“The squatter and his brood have left a strong scent on the earth,” said the old man, watching as he spoke for some signal from his learned pioneer to follow; “I hope yonder school-bred man knows enough to remember the errand on which I have sent him.”
Doctor Battius had already disappeared in the bushes and the trapper was beginning to betray additional evidences of impatience, when the person of the former was seen retiring from the thicket backwards, with his face fastened on the place he had just left, as if his look was bound in the thraldom of some charm.
“Here is something skeery, by the wildness of the creatur’s countenance!” exclaimed the old man relinquishing his hold of Hector, and moving stoutly to the side of the totally unconscious naturalist. “How is it, friend; have you found a new leaf in your book of wisdom?”
“It is a basilisk!” muttered the Doctor, whose altered visage betrayed the utter confusion which beset his faculties. “An animal of the order, serpens. I had thought its attributes were fabulous, but mighty nature is equal to all that man can imagine!”
“What is’t? what is’t? The snakes of the prairies are harmless, unless it be now and then an angered rattler and he always gives you notice with his tail, afore he works his mischief with his fangs. Lord, Lord, what a humbling thing is fear! Here is one who in common delivers words too big for a humble mouth to hold, so much beside himself, that his voice is as shrill as the whistle of the whip-poor-will! Courage!—what is it, man?—what is it?”
“A prodigy! a lusus naturae! a monster, that nature has delighted to form, in order to exhibit her power! Never before have I witnessed such an utter confusion in her laws, or a specimen that so completely bids defiance to the distinctions of class and genera. Let me record its appearance,” fumbling for his tablets with hands that trembled too much to perform their office, “while time and opportunity are allowed—eyes, enthralling; colour, various, complex, and profound—”
“One would think the man was craz’d, with his enthralling looks and pieball’d colours!” interrupted the discontented trapper, who began to grow a little uneasy that his party was all this time neglecting to seek the protection of some cover. “If there is a reptile in the brush, show me the creatur’, and should it refuse to depart peaceably, why there must be a quarrel for the possession of the place.”
“There!” said the Doctor, pointing into a dense mass of the thicket, to a spot within fifty feet of that where they both stood. The trapper turned his look, with perfect composure, in the required direction, but the instant his practised glance met the object which had so utterly upset the philosophy of the naturalist, he gave a start himself, threw his rifle rapidly forward, and as instantly recovered it, as if a second flash of thought convinced him he was wrong. Neither the instinctive movement, nor the sudden recollection, was without a sufficient object. At the very margin of the thicket, and in absolute contact with the earth, lay an animate ball, that might easily, by the singularity and fierceness of its aspect, have justified the disturbed condition of the naturalist’s mind. It were difficult to describe the shape or colours of this extraordinary substance, except to say, in general terms, that it was nearly spherical, and exhibited all the hues of the rainbow, intermingled without reference to harmony, and without any very ostensible design. The predominant hues were a black and a bright vermilion. With these, however, the several tints of white, yellow, and crimson, were strangely and wildly blended. Had this been all, it would have been difficult to have pronounced that the object was possessed of life, for it lay motionless as any stone; but a pair of dark, glaring, and moving eyeballs which watched with jealousy the smallest movement of the trapper and his companion, sufficiently established the important fact of its possessing vitality.
“Your reptile is a scouter, or I’m no judge of Indian paints and Indian deviltries!” muttered the old man, dropping the butt of his weapon to the ground, and gazing with a steady eye at the frightful object, as he leaned on its barrel, in an attitude of great composure. “He wants to face us out of sight and reason, and make us think the head of a red-skin is a stone covered with the autumn leaf; or he has some other devilish artifice in his mind!”
“Is the animal human?” demanded the Doctor, “of the genus homo? I had fancied it a non-descript.”