HOW GRUMBO FIGURED IN THE PARADISE.
The brindled dog, until his part of the work in hand should be made
known to him, stalked on with an air of grim, consequential
indifference, keeping his muzzle close under the shadow of his master's
hunting-shirt, content for the time with the little that might be seen
ahead from between the moving legs before him. Now, Grumbo--for such was
the name of the brindled dog--was a personage of consequence in his day,
and is to play a rather prominent part in our story. Therefore, it were
but due him, in memory of his great exploits, and of the signal service
which on this particular occasion he rendered the settlement, that we
draw a full-length portrait of our canine hero likewise.
Had you met his dogship in the fort, you would, at first glance, have
put him down in your mind as an uncommonly large, well-conditioned wolf,
whose habits and tastes had been so far civilized as to admit of his
tolerating the companionship of man and subsisting on a mixed diet; but
at the second glance, noting his color, and the shape of his head, with
a certain loftiness of mien and suppleness of backbone--neither of which
is ever to be found in the wolf--you would have pronounced him a little
lion, shorn of his brindled mane. On further acquaintance, however--I
cannot say intimate acquaintance, his excellency being of far too
reserved a turn for that--you would have discovered him to be a most
remarkable dog, whose character was well worth your study, made up as
it was of every quality deemed most desirable in the larger breeds of
his race.
He had the obstinacy of the bull-dog, the fierceness of the blood-hound,
the steadiness of the stag-hound, the sagacity of the shepherd-dog, and
the faithfulness and watchfulness of the mastiff, with the courage and
strength of them all combined. To this imposing array of canine virtues,
those who enjoyed his more intimate acquaintance--the few--would have
added the affectionate docility of the Newfoundland, and the delicate
playfulness of the Italian greyhound. It must be owned, however, that he
displayed little enough of the last-named qualities, excepting to
Burlman Reynolds, Jemima Reynolds, and little Bushie, in whose society
only would he now and then deign to unbend--_i.e._, untwist and wag his
iron hook of a tail--and, for a few moments snatched from the press of
public business, play the familiar and agreeable. If he ever caught any
one railing at Grumbo--any colored individual, that is, in bad odor with
his dogship--and cursing him for a misbegotten wolf, Big Black Burl
would be all afire in the flash of a gun-flint, and ready to pulverize
the false muzzle that dared dab the fair name of his four-footed chum
with a slur so foul. Sometimes, though, the white hunters, also, would
curse Grumbo--denouncing him as a dog too wanting in the milk of human
kindness to be allowed a place in human society, unmuzzled, excepting
when on duty. Too mindful of what was expected of him as a man of color
to give his white superiors the denial flat, Burl would, nevertheless,
hasten to disprove the charge, by citing some act of signal service
rendered by the injured one to his master at some moment of sore,
besetting need. For example:
One day the Fighting Nigger was out in the forest "a Injun huntin'," his
trusted dog on a hot scent far in advance, his trusty gun, Betsy Grumbo,
in "bitin'" order, on his shoulder. On a sudden, with no other warning
than a rough chorus of growls at his very heels, he found himself set
upon by a whole family of bears, who spying him, as he passed unawares
too near the door of their domestic den, had sallied out,
higgledy-piggledy, to give the intruder battle. To step to one side and
with the bullet already in his rifle lay the old he-bear, who led the
onslaught, dead on the spot was easy enough; so would it have been as
easy to dispatch the old she-bear, had she but allowed him time to
reload his piece. But enraged at the sight of her slain lord, and
afflicted at the thought of her fatherless cubs at her heels, the dam,
rearing upon her hind legs, bore down upon him at once, at the same time
growling out to her litter to fall, tooth and nail, on the enemy in
flank and rear.
So sudden was the charge that the unlucky Burl had barely time to thrust
out his gun against the chief assailant, when he found himself
completely beset. Wielding his unloaded rifle as he would a
pike--poking, pushing, punching therewith at the infuriated dam, in
throat and breast and ribs--he contrived for a time to keep himself
clear of the terrible claws continually making at him in such fierce,
unwelcome greeting. But the odds were against the black hunter. Swift to
obey their mother's command, the cubs with their milk-teeth were pulling
and tugging at his buckskin breeches in a manner exceedingly lively,
which, though it did not reach his skin, was making heavy demands on his
breath, fast growing short and shorter.
He could not hope to hold out long in a contest so unequal. Where was
Grumbo--his trusty, his courageous Grumbo? why was he not there to
succor his master in that hour of peril? In his extremity he essayed to
whistle for his dog, but his breath was too far spent for that.
Mustering up all the remaining strength of his lungs, he sent pealing
afar through the forest wilds the old familiar battle-cry, "I yi, you
dogs!" at the same moment fetching the dam a poke of unusual vigor and
directness, which brought her for once sprawling upon her back. But in
the act, while yet his whole weight was thrown upon his right foot, one
of the cubs, more sturdy than the rest, caught up his left foot by the
top of the moccasin and continued to hold it up so stiffly as to reduce
him to the necessity either of coming to his knees or of hopping about
on one foot; and hop was what he did, encumbered as was the hopping limb
with the rest of the litter. Hardly had he given a hop with one foot and
a kick with the other, to free himself from the obstinate little
tormentors, when the dam, recovering herself in a twinkling, was bearing
down upon him again on her hind legs with greater fury than ever.
Against such desperate odds how could he hold out longer, reduced as he
was to an empty gun, one leg, and no dog? Still hopping about on one
foot and kicking with the other, he had unsheathed his hunting-knife to
do what he might with that in the unmotherly hug which he felt must come
at last, when here, in the nick of time, having heard his master's call
from afar, the heroic Grumbo came dashing up to the rescue. Without
yelp, or bark, or growl, or any other needless ado, this jewel of a dog
laid hold of the she-bear's stump of a tail, which his instinct told him
was the enemy's vulnerable point, and with a sudden, forcible, backward
pull, brought her ladyship growling to her all-fours. The cubs, seeing
their dam's extremity, left off worrying the legs of the almost
breathless hunter to fall tooth and nail on the new enemy. But heeding
them no more than so many fleas to be scratched off at his leisure,
Grumbo continued to maintain his vantage-ground, holding the she-bear
still by the tail with jaws inflexible as death, and merely turning from
right to left as she turned from right to left, to keep himself on a
line with her and beyond the reach of her claws and teeth.
Meanwhile, having inspected Betsy Grumbo, to make sure that she had
sustained no damage in the conflict, Burl put her in "extry bitin'
order" by loading her with two bullets and a double charge of powder.
Then stepping a few paces to one side, so as not to endanger Grumbo, he
took deliberate aim and let the dam have it full in the body, just
behind the shoulder. With a fierce growl she sunk down lifeless by the
side of her slain lord, the jaws of the dog still clinched like a vice
upon her tail.
"An' dat's de way," to finish Burl's own story in his own words,
"Burlman Rennuls an' Grumbo woun' up de ol' she-bar. Den goes I up to de
cubs, whar dey still kep a-gnawin' an' a-scratchin' an' a-clawin' ober
Grumbo, an' tickles 'em to death wid de pint uf my knife. Den I looks
roun' an' dare's Grumbo still a-holdin' on to de varmint's tail like a
dead turtle to a corn-cob. Says I: 'Grumbo, onscrew yo' vice an' stop
yo' chawin'; de varmint's dead. Don't you know Betsy Grumbo alwus bites
in de heart, an' bars never play 'possum?' Den Grumbo lets go slow an'
easy as uf he's afeerd de varmint wus makin' a fool uf him an' Burlman
Rennuls, too. Den we skins de bars, an' we kindles a fire; briles some
uf de bar meat on de coals, streeks uf lean an' lumps uf fat; an' den we
sets down an' shakes hans--me an' Grumbo--ober de sweetest dinner eber
et in ol' Kaintuck. An' now you say Grumbo got no human feelin's in him.
Git out!"
Should any of the white hunters choose to hint a doubt as to the truth
of this story, Big Black Burl had but to point to the bear-skin bed in
his cabin, on which he slept; to the bear-skin rug under the shed at his
door, where Grumbo slept by day and watched by night; to his bear-skin
leggins, his bear-skin hunting-shirt, and bear-skin war-cap--and the
thing was settled and established beyond doubt or controversy.
Concerning these and the like points Grumbo himself maintained a grim
and dignified reserve, never speaking of them to common dogs, nor even
to his master, excepting when the subject was forced upon him; though
that was certainly frequent enough for wholesome airing. Grand, gloomy,
and peculiar, he sat upon his bear-skin, a maneless lion, wrapped in the
solitude of his own originality. Aloof from the vulgar pack, he lived
and moved and had his being but in the atmosphere of the Fighting
Nigger, in whose society only could he hope to find a little congenial
companionship, and to whom only he unbosomed the workings of his mighty
heart.
Methinks I see him now, with that air of consequence and mystery hanging
about him, like the fog from his own shaggy hide after a winter wetting;
with those short ears perpetually cocked, as if he felt that his destiny
was cast in an age and a land where to hunt, kill, and utterly root out
bears, panthers, wolves, and Indians from the top of the earth was the
sole end and aim of existence. I see him with that great brush of a tail
curled tightly--nay, inflexibly--over his right leg, as if his was a
will and a spirit not to be subdued or shaken by any power less than
that irresistible and inexorable fate which has declared, and without
repeal, that "every dog shall have his day." All this methinks I see,
and as vividly too as if I had the living Grumbo before my bodily eyes;
for, in the course of his long and eventful career, it grew to be as
characteristic of our canine hero as, twenty years later, became a
little cocked hat, a gray great-coat, military boots, and a certain
attitude, of that famous Corsican, Napoleon the First--commonly,
vulgarly, bogusly called the Great.