 | CHAPTER XIV. The prairie |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
“Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?”
King John.
In order to preserve an even pace between the incidents
of the tale, it becomes necessary to revert to
such events as occurred during the ward of Ellen
Wade.
For the few first hours, the cares of the honest
and warm-hearted girl were confined to the simple
offices of satisfying the often-repeated demands which
her younger associates made on her time and patience,
under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all
the other ceaseless wants of captious and inconsiderate
childhood. She had seized a moment from their
importunities to steal into the tent, where she was
administering to the comforts of one far more deserving
of her tenderness, when an outcry, which
arose among the children she had left, recalled her
to the duties she had momentarily forgotten.
“See, Nelly, see!” exclaimed half a dozen eager
voices, as she re-appeared among them, “yonder ar'
men; and Phœbe says that they ar' Sioux-Indians!”
Ellen turned her eyes in the direction in which so
many arms were already extended, and, to her consternation,
beheld the forms of several men, who
were advancing, manifestly and swiftly, in a straight
line towards the rock. She counted four, but was
except that they were not any of those who
of right were entitled to admission into the fortress.
It was a fearful moment for Ellen. Looking around,
at the juvenile and frightened flock that pressed upon
the skirts of her garments, she endeavoured to
recall to her confused faculties some one of the
many tales of female heroism, with which the history
of the western frontier abounded. In one, a stockade
had been successfully defended by a single man,
supported by three or four women, for days, against
the assaults of a hundred enemies. In another, the
women alone had been able to protect the children,
and less valuable effects of their absent husbands;
and a third was not wanting, in which a solitary female
had destroyed her sleeping captors and given
liberty not only to herself, but to a brood of timid
and helpless young. This was the case most nearly
assimilated to the situation in which Ellen now found
herself; and, with flushing cheeks and kindling eyes,
the encouraged girl began to consider of, and to prepare
her slender means of defence.
She posted the larger girls at the little levers that
were to cast the rocks on the assailants, the smaller
were to be used more for shew than any positive
service they could perform, while, like any other
leader, she was reserved in her own person, as a
superintendant and encourager of the whole. When
these dispositions were made, she endeavoured to
await the issue, with an air of composure, that she
intended should inspire her assistants with the confidence
necessary to insure their success.
Although Ellen was vastly their superior in that
spirit which emanates from moral qualities, she was
by no means the equal of the two eldest daughters
of Esther, in the not less important military property
of insensibility to danger. Reared in all the hardihood
of a constantly migrating life, on the skirts of
sights and dangers of the wilderness, these girls promised
fairly to become, at some future day, no less distinguished
than their mother for their daring, and for
that singular mixture of good and evil, which, in a
wider sphere of action, would probably have enabled
the wife of the squatter to enrol her name among
the remarkable females of her time. Esther had already,
on one occasion, made good the log tenement
of Ishmael against an inroad of savages; and on
another, she had been left for dead by her enemies,
after a defence that with a more civilized foe would
have entitled her to the honours and attentions of a
liberal capitulation. These facts, and sundry others
of a similar nature, had often been recapitulated with
a suitable exultation in the presence of her daughters,
and the bosoms of the young Amazons were
now strangely fluctuating between natural terror and
the ambitious wish to do something that might render
them worthy of being the children of such a
mother. It now appeared that the opportunity for
distinction, of this wild and unnatural character, was
no longer to be denied them.
The party of strangers was already within a hundred
rods of the rock. Either consulting their usual
wary method of advancing, or admonished by the
threatening attitudes of the two figures, who had
thrust forth the barrels of as many old muskets from
behind their stone entrenchment, the new comers
halted under favour of an inequality in the ground,
where a growth of grass thicker than common offered
them the advantage of a place of concealment.
From this spot they reconnoitred the fortress for several
anxious, and to Ellen, apparently interminable
minutes. Then one advanced singly, and apparently
more in the character of a herald than of an assailant.
“Phœbe, do you fire,” and “no, Hetty, you,” were
and yet eager daughters of the squatter, when Ellen
probably saved the advancing stranger from some
imminent alarm, if from no greater danger, by exclaiming—
“Lay down the muskets; it is Dr. Battius!”
Her subordinates complied, so far as to withdraw
their hands from the locks, though the threatening
barrels still maintained their portentous levels. The
naturalist, who had advanced with sufficient deliberation
to note the smallest hostile demonstration made
by the garrison, now raised a white handkerchief on
the end of his own fusee, and came within speaking
distance of the fortress. Then assuming what he
intended should be an imposing and dignified semblance
of authority, he blustered forth, in a voice
that might have been heard at a much greater distance—
“What, ho! I summon ye all, in the name of the
Confederacy of the United Sovereign States of
North America, to submit yourselves to the laws.”
“Doctor or no Doctor; he is an enemy, Nelly;
hear him! hear him! he talks of the law.”
“Stop! stay till I hear his answer!” said the nearly
breathless Ellen, pushing aside the dangerous weapons
which were again pointed in the direction of
the shrinking person of the herald.
“I admonish and forewarn ye all,” continued the
startled Doctor, “that I am a peaceful citizen of the
before named Confederacy, a supporter of the Social
Compact, and a lover of good order and amity;”
then, perceiving that the danger was, at least, temporarily
removed, he once more raised his voice to
the hostile pitch, and continued—“I charge ye all,
therefore, to submit to the laws.”
“I thought you were a friend,” Ellen replied;
“and that you travelled with my uncle, in virtue of
an agreement—”
“It is void! I have been deceived in the very
premises, and, I hereby pronounce, a certain compactum
entered into and concluded between Ishmael
Bush, squatter, and Obed Battius, M. D. to be incontinently
null and of non-effect. Nay, children, to be
null is merely a negative property, and is fraught
with no evil to your worthy parent; so lay aside the
fire-arms and listen to the admonitions of reason. I
declare it vicious—null—abrogated. As for thee,
Nelly, my feelings towards thee are kind, and not at
all given to hostility; therefore listen to that which I
have to utter, nor turn away thine ears in the wantonness
of security. Thou knowest the character of
the man with whom thou dwellest, young woman,
and thou also knowest the danger of being found in
evil company. Abandon, then, the trifling advantages
of thy situation, and yield the rock peaceably to the
will of those who accompany me—a legion, young
woman—I do assure you an invincible and powerful
legion. Give, therefore, the effects of this lawless
and wicked squatter—nay, children, such disregard
of human life, is literally destroying the pleasures of
all amicable intercourse! Point those dangerous
weapons aside, I entreat of you; more for your own
sakes, than for mine. Hetty, hast thou forgotten who
appeased thine anguish, when thy auricular nerves
were tortured by the colds and damps of the naked
earth! and thou, Phœbe, ungrateful and forgetful
Phœbe, but for this very arm, which you would prostrate
with an endless paralysis, thy incisores would
still be giving thee pain and sorrow! Lay, then,
aside thy weapons, and hearken to the advice of one
who has always been thy friend. And now, young
woman,” still keeping a jealous eye on the musket
which the girls had suffered to be diverted a little
from their aim. “And now, young woman, for the
last, and therefore the most solemn asking: I demand
of thee the surrender of this rock, without delay or
and of the—” law, he would have added; but recollecting
that this ominous word would again provoke
the hostility of the squatter's children, he succeeded
in swallowing it in good season, and concluded with
the less dangerous and more convertible term of
“reason.”
This extraordinary summons, failed however, of
producing the desired effect. It proved utterly unintelligible
to his younger listeners, with the exception
of the few offensive terms, already sufficiently distinguished,
and though Ellen better comprehended
the meaning of the herald, she appeared as little
moved by his rhetoric as her companions. At those
passages which he intended should be tender and affecting,
the intelligent girl, though tortured by painfully
contending feelings, had even manifested a disposition
to laugh, while to the threats she turned an
utterly insensible ear.
“I know not the meaning of all you wish to say,
Dr. Battius,” she quietly replied, when he had ended,
“but I am sure if it would teach me to betray
my trust, it is what I ought not to hear. I caution
you to attempt no violence, for let my wishes be
what they may, you see I am surrounded by a force
that can easily put me down, and you know, or ought
to know, too well the temper of this family, to trifle
in such a matter with any of its members, let them
be of what sex or age they may.”
“I am not entirely ignorant of human character,”
returned the naturalist, prudently receding a little
from the position, which he had, until now, stoutly
maintained at the very base of the hill. “But here
comes one who may know its secret windings still
better than I.”
“Ellen! Ellen Wade,” cried Paul Hover, who
had advanced to his elbow, without betraying any of
that sensitiveness on the subject of danger, which
expect to find an enemy in you!”
“Nor shall you, when you ask that, which I can
grant without treachery and disgrace. You know
that my uncle has trusted his family to my care, and
shall I so far betray the trust as to let in his bitterest
enemies to murder his children, perhaps, and to rob
him of the little which the Indians have left?”
“Am I a murderer—is this old man—this officer
of the States,” pointing to the trapper and his newly
discovered friend, both of whom by this time stood
at his side, “is either of these likely to do the things
you name?”
“What is it then you ask of me?” said Ellen,
wringing her hands, in the pain of excessive doubt.
“The beast! nothing more nor less than the squatter's
hidden, ravenous, dangerous beast!”
“Excellent young woman,” commenced the young
stranger, who had so lately joined himself to the
party on the prairie—but his mouth was immediately
stopped by a significant sign from the trapper, who
whispered in his private ear—
“Let the lad be our spokesman. Natur' will work
in the bosom of the child, and we shall gain our object
all in good time.”
“The whole truth is out, Ellen,” Paul continued,
“and we have lined the squatter into his most secret
misdoings. We have come to right the wronged and
to free the imprisoned; now, if you are the girl of a
true heart, as I have always believed, so far from
throwing straws in our way, you will join in the general
swarming, and leave old Ishmael and his hive to
the bees of his own breed.”
“I have sworn a solemn oath—”
“A compactum which is entered into through ignorance,
or in duresse, is null in the sight of all good
moralists,' cried the Doctor.
“Hush, hush,” again the trapper whispered, “leave
it all to natur' and the lad!”
“I have sworn in the sight and by the name of
Him who is the founder and ruler of all that is good,
whether it be in morals or in religion,” the agitated
Ellen continued, “neither to reveal the contents of
that tent, nor to help its prisoner to escape. We are
both solemnly, terribly sworn; our lives perhaps
have been the gift we received for the promises. It
is true you are masters of the secret, but not through
any means of ours; nor do I know that I can justify
myself, for even being neutral, while you attempt to
invade the dwelling of my uncle in such a hostile
manner.”
“I can prove beyond the power of refutation,”
the naturalist eagerly exclaimed, “by Paley, Berkeley,
ay, even by the immortal Binkerschoek, that a
compactum, concluded while one of the parties, be
it a state or be it an individual, is in durance—”
“You will ruffle the temper of the child, with
such abusive language,” said the cautious trapper,
“while the lad, if left to human feelings, will bring
her down to the meekness of a playful fawn. Ah!
you are like myself, little knowing in the natur' of
these sorts of hidden kindnesses!”
“Is this the only vow you have taken, Ellen!”
Paul continued in a tone which, for the gay, light-hearted
bee-hunter, sounded dolorous and reproachful.
“Have you sworn only to this! are the words
which the squatter says, to be as honey in your
mouth, and all other promises like so much useless
comb.”
The paleness, which had taken possession of the
usually cheerful countenance of Ellen, was hid in a
bright glow, that was plainly visible even at the distance
at which she stood. She hesitated a moment,
as if struggling to repress something very like resentment,
“I know not what right any one has to question
me about oaths and promises, which can only concern
her who has made them, if indeed any of
the sort you mention, have ever been made, at all. I
shall hold no further discourse with one who thinks
so much of himself, and takes advice merely of his
own feelings.”
“Now, old trapper, do you hear that!” said the
unsophisticated bee-hunter, turning abruptly to his
aged friend. “The meanest insect that skims the
heavens, when it has got its load, flies straight and
honestly to its nest or hive, according to its kind;
but the ways of a woman's mind, are as knotty as a
gnarled oak, and more crooked than the windings of
the Mississippi!”
“Nay, nay child,” said the trapper, good-naturedly
interfering in behalf of the offending Paul, “you
are to consider that youth is hasty and not overgiven
to thought. But then a promise is a promise, and
not to be thrown aside and forgotten, like the hoofs
and horns of a buffaloe.”
“I thank you for reminding me of my oath,” said
the still resentful Ellen, biting her pretty nether lip
with vexation; “I might else have proved forgetful!”
“Ah! female natur' is awakened in her,” said the
old man, shaking his head in a manner to show how
much he was disappointed in the result, “but it manifests
itself against the true spirit!”
“Ellen!” cried the young stranger, who until now,
had been an attentive listener to the parley, “since
Ellen is the name by which you are known—”
“They often add to it another. I am sometimes
called by the name of my father.”
“Call her Nelly Wade at once,” muttered Paul;
“it is her rightful name, and I care not if she keeps
it for ever!”
“Wade, I should have added,” continued the
youth. “You will acknowledge that though bound
by no oath myself, I at least have known how to respect
those of others. You are a witness yourself
that I have foreborne to utter a single call, while I
am certain it could reach those ears it would gladden
so much. Permit me then to ascend the rock, singly;
I promise a perfect indemnity to your kinsman,
against any injury his effects may sustain.”
Ellen seemed to hesitate, but catching a glimpse
of Paul, who stood leaning proudly on his rifle,
whistling, with an appearance of the utmost indifference
the air of a boating song, she recovered her
recollection in time to answer:
“I have been left the captain of the rock, while
my uncle and his sons hunt, and captain will I remain,
till he returns to receive back the charge.”
“This is wasting moments that will not soon return,
and neglecting an opportunity that may never
occur again,” the young soldier gravely remarked.
“The sun is beginning to fall already, and many
minutes cannot elapse before the squatter and his
savage brood will be returning to their huts.”
Doctor Battius cast an anxious glance behind him,
and took up the discourse by saying—
“Perfection is always found in maturity, whether
it be in the animal or the intellectual world. Reflection
is the mother of wisdom, and wisdom the parent
of success. I propose that we retire to a discreet distance
from this impregnable position, and there hold
a convocation or council to deliberate on what manner
we may sit down regularly before the place, or
perhaps by postponing the siege to another season
gain the aid of auxiliaries from the inhabited countries,
and thus secure the dignity of the laws from
any danger of a repulse.”
“A storm would be better,” the soldier smilingly
answered, measuring the height and scanning all its
broken arm or a bruised head at the most.”
“Then have at it!” shouted the impetuous bee-hunter,
making a spring that at once put him out of
danger from a shot, by carrying him beneath the projecting
ledge on which the garrison was posted;
“now do your worst, young devils of a wicked breed;
you have but a moment to work all your mischief
in!”
“Paul! rash Paul!” shrieked Ellen, “another
step and the rocks will crush you! they hang but by
a thread, and these girls are ready and willing to let
them fall!”
“Then drive the accursed swarm from the hive,
for scale the rock I will, though I find it covered
with hornets.”
“Let her if she dare!” tauntingly cried the eldest
of the girls, brandishing a musket with a mien and
resolution that would have done credit to her Amazonian
dam—“I know you, Nelly Wade; you are
with the lawyers in your heart, and if you come a
foot nigher, you shall have frontier punishment. Put
in another pry, girls; in with it. I should like to see
the man of them all that dare come up into the
camp of Ishmael Bush, without asking leave of his
children!”
“Stir not, Paul, for your life keep beneath the
rock!”—
Ellen was interrupted by the same bright vision,
which on the preceding day had stayed another
scarcely less portentous tumult, by exhibiting itself
on the same giddy height where it was now seen.
“In the name of Him, who commandeth all, I implore
you to pause—both you, who so madly incur
the risk, and you, who so rashly offer to take that
which you never can return!” said a sweet, imploring
voice, in a slightly foreign accent, that instantly
drew all eyes upward.
“Inez, Inez!” cried the officer, “do I again see
you! mine shall you now be, though a million devils
were posted on this rock. Push up, my brave woods
man, and give room for another!”
The sudden appearance of the figure from the
tent had created a momentary stupor among the defendants
of the rock, which might, with suitable forbearance
have been happily improved; but startled
by the voice of Middleton, the surprised Phœbe discharged
her musket at the female, scarcely knowing
whether she aimed at the life of a mortal or at some
being which belonged to another world. Ellen uttered
a cry of horror, and then sprang after her
alarmed or wounded friend, she knew not which, into
the tent.
During this moment of dangerous bye-play, the
sounds of a serious attack were very distinctly audible
beneath. Paul had profited by the commotion
over his head to change his place so far as to make
room for Middleton. The latter had been followed
by the naturalist, who, in a state of mental aberration
produced by the report of the musket, had instinctively
rushed towards the rocks for a cover.
The trapper remained where he was last seen, an
unmoved but close observer of these several proceedings.
Though averse to enter into actual hostilities,
the old man was, however, far from being
useless. Favoured by his position, he was enabled
to apprise his friends beneath of the movements of
those who plotted their destruction above, and to advise
and control their advance accordingly.
In the mean time the children of Esther were true
to the spirit they had inherited from their redoubtable
mother. The instant they found themselves delivered
from the presence of Ellen and her unknown
companion, they bestowed an undivided attention on
their more masculine and certainly more dangerous
assailants, who by this time had made a complete
summons to surrender, which Paul uttered in
a voice that he intended should strike terror to their
young bosoms, were as little heeded as were the calls
of the trapper to abandon a resistance, which might
prove fatal to some among them without offering the
smallest probability of eventual success. Encouraging
each other to persevere, they poised the fragments
of rocks, prepared the lighter missiles for immediate
service, and thrust forward the barrels of the muskets
with a business-like air, and a coolness that would
have done credit to men long practised in the dangers
of warfare.
“Keep under the ledge,” said the trapper, pointing
out to Paul the manner in which he should proceed;
“keep in your foot more, lad—ah! you see
the warning was not amiss! had the stone struck it,
the bees would miss their companion for many a
month. Now, namesake of my friend; Uncas, in
name and spirit! now, if you have the activity of
Le Cerf Agile, now you may make a far leap to the
right, and gain good twenty feet of height, without
danger. Beware the bush—beware the bush! 'twill
prove a treacherous hold! Ah! he has done it;
safely and bravely has he done it! Your turn comes
next, friend, that follows the fruits of natur'. Push
you to the left, and you will divide the attention of
the children. Nay, girls, fire—my old ears are used
to the whistling of lead; and little reason have I to
prove a doe-heart with fourscore years on my back.”
He shook his head with a melancholy smile, but without
flinching in a muscle, as the bullet which the exasperated
Hetty fired, passed innocently at no great
distance from the spot where he stood. “It is safer
keeping in your track than dodging when a weak finger
pulls the trigger,” he continued; “but it is a
solemn sight to witness how much human natur' is
inclined to evil, in one so young! Well done, my
you may laugh at all the squatter's bars and walls.
The Doctor has got his temper up! I see it in his
eye, and something good will now come of him!
Keep closer, man—keep closer.”
The trapper, though he was not deceived as to the
state of Dr. Battius' mind, was, however, greatly in
error as to the exciting cause. While imitating the
movements of his companions and toiling his way
upward, with the utmost caution, and not without
great inward tribulation of spirit, the eye of the
naturalist had caught a glimpse of an unknown plant,
a few yards above his head, and in a situation more
than commonly exposed to the missiles which the
girls were unceasingly hurling in the direction of the
assailants. Forgetting, in an instant, every thing but
the glory of being the first to give this jewel to the
catalogues of science, he sprang upward at the prize,
with the avidity with which the sparrow darts upon
the butterfly. The rocks, which instantly came thundering
down, announced that he was seen, and for a
moment, as his form was concealed in the cloud of
dust and fragments which followed the furious descent,
the trapper gave him up for lost; but the next
instant he was seen safely seated in a cavity, formed
by some of the projecting stones which had yielded
to the shock, holding triumphantly in his hand the
captured stem, which he was already devouring with
delighted, and certainly not unskilful eyes. Paul
profited by the opportunity. Turning his course
with the quickness of thought, he also sprang to the
post which Obed thus securely occupied, and unceremoniously
making a footstool of his shoulder as the
latter stooped over his treasure, he bounded through
the breach left by the fallen rock, and gained the
level. He was followed by Middleton, who joined him
in seizing and disarming the girls. In this manner a
bloodless and complete victory was obtained over
might prove impregnable, for the short period
of his absence.
| CHAPTER XIV. The prairie | |