The Prairie (22 page)

"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, belluae, and ferae."

"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 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 ruined."

"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 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were as effectually withdrawn from its hidden treasures!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 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.

Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!
—King Henry VI.

The mustering of the borderers on the following morning was silent,
sullen, and gloomy. The repast of that hour was wanting in the
inharmonious accompaniment with which Esther ordinarily enlivened
their meals; for the effects of the powerful opiate the Doctor had
administered still muddled her intellects. The young men brooded over
the absence of their elder brother, and the brows of Ishmael himself
were knit, as he cast his scowling eyes from one to the other, like a
man preparing to meet and to repel an expected assault on his
authority. In the midst of this family distrust, Ellen and her midnight
confederate, the naturalist, took their usual places among the children,
without awakening suspicion or exciting comment. The only apparent
fruits of the adventure in which they had been engaged, were occasional
upliftings of the eyes, on the part of the Doctor, which were mistaken
by the observers for some of his scientific contemplations of the
heavens, but which, in reality, were no other than furtive glances at
the fluttering walls of the proscribed tent.

At length the squatter, who had waited in vain for some more decided
manifestation of the expected rising among his sons, resolved to make a
demonstration of his own intentions.

"Asa shall account to me for this undutiful conduct!" he observed. "Here
has the livelong night gone by, and he out-lying on the prairie, when
his hand and his rifle might both have been wanted in a brush with the
Siouxes, for any right he had to know the contrary."

"Spare your breath, good man," retorted his wife; "be saving of your
breath; for you may have to call long enough for the boy before he will
answer!"

"It ar' a fact, that some men be so womanish, as to let the young master
the old! But, you, old Esther, should know better than to think such
will ever be the nature of things in the family of Ishmael Bush."

"Ah! you are a hectorer with the boys, when need calls! I know it well,
Ishmael; and one of your sons have you driven from you, by your temper;
and that, too, at a time when he is most wanted."

"Father," said Abner, whose sluggish nature had gradually been
stimulating itself to the exertion of taking so bold a stand, "the boys
and I have pretty generally concluded to go out on the search of Asa. We
are disagreeable about his camping on the prairie, instead of coming in
to his own bed, as we all know he would like to do."

"Pshaw!" muttered Abiram; "the boy has killed a buck; or perhaps a
buffaloe; and he is sleeping by the carcass to keep off the wolves, till
day; we shall soon see him, or hear him bawling for help to bring in his
load."

"'Tis little help that a son of mine will call for, to shoulder a buck
or to quarter your wild-beef," returned the mother. "And you, Abiram, to
say so uncertain a thing! you, who said yourself that the red-skins had
been prowling around this place, no later than the yesterday—"

"I!" exclaimed her brother, hastily, as if anxious to retract an error;
"I said it then, and I say it now and so you will find it to be. The
Tetons are in our neighbourhood, and happy will it prove for the boy if
he is well shut of them."

"It seems to me," said Dr. Battius, speaking with the sort of
deliberation and dignity one is apt to use after having thoroughly
ripened his opinions by sufficient reflection,—"it seems to me, a man
but little skilled in the signs and tokens of Indian warfare, especially
as practised in these remote plains, but one, who I may say without
vanity has some insight into the mysteries of nature,—it seems, then,
to me, thus humbly qualified, that when doubts exist in a matter of
moment, it would always be the wisest course to appease them."

"No more of your doctoring for me!" cried the grum Esther; "no more of
your quiddities in a healthy family, say I! Here was I doing well, only
a little out of sorts with over instructing the young, and you dos'd
me with a drug that hangs about my tongue, like a pound weight on a
humming-bird's wing!"

"Is the medicine out?" drily demanded Ishmael: "it must be a rare dose
that gives a heavy feel to the tongue of old Eester!"

"Friend," continued the Doctor, waving his hand for the angry wife to
maintain the peace, "that it cannot perform all that is said of it, the
very charge of good Mrs. Bush is a sufficient proof. But to speak of the
absent Asa. There is doubt as to his fate, and there is a proposition
to solve it. Now, in the natural sciences truth is always a desideratum;
and I confess it would seem to be equally so in the present case of
domestic uncertainty, which may be called a vacuum where according to
the laws of physic, there should exist some pretty palpable proofs of
materiality."

"Don't mind him, don't mind him," cried Esther, observing that the rest
of his auditors listened with an attention which might proceed, equally,
from acquiescence in his proposal or ignorance of its meaning. "There is
a drug in every word he utters."

"Dr. Battius wishes to say," Ellen modestly interposed, "that as some
of us think Asa is in danger, and some think otherwise, the whole family
might pass an hour or two in looking for him."

"Does he?" interrupted the woman; "then Dr. Battius has more sense in
him than I believed! She is right, Ishmael; and what she says, shall be
done. I will shoulder a rifle myself; and woe betide the red-skin that
crosses my path! I have pulled a trigger before to-day; ay, and heard an
Indian yell, too, to my sorrow."

The spirit of Esther diffused itself, like the stimulus which attends
a war-cry, among her sons. They arose in a body, and declared their
determination to second so bold a resolution. Ishmael prudently yielded
to an impulse he could not resist, and in a few minutes the woman
appeared, shouldering her arms, prepared to lead forth, in person, such
of her descendants as chose to follow.

"Let them stay with the children that please," she said, "and them
follow me, who ar' not chicken-hearted!"

"Abiram, it will not do to leave the huts without some guard," Ishmael
whispered, glancing his eye upward.

The man whom he addressed started, and betrayed extraordinary eagerness
in his reply.

"I will tarry and watch the camp."

A dozen voices were instantly raised in objections to this proposal.
He was wanted to point out the places where the hostile tracks had been
seen, and his termagant sister openly scouted at the idea, as unworthy
of his manhood. The reluctant Abiram was compelled to yield, and Ishmael
made a new disposition for the defence of the place; which was admitted,
by every one, to be all-important to their security and comfort.

He offered the post of commandant to Dr. Battius, who, however,
peremptorily and somewhat haughtily declined the doubtful honour;
exchanging looks of intelligence with Ellen, as he did so. In this
dilemma the squatter was obliged to constitute the girl herself
castellan; taking care, however, in deputing this important trust, to
omit no words of caution and instruction. When this preliminary point
was settled, the young men proceeded to arrange certain means of
defence, and signals of alarm, that were adapted to the weakness and
character of the garrison. Several masses of rock were drawn to the edge
of the upper level, and so placed as to leave it at the discretion of
the feeble Ellen and her associates, to cast them or not, as they
might choose, on the heads of any invaders, who would, of necessity,
be obliged to mount the eminence by the difficult and narrow passage
already so often mentioned. In addition to this formidable obstruction,
the barriers were strengthened and rendered nearly impassable. Smaller
missiles, that might be hurled even by the hands of the younger
children, but which would prove, from the elevation of the place,
exceedingly dangerous, were provided in profusion. A pile of dried
leaves and splinters were placed, as a beacon, on the upper rock, and
then, even in the jealous judgment of the squatter, the post was deemed
competent to maintain a creditable siege.

The moment the rock was thought to be in a state of sufficient security,
the party who composed what might be called the sortie, sallied forth on
their anxious expedition. The advance was led by Esther in person, who,
attired in a dress half masculine, and bearing a weapon like the rest,
seemed no unfit leader for the group of wildly clad frontiermen, that
followed in her rear.

"Now, Abiram;" cried the Amazon, in a voice that was cracked and
harsh, for the simple reason of being used too often on a strained and
unnatural key, "now, Abiram, run with your nose low; show yourself a
hound of the true breed, and do some credit to your training. You it was
that saw the prints of the Indian moccasin, and it behoves you, to let
others be as wise as yourself. Come; come to the front, man; and give us
a bold lead."

The brother, who appeared at all times to stand in awe of his sister's
authority, complied; though it was with a reluctance so evident, as
to excite sneers, even among the unobservant and indolent sons of the
squatter. Ishmael, himself, moved among his tall children, like one who
expected nothing from the search, and who was indifferent alike to
its success or failure. In this manner the party proceeded until their
distant fortress had sunk so low, as to present an object no larger nor
more distinct than a hazy point, on the margin of the prairie. Hitherto
their progress had been silent and somewhat rapid, for as swell after
swell was mounted and passed, without varying, or discovering a living
object to enliven the monotony of the view, even the tongue of Esther
was hushed in increasing anxiety. Here, however, Ishmael chose to pause,
and casting the butt of his rifle from his shoulder to the ground, he
observed—

"This is enough. Buffaloe signs, and deer signs, ar' plenty; but where
ar' thy Indian footsteps, Abiram?"

"Still farther west," returned the other, pointing in the direction he
named. "This was the spot where I struck the tracks of the buck; it was
after I took the deer, that I fell upon the Teton trail."

"And a bloody piece of work you made of it, man," cried the squatter,
pointing tauntily to the soiled garments of his kinsman, and then
directing the attention of the spectators to his own, by the way of a
triumphant contrast. "Here have I cut the throats of two lively does,
and a scampering fawn, without spot or stain; while you, blundering dog
as you ar', have made as much work for Eester and her girls, as though
butchering was your regular calling. Come, boys; it is enough. I am
too old not to know the signs of the frontiers; no Indian has been here
since the last fall of water. Follow me; and I will make a turn that
shall give us at least the beef of a fallow cow for our trouble."