He stalked through the mist and rain, with his plaid
around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an antiquarian relic,
projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother Jack at his
heels.
"Good-morning, captain."
"Good-morning to your honors," said the captain, affecting the
Hibernian accent; but at that instant, as he stooped to enter the
tent, he tripped upon the cords at the entrance, and pitched forward
against the guns which were strapped around the pole in the center.
"You are nice men, you are!" said he, after an ejaculation not
necessary to be recorded, "to set a man-trap before your door every
morning to catch your visitors."
Then he sat down upon Henry Chatillon's saddle. We tossed a piece of
buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment.
He spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid
countenance, at his brother's side.
"Exhilarating weather, captain!"
"Oh, delightful, delightful!" replied the captain. "I knew it would
be so; so much for starting yesterday at noon! I knew how it would
turn out; and I said so at the time."
"You said just the contrary to us. We were in no hurry, and only
moved because you insisted on it."
"Gentlemen," said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an
air of extreme gravity, "it was no plan of mine. There is a man
among us who is determined to have everything his own way. You may
express your opinion; but don't expect him to listen. You may be as
reasonable as you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is
resolved to rule the roost and he'll set his face against any plan
that he didn't think of himself."
The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his
grievances; then he began again:
"For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that
time I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and
nonsense, as since I have been on this cursed prairie. He's the most
uncomfortable man I ever met."
"Yes," said Jack; "and don't you know, Bill, how he drank up all the
coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!"
"He pretends to know everything," resumed the captain; "nobody must
give orders but he! It's, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do
that; and the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be
picketed there; for nobody knows as well as he does."
We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions
among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not
aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a
loss as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we
recommended him to adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his
military experience had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson
to be "hard," when the emergency requires it.
"For twenty years," he repeated, "I have been in the British army,
and in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two
hundred officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any
man. Oh, 'anything for a quiet life!' that's my maxim."
We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet
life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could
do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to
put a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the
captain's easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat
vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly
repugnant to him; he preferred to pocket his grievances, still
retaining the privilege of grumbling about them. "Oh, anything for a
quiet life!" he said again, circling back to his favorite maxim.
But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic
confederates. The captain had sold his commission, and was living in
bachelor ease and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin. He
hunted, fished, rode steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his
former exploits. He was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and
gun; the walls were plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose-
horns and deer-horns, bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain's
double-barreled rifle had seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had
killed salmon in Nova Scotia, and trout, by his own account, in all
the streams of the three kingdoms. But in an evil hour a seductive
stranger came from London; no less a person than R., who, among other
multitudinous wanderings, had once been upon the western prairies,
and naturally enough was anxious to visit them again. The captain's
imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a hunter's paradise that
his guest held forth; he conceived an ambition to add to his other
trophies the horns of a buffalo, and the claws of a grizzly bear; so
he and R. struck a league to travel in company. Jack followed his
brother, as a matter of course. Two weeks on board the Atlantic
steamer brought them to Boston; in two weeks more of hard traveling
they reached St. Louis, from which a ride of six days carried them to
the frontier; and here we found them, in full tide of preparation for
their journey.
We had been throughout on terms of intimacy with the captain, but R.,
the motive power of our companions' branch of the expedition, was
scarcely known to us. His voice, indeed, might be heard incessantly;
but at camp he remained chiefly within the tent, and on the road he
either rode by himself, or else remained in close conversation with
his friend Wright, the muleteer.
