 | CHAPTER VIII. The prairie |  |
8. CHAPTER VIII.
“Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go look on. That
dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy,
doting, foolish young knave in his helm.”
Troilus and Cressida.
It is necessary, in order that the thread of the
narrative should not be spun to a length which might
fatigue the reader, that he should imagine a week to
have intervened between the scene with which the
preceding chapter closed, and the events with which
it is our intention to resume its relation in this. The
season was on the point of changing its character;
the verdure of summer giving place more rapidly to
the brown and party-coloured livery of the fall. The
heavens were clothed in driving clouds, piled in vast
masses one above the other, which whirled violently
in the gusts; opening, occasionally, to admit transient
glimpses of the bright and glorious sight of the
heavens dwelling in a magnificence, by far too grand
and durable to be disturbed by the fitful efforts of the
lower world. Beneath, the wind swept across the
wild and naked prairies, with a violence that is seldom
witnessed in any section of the continent less
open. It would have been easy to have imagined,
in the ages of fable, that the god of the winds had
permitted his subordinate agents to escape from their
den, and that they now rioted, in wantonness, across
wastes, where neither tree, nor work of man, nor
mountain, nor obstacle of any sort opposed itself to
their gambols.
Though nakedness might, as usual, be given as the
pervading character of the spot, whither it is now
necessary to transfer the scene of the tale, it was
not entirely without the signs of human life. Amid
the monotonous rolling of the prairie, a single naked
and ragged rock arose on the margin of a little water-course,
which found its way, after winding a vast
distance through the plains, into one of the numerous
tributaries of the Father of Rivers. A swale of
low land lay near the base of the eminence, and as it
was still fringed with a thicket of alders and sumack,
it bore the signs of having once nurtured a feeble
growth of wood. The trees themselves had been
transferred, however, to the summit and crags of the
neighbouring rocks. It was on this little elevation
that the signs of man were to be found, to which the
allusion just made applies.
Seen from beneath, they presented no more than
a breast-work of logs and stones, intermingled in
such a manner as to save all unnecessary labour; of
a few low roofs made of bark and boughs of trees;
of an occasional barrier, constructed like the defences
on the summit, and placed on such points of the acclivity
as were easier of approach than the general
face of the eminence, and of a little dwelling of
cloth, perched on the apex of a small pyramid, that
shot up on one angle of the rock, the white covering
of which glimmered from a distance like a spot of
snow—or to make the simile more suitable to the
rest of the subject, like a spotless and carefully
guarded standard, which was to be protected by the
dearest blood of those who defended the citadel beneath.
It is hardly necessary to add, that this rude
and characteristic fortress was the place where Ishmael
Bush had taken refuge, after the robbery of his
flocks and herds.
On the day to which the narrative is advanced;
the squatter was to be seen standing near the base of
the sterile soil that supported him with a look in
which contempt and disappointment were strongly
blended.
“'Tis time to change our natur's,” he observed
to the brother of his wife, who was rarely far from
his elbow; “and to become ruminators, instead of
people used to the fare of Christians and free men.
I reckon, Abiram, you could glean a living among
the grasshoppers; you ar' an active man, and might
outrun the nimblest skipper of them all.”
“The country will never do,” returned the other,
who relished but little the forced humour of his kinsman;
“and it is well to remember that a lazy traveller
makes a long journey.”
“Would you have me draw a cart at my heels,
across this desert, for weeks; ay, months!” retorted
Ishmael, who, like all of his class, could labour with
incredible efforts on emergencies, but who too seldom
exerted continued industry, on any occasion, to
brook a proposal that offered so little repose. “It
may do for your people, who live in settlements, to
hasten on to their houses. But, thank Heaven, my
farm is too big for its owner ever to want a resting-place!”
“Since you like the plantation, then, you have
only to make your crop!”
“That is easier said than done, on this corner of
the estate. I tell you, Abiram, there is need of moving
for more reasons than one. You know I'm a man
that very seldom enters into a bargain; but who always
fulfils his agreements better than your dealers
in wordy contracts written on rags of paper. If
there's one mile, there ar' a hundred still needed
to make up the distance for which you have my
honour.”
As he spoke, the squatter glanced his eye upward
at the little tenement of cloth which crowned the
and answered by the other, and by some secret
influence, which operated either through their interests
or feelings, it served to re-establish that harmony
between them, which had just been threatened with
something very like a momentary breach.
“I know it, and feel it in every bone of my body.
But I remember the reason, why I have set myself on
this accursed journey too well, to forget the distance
between me and the end. Neither you nor I will
ever be the better for what we have done, unless we
thoroughly finish what is so well begun. Ay; that is
the doctrine of the whole world, I judge: I heard a
travelling preacher, who was skirting it down the
Ohio, a time since, say, if a man should live up to
the faith for a hundred years and then fall from his
work a single day, he would find the settlement was
to be made for the finishing blow that he had put to
his job, and that all the bad and none of the good
would come into the final account.”
“And you believed what the hungry hypocrite
preached!”
“Who said that I believed it!” retorted Abiram
with a bullying look, that betrayed how much his
fears had dwelt on the subject he affected to despise.
“Is it believing to tell what a roguish—And yet, Ishmael,
the man might have been honest after all! He
told us that the world was, in truth, no better than a
desert, and that there was but one hand that could
lead the most learned man through all its windings
of good and evil. Now, if this be true of the whole
world, it may be true of a part.”
“Abiram, out with your grievances like a man,”
interrupted the squatter, with a hoarse, taunting
laugh. “You want to pray. But of what use will
it be, according to your own doctrine, to serve God
five minutes and the devil an hour. Harkee, friend;
I'm not much of a husbandman, but this I know to
the richest bottom, there must be hard labour; and
your snufflers often liken the 'arth to a field of corn,
and the men, who live on it, to its yield. Now I tell
you, Abiram, that you are no better than a thistle or
a mullin; yea, ye ar' wood of too open a pore to be
good even to burn!”
The malign glance which shot from the scowling
eye of Abiram, announced the angry character of his
feelings, but as the furtive look quailed, almost immediately,
before the unmoved, steady countenance
of the squatter, it also betrayed how much the bolder
spirit of the latter had obtained the mastery over his
craven nature.
Content with his ascendency, which was too apparent,
and had been too often exerted on similar
occasions, to leave him in any doubt of its extent,
Ishmael coolly continued the discourse, by adverting
more directly to his future plans.
“You will own the justice at any rate of paying
every one in kind,” he said; “I have been robbed
of my stock, and I have a scheme to make myself as
good as before, by taking hoof for hoof; or for that
matter, when a man is put to the trouble of bargaining
for both sides, he is a fool if he dont pay himself
something in the way of commission.”
As the squatter made this declaration in a loud
and decided tone, which was a little excited by the
humour of the moment, four or five of his lounging
sons, who had been leaning against the foot of the
rock, came forward with the indolent step so common
to the whole family.
“I have been calling Ellen Wade, who is on the
rock keeping the look-out, to know if there is any
thing to be seen,” observed the eldest of the young
men; “and she shakes her head for an answer. Ellen
is sparing of her words, for a woman; and might
her uncommon good looks.”
Ishmael cast his eye upward to the place, where
the offending, but unconscious girl was holding her
anxious watch. She was seated at the edge of the
uppermost crag, by the side of the little tent, and at
least a hundred feet above the level of the plain.
Little else was to be distinguished, at that distance,
but the outline of her form, her fair hair streaming
in the gusts beyond her shoulders, and the steady
and seemingly unchangeable look that she had riveted
on some remote point of the prairie.
“What is it, Nell?” cried Ishmael, lifting his powerful
voice a little above the rushing of the element.
“Have you got a glimpse of any thing bigger than
one of them burrowing barkers?”
The lips of the attentive Ellen parted; she rose
to the utmost height her small stature admitted, seeming
still to regard the unknown object; but her voice,
if she spoke at all, was not sufficiently loud to be
heard amid the roaring of the wind.
“It ar' a fact that the child sees something more
uncommon than a buffaloe or a prairie dog!” continued
Ishmael. “Why, Nell, girl, ar' ye deaf? Nell,
I say;—I hope it is an army of red-skins she has in
her eye; for I should mightily relish the chance to
pay them for their kindness, under the favour of these
logs and rocks!”
As the squatter had accompanied his vaunt with
corresponding gestures, and directed his eyes to the
circle of his equally confident sons while speaking,
he had drawn their gaze from Ellen to himself; but
now, when they turned together to note the succeeding
movements of their female sentinel, the place
which had so lately been occupied by her form was
vacant.
“As I am a sinner,” exclaimed Asa, usually one
extraordinary excitement, “the girl is blown away
by the wind!”
Something like a sensation was exhibited among
them, which might have denoted that the influence
of the laughing blue eyes, flaxen hair, and glowing
cheeks of Ellen, had not been lost on the dull natures
of the young men, and looks of dull amazement,
mingled slightly with concern, passed from one
to the other, as they gazed, in stupid wonder, at the
point of the naked rock.
“It might well be!” added another; “she sat on
a slivered stone, and I have been thinking of telling
her she was in danger for more than an hour.”
“Is that a riband of the child, dangling from the
corner of the hill below!” cried Ishmael; “ha!
who is moving about the tent; have I not told you
all—”
“Ellen! 'tis Ellen!” interrupted the whole body
of his sons in a breath; and at that instant she re-appeared
to put an end to their different surmises, and,
to relieve more than one sluggish nature from its unwonted
excitement. As Ellen issued from beneath
the folds of the tent, she advanced with a light and
fearless step to her former giddy stand, and pointed
toward the prairie, appearing to speak in an eager
and rapid voice to some invisible auditor.
“Nell is mad!” said Asa, half in contempt and
yet not a little in concern. “The girl is dreaming
with her eyes open; and thinks she sees some of
them fierce creatur's, with hard names, with which
the Doctor fills her ears.”
“Can it be, the child has found a scout of the
Siouxes,” said Ishmael, bending his look toward the
plain; but a low, significant whisper from Abiram
drew his eyes quickly upward again, where they
were turned just in time to perceive that the cloth
of the tent was agitated by a motion very evidently
“Let her, if she dare!” the squatter muttered in his
teeth. “Abiram; they know my temper too well to
play the prank with me!”
“Look for yourself! if the curtain is not lifted, I
can see no better than an owl by daylight.”
Ishmael struck the breech of his rifle violently on
the earth, and shouted in a voice that might easily
have been heard by Ellen, had not her attention still
continued rapt on the object which so unaccountably
attracted her eyes in the distance.
“Nell!” continued the squatter; “away with
you, fool! will you bring down punishment on your
own head. Why Nell!—she has forgotten her native
speech; let us see if she can understand another
language.”
Ishmael threw his rifle to his shoulder, and at the
next moment it was pointed upward at the summit
of the rock. Before time was given for a word of
remonstrance, it had sent forth its contents, in its
usual streak of bright flame. Ellen started like the
frightened chamois, and uttering a piercing scream,
she darted into the tent, with a swiftness that left it
uncertain whether terror or actual injury had been
the penalty of her slight offence.
The action of the squatter was too sudden and
unexpected to admit of prevention, but the instant it
was done, his sons manifested, in an unequivocal
manner, the temper with which they witnessed the
desperate measure. Angry and fierce glances were
interchanged, and a murmur of disapprobation was
uttered by the whole in common.
“What has Ellen done, father,” said Asa, with a
degree of spirit, which was the more striking from
being unusual, “that she should be shot at like a
straggling deer or a hungry wolf!”
“Mischief;” deliberately returned the squatter,
but with a cool expression of defiance in his eye
humour of his children. “Mischief, boy;
mischief! take you care that the disorder don't
spread.”
“It would need a different treatment in a man,
than in you screaming girl!”
“Asa, you ar' a man, as you have often boasted;
but remember I am your father, and your better.”
“I know it well; and what sort of a father!”
“Harkee, boy: I more than half believe that your
drowsy head let in the Siouxes. Be modest in your
speech, my watchful son, or you may have to answer
yet for the mischief your own bad conduct has
brought upon us.”
“I'll stay no longer to be hectored like a child in
petticoats. You talk of law, as if you knew of none,
and yet you keep me down, as though I had not life
and wants of my own to provide for. I'll stay no
longer to be treated like one of your meanest cattle.”
“The world is wide, my gallant boy, and there's
many a noble plantation on it, without a tenant.
Go; you have title deeds sign'd and seal'd to your
hand. Few fathers portion their children better than
Ishmael Bush; you will say that for me at least,
when you get to the end of your journey.”
“Look! father, look!” exclaimed several voices
at once, as though they seized, with avidity an opportunity
to interrupt a dialogue which threatened
to become still more violent.
“Look!” repeated Abiram, in a voice which
sounded hollow and warning; “If you have time for
any thing but quarrels, Ishmael, look!”
The squatter turned slowly from his offending son,
and cast an eye upward that still lowered with deep
resentment, but which, the instant it caught a view
of the object that now attracted the attention of all
around him, changed its expression to one of astonishment
and dismay.
A female stood on the spot, from which Ellen had
been so fearfully expelled. Her person was of the
smallest size that is believed to comport with beauty,
and which poets and artists have chosen as the beau
idéal of feminine loveliness. Her dress was of a
dark and glossy silk, and fluttered like gossamer
around her form. Long, flowing, and curling tresses
of hair, still blacker and more shining than her robe,
fell at times about her shoulders, completely enveloping
the whole of her delicate bust in their ringlets;
or at others streaming long and waving in the wind.
The elevation at which she stood prevented a close
examination of the lineaments of a countenance
which, however, it might be seen was youthful, speaking,
and, at the moment of her unlooked-for appearance,
chanrged with powerful emotion. So young, indeed,
did this fair and fragile being appear, that it
might be doubted whether the age of childhood was
entirely passed. One small and exquisitely moulded
hand was pressed on her heart, while with the other
she made an impressive gesture, which seemed to invite
Ishmael, if any further violence was meditated,
to direct it against her bosom.
The silent wonder, with which the groupe of borderers
gazed upward at so extraordinary a spectacle,
was only interrupted as the person of Ellen was seen
emerging with marked timidity from the tent, as if
equally urged, by apprehensions in behalf of herself
and the fears which she felt on account of her companion,
to remain concealed and to advance. She
spoke, but her words were unheard by those below,
and unheeded by her to whom they were addressed.
The latter, however, as if content with the offer she
had made of herself as the most proper victim to
the resentment of Ishmael, now calmly retired, and
the spot she had so lately occupied became vacant,
leaving a sort of stupid impression on the spectators
beneath, not unlike that which it might be supposed
at some supernatural vision.
More than a minute of profound silence succeeded,
during which the sons of Ishmael still continued
gazing at the naked rock in stupid wonder. Then,
as eye met eye, an expression of novel intelligence
passed from one to the other, indicating that to them,
at least, the appearance of this extraordinary tenant
of the pavilion was as unexpected as it was incomprehensible.
At length Asa, in right of his years,
and moved by the still rankling impulse of his recent
quarrel, took on himself the office of interrogator.
Instead, however, of braving the resentment of his
father, of whose fierce nature, when aroused, he had
had too frequent evidence to excite it wantonly, he
turned upon the cowering person of Abiram, observing
with a sneer—
“This then is the beast you were bringing into the
prairies for a decoy! I know you to be a man who
seldom troubles truth, when any thing worse may
answer, but I never knew you to outdo yourself so
thoroughly before. The newspapers of Kentuck
have called you a dealer in black flesh a hundred
times, but little did they reckon that you drove the
trade into white families.”
“Who is a kidnapper!” demanded Abiram with a
blustering show of resentment. “Am I to be called
to account for every lie they put in print throughout
the states! Look to your own family, boy; look to
yourselves. The very stumps of Kentucky and Tennessee
cry out ag'in ye! Ay, my tonguey gentleman,
I have seen father and mother and three children,
yourself for one, published on the logs and stubs of
the settlements, with dollars enough for reward to
have made an honest man rich, for—”
He was interrupted by a back-handed but violent
blow on the mouth, that caused him to totter, and
blood and swelling lips.
“Asa,” said the father, advancing with a portion
of that dignity with which the hand of Nature seems
to have invested the parental character, “you have
struck the brother of your mother!”
“I have struck the abuser of the whole family,”
returned the angry youth; “and, unless he teaches
his tongue a wiser language, he had better part with
it altogether as the unruly member. I'm no great
performer with the knife, but, on an occasion, could
make out, myself, to cut off a slande—”
“Boy, twice have you forgotten yourself to-day.
Be careful that it does not happen the third time.
When the law of the land is weak, it is right the law of
nature should be strong. You understand me, Asa;
and you know me. As for you, Abiram, the child has
done you wrong, and it is my place to see you righted.
Remember; I tell you justice shall be done; it
is enough. But you have said hard things ag'in me
and my family. If the hounds of the law have put
their bills on the trees and stumps of the clearings,
it was for no act of dishonesty as you know, but because
we maintain the rule that the 'arth is common
property. No, Abiram; could I wash my hands of
things done by your advice, as easily as I can of the
things done by the whisperings of the devil, my
sleep would be quieter at night, and none who bear
my name need blush to hear it mentioned. Peace,
Asa, and you too man; enough has been said. Let
us all think well before any thing is added, that may
make what is already so bad still more bitter.”
Ishmael waved his hand with authority as he ended,
and turned away with the air of one who felt assured,
that those he had addressed would not have
the temerity to dispute his commands. Asa evidently
struggled with himself to compel the required
ordinary repose, and he soon appeared again the being
he really was; dangerous, only, at moments, and
one whose passions were too sluggish to be long
maintained at the point of ferocity. Not so with
Abiram. While there was an appearance of a personal
conflict, between him and his colossal nephew,
his mien had expressed the infallible evidences of
engrossing apprehension, but now, that the authority
as well as gigantic strength of the father were interposed
between him and his assailant, his countenance
changed from paleness to a livid hue, that bespoke
how deeply the injury he had received rankled in his
breast. Like Asa, however, he acquiesced in the
decision of the squatter, and the appearance, at
least, of harmony was restored again among a set of
beings, who were restrained by no obligations more
powerful than the frail web of authority with which
Ishmael had been able to envelope his restless
children.
One effect of the quarrel had been to divert the
thoughts of the young men from their recent visiter.
With the dispute that succeeded the disappearance
of the fair stranger, all recollection of her existence
appeared to have vanished. A few ominous and
secret conferences it is true were held apart, during
which the direction of the eyes of the different
speakers betrayed their subject; but these threatening
symptoms soon disappeared, and the whole party
was again seen broken into its usual, listless, silent
and lounging groupes.
“I will go upon the rock, boys, and look abroad
for the savages,” said Ishmael shortly after, advancing
towards them with a mien which he intended
should be conciliating at the same time that it was
absolute. “If there is nothing to fear, we will go
out on the plain; the day is too good to be lost in
tea and sugared cakes.”
Without waiting for approbation or dissent, the
squatter then advanced to the base of the rock, which
formed a sort of perpendicular wall near twenty feet
high around the whole acclivity. Ishmael, however,
directed his footsteps to a point where an ascent
might be made through a narrow cleft, which he had
taken the precaution to fortify with a breast-work of
cotton-wood logs, and which, in its turn, was defended
by a chevaux-de-frise of the branches of the same
tree. Here an armed man was usually kept, as at the
key of the whole position, and here one of the young
men now stood, indolently leaning against the rock,
ready to protect the pass, if it should prove necessary,
until the whole party could be mustered at the
several points of defence.
From this place the squatter found the ascent still
difficult, partly by nature and partly by artificial impediments,
until he reached a sort of terrace, or to
speak more properly the plain of the elevation,
where he had established the huts in which the whole
family dwelt. These tenements were, as already
mentioned, of that class which are so often seen on
the borders, and such as belonged to the infancy of
architecture; being simply formed of logs, bark, and
poles. The area on which they stood contained several
hundred square feet, and was sufficiently elevated
above the plain greatly to lessen if not to remove
all danger from Indian missiles. Here Ishmael believed
he might leave his infants in comparative
security, under the protection of their spirited mother,
and here he now found Esther engaged at her ordinary
domestic employments, surrounded by her
daughters, and lifting her voice, in the tones of declamatory
censure, as one or another of the idle fry
incurred her displeasure, and far too much engrossed
any thing of the violent scene which had been passing
among the party below.
“A fine windy place you have chosen for the
camp, Ishmael!” she commenced or rather continued,
by merely diverting the attack from a sobbing
girl of ten, at her elbow, to her husband. “My
word! if I haven't to count the young ones every
ten minutes, to see they are not flying away among
the buzzards or the ducks. Why do ye all keep hovering
round the rock, like lolloping reptiles in the
spring, when the heavens are beginning to be alive
with birds, man! D'ye think mouths can be filled,
and hunger satisfied, by laziness and sleep!”
“You'll have your say, Eester;” said the husband,
using the provincial pronunciation of America for the
name, and regarding his noisy companions, with a look
of habitual tolerance rather than of affection. “But
the birds you shall have, if your own tongue don't
frighten them to take too high a flight. Ay, woman,”
he continued, standing on the very spot whence he
had so rudely banished Ellen, which he had by this
time gained, “and buffaloe too, if my eye can tell
the animal at the distance of a Spanish league.”
“Come down; come down, and be doing, instead
of talking. A talking man is no better than a barking
dog. Nell shall hang out the cloth, if any of the
red-skins show themselves, in time to give you notice.
But, Ishmael, what have you been killing, my
man; for it was your rifle I heard a few minutes
agone, unless I have lost my skill in sounds.”
“Poh! 'twas to frighten the hawk you see sailing
above the rock.”
“Hawk, indeed! at your time of day to be shooting
at hawks and buzzards, with eighteen open mouths
to feed. Look at the bee, and at the beaver, my
good man, and learn to be a provider. Why, Ishmael!
I believe my soul,” she continued, dropping
that tent ag'in! More than half his time is spent
about the worthless, good-for-nothing—”
The sudden re-appearance of her husband closed
the mouth of the wife; and, as the former descended
to the place where Esther had resumed her employment,
she was content to grumble forth her dissatisfaction,
instead of expressing it in more audible
terms.
The dialogue that now took place between the
affectionate pair was sufficiently succinct and expressive.
The woman was at first a little brief and
sullen in her answers, but care for her family soon
rendered her more complaisant. As the purport of
the conversation was merely an engagement to hunt
during the remainder of the day, in order to provide
the chief necessary of life, we shall not stop to record
it.
With this resolution, then, the squatter descended
to the plain and divided his force into two parts, one
of which was to remain as a guard with the fortress,
and the other to accompany him to the field. He
warily included Asa and Abiram in his own party,
well knowing that no authority, short of his own,
was competent to repress the fierce disposition of
his headlong son, if fairly awakened. When these
arrangements were completed, the hunters sallied
forth, separating at no great distance from the rock,
in order to form a circle about the distant herd of
buffaloes.
| CHAPTER VIII. The prairie | |