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plying the heavy
pestle of a moveable homminy-mortar
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; and one or two in wheeling the
remainder of the wagons aside, and arranging them in such a manner as to
form a sort of outwork for their otherwise defenceless bivouac.
    These several duties were soon performed, and, as darkness now began
to conceal the objects on the surrounding prairie, the shrill-toned
termagant, whose voice since the halt had been diligently exercised
among her idle and drowsy offspring, announced, in tones that might have
been heard at a dangerous distance, that the evening meal waited only
for the approach of those who were to consume it. Whatever may be the
other qualities of a border man, he is seldom deficient in the virtue
of hospitality. The emigrant no sooner heard the sharp call of his wife,
than he cast his eyes about him in quest of the stranger, in order to
offer him the place of distinction, in the rude entertainment to which
they were so unceremoniously summoned.
    "I thank you, friend," the old man replied to the rough invitation to
take a seat nigh the smoking kettle; "you have my hearty thanks; but
I have eaten for the day, and am not one of them, who dig their graves
with their teeth. Well; as you wish it, I will take a place, for it is
long sin' I have seen people of my colour, eating their daily bread."
    "You ar' an old settler, in these districts, then?" the emigrant rather
remarked than enquired, with a mouth filled nearly to overflowing with
the delicious homminy, prepared by his skilful, though repulsive
spouse. "They told us below, we should find settlers something thinnish,
hereaway, and I must say, the report was mainly true; for, unless, we
count the Canada traders on the big river, you ar' the first white face
I have met, in a good five hundred miles; that is calculating according
to your own reckoning."
    "Though I have spent some years, in this quarter, I can hardly be called
a settler, seeing that I have no regular abode, and seldom pass more
than a month, at a time, on the same range."
    "A hunter, I reckon?" the other continued, glancing his eyes aside, as
if to examine the equipments of his new acquaintance; "your fixen seem
none of the best, for such a calling."
    "They are old, and nearly ready to be laid aside, like their master,"
said the old man, regarding his rifle, with a look in which affection
and regret were singularly blended; "and I may say they are but little
needed, too. You are mistaken, friend, in calling me a hunter; I am
nothing better than a trapper."
[5]
    "If you ar' much of the one, I'm bold to say you ar' something of the
other; for the two callings, go mainly together, in these districts."
    "To the shame of the man who is able to follow the first be it so said!"
returned the trapper, whom in future we shall choose to designate by
his pursuit; "for more than fifty years did I carry my rifle in the
wilderness, without so much as setting a snare for even a bird that
flies the heavens;—much less, a beast that has nothing but legs, for
its gifts."
    "I see but little difference whether a man gets his peltry by the rifle
or by the trap," said the ill-looking companion of the emigrant, in his
rough manner. "The 'arth was made for our comfort; and, for that matter,
so ar' its creatur's."
    "You seem to have but little plunder,
[6]
stranger, for one who is far
abroad," bluntly interrupted the emigrant, as if he had a reason for
wishing to change the conversation. "I hope you ar' better off for
skins."
    "I make but little use of either," the trapper quietly replied. "At my
time of life, food and clothing be all that is needed; and I have little
occasion for what you call plunder, unless it may be, now and then, to
barter for a horn of powder, or a bar of lead."
    "You ar' not, then, of these parts by natur', friend," the emigrant
continued, having in his mind the exception which the other had taken
to the very equivocal word, which he himself, according to the custom of
the country, had used for "baggage,"