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CHAPTER 35
The uninvited guest - Free and easy manners - Salutary jokes - A prodigal son - Exit of the glutton - A sudden change in fortune - Danger of a visit to poor relations - Plucking of a prosperous man - A vagabond toilet - A substitute for the very fine
horse - Hard travelling - The uninvited guest and the patriarchal colt - A beggar on horseback - A catastrophe - Exit of the merry vagabond
As CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE and his men were encamped one evening among
the hills near Snake River, seated before their fire, enjoying a
hearty supper, they were suddenly surprised by the visit of an
uninvited guest. He was a ragged, half-naked Indian hunter, armed
with bow and arrows, and had the carcass of a fine buck thrown
across his shoulder. Advancing with an alert step, and free and
easy air, he threw the buck on the ground, and, without waiting
for an invitation, seated himself at their mess, helped himself
without ceremony, and chatted to the right and left in the
liveliest and most unembarrassed manner. No adroit and veteran
dinner hunter of a metropolis could have acquitted himself more
knowingly. The travellers were at first completely taken by
surprise, and could not but admire the facility with which this
ragged cosmopolite made himself at home among them. While they
stared he went on, making the most of the good cheer upon which
he had so fortunately alighted; and was soon elbow deep in "pot
luck," and greased from the tip of his nose to the back of his
ears.
As the company recovered from their surprise, they began to feel
annoyed at this intrusion. Their uninvited guest, unlike the
generality of his tribe, was somewhat dirty as well as ragged and
they had no relish for such a messmate. Heaping up, therefore, an
abundant portion of the "provant" upon a piece of bark, which
served for a dish, they invited him to confine himself thereto,
instead of foraging in the general mess.
He complied with the most accommodating spirit imaginable; and
went on eating and chatting, and laughing and smearing himself,
until his whole countenance shone with grease and good-humor. In
the course of his repast, his attention was caught by the figure
of the gastronome, who, as usual, was gorging himself in dogged
silence. A droll cut of the eye showed either that he knew him of
old, or perceived at once his characteristics. He immediately
made him the butt of his pleasantries; and cracked off two or
three good hits, that caused the sluggish dolt to prick up his
ears, and delighted all the company. From this time, the
uninvited guest was taken into favor; his jokes began to be
relished; his careless, free and easy air, to be considered
singularly amusing; and in the end, he was pronounced by the
travellers one of the merriest companions and most entertaining
vagabonds they had met with in the wilderness.
Supper being over, the redoubtable Shee-wee-she-ouaiter, for such
was the simple name by which he announced himself, declared his
intention of keeping company with the party for a day or two, if
they had no objection; and by way of backing his self-invitation,
presented the carcass of the buck as an earnest of his hunting
abilities. By this time, he had so completely effaced the
unfavorable impression made by his first appearance, that he was
made welcome to the camp, and the Nez Perce guide undertook to
give him lodging for the night. The next morning, at break of
day, he borrowed a gun, and was off among the hills, nor was
anything more seen of him until a few minutes after the party had
encamped for the evening, when he again made his appearance, in
his usual frank, careless manner, and threw down the carcass of
another noble deer, which he had borne on his back for a
considerable distance.
This evening he was the life of the party, and his open
communicative disposition, free from all disguise, soon put them
in possession of his history. He had been a kind of prodigal son
in his native village; living a loose, heedless life, and
disregarding the precepts and imperative commands of the chiefs.
He had, in consequence, been expelled from the village, but, in
nowise disheartened at this banishment, had betaken himself to
the society of the border Indians, and had led a careless,
haphazard, vagabond life, perfectly consonant to his humors;
heedless of the future, so long as he had wherewithal for the
present; and fearing no lack of food, so long as he had the
implements of the chase, and a fair hunting ground.
Finding him very expert as a hunter, and being pleased with his
eccentricities, and his strange and merry humor, Captain
Bonneville fitted him out handsomely as the Nimrod of the party,
who all soon became quite attached to him. One of the earliest
and most signal services he performed, was to exorcise the
insatiate kill-crop that hitherto oppressed the party. In fact,
the doltish Nez Perce, who had seemed so perfectly insensible to
rough treatment of every kind, by which the travellers had
endeavored to elbow him out of their society, could not withstand
the good-humored bantering, and occasionally sharp wit of
She-wee-she. He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat
blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and
peckings of mischievous birds. At length his place was found
vacant at meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he
had gone, but he was seen no more, and the vast surplus that
remained when the repast was over, showed what a mighty
gormandizer had departed.
Relieved from this incubus, the little party now went on
cheerily. She-wee-she kept them in fun as well as food. His
hunting was always successful; he was ever ready to render any
assistance in the camp or on the march; while his jokes, his
antics, and the very cut of his countenance, so full of whim and
comicality, kept every one in good-humor.
In this way they journeyed on until they arrived on the banks of
the Immahah, and encamped near to the Nez Perce lodges. Here
She-wee-she took a sudden notion to visit his people, and show
off the state of worldly prosperity to which he had so suddenly
attained. He accordingly departed in the morning, arrayed in
hunter's style, and well appointed with everything benefitting
his vocation. The buoyancy of his gait, the elasticity of his
step, and the hilarity of his countenance, showed that he
anticipated, with chuckling satisfaction, the surprise he was
about to give those who had ejected him from their society in
rags. But what a change was there in his whole appearance when he
rejoined the party in the evening! He came skulking into camp
like a beaten cur, with his tail between his legs. All his finery
was gone; he was naked as when he was born, with the exception of
a scanty flap that answered the purpose of a fig leaf. His
fellow-travellers at first did not know him, but supposed it to
be some vagrant Root Digger sneaking into the camp; but when they
recognized in this forlorn object their prime wag, She-wee-she,
whom they had seen depart in the morning in such high glee and
high feather, they could not contain their merriment, but hailed
him with loud and repeated peals of laughter.
She-wee-she was not of a spirit to be easily cast down; he soon
joined in the merriment as heartily as any one, and seemed to
consider his reverse of fortune an excellent joke. Captain
Bonneville, however, thought proper to check his good-humor, and
demanded, with some degree of sternness, the cause of his altered
condition. He replied in the most natural and self-complacent
style imaginable, "that he had been among his cousins, who were
very poor; they had been delighted to see him; still more
delighted with his good fortune; they had taken him to their
arms; admired his equipments; one had begged for this; another
for that"--in fine, what with the poor devil's inherent
heedlessness, and the real generosity of his disposition, his
needy cousins had succeeded in stripping him of all his clothes
and accoutrements, excepting the fig leaf with which he had
returned to camp.
Seeing his total want of care and forethought, Captain Bonneville
determined to let him suffer a little, in hopes it might prove a
salutary lesson; and, at any rate, to make him no more presents
while in the neighborhood of his needy cousins. He was left,
therefore, to shift for himself in his naked condition; which,
however, did not seem to give him any concern, or to abate one
jot of his good-humor. In the course of his lounging about the
camp, however, he got possession of a deer skin; whereupon,
cutting a slit in the middle, he thrust his head through it, so
that the two ends hung down before and behind, something like a
South American poncho, or the tabard of a herald. These ends he
tied together, under the armpits; and thus arrayed, presented
himself once more before the captain, with an air of perfect
self-satisfaction, as though he thought it impossible for any
fault to be found with his toilet.
A little further journeying brought the travellers to the petty
village of Nez Perces, governed by the worthy and affectionate
old patriarch who had made Captain Bonneville the costly present
of the very fine horse. The old man welcomed them once more to
his village with his usual cordiality, and his respectable squaw
and hopeful son, cherishing grateful recollections of the hatchet
and ear-bobs, joined in a chorus of friendly gratulation.
As the much-vaunted steed, once the joy and pride of this
interesting family, was now nearly knocked up by travelling, and
totally inadequate to the mountain scramble that lay ahead,
Captain Bonneville restored him to the venerable patriarch, with
renewed acknowledgments for the invaluable gift. Somewhat to his
surprise, he was immediately supplied with a fine two years' old
colt in his stead, a substitution which he afterward learnt,
according to Indian custom in such cases, he might have claimed
as a matter of right. We do not find that any after claims were
made on account of this colt. This donation may be regarded,
therefore, as a signal punctilio of Indian honor; but it will be
found that the animal soon proved an unlucky acquisition to the
party.
While at this village, the Nez Perce guide had held consultations
with some of the inhabitants as to the mountain tract the party
were about to traverse. He now began to wear an anxious aspect,
and to indulge in gloomy forebodings. The snow, he had been told,
lay to a great depth in the passes of the mountains, and
difficulties would increase as he proceeded. He begged Captain
Bonneville, therefore, to travel very slowly, so as to keep the
horses in strength and spirit for the hard times they would have
to encounter. The captain surrendered the regulation of the march
entirely to his discretion, and pushed on in the advance, amusing
himself with hunting, so as generally to kill a deer or two in
the course of the day, and arriving, before the rest of the
party, at the spot designated by the guide for the evening's
encampment.
In the meantime, the others plodded on at the heels of the guide,
accompanied by that merry vagabond, She-wee-she. The primitive
garb worn by this droll left all his nether man exposed to the
biting blasts of the mountains. Still his wit was never frozen,
nor his sunshiny temper beclouded; and his innumerable antics and
practical jokes, while they quickened the circulation of his own
blood, kept his companions in high good-humor.
So passed the first day after the departure from the patriarch's.
The second day commenced in the same manner; the captain in the
advance, the rest of the party following on slowly. She-wee-she,
for the greater part of the time, trudged on foot over the snow,
keeping himself warm by hard exercise, and all kinds of crazy
capers. In the height of his foolery, the patriarchal colt,
which, unbroken to the saddle, was suffered to follow on at
large, happened to come within his reach. In a moment, he was on
his back, snapping his fingers, and yelping with delight. The
colt, unused to such a burden, and half wild by nature, fell to
prancing and rearing and snorting and plunging and kicking; and,
at length, set off full speed over the most dangerous ground. As
the route led generally along the steep and craggy sides of the
hills, both horse and horseman were constantly in danger, and
more than once had a hairbreadth escape from deadly peril.
Nothing, however, could daunt this madcap savage. He stuck to the
colt like a plaister [sic], up ridges, down gullies; whooping and
yelling with the wildest glee. Never did beggar on horseback
display more headlong horsemanship. His companions followed him
with their eyes, sometimes laughing, sometimes holding in their
breath at his vagaries, until they saw the colt make a sudden
plunge or start, and pitch his unlucky rider headlong over a
precipice. There was a general cry of horror, and all hastened to
the spot. They found the poor fellow lying among the rocks below,
sadly bruised and mangled. It was almost a miracle that he had
escaped with life. Even in this condition, his merry spirit was
not entirely quelled, and he summoned up a feeble laugh at the
alarm and anxiety of those who came to his relief. He was
extricated from his rocky bed, and a messenger dispatched to
inform Captain Bonneville of the accident. The latter returned
with all speed, and encamped the party at the first convenient
spot. Here the wounded man was stretched upon buffalo skins, and
the captain, who officiated on all occasions as doctor and
surgeon to the party, proceeded to examine his wounds. The
principal one was a long and deep gash in the thigh, which
reached to the bone. Calling for a needle and thread, the captain
now prepared to sew up the wound, admonishing the patient to
submit to the operation with becoming fortitude. His gayety was
at an end; he could no longer summon up even a forced smile; and,
at the first puncture of the needle, flinched so piteously, that
the captain was obliged to pause, and to order him a powerful
dose of alcohol. This somewhat rallied up his spirit and warmed
his heart; all the time of the operation, however, he kept his
eyes riveted on the wound, with his teeth set, and a whimsical
wincing of the countenance, that occasionally gave his nose
something of its usual comic curl.
When the wound was fairly closed, the captain washed it with rum,
and administered a second dose of the same to the patient, who
was tucked in for the night, and advised to compose himself to
sleep. He was restless and uneasy, however; repeatedly expressing
his fears that his leg would be so much swollen the next day, as
to prevent his proceeding with the party; nor could he be
quieted, until the captain gave a decided opinion favorable to
his wishes.
Early the next morning, a gleam of his merry humor returned, on
finding that his wounded limb retained its natural proportions.
On attempting to use it, however, he found himself unable to
stand. He made several efforts to coax himself into a belief that
he might still continue forward; but at length, shook his head
despondingly, and said, that "as he had but one leg," it was all
in vain to attempt a passage of the mountain.
Every one grieved to part with so boon a companion, and under
such disastrous circumstances. He was once more clothed and
equipped, each one making him some parting present. He was then
helped on a horse, which Captain Bonneville presented to him; and
after many parting expressions of good will on both sides, set
off on his return to his old haunts; doubtless, to be once more
plucked by his affectionate but needy cousins.
Content of CHAPTER 35 [Washington Irving's book: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville]
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