Ah, peerless Fulano! that was our last love-passage!
The day, after the crisp frostiness of its beginning, was a belated day of Indian summer; mild as the golden mornings of that calm, luxurious time. We stopped to noon in a sunny spot of open pasture near a wide muddy slough of the Missouri. This reservoir for the brewage of shakes for Pikes had been refilled in some autumn rise of the river, and lay a great stagnant lake along the road-side, a mile or so long, two hundred yards broad. Not very exhilarating tipple, but still water; the horses would not disdain it, after their education on the plains; we could qualify it with argee from our flasks, and ice it with the little films of ice unmelted along the pool’s edges. We were fortified with a bag of corn for the horses, and a cold chicken for the men.
We camped by a fallen cottonwood near the slough. The atmosphere was hopeful. We picnicked merrily, men and beasts. “Three gentlemen at once” over a chicken soon dissipated this and its trimmings. We lighted the tranquil calumet, and lounged, watching our horses at their corn.
Presently we began to fancy we heard, then to think we heard, at last to be sure we heard the baying of hounds through the mild, golden air.
“Tally-ho!” cried Biddulph, “what a day for a fox-hunt! This haze will make the scent lie almost as well as the clouds.”
“Music! Music!” cried he again, springing up, as the sound, increasing, rose and fell along the peaceful air that lay on earth so lovingly.
“Music, if it were in Merrie England, where the hunt are gentlemen. A cursed uproar here, where the hunt are man-stealers,” said Brent.
“No,” said Biddulph. “Those are fables of the old, barbarous days of the Maroons. I can’t believe in dogs after men, until I see it.”
“I’m afraid it’s our friend Ham they are after. This would be his line of escape.”
At the word, a rustling in the bushes along the slough, and Ham burst through. He turned to run. We shouted. He knew us, and flung himself, livid with terror and panting with flight, on the ground at our feet,—the “pop’lar nigger”!