The Big Otter

“I don’t think there is another man in the district,” continued the matron, “who would take so long to write a short letter. You said it was going to be short didn’t you?”

“Yes—short and sweet; though I doubt if the dear old man will think it so at first. But he’ll change his mind when he gets here.”

“No doubt we will convert him,” said Aunt Temple.

“Eve will, at all events,” said I.

There was not much more said at that dinner which calls for record. I will therefore return to the attic-room and the letter.

After at least another hour of effort, I succeeded in finishing my task, though not entirely to my satisfaction. As the letter was of considerable importance and interest—at least to those concerned—I now lay it before the reader. It ran thus:—

“My Dear Father,

“I scarcely know how to tell you—or how to begin, for I fear that you will not only be very much surprised, but perhaps, displeased by what I have to write. But let me assure you, dear father, that I cannot help it! It almost seems as if the thing had been arranged for me, and as if I had had no say in the matter. The fact is that I have left the service of the Fur-Traders, and am engaged to be married to a dear beautiful half-caste girl (quite a lady, however, I assure you), and have made up my mind to become a farmer in one of the wildest parts of Colorado! There—I’ve made a clean breast of it, and if that does not take away your breath, nothing will! But I write in all humility, dearest father. Do not fancy that, having taken the bit in my teeth, I tell you all this defiantly. Very far from it. Had it been possible, nothing would have gratified me more than to have consulted you, and asked your approval and blessing, but with three thousand miles of ocean, and I know not how many hundred miles of land between us, that you know, was out of the question; besides, it could not have altered matters, for the thing is fixed.

“My Eve’s mother was an Indian. A very superior woman, indeed, let me hasten to say, and an exceptionally amiable one. Her father was an English gentleman named William Liston—son of a clergyman, and a highly educated man. He was wild and wilful in his youth, and married an Indian, but afterwards became a really good man, and, being naturally refined and with amiable feelings, spent his life in doing good to the people with whom he had cast his lot, and perished in saving the life of his wife. Eve evidently takes after him.

“As to my Eve herself—”

I will spare the reader what I said about Eve herself! Suffice it to say that after an enthusiastic account of her mental and physical qualities, in which, however, I carefully refrained from exaggeration, and giving a brief outline of my recent experiences, I wound up with,—“And now, dear father, forgive me if I have done wrong in all this, and make up your mind to come out here and live with us, or take a farm of your own near to us. You know there is nothing to tie you to the old country; you were always fond of the idea of emigrating to the backwoods; your small income will go twice as far here as there, if properly laid out, and you’ll live twice as long. Come, dear dad, if you love me. I can’t get married till you come. Ever believe me, your affectionate son—George Maxby.”

Reader, shall we visit the dear old man in his dingy little house in old England while he peruses the foregoing letter? Yes, let us go. It is worth while travelling between four and five thousand miles to see him read it. Perhaps, if you are a critical reader, you may ask, “But how came you to know how the old gentleman received the letter?” Well, although the question is impertinent, I will answer it.

I have a small cousin of about ten years of age. She dwells with my father, and is an exceedingly sharp and precocious little girl. She chanced to be in the parlour waiting for my father—who was rather given to being late for breakfast—when my letter arrived. The familiar domestic cat was also waiting for him. It had mounted the table and sat glaring at the butter and cream, but, being aware that stealing was wrong, or that the presence of Cousin Maggie was prohibitive, it practised self-denial. Finding a story-book, my cousin sat down on the window seat behind the curtain and became absorbed—so much absorbed that she failed to notice the entrance of my father; failed to hear his—“Ha! a letter from Punch at last!”—and was only roused to outward events by the crash which ensued when my father smote the table with his fist and exclaimed, “im-possible!” The cups and saucers almost sprang into the air. The cat did so completely, and retired in horror to the furthest corner of the room. Recovering itself, however, it soon returned to its familiar post of observation on the table. Not so Cousin Maggie, who, observing that she was unperceived, and feeling somewhat shocked as well as curious, sat quite still, with her mouth, eyes, and especially her ears, wide-open.

From Maggie then—long afterwards—I learned the details.

My father sat down after smiting the table, gasped once or twice; pulled off and wiped his spectacles; put them on again, and, laying strong constraint on himself, read the whole through, aloud, and without a word of comment till he reached the end, when he ejaculated—“in-con-ceivable!” laid the letter down, and, looking up, glared at the cat. As that creature took no notice of him he incontinently flung his napkin at it, and swept it off the table. Then he gave vent to a prolonged “wh–sh!” burst into a fiendish laugh, and gave a slap to his thigh that shattered the cat’s peace of mind for the remainder of that morning, after which he re-opened the letter, spread it carefully out on the table, and, in the most intensely cynical tones, began a disjointed commentary on it as follows:—

“Your ‘dear father,’ indeed! That’s the first piece of humbug in your precious letter. Very ‘dear’ I am to you, no doubt. And you—you—a chit—a mere boy (he forgot that several years had elapsed since I left him). Oh! no—I’m neither surprised nor displeased—not at all. The state of my mind is not to be expressed by such phraseology—by no means! And you were always such a smooth-faced, quiet little beggar that—well—no matter. ‘Couldn’t help it!’ indeed. H’m. ‘Quite a lady!’ Oh! of course. Necessarily so, when you condescended to fall in love with her! ‘Humility!’ well! ‘Given up the service,’ too! ‘Colorado!’ ‘One of the wildest parts’—as if a tame part wouldn’t have done just as well! A ‘farmer!’ Much you know about farming! You don’t tell all this ‘defiantly.’ Oh! no, certainly not, but if you don’t do it defiantly, I have misunderstood the meaning of the word self-will till I am bald. Why didn’t you ‘consult’ me, then? Much you care for my blessing—and ‘the thing is fixed!’”

Exasperation was too much developed at this point to permit of blowing off steam in the form of sarcastic remark. My poor father hit the table with such force that the cream spurted out of its pot over the cloth—and my father didn’t care! The cat cared, however, when, at a later period, it had the cleaning up of that little matter all to itself! This last explosion caused so much noise—my cousin told me—as to attract the attention of my father’s only domestic, who bounced into the room and asked, “did ’e ring.” To which my father returned such a thundering “No!” that the domestic fled precipitately, followed by the cat—rampant.

“Your ‘Eve!’ indeed,” said my father, resuming the sarcastic vein. “‘Mother an Indian’—a Hottentot, I suppose, or something of that sort—short skirt of peacock feathers; no upper part worth mentioning, flat nose and lips, and smeared all over with fat, I dare say. Charming mother-in-law. Calculated to create some impression on English society. No wonder you’ve chosen the wilds of Colorado! Ah, now, as to ‘my Eve herself’—just let us have it strong, my boy—h’m, ‘sweet’—yes, yes—‘amiable,’ exactly, ‘fair hair and blue eyes’—ha, you expect me to swallow that! oh, ‘graceful,’ ha! ‘perfection,’ undoubtedly. ‘Forgive’ you! No—boy, I’ll never forgive you. You’re the most arrant ass—idiot—but this caps all—‘come out here and live with us!’ They’ll give me one quarter of the wigwam, I suppose—curtained off with birch-bark, perhaps, or deerskin. ‘Your affectionate’—dolt! wh–why—what do you glare like that for?”

This last question was put to my small cousin, who, in the horror of her belief that my father had gone mad, had agitated the window-curtain and revealed herself!

My poor dear father! I can imagine the scene well, and would not have detailed it so minutely here if—but enough. I must not forecast.

The afternoon on which this letter was despatched Big Otter returned to Sunny Creek cottage with a haunch of fat venison on his lusty shoulders.

He found us all grouped round the rustic table in front of the door, enjoying a cup of fragrant tea, and admiring the view. Eve was sitting on a low stool at the feet of Mrs Liston, engaged in ornamenting a bright blue fire-bag with bead and quill work of the most gorgeous colouring and elegant design. The design, of course, was her own. Mrs Liston was knitting small squares of open cotton-work, of a stitch so large that wooden needles about the size of a goose-quill were necessary. It was the only work that the poor old lady’s weak eyesight and trembling hands could accomplish, and the simple stitch required little exercise of mind or muscle. When Mrs Liston completed a square she rolled it away. When sixteen squares were finished, she sewed them together and formed a strip about eight feet long and six inches broad. When sixteen such strips were completed, she sewed them all together and thus produced a bed-quilt. Quilts of this sort she presented periodically, with much ceremony and demonstration of regard, to her most intimate friends. In that region the old lady had not many intimate friends, but then it luckily took much time to produce a quilt.

The quilt then in hand—at that time near its completion—was for Eve.

“Thank you so much for your venison,” said Mrs Liston, as the hunter, with an air of native dignity, laid the haunch at her feet. “Take it to the kitchen, dear,” she added to Mrs Temple, who was pouring out the tea.

“It has just come in time,” said Mrs Temple, with a pleasant nod to Big Otter; “we had quite run out of fresh meat, and your friend Muxbee is such a lazy boy that he never touches a gun. In fact I don’t know how to get him out of the house even for an hour.”

As this was said in English, Big Otter did not understand it, but when he saw the speaker stoop to pick up the venison, he stepped quickly forward and anticipated her. “Thank you, carry it this way,” said Aunt Temple (as I had begun to style her), leading the Indian to the pantry in rear of the cottage.

“Well, Big Otter,” said I, when they returned, “now do you find the country round here in regard to game?”

“There is much game,” he answered.

“Then you’ll make up your mind to pitch your wigwam here, I hope, and make it your home.”

“No, Big Otter’s heart is in his own land in the far north. He will go back to it.”

“What! and forsake Waboose?” said Eve, looking up from her work with an expression of real concern.

With a gratified air the Indian replied, “Big Otter will return.”

“Soon!” I asked.

“Not very long.”

“When do you start?”

“Before yon sun rises again,” said Big Otter, pointing to the westward, where the heavens above, and the heavens reflected in the lake below, were suffused with a golden glow.

“Then I shall have to spend the most of the night writing,” said I, “for I cannot let you go without a long letter to my friend Lumley, and a shorter one to Macnab. I have set my heart on getting them both to leave the service, and come here to settle alongside of me.”

“You see, your friend Muxbee,” said Aunt Temple, using the Indian’s pronunciation of my name, “is like the fox which lost his tail. He wishes all other foxes to cut off their tails so as to resemble him.”

“Am I to translate that?” I asked.

“If you can and will.”

Having done so, I continued,—“But seriously, Big Otter, I hope you will try to persuade them to come here. Give them a glowing account of the country and the climate, and say I’ll not marry till they come to dance at my wedding. I would not wait for that however, if it were not that Eve thinks she is a little too young yet, and besides, she has set her heart on my father being present. I’ll explain all that in my letters, of course, but do you press it on them.”

“And be sure you tell the dark-haired pale-face,” said Eve, “that Waboose expects her to come. Give these from her friend Fairhair—she was fond of calling me Fairhair.”

Eve rose as she spoke, and produced a pair of beautiful moccasins, which had been made and richly ornamented by her own hands. At the same time she presented the fire-bag to the Indian, adding that she was glad to have had it so nearly ready when he arrived.

“For whom are these pretty things, my dear?” asked Mrs Liston.

“The fire-bag, mother, is for Big Otter, and the moccasins is—”

“Are, Eve—are—plural you know.”

“Is,” replied Eve, with emphasis, “for my dear friend, Jessie, the black-haired pale-face.”

“Well done, Waboose!” exclaimed Aunt Temple. “I’m glad to see that you improve under my tuition.”

“You can’t spoil her,” I retorted, quietly.

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs Liston, “send a message from me to your dark-haired pale-face that I shall begin a quilt for her next week.”