—With much more dismay,
I view the fight, than those that make the fray.
—Merchant of Venice.
The unfortunate bee-hunter and his companions had become the captives
of a people, who might, without exaggeration, be called the Ishmaelites
of the American deserts. From time immemorial, the hands of the Siouxes
had been turned against their neighbours of the prairies, and even at
this day, when the influence and authority of a civilised government
are beginning to be felt around them, they are considered a treacherous
and dangerous race. At the period of our tale, the case was far worse;
few white men trusting themselves in the remote and unprotected regions
where so false a tribe was known to dwell.
Notwithstanding the peaceable submission of the trapper, he was quite
aware of the character of the band into whose hands he had fallen. It
would have been difficult, however, for the nicest judge to have
determined whether fear, policy, or resignation formed the secret
motive of the old man, in permitting himself to be plundered as he did,
without a murmur. So far from opposing any remonstrance to the rude and
violent manner in which his conquerors performed the customary office,
he even anticipated their cupidity, by tendering to the chiefs such
articles as he thought might prove the most acceptable. On the other
hand Paul Hover, who had been literally a conquered man, manifested the
strongest repugnance to submit to the violent liberties that were taken
with his person and property. He even gave several exceedingly
unequivocal demonstrations of his displeasure during the summary
process, and would, more than once, have broken out in open and
desperate resistance, but for the admonitions and entreaties of the
trembling girl, who clung to his side, in a manner so dependent, as to
show the youth, that her hopes were now placed, no less on his
discretion, than on his disposition to serve her.
The Indians had, however, no sooner deprived the captives of their arms
and ammunition, and stripped them of a few articles of dress of little
use, and perhaps of less value, than they appeared disposed to grant
them a respite. Business of greater moment pressed on their hands, and
required their attention. Another consultation of the chiefs was
convened, and it was apparent, by the earnest and vehement manner of
the few who spoke, that the warriors conceived their success as yet to
be far from complete.
“It will be well,” whispered the trapper, who knew enough of the
language he heard to comprehend perfectly the subject of the
discussion, “if the travellers who lie near the willow brake are not
awoke out of their sleep by a visit from these miscreants. They are too
cunning to believe that a woman of the ‘pale-faces’ is to be found so
far from the settlements, without having a white man’s inventions and
comforts at hand.”
“If they will carry the tribe of wandering Ishmael to the Rocky
Mountains,” said the young bee-hunter, laughing in his vexation with a
sort of bitter merriment, “I may forgive the rascals.”
“Paul! Paul!” exclaimed his companion in a tone of reproach, “you
forget all! Think of the dreadful consequences!”
“Ay, it was thinking of what you call consequences, Ellen, that
prevented me from putting the matter, at once, to yonder red-devil, and
making it a real knock-down and drag-out! Old trapper, the sin of this
cowardly business lies on your shoulders! But it is no more than your
daily calling, I reckon, to take men, as well as beasts, in snares.”
“I implore you, Paul, to be calm—to be patient.”
“Well, since it is your wish, Ellen,” returned the youth, endeavouring
to swallow his spleen, “I will make the trial; though, as you ought to
know, it is part of the religion of a Kentuckian to fret himself a
little at a mischance.”
“I fear your friends in the other bottom will not escape the eyes of
the imps!” continued the trapper, as coolly as though he had not heard
a syllable of the intervening discourse. “They scent plunder; and it
would be as hard to drive a hound from his game, as to throw the
varmints from its trail.”
“Is there nothing to be done?” asked Ellen, in an imploring manner,
which proved the sincerity of her concern.
“It would be an easy matter to call out, in so loud a voice as to make
old Ishmael dream that the wolves were among his flock,” Paul replied;
“I can make myself heard a mile in these open fields, and his camp is
but a short quarter from us.”
“And get knocked on the head for your pains,” returned the trapper.
“No, no; cunning must match cunning, or the hounds will murder the
whole family.”
“Murder! no—no murder. Ishmael loves travel so well, there would be no
harm in his having a look at the other sea, but the old fellow is in a
bad condition to take the long journey! I would try a lock myself
before he should be quite murdered.”
“His party is strong in number, and well armed; do you think it will
fight?”
“Look here, old trapper: few men love Ishmael Bush and his seven
sledge-hammer sons less than one Paul Hover; but I scorn to slander
even a Tennessee shotgun. There is as much of the true stand-up courage
among them, as there is in any family that was ever raised in Kentuck,
itself. They are a long-sided and a double-jointed breed; and let me
tell you, that he who takes the measure of one of them on the ground,
must be a workman at a hug.”
“Hist! The savages have done their talk, and are about to set their
accursed devices in motion. Let us be patient; something may yet offer
in favour of your friends.”
“Friends! call none of the race a friend of mine, trapper, if you have
the smallest regard for my affection! What I say in their favour is
less from love than honesty.”
“I did not know but the young woman was of the kin,” returned the
other, a little drily—“but no offence should be taken, where none was
intended.”
The mouth of Paul was again stopped by the hand of Ellen, who took on
herself to reply, in her conciliating tones: “we should be all of a
family, when it is in our power to serve each other. We depend entirely
on your experience, honest old man, to discover the means to apprise
our friends of their danger.”
“There will be a real time of it,” muttered the bee-hunter, laughing,
“if the boys get at work, in good earnest, with these red skins!”
He was interrupted by a general movement which took place among the
band. The Indians dismounted to a man, giving their horses in charge to
three or four of the party, who were also intrusted with the safe
keeping of the prisoners. They then formed themselves in a circle
around a warrior, who appeared to possess the chief authority; and at a
given signal the whole array moved slowly and cautiously from the
centre in straight and consequently in diverging lines. Most of their
dark forms were soon blended with the brown covering of the prairie;
though the captives, who watched the slightest movement of their
enemies with vigilant eyes, were now and then enabled to discern a
human figure, drawn against the horizon, as some one, more eager than
the rest, rose to his greatest height in order to extend the limits of
his view. But it was not long before even these fugitive glimpses of
the moving, and constantly increasing circle, were lost, and
uncertainty and conjecture were added to apprehension. In this manner
passed many anxious and weary minutes, during the close of which the
listeners expected at each moment to hear the whoop of the assailants
and the shrieks of the assailed, rising together on the stillness of
the night. But it would seem, that the search which was so evidently
making, was without a sufficient object; for at the expiration of half
an hour the different individuals of the band began to return singly,
gloomy and sullen, like men who were disappointed.
“Our time is at hand,” observed the trapper, who noted the smallest
incident, or the slightest indication of hostility among the savages:
“we are now to be questioned; and if I know any thing of the policy of
our case, I should say it would be wise to choose one among us to hold
the discourse, in order that our testimony may agree. And furthermore,
if an opinion from one as old and as worthless as a hunter of
fourscore, is to be regarded, I would just venture to say, that man
should be the one most skilled in the natur’ of an Indian, and that he
should also know something of their language.—Are you acquainted with
the tongue of the Siouxes, friend?”
“Swarm your own hive,” returned the discontented bee-hunter. “You are
good at buzzing, old trapper, if you are good at nothing else.”
“’Tis the gift of youth to be rash and heady,” the trapper calmly
retorted. “The day has been, boy, when my blood was like your own, too
swift and too hot to run quietly in my veins. But what will it profit
to talk of silly risks and foolish acts at this time of life! A grey
head should cover a brain of reason, and not the tongue of a boaster.”
“True, true,” whispered Ellen; “and we have other things to attend to
now! Here comes the Indian to put his questions.”
The girl, whose apprehensions had quickened her senses, was not
deceived. She was yet speaking when a tall, half naked savage,
approached the spot where they stood, and after examining the whole
party as closely as the dim light permitted, for more than a minute in
perfect stillness, he gave the usual salutation in the harsh and
guttural tones of his own language. The trapper replied as well as he
could, which it seems was sufficiently well to be understood. In order
to escape the imputation of pedantry we shall render the substance,
and, so far as it is possible, the form of the dialogue that succeeded,
into the English tongue.
“Have the pale-faces eaten their own buffaloes, and taken the skins
from all their own beavers,” continued the savage, allowing the usual
moment of decorum to elapse, after the words of greeting, before he
again spoke, “that they come to count how many are left among the
Pawnees?”
“Some of us are here to buy, and some to sell,” returned the trapper;
“but none will follow, if they hear it is not safe to come nigh the
lodge of a Sioux.”
“The Siouxes are thieves, and they live among the snow; why do we talk
of a people who are so far, when we are in the country of the Pawnees?”
“If the Pawnees are the owners of this land, then white and red are
here by equal right.”
“Have not the pale-faces stolen enough from the red men, that you come
so far to carry a lie? I have said that this is a hunting-ground of my
tribe.”
“My right to be here is equal to your own,” the trapper rejoined, with
undisturbed coolness; “I do not speak as I might—it is better to be
silent. The Pawnees and the white men are brothers, but a Sioux dare
not show his face in the village of the Loups.”
“The Dahcotahs are men!” exclaimed the savage, fiercely; forgetting in
his anger to maintain the character he had assumed, and using the
appellation of which his nation was most proud; “the Dahcotahs have no
fear! Speak; what brings you so far from the villages of the
pale-faces?”
“I have seen the sun rise and set on many councils, and have heard the
words of wise men. Let your chiefs come, and my mouth shall not be
shut.”
“I am a great chief!” said the savage, affecting an air of offended
dignity. “Do you take me for an Assiniboine? Weucha is a warrior often
named, and much believed!”
“Am I a fool not to know a burnt-wood Teton?” demanded the trapper,
with a steadiness that did great credit to his nerves. “Go; it is dark,
and you do not see that my head is grey!”
The Indian now appeared convinced that he had adopted too shallow an
artifice to deceive one so practised as the man he addressed, and he
was deliberating what fiction he should next invent, in order to obtain
his real object, when a slight commotion among the band put an end at
once to all his schemes. Casting his eyes behind him, as if fearful of
a speedy interruption, he said, in tones much less pretending than
those he had first resorted to—
“Give Weucha the milk of the Long-knives, and he will sing your name in
the ears of the great men of his tribe.”
“Go,” repeated the trapper, motioning him away, with strong disgust.
“Your young men are speaking of Mahtoree. My words are for the ears of
a chief.”
The savage cast a look at the other, which, notwithstanding the dim
light, was sufficiently indicative of implacable hostility. He then
stole away among his fellows, anxious to conceal the counterfeit he had
attempted to practise, no less than the treachery he had contemplated
against a fair division of the spoils, from the man named by the
trapper, whom he now also knew to be approaching, by the manner in
which his name passed from one to another, in the band. He had hardly
disappeared before a warrior of powerful frame advanced out of the dark
circle, and placed himself before the captives, with that high and
proud bearing for which a distinguished Indian chief is ever so
remarkable. He was followed by all the party, who arranged themselves
around his person, in a deep and respectful silence.
“The earth is very large,” the chief commenced, after a pause of that
true dignity which his counterfeit had so miserably affected; “why can
the children of my great white father never find room on it?”
“Some among them have heard that their friends in the prairies are in
want of many things,” returned the trapper; “and they have come to see
if it be true. Some want, in their turns, what the red men are willing
to sell, and they come to make their friends rich, with powder and
blankets.”
“Do traders cross the big river with empty hands?”
“Our hands are empty because your young men thought we were tired, and
they have lightened us of our load. They were mistaken; I am old, but I
am still strong.”
“It cannot be. Your load has fallen in the prairies. Show my young men
the place, that they may pick it up before the Pawnees find it.”
“The path to the spot is crooked, and it is night. The hour is come for
sleep,” said the trapper, with perfect composure. “Bid your warriors go
over yonder hill; there is water and there is wood; let them light
their fires and sleep with warm feet. When the sun comes again I will
speak to you.”
A low murmur, but one that was clearly indicative of dissatisfaction,
passed among the attentive listeners, and served to inform the old man
that he had not been sufficiently wary in proposing a measure that he
intended should notify the travellers in the brake of the presence of
their dangerous neighbours. Mahtoree, however, without betraying, in
the slightest degree, the excitement which was so strongly exhibited by
his companions, continued the discourse in the same lofty manner as
before.
“I know that my friend is rich,” he said; “that he has many warriors
not far off, and that horses are plentier with him, than dogs among the
red-skins.”
“You see my warriors, and my horses.”
“What! has the woman the feet of a Dahcotah, that she can walk for
thirty nights in the prairies, and not fall! I know the red men of the
woods make long marches on foot, but we, who live where the eye cannot
see from one lodge to another, love our horses.”
The trapper now hesitated, in his turn. He was perfectly aware that
deception, if detected, might prove dangerous; and, for one of his
pursuits and character, he was strongly troubled with an
unaccommodating regard for the truth. But, recollecting that he
controlled the fate of others as well as of himself, he determined to
let things take their course, and to permit the Dahcotah chief to
deceive himself if he would.
“The women of the Siouxes and of the white men are not of the same
wigwam,” he answered evasively. “Would a Teton warrior make his wife
greater than himself? I know he would not; and yet my ears have heard
that there are lands where the councils are held by squaws.”
Another slight movement in the dark circle apprised the trapper that
his declaration was not received without surprise, if entirely without
distrust. The chief alone seemed unmoved; nor was he disposed to relax
from the loftiness and high dignity of his air.
“My white fathers who live on the great lakes have declared,” he said,
“that their brothers towards the rising sun are not men; and now I know
they did not lie! Go—what is a nation whose chief is a squaw! Are you
the dog and not the husband of this woman?”
“I am neither. Never did I see her face before this day. She came into
the prairies because they had told her a great and generous nation
called the Dahcotahs lived there, and she wished to look on men. The
women of the pale-faces, like the women of the Siouxes, open their eyes
to see things that are new; but she is poor, like myself, and she will
want corn and buffaloes, if you take away the little that she and her
friend still have.”
“My ears listen to many wicked lies!” exclaimed the Teton warrior, in a
voice so stern that it startled even his red auditors. “Am I a woman?
Has not a Dahcotah eyes? Tell me, white hunter; who are the men of your
colour, that sleep near the fallen trees?”
As he spoke, the indignant chief pointed in the direction of Ishmael’s
encampment, leaving the trapper no reason to doubt, that the superior
industry and sagacity of this man had effected a discovery, which had
eluded the search of the rest of his party. Notwithstanding his regret
at an event that might prove fatal to the sleepers, and some little
vexation at having been so completely outwitted, in the dialogue just
related, the old man continued to maintain his air of inflexible
composure.
“It may be true,” he answered, “that white men are sleeping in the
prairie. If my brother says it, it is true; but what men thus trust to
the generosity of the Tetons, I cannot tell. If there be strangers
asleep, send your young men to wake them up, and let them say why they
are here; every pale-face has a tongue.” The chief shook his head with
a wild and fierce smile, answering abruptly, as he turned away to put
an end to the conference—
“The Dahcotahs are a wise race, and Mahtoree is their chief! He will
not call to the strangers, that they may rise and speak to him with
their carabines. He will whisper softly in their ears. When this is
done, let the men of their own colour come and awake them!”
As he uttered these words, and turned on his heel, a low and approving
laugh passed around the dark circle, which instantly broke its order
and followed him to a little distance from the stand of the captives,
where those who might presume to mingle opinions with so great a
warrior again gathered about him in consultation. Weucha profited by
the occasion to renew his importunities; but the trapper, who had
discovered how great a counterfeit he was, shook him off in
displeasure. An end was, however, more effectually put to the annoyance
of this malignant savage, by a mandate for the whole party, including
men and beasts, to change their positions. The movement was made in
dead silence, and with an order that would have done credit to more
enlightened beings. A halt, however, was soon made; and when the
captives had time to look about them, they found they were in view of
the low, dark outline of the copse, near which lay the slumbering party
of Ishmael.
Here another short but grave and deliberative consultation was held.
The beasts, which seemed trained to such covert and silent attacks,
were once more placed under the care of keepers, who, as before, were
charged with the duty of watching the prisoners. The mind of the
trapper was in no degree relieved from the uneasiness which was, at
each instant, getting a stronger possession of him, when he found
Weucha was placed nearest to his own person, and, as it appeared by the
air of triumph and authority he assumed, at the head of the guard also.
The savage, however, who doubtless had his secret instructions, was
content, for the present, with making a significant gesture with his
tomahawk, which menaced death to Ellen. After admonishing in this
expressive manner his male captives of the fate that would instantly
attend their female companion, on the slightest alarm proceeding from
any of the party, he was content to maintain a rigid silence. This
unexpected forbearance, on the part of Weucha, enabled the trapper and
his two associates to give their undivided attention to the little that
might be seen of the interesting movements which were passing in their
front.
Mahtoree took the entire disposition of the arrangements on himself. He
pointed out the precise situation he wished each individual to occupy,
like one intimately acquainted with the qualifications of his
respective followers, and he was obeyed with the deference and
promptitude with which an Indian warrior is wont to submit to the
instructions of his chief, in moments of trial. Some he despatched to
the right, and others to the left. Each man departed with the noiseless
and quick step peculiar to the race, until all had assumed their
allotted stations, with the exception of two chosen warriors, who
remained nigh the person of their leader. When the rest had
disappeared, Mahtoree turned to these select companions, and intimated
by a sign that the critical moment had arrived, when the enterprise he
contemplated was to be put in execution.
Each man laid aside the light fowling-piece, which, under the name of a
carabine, he carried in virtue of his rank; and divesting himself of
every article of exterior or heavy clothing, he stood resembling a dark
and fierce looking statue, in the attitude, and nearly in the garb, of
nature. Mahtoree assured himself of the right position of his tomahawk,
felt that his knife was secure in its sheath of skin, tightened his
girdle of wampum and saw that the lacing of his fringed and ornamental
leggings was secure, and likely to offer no impediment to his
exertions. Thus prepared at all points, and ready for his desperate
undertaking, the Teton gave the signal to proceed.
The three advanced in a line with the encampment of the travellers,
until, in the dim light by which they were seen, their dusky forms were
nearly lost to the eyes of the prisoners. Here they paused, looking
around them like men who deliberate and ponder long on the consequences
before they take a desperate leap. Then sinking together, they became
lost in the grass of the prairie.
It is not difficult to imagine the distress and anxiety of the
different spectators of these threatening movements. Whatever might be
the reasons of Ellen for entertaining no strong attachment to the
family in which she has first been seen by the reader, the feelings of
her sex, and, perhaps, some lingering seeds of kindness, predominated.
More than once she felt tempted to brave the awful and instant danger
that awaited such an offence, and to raise her feeble, and, in truth,
impotent voice in warning. So strong, indeed, and so very natural was
the inclination, that she would most probably have put it in execution,
but for the often repeated though whispered remonstrances of Paul
Hover. In the breast of the young bee-hunter himself, there was a
singular union of emotions. His first and chiefest solicitude was
certainly in behalf of his gentle and dependent companion; but the
sense of her danger was mingled, in the breast of the reckless
woodsman, with a consciousness of a high and wild, and by no means an
unpleasant, excitement. Though united to the emigrants by ties still
less binding than those of Ellen, he longed to hear the crack of their
rifles, and, had occasion offered, he would gladly have been among the
first to rush to their rescue. There were, in truth, moments when he
felt in his turn an impulse, that was nearly resistless, to spring
forward and awake the unconscious sleepers; but a glance at Ellen would
serve to recall his tottering prudence, and to admonish him of the
consequences. The trapper alone remained calm and observant, as if
nothing that involved his personal comfort or safety had occurred. His
ever-moving, vigilant eyes, watched the smallest change, with the
composure of one too long inured to scenes of danger to be easily
moved, and with an expression of cool determination which denoted the
intention he actually harboured, of profiting by the smallest oversight
on the part of the captors.
In the mean time the Teton warriors had not been idle. Profiting by the
high fog which grew in the bottoms, they had wormed their way through
the matted grass, like so many treacherous serpents stealing on their
prey, until the point was gained, where an extraordinary caution became
necessary to their further advance. Mahtoree, alone, had occasionally
elevated his dark, grim countenance above the herbage, straining his
eye-balls to penetrate the gloom which skirted the border of the brake.
In these momentary glances he gained sufficient knowledge, added to
that he had obtained in his former search, to be the perfect master of
the position of his intended victims, though he was still profoundly
ignorant of their numbers, and of their means of defence.
His efforts to possess himself of the requisite knowledge concerning
these two latter and essential points were, however, completely baffled
by the stillness of the camp, which lay in a quiet as deep as if it
were literally a place of the dead. Too wary and distrustful to rely,
in circumstances of so much doubt, on the discretion of any less firm
and crafty than himself, the Dahcotah bade his companions remain where
they lay, and pursued the adventure alone.
The progress of Mahtoree was now slow, and to one less accustomed to
such a species of exercise, it would have proved painfully laborious.
But the advance of the wily snake itself is not more certain or
noiseless than was his approach. He drew his form, foot by foot,
through the bending grass, pausing at each movement to catch the
smallest sound that might betray any knowledge, on the part of the
travellers, of his proximity. He succeeded, at length, in dragging
himself out of the sickly light of the moon, into the shadows of the
brake, where not only his own dark person was much less liable to be
seen, but where the surrounding objects became more distinctly visible
to his keen and active glances.
Here the Teton paused long and warily to make his observations, before
he ventured further. His position enabled him to bring the whole
encampment, with its tent, wagons, and lodges, into a dark but clearly
marked profile; furnishing a clue by which the practised warrior was
led to a tolerably accurate estimate of the force he was about to
encounter. Still an unnatural silence pervaded the spot, as if men
suppressed even the quiet breathings of sleep, in order to render the
appearance of their confidence more evident. The chief bent his head to
the earth, and listened intently. He was about to raise it again, in
disappointment, when the long drawn and trembling respiration of one
who slumbered imperfectly met his ear. The Indian was too well skilled
in all the means of deception to become himself the victim of any
common artifice. He knew the sound to be natural, by its peculiar
quivering, and he hesitated no longer.
A man of nerves less tried than those of the fierce and conquering
Mahtoree would have been keenly sensible of all the hazard he incurred.
The reputation of those hardy and powerful white adventurers, who so
often penetrated the wilds inhabited by his people, was well known to
him; but while he drew nigher, with the respect and caution that a
brave enemy never fails to inspire, it was with the vindictive
animosity of a red man, jealous and resentful of the inroads of the
stranger.
Turning from the line of his former route, the Teton dragged himself
directly towards the margin of the thicket. When this material object
was effected in safety, he arose to his seat, and took a better survey
of his situation. A single moment served to apprise him of the place
where the unsuspecting traveller lay. The reader will readily
anticipate that the savage had succeeded in gaining a dangerous
proximity to one of those slothful sons of Ishmael, who were deputed to
watch over the isolated encampment of the travellers.
When certain that he was undiscovered, the Dahcotah raised his person
again, and bending forward, he moved his dark visage above the face of
the sleeper, in that sort of wanton and subtle manner with which the
reptile is seen to play about its victim before it strikes. Satisfied
at length, not only of the condition but of the character of the
stranger, Mahtoree was in the act of withdrawing his head, when a
slight movement of the sleeper announced the symptoms of reviving
consciousness. The savage seized the knife which hung at his girdle,
and in an instant it was poised above the breast of the young emigrant.
Then changing his purpose, with an action as rapid as his own flashing
thoughts, he sunk back behind the trunk of the fallen tree against
which the other reclined, and lay in its shadow, as dark, as
motionless, and apparently as insensible as the wood itself.
The slothful sentinel opened his heavy eyes, and gazing upward for a
moment at the hazy heavens, he made an extraordinary exertion, and
raised his powerful frame from the support of the log. Then he looked
about him, with an air of something like watchfulness, suffering his
dull glances to run over the misty objects of the encampment until they
finally settled on the distant and dim field of the open prairie.
Meeting with nothing more attractive than the same faint outlines of
swell and interval, which every where rose before his drowsy eyes, he
changed his position so as completely to turn his back on his dangerous
neighbour, and suffered his person to sink sluggishly down into its
former recumbent attitude. A long, and, on the part of the Teton, an
anxious and painful silence succeeded, before the deep breathing of the
traveller again announced that he was indulging in his slumbers. The
savage was, however, far too jealous of a counterfeit to trust to the
first appearance of sleep. But the fatigues of a day of unusual toil
lay too heavy on the sentinel to leave the other long in doubt. Still
the motion with which Mahtoree again raised himself to his knees was so
noiseless and guarded, that even a vigilant observer might have
hesitated to believe he stirred. The change was, however, at length
effected, and the Dahcotah chief then bent again over his enemy,
without having produced a noise louder than that of the cotton-wood
leaf which fluttered at his side in the currents of the passing air.
Mahtoree now felt himself master of the sleeper’s fate. At the same
time that he scanned the vast proportions and athletic limbs of the
youth, in that sort of admiration which physical excellence seldom
fails to excite in the breast of a savage, he coolly prepared to
extinguish the principle of vitality which could alone render them
formidable. After making himself sure of the seat of life, by gently
removing the folds of the intervening cloth, he raised his keen weapon,
and was about to unite his strength and skill in the impending blow,
when the young man threw his brawny arm carelessly backward, exhibiting
in the action the vast volume of its muscles.
The sagacious and wary Teton paused. It struck his acute faculties that
sleep was less dangerous to him, at that moment, than even death itself
might prove. The smallest noise, the agony of struggling, with which
such a frame would probably relinquish its hold of life, suggested
themselves to his rapid thoughts, and were all present to his
experienced senses. He looked back into the encampment, turned his head
into the thicket, and glanced his glowing eyes abroad into the wild and
silent prairies. Bending once more over the respited victim, he assured
himself that he was sleeping heavily, and then abandoned his immediate
purpose in obedience alone to the suggestions of a more crafty policy.
The retreat of Mahtoree was as still and guarded as had been his
approach. He now took the direction of the encampment, stealing along
the margin of the brake, as a cover into which he might easily plunge
at the smallest alarm. The drapery of the solitary hut attracted his
notice in passing. After examining the whole of its exterior, and
listening with painful intensity, in order to gather counsel from his
ears, the savage ventured to raise the cloth at the bottom, and to
thrust his dark visage beneath. It might have been a minute before the
Teton chief drew back, and seated himself with the whole of his form
without the linen tenement. Here he sat, seemingly brooding over his
discovery, for many moments, in rigid inaction. Then he resumed his
crouching attitude, and once more projected his visage beyond the
covering of the tent. His second visit to the interior was longer, and,
if possible, more ominous than the first. But it had, like every thing
else, its termination, and the savage again withdrew his glaring eyes
from the secrets of the place.
Mahtoree had drawn his person many yards from the spot, in his slow
progress towards the cluster of objects which pointed out the centre of
the position, before he again stopped. He made another pause, and
looked back at the solitary little dwelling he had left, as if doubtful
whether he should not return. But the chevaux-de-frise of branches now
lay within reach of his arm, and the very appearance of precaution it
presented, as it announced the value of the effects it encircled,
tempted his cupidity, and induced him to proceed.
The passage of the savage, through the tender and brittle limbs of the
cotton-wood, could be likened only to the sinuous and noiseless winding
of the reptiles which he imitated. When he had effected his object, and
had taken an instant to become acquainted with the nature of the
localities within the enclosure, the Teton used the precaution to open
a way through which he might make a swift retreat. Then raising himself
on his feet, he stalked through the encampment, like the master of
evil, seeking whom and what he should first devote to his fell
purposes. He had already ascertained the contents of the lodge in which
were collected the woman and her young children, and had passed several
gigantic frames, stretched on different piles of brush, which happily
for him lay in unconscious helplessness, when he reached the spot
occupied by Ishmael in person. It could not escape the sagacity of one
like Mahtoree, that he had now within his power the principal man among
the travellers. He stood long hovering above the recumbent and
Herculean form of the emigrant, keenly debating in his own mind the
chances of his enterprise, and the most effectual means of reaping its
richest harvest.
He sheathed the knife, which, under the hasty and burning impulse of
his thoughts, he had been tempted to draw, and was passing on, when
Ishmael turned in his lair, and demanded roughly who was moving before
his half-opened eyes. Nothing short of the readiness and cunning of a
savage could have evaded the crisis. Imitating the gruff tones and
nearly unintelligible sounds he heard, Mahtoree threw his body heavily
on the earth, and appeared to dispose himself to sleep. Though the
whole movement was seen by Ishmael, in a sort of stupid observation,
the artifice was too bold and too admirably executed to fail. The
drowsy father closed his eyes, and slept heavily, with this treacherous
inmate in the very bosom of his family.
It was necessary for the Teton to maintain the position he had taken,
for many long and weary minutes, in order to make sure that he was no
longer watched. Though his body lay so motionless, his active mind was
not idle. He profited by the delay to mature a plan which he intended
should put the whole encampment, including both its effects and their
proprietors, entirely at his mercy. The instant he could do so with
safety, the indefatigable savage was again in motion. He took his way
towards the slight pen which contained the domestic animals, worming
himself along the ground in his former subtle and guarded manner.
The first animal he encountered among the beasts occasioned a long and
hazardous delay. The weary creature, perhaps conscious, through its
secret instinct, that in the endless wastes of the prairies its surest
protector was to be found in man, was so exceedingly docile as quietly
to submit to the close examination it was doomed to undergo. The hand
of the wandering Teton passed over the downy coat, the meek
countenance, and the slender limbs of the gentle creature, with
untiring curiosity; but he finally abandoned the prize, as useless in
his predatory expeditions, and offering too little temptation to the
appetite. As soon, however, as he found himself among the beasts of
burden, his gratification was extreme, and it was with difficulty that
he restrained the customary ejaculations of pleasure that were more
than once on the point of bursting from his lips. Here he lost sight of
the hazards by which he had gained access to his dangerous position;
and the watchfulness of the wary and long practised warrior was
momentarily forgotten in the exultation of the savage.