 | CHAPTER XIII. The prairie |  |
13. CHAPTER XIII.
For,—and a shrouding sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.”
Song in Hamlet.
“Stand back! stand off, the whole of ye!” said
Esther hoarsely to the crowd, which pressed too
closely on the corpse; “I am his mother, and my
right is better than that of ye all! Who has done
this! Tell me, Ishmael, Abiram, Abner! open your
mouths and your hearts, and let God's truth and no
other issue from them. Who has done this bloody
deed?”
Her husband made no reply, but stood, leaning on
his rifle, looking sadly, but with an unaltered eye, at
the mangled remains of his son. Not so the mother,
she threw herself on the earth, and receiving the
cold and ghastly head of the dead man into her lap,
she sat many minutes contemplating those muscular
features, on which the death-agony was still horridly
impressed, in a silence even more expressive than
any language of lamentation could possibly have
proved.
The voice of the woman was literally frozen in
grief. In vain Ishmael attempted a few words of
rude consolation; she neither listened nor answered.
Her sons gathered about her in a circle, and expressed,
after their uncouth manner, their sympathy in
her sorrow, as well as their sense of their own loss,
but she motioned them away, impatiently, with her
hand. At times her fingers played in the matted hair
of the dead, and at others they lightly attempted to
smooth the painfully expressive muscles of its ghastly
visage, as the hand of the mother is often seen to
Then starting from their revolting office, her hands
would flutter around her, and seem to seek some
fruitless remedy against the violent blow, which had
thus suddenly destroyed the child in whom she had
not only placed her greatest hopes, but so much of
her maternal pride. It was while engaged in the latter
incomprehensible manner, that the lethargic Abner
turned aside, and swallowing the unwonted emotions
which were rising in his own throat, he observed—
“Mother means that we should look for the signs,
that we may know in what manner Asa has come by
his end.”
“We owe it to the accursed Siouxes!” answered
Ishmael; “Twice have they put me deeply in their
debt! The third time, the score shall be cleared!”
But, as if not content with this plausible explanation,
and, perhaps, secretly glad to avert their eyes
from a spectacle which awakened such extraordinary
and unusual sensations in their sluggish bosoms, the
sons of the squatter turned away in a body from
their mother and the corpse, and proceeded to make
the inquiries which they fancied the former had so
repeatedly demanded. Ishmael made no objections;
but, though he accompanied his children while they
proceeded in the investigation, it was more with the
appearance of complying with their wishes, at a time
when resistance might not be seemly, than with any
visible interest in the result. As the borderers, notwithstanding
their usual dullness, were well instructed
in most things connected with their habits of life,
an inquiry, the success of which depended so much
on signs and evidences that bore so strong a resemblance
to a forest trail, was likely to be conducted
with skill and acuteness. Accordingly, they proceeded
to the melancholy task with great readiness and
intelligence.
Abner and Enoch agreed in their accounts as to
the position in which they had found the body. It
was seated nearly upright, the back supported by a
mass of matted brush, and one hand still grasping a
broken twig of the alders. It was most probably
owing to the former circumstance that the body had
escaped the rapacity of the carrion birds, which had
been seen hovering above the thicket, and the latter
proved that life had not yet entirely abandoned the
hapless victim when he entered the brake. The
opinion now became general, that the youth had received
his death-wound in the open prairie, and had
dragged his enfeebled form into the cover of the
thicket for the purpose of concealment. A trail
through the bushes confirmed this opinion. It also
appeared, on examination, that a desperate struggle
had taken place on the very margin of the thicket.
This was sufficiently apparent by the trodden branches,
the deep impressions on the moist ground, and the
lavish flow of blood.
“He has been shot in the open ground and come
here for a cover,” said Abiram; “these marks would
clearly prove it. The boy has been set upon by the
savages in a body, and has fou't like a hero as he was,
until they have mastered his strength and then drawn
him to the bushes.”
To this probable opinion there was now but one
dissenting voice, that of the slow-minded Ishmael,
who demanded that the corpse itself should be examined
in order to a more accurate knowledge of its
injuries. On examination, it appeared that a rifle
bullet had passed directly through the body of the
deceased, entering beneath one of his brawny shoulders,
and making its exit by the breast. It required
some knowledge in gun-shot wounds to decide this
delicate point, but the experience of the borderers
was quite equal to the scrutiny; and a smile of wild,
and certainly of singular satisfaction, passed among
that the enemies of Asa had assailed him in
the rear.
“It must be so,” said the gloomy but attentive
squatter. “He was of too good a stock and too well
trained, knowingly to turn the weak side to man or
beast! Remember, boys, that while the front of
manhood is to your enemy, let him be who or what
he may, you ar' safe from cowardly surprise.—Why
Eester, woman! you ar' getting beside yourself; with
picking at the hair and the garments of the child!
Little good can you do him now, old girl.”
“See!” interrupted Enoch, extricating from the
fragments of cloth the morsel of lead which had
prostrated the strength of one so powerful, “Here is
the very bullet.”
Ishmael took it in his hand and eyed it long and
closely.
“There's no mistake;” at length he muttered
through his compressed teeth. “It is from the pouch
of that accursed trapper. Like many of the hunters
he has a mark in his mould, in order to know the
work his rifle performs; and here you see it plainly
—six little holes, laid crossways.”
“I'll swear to it!” cried Abiram, triumphantly.
“He shew'd me his private mark, himself, and boasted
of the number of deer he had laid upon the prairies
with these very bullets! Now, Ishmael, will you
believe me when I tell you the old knave is a spy of
the red-skins!”
The lead passed from the hand of one to that of
another; and unfortunately for the reputation of the
old man, several among them remembered also to
have seen the aforesaid private bullet-marks, during
the curious examination which all had made of his
accoutrements. In addition to this wound, however,
were many others of a less dangerous nature, all of
of the trapper.
The traces of many different struggles were to be
seen, between the spot where the first blood was spilt
and the thicket to which it was now generally believed
Asa had retreated, as a place of refuge. These
were interpreted into so many proofs of the weakness
of the murderer, who would have sooner despatched
his victim, had not even the dying strength
of the youth rendered him formidable to the infirmities
of one so old. The danger of drawing some
others of the hunters to the spot, by repeated
firing, was deemed a sufficient reason for not again
resorting to the rifle, after it had performed the important
duty of disabling the victim. The weapon
of the dead man was not to be found, and had doubtless,
together with many other less valuable and
lighter articles, that he was accustomed to carry
about his person, become a prize to his destroyer.
But what, in addition to the tell-tale bullet, appeared
to fix the ruthless deed with peculiar certainty
on the trapper, was the accumulated evidence furnished
by the trail; which proved, notwithstanding
his deadly hurt, that the wounded man had still been
able to make a long and desperate resistance to the
subsequent efforts of his murderer. Ishmael seemed
to press this proof with a singular mixture of sorrow
and pride: sorrow, at the loss of a son, whom in
their moments of amity he highly valued; and pride,
at the courage and power he had manifested to his
last and weakest breath.
“He died as a son of mine should die,” said the
squatter, gleaning a hollow consolation from so unnatural
an exultation; “a dread to his enemy to the
last, and without help from the law! Come, children;
we have first the grave to make, and then to
hunt his murderer.”
The sons of the squatter set about their melancholy
office, in silence and in sadness. An excavation
was made in the hard earth, at a great expense of
toil and time, and the body was wrapped in such
spare vestments as could be collected among the labourers.
When these arrangements were completed,
Ishmael approached the seemingly unconscious Esther,
and announced his intention to inter the dead.
She heard him, and quietly relinquished her grasp of
the corpse, rising in silence to follow it to its narrow
resting place. Here she seated herself again at the
head of the grave, watching each movement of the
youths with eager and jealous eyes. When a sufficiency
of earth was laid upon the senseless clay of
Asa, to protect it from injury, Enoch and Abner entered
the cavity, and trode it into a solid mass, by
the weight of their huge frames, with an appearance
of a strange, not to say savage, mixture of care and
indifference. This well-known precaution was adopted
to prevent the speedy exhumation of the body by
some of the carnivorous beasts of the prairie, whose
instinct was sure to guide them to the spot. Even
the rapacious birds appeared to comprehend the nature
of the ceremony, for, mysteriously apprised that
the miserable victim was now about to be abandoned
by the human race, they once more began to make
their airy circuits above the place, screaming, as if to
frighten the kinsmen from their labour of caution and
love.
Ishmael stood, with folded arms, steadily watching
the manner in which this necessary duty was performed,
and when the whole was completed, he lifted
his cap to his sons, to thank them for their services,
with a dignity that would have become one much
better nurtured. Throughout the whole of a ceremony,
which is ever solemn and admonitory, the
squatter had maintained a grave and serious deportment.
an expression of deep concern; but at no time did
they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed
for ever, on the grave of his first-born. Nature was
then stirring powerfully within him, and the muscles
of his stern visage began to work perceptibly. His
children fastened their eyes on his, as if to seek a
direction to the strange emotions which were moving
their own heavy natures, when the struggle in the
bosom of the squatter suddenly ceased, and, taking
his wife by the arm, he raised her to her feet as
though she had been an infant, saying, in a voice
that was perfectly steady, though a nice observer
would have discovered that it was kinder than
usual—
“Eester, we have now done all that man and
woman can do. We raised the boy, and made him
such as few others were like, on the frontiers of
America; and we have given him a grave. Let us
go.”
The woman turned her eyes slowly from the fresh
earth, and laying her hands on the shoulders of her
husband, stood looking him anxiously in the eyes for
many moments, before she uttered in a voice, deep,
frightful, and nearly choked—
“Ishmael! Ishmael! you parted from the boy in
your wrath!”
“May the Lord pardon his sins freely as I have
forgiven his worst misdeeds,” calmly returned the
squatter, “woman, go you back to the rock and read
in your bible; a chapter in that book always does
you good. You can read, Eester; which is a privilege
I never did enjoy.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered the woman, yielding to his
strength, and suffering herself to be led, though with
powerful reluctance, from the spot. “I can read;
and how have I used the knowledge! But he, Ishmael,
for. We have spared him that, at least! whether it
be in mercy, or in cruelty, I know not.”
Her husband made no reply, but continued steadily
to lead her in the direction of their temporary abode.
When they reached the summit of the swell of land,
which they knew was the last spot from which the
situation of the grave of Asa could be seen, they all
turned, as by common concurrence, to take a farewell
view of the place. The little mound itself was
not visible; but it was frightfully indicated by the
flock of screaming birds which hovered above it. In
the opposite direction a low, blue hillock, in the
skirts of the horizon, pointed out the place where
Esther had left the rest of her young, and served as
an attraction to draw her reluctant steps from the
last abode of her eldest son. Nature quickened in
the bosom of the mother at the sight, and she finally
yielded the rights of the dead, to the more urgent
claims of the living.
The foregoing occurrences had struck a spark
from the stern tempers of a set of beings so singularly
moulded in the habits of their uncultivated
lives, which served to keep alive among them the dying
embers of family affection. United to their parents
by ties no stronger than those which use had
created, there had been great danger, as Ishmael had
foreseen, that the overloaded hive would quickly
swarm, and leave him saddled with the difficulties of
a young and helpless brood, unsupported by the exertions
of those, whom he had already brought to a state
of maturity. The spirit of insubordination, which
emanated from the unfortunate Asa, had spread among
his juniors, and the squatter had been made painfully
to remember the time when, in the wantonness of
his youth and vigour, he had, reversing the order of
the brutes, cast off his own aged and failing parents,
to enter into the world unshackled and free. But
if his authority was not restored with all its former
influence, it was visibly admitted to exist, and to
maintain its ascendancy a little longer.
It is true that his slow-minded sons, even while
they submitted to the impressions of the recent
event, had glimmerings of terrible distrusts, as to the
manner in which their elder brother had met with his
death. There were faint and indistinct images in the
minds of two or three of the oldest, which pourtrayed
the father himself, as ready to imitate the example
of Abraham, without the justification of the
sacred authority which commanded the holy man to
attempt the revolting office. But then, these images
were so transient and so much obscured in intellectual
mists, as to leave no very strong impressions, and
the tendency of the whole transaction, as we have
already said, was rather to strengthen than to weaken
the authority of Ishmael.
In this disposition of mind, the party continued
their route towards the place whence they had that
morning issued on a search which had been crowned
with so melancholy a success. The long and fruitless
march which they had made under the direction
of Abiram, the discovery of the body and its subsequent
interment, had so far consumed the day, that
by the time their steps were retraced across the
broad tract of waste which lay between the grave
of Asa and the rock, the sun had fallen far below his
meridian altitude. The hill had gradually risen as
they approached, like some tower emerging from
the bosom of the sea, and when within a mile, the
minuter objects that crowned its height came dimly
into view.
“It will be a sad meeting for the girls!” said Ishmael,
who, from time to time, did not cease to utter
something which he intended should be consolatory
to the bruised spirit of his stricken partner. “Asa
failed to bring in from his hunts something that they
loved.”
“He did; he did;” murmured Esther; “the boy
was the pride of the family.—My other children are
as nothing to him!”
“Say not so, good woman,” returned the father,
glancing his eye a little proudly at the athletic train
which followed, at no great distance, in the rear.
“Say not so, old Eester; for few fathers and mothers
have greater reason to be boastful than ourselves.”
“Thankful, thankful,” muttered the humbled woman,
“ye mean thankful; Ishmael!”
“Then thankful let it be, if you like the word better,
my good girl,—but what has become of Nelly
and the young! The child has forgotten the charge
I gave her, and has not only suffered the children to
sleep, but, I warrant you, is dreaming of the fields
of Tennessee at this very moment. The mind of
your niece is mainly fixed on the settlements, I
reckon.”
“Ay, she is not for us; I said it, and thought it,
when I took her, because death had stripped her of
all other friends. Death is a sad worker in the
bosom of families, Ishmael! Asa had a kind feeling
to the child, and they might have come one day
into our places, had things been so ordered.”
“Nay, she is not gifted for a frontier wife, if this
is the manner she is to keep house while the husband
is on the hunt. Abner, let off your rifle, that they
may know we ar' coming. I fear Nelly and the
young ar' asleep.”
The young man complied with an alacrity that
manifested how gladly he would see the rounded, active
figure of Ellen, enlivening the ragged summit of
the rock. But the report was succeeded neither by
signal nor answer of any sort. For a moment, the
whole party stood in suspense, awaiting the result,
to let off their pieces at the same instant, producing
a noise which might not fail to reach the ears of all
within so short a distance.
“Ah! there they come at last!” cried Abiram,
who was usually among the first to seize on any circumstance
which promised relief from disagreeable
apprehensions.
“It is a petticoat fluttering on the line,” said Esther,
“I put it there myself.”
“You ar' right; but now she comes; the jade has
been taking her comfort in the tent!”
“It is not so,” said Ishmael, whose usually inflexible
features were beginning to manifest the uneasiness
he violently felt. “It is the tent itself blowing
about loosely in the wind. They have loosened the
bottom, like silly children as they ar', and unless care
s had, the whole will come down!”
The words were scarcely uttered before a hoarse,
rushing blast of wind, swept by the spot where they
stood, raising the dust into little eddies, in its progress;
and then, as if guided by a master hand, it
quitted the earth, and mounted in its progress to the
precise spot, on which all eyes were just then riveted.
The loosened linen felt its influence and tottered;
but regained its poise, and, for a moment, it became
tranquil. The cloud of leaves next played in
circling revolutions around the place, and then descended
with the velocity of a swooping hawk, and
sailed away into the prairie in long straight lines,
like a flight of swallows resting on their expanded
wings. They were followed for some distance by the
snow-white tent, which, however, soon fell behind the
rock, leaving its highest peak as naked as when it
lay in the entire solitude of the desert.
“The murderers have been here!” moaned Esther.
“My babes! my babes!”
For a moment even Ishmael faltered before the
himself, like an awakened lion, he sprang forward,
and pushing aside the impediments of the barrier, as
though they had been feathers, he rushed up the ascent
with an impetuosity which proved how formidable
a sluggish nature may become, when thoroughly
aroused.
| CHAPTER XIII. The prairie | |