A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade,
For,—and a shrouding sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
—Song in Hamlet.
“Stand back! stand off, the whole of ye!” said Esther hoarsely to the
crowd, which pressed too closely on the corpse; “I am his mother, and
my right is better than that of ye all! Who has done this? Tell me,
Ishmael, Abiram, Abner! open your mouths and your hearts, and let God’s
truth and no other issue from them. Who has done this bloody deed?”
Her husband made no reply, but stood, leaning on his rifle, looking
sadly, but with an unaltered eye, at the mangled remains of his son.
Not so the mother, she threw herself on the earth, and receiving the
cold and ghastly head into her lap, she sat contemplating those
muscular features, on which the death-agony was still horridly
impressed, in a silence far more expressive than any language of
lamentation could have proved.
The voice of the woman was frozen in grief. In vain Ishmael attempted a
few words of rude consolation; she neither listened nor answered. Her
sons gathered about her in a circle, and expressed, after their uncouth
manner, their sympathy in her sorrow, as well as their sense of their
own loss, but she motioned them away, impatiently with her hand. At
times her fingers played in the matted hair of the dead, and at others
they lightly attempted to smooth the painfully expressive muscles of
its ghastly visage, as the hand of the mother is seen lingering fondly
about the features of her sleeping child. Then starting from their
revolting office, her hands would flutter around her, and seem to seek
some fruitless remedy against the violent blow, which had thus suddenly
destroyed the child in whom she had not only placed her greatest hopes,
but so much of her maternal pride. While engaged in the latter
incomprehensible manner, the lethargic Abner turned aside, and
swallowing the unwonted emotions which were rising in his own throat,
he observed—
“Mother means that we should look for the signs, that we may know in
what manner Asa has come by his end.”
“We owe it to the accursed Siouxes!” answered Ishmael: “twice have they
put me deeply in their debt! The third time, the score shall be
cleared!”
But, not content with this plausible explanation, and, perhaps,
secretly glad to avert their eyes from a spectacle which awakened so
extraordinary and unusual sensations in their sluggish bosoms, the sons
of the squatter turned away in a body from their mother and the corpse,
and proceeded to make the enquiries which they fancied the former had
so repeatedly demanded. Ishmael made no objections; but, though he
accompanied his children while they proceeded in the investigation, it
was more with the appearance of complying with their wishes, at a time
when resistance might not be seemly, than with any visible interest in
the result. As the borderers, notwithstanding their usual dulness, were
well instructed in most things connected with their habits of life, an
enquiry, the success of which depended so much on signs and evidences
that bore so strong a resemblance to a forest trail, was likely to be
conducted with skill and acuteness. Accordingly, they proceeded to the
melancholy task with great readiness and intelligence.
Abner and Enoch agreed in their accounts as to the position in which
they had found the body. It was seated nearly upright, the back
supported by a mass of matted brush, and one hand still grasping a
broken twig of the alders. It was most probably owing to the former
circumstance that the body had escaped the rapacity of the carrion
birds, which had been seen hovering above the thicket, and the latter
proved that life had not yet entirely abandoned the hapless victim when
he entered the brake. The opinion now became general, that the youth
had received his death-wound in the open prairie, and had dragged his
enfeebled form into the cover of the thicket for the purpose of
concealment. A trail through the bushes confirmed this opinion. It also
appeared, on examination, that a desperate struggle had taken place on
the very margin of the thicket. This was sufficiently apparent by the
trodden branches, the deep impressions on the moist ground, and the
lavish flow of blood.
“He has been shot in the open ground and come here for a cover,” said
Abiram; “these marks would clearly prove it. The boy has been set upon
by the savages in a body, and has fou’t like a hero as he was, until
they have mastered his strength, and then drawn him to the bushes.”
To this probable opinion there was now but one dissenting voice, that
of the slow-minded Ishmael, who demanded that the corpse itself should
be examined in order to obtain a more accurate knowledge of its
injuries. On examination, it appeared that a rifle bullet had passed
directly through the body of the deceased, entering beneath one of his
brawny shoulders, and making its exit by the breast. It required some
knowledge in gun-shot wounds to decide this delicate point, but the
experience of the borderers was quite equal to the scrutiny; and a
smile of wild, and certainly of singular satisfaction, passed among the
sons of Ishmael, when Abner confidently announced that the enemies of
Asa had assailed him in the rear.
“It must be so,” said the gloomy but attentive squatter. “He was of too
good a stock and too well trained, knowingly to turn the weak side to
man or beast! Remember, boys, that while the front of manhood is to
your enemy, let him be who or what he may, you ar’ safe from cowardly
surprise. Why, Eester, woman! you ar’ getting beside yourself; with
picking at the hair and the garments of the child! Little good can you
do him now, old girl.”
“See!” interrupted Enoch, extricating from the fragments of cloth the
morsel of lead which had prostrated the strength of one so powerful;
“here is the very bullet!”
Ishmael took it in his hand and eyed it long and closely.
“There’s no mistake,” at length he muttered through his compressed
teeth. “It is from the pouch of that accursed trapper. Like many of the
hunters he has a mark in his mould, in order to know the work his rifle
performs; and here you see it plainly—six little holes, laid
crossways.”
“I’ll swear to it!” cried Abiram, triumphantly. “He show’d me his
private mark, himself, and boasted of the number of deer he had laid
upon the prairies with these very bullets! Now, Ishmael, will you
believe me when I tell you the old knave is a spy of the red-skins?”
The lead passed from the hand of one to that of another, and
unfortunately for the reputation of the old man, several among them
remembered also to have seen the aforesaid private bullet-marks, during
the curious examination which all had made of his accoutrements. In
addition to this wound, however, were many others of a less dangerous
nature, all of which were supposed to confirm the supposed guilt of the
trapper.
The traces of many different struggles were to be seen, between the
spot where the first blood was spilt and the thicket to which it was
now generally believed Asa had retreated, as a place of refuge. These
were interpreted into so many proofs of the weakness of the murderer,
who would have sooner despatched his victim, had not even the dying
strength of the youth rendered him formidable to the infirmities of one
so old. The danger of drawing some others of the hunters to the spot,
by repeated firing, was deemed a sufficient reason for not again
resorting to the rifle, after it had performed the important duty of
disabling the victim. The weapon of the dead man was not to be found,
and had doubtless, together with many other less valuable and lighter
articles, that he was accustomed to carry about his person, become a
prize to his destroyer.
But what, in addition to the tell-tale bullet, appeared to fix the
ruthless deed with peculiar certainty on the trapper, was the
accumulated evidence furnished by the trail; which proved,
notwithstanding his deadly hurt, that the wounded man had still been
able to make a long and desperate resistance to the subsequent efforts
of his murderer. Ishmael seemed to press this proof with a singular
mixture of sorrow and pride: sorrow, at the loss of a son, whom in
their moments of amity he highly valued; and pride, at the courage and
power he had manifested to his last and weakest breath.
“He died as a son of mine should die,” said the squatter, gleaning a
hollow consolation from so unnatural an exultation: “a dread to his
enemy to the last, and without help from the law! Come, children; we
have the grave to make, and then to hunt his murderer.”
The sons of the squatter set about their melancholy office, in silence
and in sadness. An excavation was made in the hard earth, at a great
expense of toil and time, and the body was wrapped in such spare
vestments as could be collected among the labourers. When these
arrangements were completed, Ishmael approached the seemingly
unconscious Esther, and announced his intention to inter the dead. She
heard him, and quietly relinquished her grasp of the corpse, rising in
silence to follow it to its narrow resting place. Here she seated
herself again at the head of the grave, watching each movement of the
youths with eager and jealous eyes. When a sufficiency of earth was
laid upon the senseless clay of Asa, to protect it from injury, Enoch
and Abner entered the cavity, and trode it into a solid mass, by the
weight of their huge frames, with an appearance of a strange, not to
say savage, mixture of care and indifference. This well-known
precaution was adopted to prevent the speedy exhumation of the body by
some of the carnivorous beasts of the prairie, whose instinct was sure
to guide them to the spot. Even the rapacious birds appeared to
comprehend the nature of the ceremony, for, mysteriously apprised that
the miserable victim was now about to be abandoned by the human race,
they once more began to make their airy circuits above the place,
screaming, as if to frighten the kinsmen from their labour of caution
and love.
Ishmael stood, with folded arms, steadily watching the manner in which
this necessary duty was performed, and when the whole was completed, he
lifted his cap to his sons, to thank them for their services, with a
dignity that would have become one much better nurtured. Throughout the
whole of a ceremony, which is ever solemn and admonitory, the squatter
had maintained a grave and serious deportment. His vast features were
visibly stamped with an expression of deep concern; but at no time did
they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed for ever, on the
grave of his first-born. Nature was then stirring powerfully within
him, and the muscles of his stern visage began to work perceptibly. His
children fastened their eyes on his, as if to seek a direction to the
strange emotions which were moving their own heavy natures, when the
struggle in the bosom of the squatter suddenly ceased, and, taking his
wife by the arm, he raised her to her feet as if she had been an
infant, saying, in a voice that was perfectly steady, though a nice
observer would have discovered that it was kinder than usual—
“Eester, we have now done all that man and woman can do. We raised the
boy, and made him such as few others were like, on the frontiers of
America; and we have given him a grave. Let us go our way.”
The woman turned her eyes slowly from the fresh earth, and laying her
hands on the shoulders of her husband, stood, looking him anxiously in
the eyes.
“Ishmael! Ishmael!” she said, “you parted from the boy in your wrath!”
“May the Lord pardon his sins freely as I have forgiven his worst
misdeeds!” calmly returned the squatter: “woman, go you back to the
rock and read your Bible; a chapter in that book always does you good.
You can read, Eester; which is a privilege I never did enjoy.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered the woman, yielding to his strength, and suffering
herself to be led, though with strong reluctance from the spot. “I can
read; and how have I used the knowledge! But he, Ishmael, he has not
the sin of wasted l’arning to answer for. We have spared him that, at
least! whether it be in mercy, or in cruelty, I know not.”
Her husband made no reply, but continued steadily to lead her in the
direction of their temporary abode. When they reached the summit of the
swell of land, which they knew was the last spot from which the
situation of the grave of Asa could be seen, they all turned, as by
common concurrence, to take a farewell view of the place. The little
mound itself was not visible; but it was frightfully indicated by the
flock of screaming birds which hovered above. In the opposite direction
a low, blue hillock, in the skirts of the horizon, pointed out the
place where Esther had left the rest of her young, and served as an
attraction to draw her reluctant steps from the last abode of her
eldest born. Nature quickened in the bosom of the mother at the sight;
and she finally yielded the rights of the dead, to the more urgent
claims of the living.
The foregoing occurrences had struck a spark from the stern tempers of
a set of beings so singularly moulded in the habits of their
uncultivated lives, which served to keep alive among them the dying
embers of family affection. United to their parents by ties no stronger
than those which use had created, there had been great danger, as
Ishmael had foreseen, that the overloaded hive would swarm, and leave
him saddled with the difficulties of a young and helpless brood,
unsupported by the exertions of those, whom he had already brought to a
state of maturity. The spirit of insubordination, which emanated from
the unfortunate Asa, had spread among his juniors; and the squatter had
been made painfully to remember the time when, in the wantonness of his
youth and vigour, he had, reversing the order of the brutes, cast off
his own aged and failing parents, to enter into the world unshackled
and free. But the danger had now abated, for a time at least; and if
his authority was not restored with all its former influence, it was
admitted to exist, and to maintain its ascendency a little longer.
It is true that his slow-minded sons, even while they submitted to the
impressions of the recent event, had glimmerings of terrible distrusts,
as to the manner in which their elder brother had met with his death.
There were faint and indistinct images in the minds of two or three of
the oldest, which portrayed the father himself, as ready to imitate the
example of Abraham, without the justification of the sacred authority
which commanded the holy man to attempt the revolting office. But then,
these images were so transient, and so much obscured in intellectual
mists, as to leave no very strong impressions, and the tendency of the
whole transaction, as we have already said, was rather to strengthen
than to weaken the authority of Ishmael.
In this disposition of mind, the party continued their route towards
the place whence they had that morning issued on a search which had
been crowned with so melancholy a success. The long and fruitless march
which they had made under the direction of Abiram, the discovery of the
body, and its subsequent interment, had so far consumed the day, that
by the time their steps were retraced across the broad track of waste
which lay between the grave of Asa and the rock, the sun had fallen far
below his meridian altitude. The hill had gradually risen as they
approached, like some tower emerging from the bosom of the sea, and
when within a mile, the minuter objects that crowned its height came
dimly into view.
“It will be a sad meeting for the girls!” said Ishmael, who, from time
to time, did not cease to utter something which he intended should be
consolatory to the bruised spirit of his partner. “Asa was much
regarded by all the young; and seldom failed to bring in from his hunts
something that they loved.”
“He did, he did,” murmured Esther; “the boy was the pride of the
family. My other children are as nothing to him!”
“Say not so, good woman,” returned the father, glancing his eye a
little proudly at the athletic train which followed, at no great
distance, in the rear”. Say not so, old Eester, for few fathers and
mothers have greater reason to be boastful than ourselves.”
“Thankful, thankful,” muttered the humbled woman; “ye mean thankful,
Ishmael!”
“Then thankful let it be, if you like the word better, my good
girl,—but what has become of Nelly and the young? The child has
forgotten the charge I gave her, and has not only suffered the children
to sleep, but, I warrant you, is dreaming of the fields of Tennessee at
this very moment. The mind of your niece is mainly fixed on the
settlements, I reckon.”
“Ay, she is not for us; I said it, and thought it, when I took her,
because death had stripped her of all other friends. Death is a sad
worker in the bosom of families, Ishmael! Asa had a kind feeling to the
child, and they might have come one day into our places, had things
been so ordered.”
“Nay, she is not gifted for a frontier wife, if this is the manner she
is to keep house while the husband is on the hunt. Abner, let off your
rifle, that they may know we ar’ coming. I fear Nelly and the young ar’
asleep.” The young man complied with an alacrity that manifested how
gladly he would see the rounded, active figure of Ellen, enlivening the
ragged summit of the rock. But the report was succeeded by neither
signal nor answer of any sort. For a moment, the whole party stood in
suspense, awaiting the result, and then a simultaneous impulse caused
the whole to let off their pieces at the same instant, producing a
noise which might not fail to reach the ears of all within so short a
distance.
“Ah! there they come at last!” cried Abiram, who was usually among the
first to seize on any circumstance which promised relief from
disagreeable apprehensions.
“It is a petticoat fluttering on the line,” said Esther; “I put it
there myself.”
“You ar’ right; but now she comes; the jade has been taking her comfort
in the tent!”
“It is not so,” said Ishmael, whose usually inflexible features were
beginning to manifest the uneasiness he felt. “It is the tent itself
blowing about loosely in the wind. They have loosened the bottom, like
silly children as they ar’, and unless care is had, the whole will come
down!”
The words were scarcely uttered before a rushing blast of wind swept by
the spot where they stood, raising the dust in little eddies, in its
progress; and then, as if guided by a master hand, it quitted the
earth, and mounted to the precise spot on which all eyes were just then
riveted. The loosened linen felt its influence and tottered; but
regained its poise, and, for a moment, it became tranquil. The cloud of
leaves next played in circling revolutions around the place, and then
descended with the velocity of a swooping hawk, and sailed away into
the prairie in long straight lines, like a flight of swallows resting
on their expanded wings. They were followed for some distance by the
snow-white tent, which, however, soon fell behind the rock, leaving its
highest peak as naked as when it lay in the entire solitude of the
desert.
“The murderers have been here!” moaned Esther. “My babes! my babes!”
For a moment even Ishmael faltered before the weight of so unexpected a
blow. But shaking himself, like an awakened lion, he sprang forward,
and pushing aside the impediments of the barrier, as if they had been
feathers, he rushed up the ascent with an impetuosity which proved how
formidable a sluggish nature may become, when thoroughly aroused.