The Prairie (24 page)

A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade,
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 into her lap, she sat contemplating those muscular
features, on which the death-agony was still horridly impressed, in a
silence far more expressive than any language of lamentation could have
proved.

The voice of the woman was 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 seen lingering fondly about
the features of her sleeping child. 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. While engaged in the
latter incomprehensible manner, 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, not content with this plausible explanation, and, perhaps,
secretly glad to avert their eyes from a spectacle which awakened so
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 enquiries 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 dulness, were
well instructed in most things connected with their habits of life, an
enquiry, 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 obtain 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 the sons of Ishmael,
when Abner confidently announced 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 show'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 which were supposed to confirm the supposed guilt 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 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. His vast features were
visibly stamped with 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 if 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 our way."

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.

"Ishmael! Ishmael!" she said, "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 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 strong reluctance from the spot. "I can
read; and how have I used the knowledge! But he, Ishmael, he has not the
sin of wasted l'arning to answer 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. 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 born.
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 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 the danger had
now abated, for a time at least; and if his authority was not restored
with all its former influence, it was admitted to exist, and to maintain
its ascendency a little longer.