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. As the captain left the tent that
morning, I observed R. standing by the fire, and having nothing else
to do, I determined to ascertain, if possible, what manner of man he
was. He had a book under his arm, but just at present he was
engrossed in actively superintending the operations of Sorel, the
hunter, who was cooking some corn-bread over the coals for breakfast.
R. was a well-formed and rather good-looking man, some thirty years
old; considerably younger than the captain. He wore a beard and
mustache of the oakum complexion, and his attire was altogether more
elegant than one ordinarily sees on the prairie. He wore his cap on
one side of his head; his checked shirt, open in front, was in very
neat order, considering the circumstances, and his blue pantaloons,
of the John Bull cut, might once have figured in Bond Street.
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