HAM.
Two days Biddulph solaced himself on those rare luxuries of Ruby’s
_ménage_; the third, we started.
Ruby and the surgeon rode with us a score of miles. It was hard to say
good-bye. We were grateful, and they were sorry.
“What can we do for you, Ruby?”
“Raze Laramie, abolish the plains, level the Rockys, nullify the Sioux,
and disband the American army.”
“What can we do for you, Doctor?”
“Find me a wife, box her up so that no one will stop her _in transitu_,
mark Simeon Pathie, M. D., U. S. A., and ship to Fort Vancouver,
Oregon, where I shall be stationed next summer. Your English lady in
half a day has spoiled my philosophy of a life.”
“Good-bye and good luck!”
It was late travelling through that houseless waste. Deep snow
already blanched the Black Hills, and Laramie Peak, their chief. Mr.
Bierstadt, in his fine picture in this year’s Academy, has shown them
as they are in the mellow days of summer. Now, cold and stern, they
warned us to hasten on.
We did hasten. We crowded through the buffalo; we crossed and recrossed
the Platte, already curdling with winter; we dashed over the prairies
of Kansas, blackened by fire and whitened by snow, but then unstained
by any peaceful settler’s blood.
Jake Shamberlain, returning with his party, met us on the way.
“I passed the train with the young woman and her father,” said he. “We
camped together one night, and bein’ as I was a friend of your’n, she
give me a talk. Pooty tall talkin’ ’t wuz, and I wuz teched in a new
spot. I’ve felt mean as muck ever sence she opened to me on religion,
and when I git home I’m goan to swing clear of the Church, ef I ken cut
clear, and emigrate to Oregon. So, Barrownight, next time you come out,
you’ll find me on a claim there, out to the Willamette or the Umpqua,
just as much like a gentleman’s park in England as one grasshopper is
to another, only they hain’t got no such mountains to England as I’ll
show you thar.”
“Well, Jake, we’ll try to pay you our respects.”
We hastened on. Why pause for our adventures? They were but episodes
along our new gallop of three. This time it was not restless, anxious
gallop. We had no doubt but that in good time we should overtake our
friends, in regions where men are not shot along the right arm when
they protect insulted dames.
Brent was himself again. We rode hard. Biddulph was as fine a fellow as
my grandmother England has mothered. Find an Englishman vital enough
to be a Come-outer, and you have found a man worthy to be the peer
of an American with Yankee education, Western scope, and California
irrepressibility.
Winter chased us close. Often we woke at night, and found our bivouac
sheeted with cold snow,--a cool sheet, but luckily outside our warm
blankets. It was full December when the plains left us, fell back,
and beached us upon the outer edge of civilization, at Independence,
Missouri.
The muddy Missouri was running dregs. Steamboats were tired of skipping
from sand-bar to sand-bar. Engineer had reported to Captain, that
“Kangaroo No. 5 would bust, if he didn’t stop trying to make her lift
herself over the damp country by her braces.” No more steamboating on
the yellow ditch until there was a rise; until the Platte sent down
sand three and water one, or the Yellowstone mud three and water one,
or the Missouri proper grit three and water one. We must travel by land
to St. Louis and railroads.
We could go with our horses as fast as the stage-coaches. So we sold
our pack beasts, and started to continue our gallop of three across
Missouri.
Half-way across, we stopped one evening at the mean best tavern in a
mean town,--a frowzy county town, with a dusty public square, a boxy
church, and a spittley court-house.
Fit entertainment for beast the tavern offered. We saw our horses
stabled, and had our supper.
“Shall we go into the Spittoon?” said Biddulph.
“Certainly,” said Brent. “The bar-room--I am sorry to hear you speak of
it with foreign prejudice--is an institution, and merits study. Argee,
upon the which the bar-room is based, is also an institution.”
“Well, I came to study American institutions. Let us go in and take a
whiff of disgust.”
Fit entertainment for brute the bar-room offered. In that club-room we
found the brute class drinking, swearing, spitting, squabbling over the
price of hemp and the price of “niggers,” and talking what it called
“politics.”
One tall, truculent Pike, the loudest of all that blatant crew, seemed
to Brent and myself an old acquaintance. We had seen him or his double
somewhere. But neither of us could fit him with a pedestal in our
long gallery of memory. Saints one takes pains to remember, and their
scenes; but satyrs one endeavors to lose.
“Have you had enough of the Spittoon?” I asked Biddulph. “Shall we go
up? They’ve put us all three in the same room; but bivouacs in the same
big room--Out-Doors--are what we are best used to.”
Two and a half beds, one broken-backed chair, a wash-stand decked
with an ancient fringed towel and an abandoned tooth-brush, one torn
slipper, and a stove-pipe hole, furnished our bedchamber.
We were about to cast lots for the half-bed, when we heard two men
enter the next room. The partition was only paper pasted over lath, and
cut up as if a Border Ruffian member of Congress had practised at it
with a bowie-knife before a street-fight. Every word of our neighbors
came to us. They were talking of a slave bargain. I eliminate their
oaths, though such filtration does them injustice.
“Eight hundred dollars,” said the first speaker, and his voice startled
us as if a dead man we knew had spoken. “Eight hundred,--that’s the top
of my pile fur that boy. Ef he warn’t so old and hadn’t one eye poked
out, I agree he’d be wuth a heap more.”
“Waal, a trade’s a trade. I’ll take yer stump. Count out yer dimes, and
I’ll fill out a blank bill of sale. Murker, the boy’s yourn.”
“Murker!”--we both started at the name. This was the satyr we had
observed in the bar-room. Had Fulano’s victim crept from under his
cairn in Luggernel Alley, and chased us to take flesh here and harm us
again. Such a superstitious thought crossed my mind.
The likeness--look, voice, and name--was presently accounted for.
“You’re lookin’ fur yer brother out from Sacramenter, ’bout now, I
reckon,” said the trader.
“He wuz comin’ cross lots with a man named Larrap, a pardener of his’n.
Like enough they’ve stayed over winter in Salt Lake. They oughter rake
down a most a mountainious pile thar.”
“Mormons is flush and sarcy with their dimes sence the emigration. Now
thar’s yer bill of sale, all right.”
“And thar’s yer money, all right.”
“That are’s wut I call a screechin’ good price fur an old one-eyed
nigger. Fourteen hundred dollars,--an all-fired price.”
“Eight hundred, you mean.”
“No; fourteen. Yer see, you’re not up ter taime on the nigger
question. I know ’em like a church-steeple. When I bought that are
boy, now comin’ three year, I seed he wuz a sprightly nigger, one
er yer ambitious sort, what would be mighty apt to git fractious,
an’ be makin’ tracks, onless I got a holt on him. So sez I to him,
‘Ham, you’re a sprightly nigger, one of the raal ambitious sort, now
aincher?’ He allowed he warnt nothin’ else. ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘Ham, how’d
you like to buy yerself, an’ be a free nigger, an’ hev a house of yer
own, an’ a woman of yer own, all jess like white folks?’ ‘Lor,’ sez he,
‘Massa, I’d like it a heap.’ ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘you jess scrabble round
an’ raise me seven hundred dollars, an’ I’ll sell you to yerself, an’
cheap at that.’ So yer see he began to pay up, an’ I got a holt on him.
He’s a handy nigger, an’ a likely nigger, an’ a pop’lar nigger. He ken
play on ther fiddle like taime,--pooty nigh a minstril is that are
nigger. He ken cut hair an’ fry a beefsteak with ayry man. He ken drive
team, an’ do a little j’iner work, an’ shoe a mule when thar ain’t no
reg’lar blacksmith round. He made these yer boots, an’ reg’lar stompers
they is. He’s one er them chirrupy, smilin’ niggers, with white teeth
an’ genteel manners, what critturs an’ foaks nat’rally takes to. Waal,
he picked up the bits and quarters right smart. He’s ben at it, lammin’
ahead raal ambitious, for ’bout three year. Last Sunday, after church,
he pinted up the last ten of the six hundred. So I allowed ’t wuz come
time to sell him. He wuz gettin’ his bead drawed, an’ his idees sot on
freedom very onhealthy. I didn’t like to disapp’int him to ther last;
so I allowed ’t wuz jest as well to let you hev him cheap to go down
River. That’s how to work them fractious runaway niggers. That are’s my
patent. You ken hev it for nothin’. Haw! haw!”
“Haw, haw, haw! You are one er ther boys. I’m dum sorry that are trick
can’t be did twicet on the same nigger. I reckon he knows too much for
that. Waal, s’pose we walk round to the calaboose, ’fore we go to bed,
an’ see ef he’s chained up all right.”
They went out.
Biddulph spoke first.
“Shame!”
“Yes,” said Brent; “do you wonder that we have to run away to the
Rockys and spend our indignation on grizzlys?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Try to abolish slavery in Ham’s case. Come; we’ll go buy him a file.”
“We seem to have business with the Murker family,” said I.
“A hard lot they are. Representative brutes!”
“I am getting a knowledge of all classes on your continent,” said
Biddulph. “Some I like better than others!”
“Don’t be too harsh on us malecontents for the sin of slavery. It is an
ancestral taint. We shall burn it out before many decades.”
“You had better, or it will set your own house on fire.”
It was late as we walked along the streets, channels of fever and ague
now frozen up for the winter. We saw a light through a shop door, and
hammered stoutly for admission.
A clerk, long-haired and frowzy, opened ungraciously. In the back shop
were three others, also long-haired and frowzy, dealing cards and
drinking a dark compost from tumblers.
“Port wine,” whispered Brent. “Fine Old London Dock Port is the
favorite beverage, when the editor, the lawyer, the apothecary, and the
merchant meet to play euchre in Missouri.”
We bought our files from the surly clerk, and made for the calaboose.
It was a stout log structure, with grated windows. At one of these, by
the low moonlight, we saw a negro. It was cold and late. Nobody was
near. We hailed the man.
“Ham.”
“That’s me, Massa.”
“You’re sold to Murker, to go south to-morrow morning. If you want to
get free, catch!”
Brent tossed him up the files.
“Catch again!” said Biddulph, and up went a rattling purse, England’s
subsidy.
Ham’s white teeth and genteel manners appeared at once. He grinned, and
whispered thanks.
“Is that all we can do?” asked the Baronet, as we walked off.
“Yes,” said Brent, taking a nasal tone. “Ham’s a pop’lar nigger, a
handy nigger, one er your raal ambitious sort. He ken cut hair, fry
a beefsteak, and play on the fiddle like a minstril. He ken shoe
a mule, drive a team, do a little j’iner work, and make stompers.
Yes, Biddulph, trust him to gnaw himself free with that Connecticut
rat-tail.”
“Ham against Japhet; I hope he’ll win.”
“Now,” said Brent, “that we’ve put in action Christ’s Golden Rule,
Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and All-the-wisdom’s Preamble
to the Constitution, we can sleep the sleep of welldoers, if we have
two man-stealers--and one the brother of a murderer--only papered off
from us.”