Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I’ll go look on. That
dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy,
doting, foolish young knave in his helm.
—Troilus and Cressida.
It is necessary, in order that the thread of the narrative should not
be spun to a length which might fatigue the reader, that he should
imagine a week to have intervened between the scene with which the
preceding chapter closed and the events with which it is our intention
to resume its relation in this. The season was on the point of changing
its character; the verdure of summer giving place more rapidly to the
brown and party-coloured livery of the fall.[12] The heavens were
clothed in driving clouds, piled in vast masses one above the other,
which whirled violently in the gusts; opening, occasionally, to admit
transient glimpses of the bright and glorious sight of the heavens,
dwelling in a magnificence by far too grand and durable to be disturbed
by the fitful efforts of the lower world. Beneath, the wind swept
across the wild and naked prairies, with a violence that is seldom
witnessed in any section of the continent less open. It would have been
easy to have imagined, in the ages of fable, that the god of the winds
had permitted his subordinate agents to escape from their den, and that
they now rioted, in wantonness, across wastes, where neither tree, nor
work of man, nor mountain, nor obstacle of any sort, opposed itself to
their gambols.
Though nakedness might, as usual, be given as the pervading character
of the spot, whither it is now necessary to transfer the scene of the
tale, it was not entirely without the signs of human life. Amid the
monotonous rolling of the prairie, a single naked and ragged rock arose
on the margin of a little watercourse, which found its way, after
winding a vast distance through the plains, into one of the numerous
tributaries of the Father of Rivers. A swale of low land lay near the
base of the eminence; and as it was still fringed with a thicket of
alders and sumack, it bore the signs of having once nurtured a feeble
growth of wood. The trees themselves had been transferred, however, to
the summit and crags of the neighbouring rocks. On this elevation the
signs of man, to which the allusion just made applies, were to be
found.
Seen from beneath, there were visible a breast-work of logs and stones,
intermingled in such a manner as to save all unnecessary labour, a few
low roofs made of bark and boughs of trees, an occasional barrier,
constructed like the defences on the summit, and placed on such points
of the acclivity as were easier of approach than the general face of
the eminence; and a little dwelling of cloth, perched on the apex of a
small pyramid, that shot up on one angle of the rock, the white
covering of which glimmered from a distance like a spot of snow, or, to
make the simile more suitable to the rest of the subject, like a
spotless and carefully guarded standard, which was to be protected by
the dearest blood of those who defended the citadel beneath. It is
hardly necessary to add, that this rude and characteristic fortress was
the place where Ishmael Bush had taken refuge, after the robbery of his
flocks and herds.
On the day to which the narrative is advanced, the squatter was
standing near the base of the rocks, leaning on his rifle, and
regarding the sterile soil that supported him with a look in which
contempt and disappointment were strongly blended.
“’Tis time to change our natur’s,” he observed to the brother of his
wife, who was rarely far from his elbow; “and to become ruminators,
instead of people used to the fare of Christians and free men. I
reckon, Abiram, you could glean a living among the grasshoppers: you
ar’ an active man, and might outrun the nimblest skipper of them all.”
“The country will never do,” returned the other, who relished but
little the forced humour of his kinsman; “and it is well to remember
that a lazy traveller makes a long journey.”
“Would you have me draw a cart at my heels, across this desert for
weeks,—ay, months?” retorted Ishmael, who, like all of his class, could
labour with incredible efforts on emergencies, but who too seldom
exerted continued industry, on any occasion, to brook a proposal that
offered so little repose. “It may do for your people, who live in
settlements, to hasten on to their houses; but, thank Heaven! my farm
is too big for its owner ever to want a resting-place.”
“Since you like the plantation, then, you have only to make your crop.”
“That is easier said than done, on this corner of the estate. I tell
you, Abiram, there is need of moving, for more reasons than one. You
know I’m a man that very seldom enters into a bargain, but who always
fulfils his agreements better than your dealers in wordy contracts
written on rags of paper. If there’s one mile, there ar’ a hundred
still needed to make up the distance for which you have my honour.”
As he spoke, the squatter glanced his eye upward at the little tenement
of cloth which crowned the summit of his ragged fortress. The look was
understood and answered by the other; and by some secret influence,
which operated either through their interests or feelings, it served to
re-establish that harmony between them, which had just been threatened
with something like a momentary breach.
“I know it, and feel it in every bone of my body. But I remember the
reason, why I have set myself on this accursed journey too well to
forget the distance between me and the end. Neither you nor I will ever
be the better for what we have done, unless we thoroughly finish what
is so well begun. Ay, that is the doctrine of the whole world, I judge:
I heard a travelling preacher, who was skirting it down the Ohio, a
time since, say, if a man should live up to the faith for a hundred
years, and then fall from his work a single day, he would find the
settlement was to be made for the finishing blow that he had put to his
job, and that all the bad, and none of the good, would come into the
final account.”
“And you believed the hungry hypocrite!”
“Who said that I believed it?” retorted Abiram with a bullying look,
that betrayed how much his fears had dwelt on the subject he affected
to despise. “Is it believing to tell what a roguish—And yet, Ishmael,
the man might have been honest after all! He told us that the world
was, in truth, no better than a desert, and that there was but one hand
that could lead the most learned man through all its crooked windings.
Now, if this be true of the whole, it may be true of a part.”
“Abiram, out with your grievances like a man,” interrupted the
squatter, with a hoarse laugh. “You want to pray! But of what use will
it be, according to your own doctrine, to serve God five minutes and
the devil an hour? Harkee, friend; I’m not much of a husband-man, but
this I know to my cost; that to make a right good crop, even on the
richest bottom, there must be hard labour; and your snufflers liken the
’arth to a field of corn, and the men, who live on it, to its yield.
Now I tell you, Abiram, that you are no better than a thistle or a
mullin; yea, ye ar’ wood of too open a pore to be good even to burn!”
The malign glance, which shot from the scowling eye of Abiram,
announced the angry character of his feelings, but as the furtive look
quailed, immediately, before the unmoved, steady, countenance of the
squatter, it also betrayed how much the bolder spirit of the latter had
obtained the mastery over his craven nature.
Content with his ascendency, which was too apparent, and had been too
often exerted on similar occasions, to leave him in any doubt of its
extent, Ishmael coolly continued the discourse, by adverting more
directly to his future plans.
“You will own the justice of paying every one in kind,” he said; “I
have been robbed of my stock, and I have a scheme to make myself as
good as before, by taking hoof for hoof; or for that matter, when a man
is put to the trouble of bargaining for both sides, he is a fool if he
don’t pay himself something in the way of commission.”
As the squatter made this declaration in a tone which was a little
excited by the humour of the moment, four or five of his lounging sons,
who had been leaning against the foot of the rock, came forward with
the indolent step so common to the family.
“I have been calling Ellen Wade, who is on the rock keeping the
look-out, to know if there is any thing to be seen,” observed the
eldest of the young men; “and she shakes her head, for an answer. Ellen
is sparing of her words for a woman; and might be taught manners at
least, without spoiling her good looks.”
Ishmael cast his eye upward to the place, where the offending, but
unconscious girl was holding her anxious watch. She was seated at the
edge of the uppermost crag, by the side of the little tent, and at
least two hundred feet above the level of the plain. Little else was to
be distinguished, at that distance, but the outline of her form, her
fair hair streaming in the gusts beyond her shoulders, and the steady
and seemingly unchangeable look that she had riveted on some remote
point of the prairie.
“What is it, Nell?” cried Ishmael, lifting his powerful voice a little
above the rushing of the element. “Have you got a glimpse of any thing
bigger than a burrowing barker?”
The lips of the attentive Ellen parted; she rose to the utmost height
her small stature admitted, seeming still to regard the unknown object;
but her voice, if she spoke at all, was not sufficiently loud to be
heard amid the wind.
“It ar’ a fact that the child sees something more uncommon than a
buffaloe or a prairie dog!” continued Ishmael. “Why, Nell, girl, ar’ ye
deaf? Nell, I say;—I hope it is an army of red-skins she has in her
eye; for I should relish the chance to pay them for their kindness,
under the favour of these logs and rocks!”
As the squatter accompanied his vaunt with corresponding gestures, and
directed his eyes to the circle of his equally confident sons while
speaking, he drew their gaze from Ellen to himself; but now, when they
turned together to note the succeeding movements of their female
sentinel, the place which had so lately been occupied by her form was
vacant.
“As I am a sinner,” exclaimed Asa, usually one of the most phlegmatic
of the youths, “the girl is blown away by the wind!”
Something like a sensation was exhibited among them, which might have
denoted that the influence of the laughing blue eyes, flaxen hair, and
glowing cheeks of Ellen, had not been lost on the dull natures of the
young men; and looks of amazement, mingled slightly with concern,
passed from one to the other as they gazed, in dull wonder, at the
point of the naked rock.
“It might well be!” added another; “she sat on a slivered stone, and I
have been thinking of telling her she was in danger for more than an
hour.”
“Is that a riband of the child, dangling from the corner of the hill
below?” cried Ishmael; “ha! who is moving about the tent? have I not
told you all—”
“Ellen! ’tis Ellen!” interrupted the whole body of his sons in a
breath; and at that instant she re-appeared to put an end to their
different surmises, and to relieve more than one sluggish nature from
its unwonted excitement. As Ellen issued from beneath the folds of the
tent, she advanced with a light and fearless step to her former giddy
stand, and pointed toward the prairie, appearing to speak in an eager
and rapid voice to some invisible auditor.
“Nell is mad!” said Asa, half in contempt and yet not a little in
concern. “The girl is dreaming with her eyes open; and thinks she sees
some of them fierce creatur’s, with hard names, with which the Doctor
fills her ears.”
“Can it be, the child has found a scout of the Siouxes?” said Ishmael,
bending his look toward the plain; but a low, significant whisper from
Abiram drew his eyes quickly upward again, where they were turned just
in time to perceive that the cloth of the tent was agitated by a motion
very evidently different from the quivering occasioned by the wind.
“Let her, if she dare!” the squatter muttered in his teeth. “Abiram;
they know my temper too well to play the prank with me!”
“Look for yourself! if the curtain is not lifted, I can see no better
than the owl by daylight.”
Ishmael struck the breach of his rifle violently on the earth, and
shouted in a voice that might easily have been heard by Ellen, had not
her attention still continued rapt on the object which so unaccountably
attracted her eyes in the distance.
“Nell!” continued the squatter, “away with you, fool! will you bring
down punishment on your own head? Why, Nell!—she has forgotten her
native speech; let us see if she can understand another language.”
Ishmael threw his rifle to his shoulder, and at the next moment it was
pointed upward at the summit of the rock. Before time was given for a
word of remonstrance, it had sent forth its contents, in its usual
streak of bright flame. Ellen started like the frightened chamois, and
uttering a piercing scream, she darted into the tent, with a swiftness
that left it uncertain whether terror or actual injury had been the
penalty of her offence.
The action of the squatter was too sudden and unexpected to admit of
prevention, but the instant it was done, his sons manifested, in an
unequivocal manner, the temper with which they witnessed the desperate
measure. Angry and fierce glances were interchanged, and a murmur of
disapprobation was uttered by the whole, in common.
“What has Ellen done, father,” said Asa, with a degree of spirit, which
was the more striking from being unusual, “that she should be shot at
like a straggling deer, or a hungry wolf?”
“Mischief,” deliberately returned the squatter; but with a cool
expression of defiance in his eye that showed how little he was moved
by the ill-concealed humour of his children. “Mischief, boy; mischief!
take you heed that the disorder don’t spread.”
“It would need a different treatment in a man, than in yon screaming
girl!”
“Asa, you ar’ a man, as you have often boasted; but remember I am your
father, and your better.”
“I know it well; and what sort of a father?”
“Harkee, boy: I more than half believe that your drowsy head let in the
Siouxes. Be modest in speech, my watchful son, or you may have to
answer yet for the mischief your own bad conduct has brought upon us.”
“I’ll stay no longer to be hectored like a child in petticoats. You
talk of law, as if you knew of none, and yet you keep me down, as
though I had not life and wants of my own. I’ll stay no longer to be
treated like one of your meanest cattle!”
“The world is wide, my gallant boy, and there’s many a noble plantation
on it, without a tenant. Go; you have title deeds signed and sealed to
your hand. Few fathers portion their children better than Ishmael Bush;
you will say that for me, at least, when you get to be a wealthy
landholder.”
“Look! father, look!” exclaimed several voices at once, seizing with
avidity, an opportunity to interrupt a dialogue which threatened to
become more violent.
“Look!” repeated Abiram, in a voice which sounded hollow and warning;
“if you have time for any thing but quarrels, Ishmael, look!”
The squatter turned slowly from his offending son, and cast an eye,
that still lowered with deep resentment upward; but which, the instant
it caught a view of the object that now attracted the attention of all
around him, changed its expression to one of astonishment and dismay.
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.
[12] The Americans call the autumn the “fall,” from the fall of the
leaf.