The Prairie (16 page)

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
ideal 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 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, and, at the moment of her unlooked-for appearance, eloquent
with feeling. 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 further violence was meditated, to direct it against
her bosom.

The silent wonder, with which the group of borderers gazed upward at so
extraordinary a spectacle, was only interrupted as the person of Ellen
was seen emerging with 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 a 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 would have been created had they
just been gazing 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
rankling impulse of the 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 which left the impression of its weight in the
starting 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 '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 obedience, but his heavy nature quietly
sunk into its 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 children.

One effect of the quarrel had been to divert the thoughts of the young
men from their recent visitor. 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 groups.

"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
authoritative.

"If there is nothing to fear, we will go out on the plain; the day is
too good to be lost in words, like women in the towns wrangling over
their tea and sugared cakes."

Without waiting for approbation or dissent, the squatter advanced to
the base of the rock, which formed a sort of perpendicular wall, nearly
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 cottonwood 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 declamatory censure, as one or another of the idle fry
incurred her displeasure, and far too much engrossed with the tempest
of her own conversation to know any thing of the violent scene which had
been passing 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. I 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 the tow she was twisting on a distaff,
"the man is in 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 forces 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.

Priscian a little scratch'd;
'Twill serve.
—Love's Labour Lost.

Having made the reader acquainted with the manner in which Ishmael Bush
had disposed of his family, under circumstances that might have proved
so embarrassing to most other men, we shall again shift the scene a few
short miles from the place last described, preserving, however, the due
and natural succession of time. At the very moment that the squatter and
his sons departed in the manner mentioned in the preceding chapter, two
men were intently occupied in a swale that lay along the borders of a
little run, just out of cannon-shot from the encampment, discussing
the merits of a savoury bison's hump, that had been prepared for their
palates with the utmost attention to the particular merits of that
description of food. The choice morsel had been judiciously separated
from the adjoining and less worthy parts of the beast, and, enveloped in
the hairy coating provided by nature, it had duly undergone the heat
of the customary subterraneous oven, and was now laid before its
proprietors in all the culinary glory of the prairies. So far as
richness, delicacy, and wildness of flavour, and substantial nourishment
were concerned, the viand might well have claimed a decided superiority
over the meretricious cookery and laboured compounds of the most
renowned artist; though the service of the dainty was certainly achieved
in a manner far from artificial. It would appear that the two fortunate
mortals, to whose happy lot it fell to enjoy a meal in which health and
appetite lent so keen a relish to the exquisite food of the American
deserts, were far from being insensible of the advantage they possessed.