 | CHAPTER XI. The prairie |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
“So foul a sky clears not without a storm.”
King John.
In the mean time the industrious and irreclaimable
hours continued their labours. The sun, which
had been struggling through such masses of vapour
throughout the day, fell slowly into a streak of clear
sky, and thence sunk gloriously into the gloomy
ocean. The vast herds which had been grazing
among the wild pastures of the prairies, gradually
disappeared, and the endless flocks of aquatic birds,
that were pursuing their customary annual journey
from the virgin lakes of the north towards the gulf
of Mexico, ceased to fan that air, which had now become
loaded with dew and vapour. In short, the
shadows of night fell upon the rock, adding the mantle
of darkness to the other dreary accompaniments
of the place.
As the light began to fail, Esther collected her
younger children at her side, and placing herself on
a projecting point of her insulated fortress, she sat
patiently awaiting the return of the hunters. Ellen
Wade was at no great distance, seeming to keep a
little aloof from the anxious circle, as if willing to
mark the distinction which existed in their characters.
“Your uncle is, and always will be a dull calculator,
Nell,” observed the mother, after a long pause
in a conversation that had turned on the labours of
the day; “a lazy hand at figures and foreknowledge
is that said Ishmael Bush! Here he sat lolloping
about the rock from light till noon, doing nothing
but scheme—scheme—scheme—with seven as noble
boys at his elbows as woman ever gave to man; and
what's the upshot! why, night is setting in, and his
needful work not yet ended.”
“It is not prudent, certainly, aunt,” Ellen replied,
with a vacancy in her air, that proved how little she
knew what she was saying; “and it is setting a very
bad example to his sons.”
“Hoity, toity, girl! who has reared you up as a
judge over your elders, ay, and your betters, too!
I should like to see the man on the whole frontier
who sets a more honest example to his children than
this same Ishmael Bush! Show me, if you can, Miss
who will, on occasion, sooner chop a piece of logging
and dress it for the crop, than my own children;
though I say it myself, who, perhaps, should be silent;
or a cradler that knows better how to lead a
gang of hands through a field of wheat, leaving a
cleaner stubble in his track, than my own good man!
Then, as a father, he is as generous as a lord; for
his sons have only to name the spot where they
would like to pitch, and he gives 'em a deed of the
plantation, and no charge for papers is ever made!”
As the wife of the squatter concluded, she raised
a hollow, taunting laugh, that was echoed from the
mouths of several juvenile imitators, whom she was
training to a life as shiftless and lawless as her own;
but which, notwithstanding its uncertainty was not
without its secret charms.
“Holloa! old Eester;” shouted the well-known
voice of her husband, from the plain beneath; “'ar
you keeping your junketts, while we are finding you
in venison and buffaloe beef! Come down—come
down, old girl, with all your young; and lend us a
hand to carry up the meat—why, what a frolic you
ar' in, woman! Come down, come down, for the
boys are at hand, and we have work here for double
your number.”
Ishmael might have spared his lungs more than a
moiety of the effort they were compelled to make in
order that he should be heard. He had hardly uttered
the name of his wife, before the whole of the
crouching circle rose in a body, and tumbling over
each other, they precipitated themselves down the
dangerous passes of the rock with ungovernable impatience.
Esther followed the young fry with a more
measured gait; nor did Ellen deem it wise, or rather
discreet, to remain behind. Consequently the whole
were soon assembled at the base of their citadel, on
the open plain.
Here the squatter was found, staggering under the
weight of a fine fat buck, attended by one or two of
his younger sons. Abiram quickly appeared, and
before many minutes had elapsed most of the hunters
dropped in, singly and in pairs, each man bringing
with him some fruits of his prowess in the field.
“The plain is free from red-skins, to-night at
least,” said Ishmael, after the bustle of reception had
a little subsided; “for I have scoured the prairie for
many long miles, on my own feet, and I call myself
a judge of the print of an Indian moccasin. So, old
woman, you can give us a few steaks of the venison,
and then we will sleep on the day's work.”
“I'll not swear there are no savages near us,” said
Abiram. “I too, know something of the trail of a
red-skin, and unless my eyes have lost some of their
sight, I would swear, boldly, that there ar' Indians at
hand. But wait till Asa comes in. He pass'd the
spot where I found the marks, and the boy knows
something of such matters too.”
“Ay, the boy knows too much of many things,”
returned Ishmael, gloomily. “It will be better for
him when he thinks he knows less. But what matters
it, Hetty, if all the Sioux tribes, west of the big
river, are within a mile of us; they will find it no
easy matter to scale this rock, in the teeth of ten
bold men.”
“Call 'em twelve, at once, Ishmael; call'em
twelve!” cried his termagant assistant. “For if
your moth-gathering, bug-hunting friend, can be
counted a man, I beg you will set me down as two.
I will not turn my back to him, with the rifle or the
shot-gun, and for courage!—the yearling heifer, that
them skulking devils the Tetons stole, was the biggest
coward among us all; and after her came your
drivelling Doctor. Ah! Ishmael, you rarely attempt
a regular trade but you come out the loser; and this
man, I reckon, is the hardest bargain among them
blister around my mouth, because I complained of a
pain in the foot!”
“It is a pity, Eester,” her husband coolly answered,
“that you did not take it; I reckon it would
have done you considerable good. But, boys, if it
should turn out as Abiram thinks, that there are Indians
near us, we may have to scamper up the rock,
and lose our suppers after all. Therefore we will
make sure of the game, and talk over the performances
of the Doctor when we have nothing better
to do.”
The hint was taken, and in a few minutes, the exposed
situation in which the family was collected,
was exchanged for the more secure elevation of the
rock. Here Esther busied herself, working and
scolding, with equal industry, until the repast was
prepared, when she summoned her husband to his
meal in a voice as sonorous as that with which the
Imaun reminds the Faithful of a more important
duty.
When each had assumed his proper and customary
place around the smoking viands, the squatter set
the example by beginning to partake of a delicious
venison steak, prepared like the hump of the bison,
with a skill that rather increased than concealed its
natural properties. A painter would gladly have
seized the moment, to transfer the wild and characteristic
scene to the canvass.
The reader will remember that the citadel of Ishmael
stood insulated, lofty, ragged, and nearly inaccessible.
A bright flashing fire that was burning on
the centre of its summit, and around which the busy
groupe was clustered, lent it the appearance of some
tall Pharos placed in the centre of the deserts, to
light such adventurers as wandered through their
broad wastes. The flashing flame gleamed from one
sun-burnt countenance to another, exhibiting every
of the children, mingled as it was with a shade of
the wildness peculiar to their semi-barbarous lives,
to the dull and immovable apathy that dwelt on the
features of the squatter, when unexcited. Occasionally
a gust of wind would fan the embers, and, as a
brighter light shot upwards, the little solitary tent
was seen as it were suspended in the gloom of the
upper air. All beyond was enveloped, as usual at
that hour, in an impenetrable body of darkness.
“It is unaccountable that Asa should choose to be
out of the way at such a time as this,” Esther pettishly
observed. “When all is finished and to-rights,
we shall have the boy coming up, grumbling for his
meal, and hungry as a bear after his winter's nap.
His stomach is as true as the best clock in Kentucky,
and seldom wants winding up to tell the time, whether
of day or night. A desperate eater is Asa, when
a-hungered, by a little work!”
Ishmael looked sternly around the circle of his
silent sons, as if to see whether any among them
would presume to say aught in favour of the absent
delinquent. But now, when no exciting causes existed
to arouse their slumbering tempers, it seemed
to be too great an effort to enter on the defence of
their rebellious brother. Abiram, however, who
since the pacification, either felt, or affected to feel,
a more generous interest in his late adversary, saw fit
to express an anxiety, to which the others were
strangers—
“It will be well if the boy has escaped the Tetons!”
he muttered. “I should be sorry to have
Asa, who is one of the stoutest of our party, both
in heart and hand, fall into the power of the red-devils.”
“Look to yourself, Abriam; and spare your
breath, if you can use it only to frighten the woman
and her huddling girls. You have whitened the face
was staring to-day at the very Indians you name,
when I was forced to speak to her through the rifle,
because I couldn't reach her ears with my tongue.
How was it, Nell! you have never given the reason
of your deafness?”
The colour of Ellen's cheek changed as suddenly
as the squatter's piece had flashed on the occasion to
which he alluded, the burning glow suffusing her
features, until it even mantled her throat with its fine
healthful tinge. She hung her head abashed, but did
not seem to think it necessary to reply.
Ishmael, too sluggish to pursue the subject, or content
with the pointed allusion he had just made, rose
from his seat on the rock, and stretching his heavy
frame, like a well-fed and fattened ox, he announced
his intention to sleep. Among a race who lived chiefly
for the indulgence of the natural wants, such a declaration
could not fail of meeting with sympathetic
dispositions. One after another disappeared, each
seeking his or her rude dormitory, and, before many
minutes, Esther, who by this time had scolded the
younger fry to sleep, found herself, if we except the
usual watchman below, in solitary possession of the
naked rock.
Whatever less valuable fruits had been produced,
in this uneducated woman by her migratory habits,
the great principle of female nature was too deeply
rooted ever to be entirely eradicated. Of a powerful,
not to say fierce temperament, her passions were
violent and difficult to be smothered. But, however
she might and did abuse the accidental prerogatives
of her situation, her love for her offspring, while it
often slumbered, could never be said to become extinct.
She liked not the protracted absence of Asa.
Too fearless herself to have hesitated an instant on
her own account about crossing the dark abyss, into
which she now sat looking with longing eyes, her
sentiment, began to conjure nameless evils on
account of her son. It might be true, as Abiram had
hinted, that he had become a captive to some of the
tribes who were hunting the buffaloe in that vicinity,
or even a still more dreadful calamity might have
befallen. So thought the mother, while silence and
darkness lent their aid to the secret impulses of nature.
Agitated by these reflections, which put sleep at
defiance, Esther continued at her post, listening with
that sort of acuteness which is termed instinct, in the
animals a few degrees below her in the scale of intelligence,
for any of those noises which might indicate
the approach of footsteps. At length, her wishes had
an appearance of being realized, for the long desired
sounds were distinctly audible, and presently she
distinguished the dim form of a man, at the base of
the rock.
“Now, Asa, richly do you deserve to be left with
an earthen bed this blessed night!” the woman began
to mutter, with a revolution in her feelings, that
will not be surprising to those who have made the
contradictions that give variety to the human character
a study. “And a hard one I've a mind it shall
be! Why Abner; Abner; you Abner, do you sleep?
Let me not see you dare to open the hole, till I get
down. I will know who it is that wishes to disturb
a peaceable, ay, and an honest family too, at such
a time in the night as this!”
“Woman!” exclaimed a voice, that intended to
bluster, while the speaker was manifestly a little apprehensive
of the consequences; “Woman, I forbid
you on pain of the law to project any of your infernal
missiles. I am a citizen and a freeholder, and, a
graduate of two universities; and I stand upon my
rights! Beware of malice prepense, of chance medley
friend and inmate. I—Dr. Obed Battius.”
“Who!” demanded Esther, in a voice that nearly
refused to convey her words to the ears of the anxious
listener beneath. “Did you say it was not Asa?”
“Nay, I am neither Asa, nor Absalom, nor any of
the Hebrew princes; but Obed, the root and stock
of them all. Have I not said, woman, that you keep
one in attendance who is entitled to a peaceable as
well as an honourable admission. Do you take me
for an animal of the class amphibia, and that I can
play with my lungs as a blacksmith does with his
bellows!”
The naturalist might have expended his breath
much longer, without producing any desirable result,
had Esther been his only auditor. Disappointed and
alarmed, the woman had already sought her pallet,
and was preparing, with a sort of desperate indifference,
to compose herself to sleep. Abner, the sentinel
below, however, had been aroused from an exceedingly
equivocal situation, by the outcry; and as
he had now regained sufficient consciousness to recognize
the voice of the physician, the latter was admitted,
with the least possible delay. Dr. Battius
bustled through the narrow entrance, with an air of
singular impatience, and was already beginning to
mount the difficult ascent, when catching a view of
the porter, he paused, to observe with an air that he
intended should be impressively admonitory—
“Abner, there are dangerous symptoms of somnolency
about thee! It is sufficiently exhibited in the
tendency to hiation, and may prove dangerous not
only to yourself, but to all thy father's family!”
“You never made a greater mistake, Doctor,” returned
the youth, gaping like an indolent lion, “I
haven't a symptom, as you call it, about any part of
me; and as to father and the children, I reckon the
through the breed these many months ago.”
Content with his brief admonition, the naturalist
had surmounted half the difficulties of the ascent
before the deliberate Abner had ended his justification.
On the summit, Obed fully expected to encounter
Esther, of whose linguacious powers, he had
too often been furnished with the most sinister proofs,
and of which he stood in an awe too salutary to
covet a repetition of her attacks. The reader can
foresee that he was to be agreeably disappointed.
Treading lightly, and looking timidly over his shoulder,
as if he apprehended a shower of something,
even more formidable than words, the Doctor proceeded
to the place which had been allotted to himself
in the general disposition of the dormitories.
Instead of sleeping, the worthy naturalist sat ruminating
over what he had both seen and heard that
day, until the tossing and mutterings which proceeded
from the cabin of Esther, who was his nearest
neighbour, advertised him of the wakeful situation
of its inmate. Perceiving the necessity of doing
something to disarm this female Cerberus, before his
own purpose could be accomplished, the Doctor,
reluctant as he was to encounter her tongue, found
himself compelled to invite a colloquial communication.
“You appear not to sleep, my very kind and worthy
Mrs. Bush,” he said, determined to commence
his applications with a plaster that was usually found
to adhere; “you appear to rest badly, my excellent
hostess; can I administer to your ailings?”
“What would you give me, man,” grumbled Esther.
“A blister to make me sleep?”
“Say rather a cataplasm. But if you are in pain,
here are some cordial drops, which taken in a glass
of my own cogniac will give you rest, if I know
aught of the materia medica.”
The Doctor, as he very well knew, had assailed
Esther on her weak side; and, as he doubted not of
the acceptability of his prescription, he sat himself
at work, without unnecessary delay, to prepare it.
When he made his offering, it was received in a
snappish and threatening manner, but swallowed
with a facility that sufficiently proclaimed how much
it was relished by the patient. The woman muttered
her thanks, and her leech reseated himself in silence,
to await the operation of the dose. In less
than half an hour the breathing of Esther became so
profound, and as the Doctor himself might have
termed it, so very abstracted, that had he not known
how easy it was to ascribe this new instance of somnolency
to the powerful dose of opium with which
he had garnished the brandy, he might have seen
reason to distrust his own prescription. With the
sleep of the restless woman, the stillness became
profound and general.
Then it was that Dr. Battius saw fit to arise, with
the silence and caution of the midnight robber, and
to steal out of his own cabin, or rather kennel, for it
deserved no better name, towards the adjoining dormitories.
Here he took time to assure himself that
all his neighbours were buried in deep sleep. Once
advised of this important fact, he hesitated no longer,
but commenced the difficult ascent which led to
the upper pinnacle of the rock. His advance, though
abundantly guarded, was not entirely noiseless; but
while he was felicitating himself on having successfully
effected his object, and he was in the very act
of placing his foot on the highest ledge, a hand was
laid upon the skirts of his coat, which as effectually
put an end to his advance, as though the gigantic
strength of Ishmael himself had pinned him to the
earth.
“Is there sickness in the tent,” whispered a soft
visit it at such an hour?”
So soon as the heart of the naturalist had returned
from its hasty expedition into his throat, as one less
skilled than Dr. Battius in the formation of the animal
would have been apt to have accounted for the
extraordinary sensation with which he received this
unlooked-for interruption, he found resolution to reply;
using, as much in terror as in prudence, the
same precaution in the indulgence of his voice.
“My worthy Nelly! I am greatly rejoiced to find
it is no other than thee! Hist! child, hist! Should
Ishmael gain a knowledge of our plans, he would
not hesitate to cast us both from off this rock, upon
the plain beneath. Hist! Nelly, hist!”
As the Doctor delivered his injunctions between
the intervals of his ascent, by the time they were
concluded, both he and his auditor had gained the
upper level.
“And now, Dr. Battius,” the girl gravely demanded,
“may I know the reason why you have run so
great a risk of flying from this place, without wings,
and at the certain expense of your neck?”
“Nothing shall be concealed from thee, my worthy
and trusty Nelly—but are you certain that Ishmael
will not awake?”
“No fear of him; he will sleep until the sun
scorches his eye-lids. The danger is from my
aunt.”
“Esther sleepeth!” the Doctor sententiously replied.
“Ellen, you have been watching on this rock
to-day?”
“I was ordered to do so.”
“And you have seen the bison, and the antelope,
and the wolf, and the deer, as usual; animals of the
orders, pecora, belluæ and feræ.”
“I have seen the creatures you named in English;
but I know nothing of the Indian languages.”
“There is still an order that I have not named,
which you have also seen. The primates—is it not
true?”
“I cannot say. I know no animal by that name.”
“Nay, Ellen, you confer with a friend. Of the
genus, homo, child?”
“Whatever else I may have had in view, I have
not seen the vespertilio horribi—”
“Hush, Nelly, thy vivacity will betray us! Tell
me, girl, have you not seen certain bipeds, called
men, wandering about the prairies?”
“Surely. My uncle and his sons have been hunting
the buffaloe, since the sun began to fall.”
“I must speak in the vernacular, to be comprehended!
Ellen, I would say of the species, Kentucky.”
Though Ellen reddened like the rose, her blushes
were happily concealed by the darkness. She hesitated
an instant, and then summoned sufficient spirit,
to say, decidedly—
“If you wish to speak in parables, Doctor Battius,
you must find another listener. Put your questions
plainly in English, and I will answer them honestly
in the same tongue.”
“I have been journeying in this desert, as thou
knowest, Nelly, in quest of animals that have been
hidden from the eyes of science, until now. Among
others, I have discovered a primates, of the genus,
homo; species, Kentucky; which I term, Paul—”
“Hist, for the sake of mercy!” said Ellen—
“speak lower, Doctor; or we shall be heard.”
“Hover; by profession a collector of the apes or
bee,” continued the other. “Do I use the vernacular
now,—am I understood?”
“Perfectly, perfectly,” returned the agitated girl,
breathing with difficulty, in her surprise. “But
what of him? did he tell you to mount this rock—he
knows nothing, himself; for the oath I gave my uncle,
has shut my mouth.”
“Ay, but there is one, that has taken no oath,
who has revealed all. I would that the mantle which
is wrapped around the mysteries of nature, were as
effectually withdrawn from its hidden treasures!
Ellen! Ellen! the man with whom I have unwittingly
formed a compactum or agreement is sadly forgetful
of the obligations of honesty! Thy uncle, child.”
“You mean Ishmael Bush, my father's brother's
widow's husband,” returned the offended girl, a little
proudly.—“Indeed, indeed, it is cruel to reproach
me with a tie that chance has formed, and which I
would rejoice so much to break for ever!”
The humbled Ellen could utter no more, but sinking
on a projection of the rock, she began to sob in
a manner that rendered their situation doubly critical.
The Doctor muttered a few words, which he
intended as an apologetic explanation, but before he
had time to complete his laboured vindication, she
arose and said with great decision—
“I did not come here to pass my time in foolish
tears, nor you to try to stop them. What then has
brought you hither?”
“I must see the inmate of that tent.”
“You know what it contains?”
“I am taught to believe I do; and I bear a letter,
which I must deliver with my own hands. If the
animal prove a quadruped, Ishmael is a true man—
if a biped, fledged or unfledged, I care not, he is false,
and our compactum at an end!”
Ellen made a sign for the Doctor to remain where
he was, and to be silent. She then glided into the
tent, where she continued many minutes, that proved
exceedingly weary and anxious to the expectant
without, but the instant she returned, she took him
by the arm, and together they entered beneath the
folds of the mysterious cloth.
| CHAPTER XI. The prairie | |