant for a woman, and had become a man by accident, as in some of those stories by the elder physiologists, is an abiding topic of humorous comment with Mr. X. "That 'ere stooard," he says, with a brown grin like what you might fancy on the face of a serious and aged seal, "'s agittin' as fat's a porpis. He was as thin's a shingle when he come aboord last v'yge. Them trousis'll bust yit. He don't darst take 'em off nights, for the whole ship's company couldn't git him into 'em agin." And then he turns aside to enjoy the intensity of his emotion by himself, and you hear at intervals low rumblings, an indigestion of laughter. He tells me of St. Elmo's fires, Marvell's _corposants_, though with him the original _corpos santos_ has suffered a sea change, and turned to _comepleasants_, pledges of fine weather. I shall not soon find a pleasanter companion. It is so delightful to meet a man who knows just what you do _not_. Nay, I think the tired mind finds something in plump ignorance like what the body feels in cushiony moss. Talk of the sympathy of kindred pursuits! It is the sympathy of the upper and nether mill-stones, both forever grinding the same grist, and wearing each other smooth. One has not far to seek for book-nature, artist-nature, every variety of superinduced nature, in short, but genuine human-nature is hard to find. And how good it is! Wholesome as a potato, fit company for any dish. The free masonry of cultivated men is agreeable, but artificial, and I like better the natural grip with which manhood recognizes manhood.