And I beseech you,
Wrest once the law, to your authority:
To do a great right, do a little wrong.
—Shakespeare.
Ishmael awaited long and patiently for the motley train of Hard-Heart
to disappear. When his scout reported that the last straggler of the
Indians, who had joined their chief so soon as he was at such a
distance from the encampment as to excite no jealousy by their numbers,
had gone behind the most distant swell of the prairie, he gave forth
the order to strike his tents. The cattle were already in the gears,
and the movables were soon transferred to their usual places in the
different vehicles. When all these arrangements were completed, the
little wagon, which had so long been the tenement of Inez, was drawn
before the tent, into which the insensible body of the kidnapper had
been borne, and preparations were evidently made for the reception of
another prisoner. Then it was, as Abiram appeared, pale, terrified, and
tottering beneath a load of detected guilt, that the younger members of
the family were first apprised that he still belonged to the class of
the living. A general and superstitious impression had spread among
them, that his crime had been visited by a terrible retribution from
Heaven; and they now gazed at him, as at a being who belonged rather to
another world, than as a mortal, who, like themselves, had still to
endure the last agony before the great link of human existence could be
broken. The criminal himself appeared to be in a state, in which the
most sensitive and startling terror was singularly combined with total
physical apathy. The truth was, that while his person had been numbed
by the shock, his susceptibility to apprehension kept his agitated mind
in unrelieved distress. When he found himself in the open air, he
looked about him, in order to gather, if possible, some evidences of
his future fate, from the countenances of those gathered round. Seeing
every where grave but composed features, and meeting in no eye any
expression that threatened immediate violence, the miserable man began
to revive; and, by the time he was seated in the wagon, his artful
faculties were beginning to plot the expedients of parrying the just
resentment of his kinsmen, or, if these should fail him, the means of
escaping from a punishment that his forebodings told him would be
terrible.
Throughout the whole of these preparations Ishmael rarely spoke. A
gesture, or a glance of the eye, served to indicate his pleasure to his
sons, and with these simple methods of communication, all parties
appeared content. When the signal was made to proceed, the squatter
threw his rifle into the hollow of his arm, and his axe across his
shoulder, taking the lead as usual. Esther buried herself in the wagon
which contained her daughters; the young men took their customary
places among the cattle, or nigh the teams, and the whole proceeded, at
their ordinary, dull, but unremitted gait.
For the first time, in many a day, the squatter turned his back towards
the setting sun. The route he held was in the direction of the settled
country, and the manner in which he moved sufficed to tell his
children, who had learned to read their father’s determinations in his
mien, that their journey on the prairie was shortly to have an end.
Still nothing else transpired for hours, that might denote the
existence of any sudden, or violent, revolution in the purposes or
feelings of Ishmael. During all that time he marched alone, keeping a
few hundred rods in front of his teams, seldom giving any sign of
extraordinary excitement. Once or twice, indeed, his huge figure was
seen standing on the summit of some distant swell, with the head bent
towards the earth, as he leaned on his rifle; but then these moments of
intense thought were rare, and of short continuance. The train had long
thrown its shadows towards the east, before any material alteration was
made in the disposition of their march. Water-courses were waded,
plains were passed, and rolling ascents risen and descended, without
producing the smallest change. Long practised in the difficulties of
that peculiar species of travelling in which he was engaged, the
squatter avoided the more impracticable obstacles of their route by a
sort of instinct, invariably inclining to the right or left in season,
as the formation of the land, the presence of trees, or the signs of
rivers forewarned him of the necessity of such movements.
At length the hour arrived when charity to man and beast required a
temporary suspension of labour. Ishmael chose the required spot with
his customary sagacity. The regular formation of the country, such as
it has been described in the earlier pages of our book, had long been
interrupted by a more unequal and broken surface. There were, it is
true, in general, the same wide and empty wastes, the same rich and
extensive bottoms, and that wild and singular combination of swelling
fields and of nakedness, which gives that region the appearance of an
ancient country, incomprehensibly stripped of its people and their
dwellings. But these distinguishing features of the rolling prairies
had long been interrupted by irregular hillocks, occasional masses of
rock, and broad belts of forest.
Ishmael chose a spring, that broke out of the base of a rock some forty
or fifty feet in elevation, as a place well suited to the wants of his
herds. The water moistened a small swale that lay beneath the spot,
which yielded, in return for the fecund gift, a scanty growth of grass.
A solitary willow had taken root in the alluvion, and profiting by its
exclusive possession of the soil, the tree had sent up its stem far
above the crest of the adjacent rock, whose peaked summit had once been
shadowed by its branches. But its loveliness had gone with the
mysterious principle of life. As if in mockery of the meagre show of
verdure that the spot exhibited, it remained a noble and solemn
monument of former fertility. The larger, ragged, and fantastic
branches still obtruded themselves abroad, while the white and hoary
trunk stood naked and tempest-riven. Not a leaf, nor a sign of
vegetation, was to be seen about it. In all things it proclaimed the
frailty of existence, and the fulfilment of time.
Here Ishmael, after making the customary signal for the train to
approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on
the deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not
long in arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the food and water
than they quickened their pace, and then succeeded the usual bustle and
avocations of a halt.
The impression made by the scene of that morning was not so deep, or
lasting, on the children of Ishmael and Esther, as to induce them to
forget the wants of nature. But while the sons were searching among
their stores, for something substantial to appease their hunger, and
the younger fry were wrangling about their simple dishes, the parents
of the unnurtured family were differently employed.
When the squatter saw that all, even to the reviving Abiram, were busy
in administering to their appetites, he gave his downcast partner a
glance of his eye, and withdrew towards a distant roll of the land,
which bounded the view towards the east. The meeting of the pair, in
this naked spot, was like an interview held above the grave of their
murdered son. Ishmael signed to his wife to take a seat beside him on a
fragment of rock, and then followed a space, during which neither
seemed disposed to speak.
“We have journeyed together long, through good and bad,” Ishmael at
length commenced: “much have we had to try us, and some bitter cups
have we been made to swallow, my woman; but nothing like this has ever
before lain in my path.”
“It is a heavy cross for a poor, misguided, and sinful woman to bear!”
returned Esther, bowing her head to her knees, and partly concealing
her face in her dress. “A heavy and a burdensome weight is this to be
laid upon the shoulders of a sister and a mother!”
“Ay; therein lies the hardship of the case. I had brought my mind to
the punishment of that houseless trapper, with no great strivings, for
the man had done me few favours, and God forgive me if I suspected him
wrongfully of much evil! This is, however, bringing shame in at one
door of my cabin, in order to drive it out at the other. But shall a
son of mine be murdered, and he who did it go at large?—the boy would
never rest!”
“Oh, Ishmael, we pushed the matter far. Had little been said, who would
have been the wiser? Our consciences might then have been quiet.”
“Eest’er,” said the husband, turning on her a reproachful but still a
dull regard, “the hour has been, my woman, when you thought another
hand had done this wickedness.”
“I did, I did the Lord gave me the feeling, as a punishment for my
sins! but his mercy was not slow in lifting the veil; I looked into the
book, Ishmael, and there I found the words of comfort.”
“Have you that book at hand, woman; it may happen to advise in such a
dreary business.”
Esther fumbled in her pocket, and was not long in producing the
fragment of a Bible, which had been thumbed and smoke-dried till the
print was nearly illegible. It was the only article, in the nature of a
book, that was to be found among the chattels of the squatter, and it
had been preserved by his wife, as a melancholy relic of more
prosperous, and possibly of more innocent, days. She had long been in
the habit of resorting to it, under the pressure of such circumstances
as were palpably beyond human redress, though her spirit and resolution
rarely needed support under those that admitted of reparation through
any of the ordinary means of reprisal. In this manner Esther had made a
sort of convenient ally of the word of God; rarely troubling it for
counsel, however, except when her own incompetency to avert an evil was
too apparent to be disputed. We shall leave casuists to determine how
far she resembled any other believers in this particular, and proceed
directly with the matter before us.
“There are many awful passages in these pages, Ishmael,” she said, when
the volume was opened, and the leaves were slowly turning under her
finger, “and some there ar’ that teach the rules of punishment.”
Her husband made a gesture for her to find one of those brief rules of
conduct, which have been received among all Christian nations as the
direct mandates of the Creator, and which have been found so just, that
even they, who deny their high authority, admit their wisdom. Ishmael
listened with grave attention, as his companion read all those verses,
which her memory suggested, and which were thought applicable to the
situation in which they found themselves. He made her show him the
words, which he regarded with a sort of strange reverence. A resolution
once taken was usually irrevocable, in one who was moved with so much
difficulty. He put his hand upon the book, and closed the pages
himself, as much as to apprise his wife that he was satisfied. Esther,
who so well knew his character, trembled at the action, and casting a
glance at his steady eye, she said—
“And yet, Ishmael, my blood, and the blood of my children, is in his
veins, cannot mercy be shown?”
“Woman,” he answered sternly, “when we believed that miserable old
trapper had done this deed, nothing was said of mercy!”
Esther made no reply, but folding her arms upon her breast, she sat
silent and thoughtful for many minutes. Then she once more turned her
anxious gaze upon the countenance of her husband, where she found all
passion and care apparently buried in the coldest apathy. Satisfied
now, that the fate of her brother was sealed, and possibly conscious
how well he merited the punishment that was meditated, she no longer
thought of mediation. No more words passed between them. Their eyes met
for an instant, and then both arose and walked in profound silence
towards the encampment.
The squatter found his children expecting his return in the usual
listless manner with which they awaited all coming events. The cattle
were already herded, and the horses in their gears, in readiness to
proceed, so soon as he should indicate that such was his pleasure. The
children were already in their proper vehicle, and, in short, nothing
delayed the departure but the absence of the parents of the wild brood.
“Abner,” said the father, with the deliberation with which all his
proceedings were characterised, “take the brother of your mother from
the wagon, and let him stand on the ’arth.”
Abiram issued from his place of concealment, trembling, it is true, but
far from destitute of hopes, as to his final success in appeasing the
just resentment of his kinsman. After throwing a glance around him,
with the vain wish of finding a single countenance in which he might
detect a solitary gleam of sympathy, he endeavoured to smother those
apprehensions, that were by this time reviving in their original
violence, by forcing a sort of friendly communication between himself
and the squatter—
“The beasts are getting jaded, brother,” he said, “and as we have made
so good a march already, is it not time to camp. To my eye you may go
far, before a better place than this is found to pass the night in.”
“Tis well you like it. Your tarry here ar’ likely to be long. My sons,
draw nigh and listen. Abiram White,” he added, lifting his cap, and
speaking with a solemnity and steadiness, that rendered even his dull
mien imposing, “you have slain my first-born, and according to the laws
of God and man must you die!”
The kidnapper started at this terrible and sudden sentence, with the
terror that one would exhibit who unexpectedly found himself in the
grasp of a monster, from whose power there was no retreat. Although
filled with the most serious forebodings of what might be his lot, his
courage had not been equal to look his danger in the face, and with the
deceitful consolation, with which timid tempers are apt to conceal
their desperate condition from themselves, he had rather courted a
treacherous relief in his cunning, than prepared himself for the worst.
“Die!” he repeated, in a voice that scarcely issued from his chest; “a
man is surely safe among his kinsmen!”
“So thought my boy,” returned the squatter, motioning for the team,
that contained his wife and the girls, to proceed, as he very coolly
examined the priming of his piece. “By the rifle did you destroy my
son; it is fit and just that you meet your end by the same weapon.”
Abiram stared about him with a gaze that bespoke an unsettled reason.
He even laughed, as if he would not only persuade himself but others
that what he heard was some pleasantry, intended to try his nerves. But
nowhere did his frightful merriment meet with an answering echo. All
around was solemn and still. The visages of his nephews were excited,
but cold towards him, and that of his former confederate frightfully
determined. This very steadiness of mien was a thousand times more
alarming and hopeless than any violence could have proved. The latter
might possibly have touched his spirit and awakened resistance, but the
former threw him entirely on the feeble resources of himself.
“Brother,” he said, in a hurried, unnatural whisper, “did I hear you?”
“My words are plain, Abiram White: thou hast done murder, and for the
same must thou die!”
“Esther! sister, sister, will you leave me! Oh sister! do you hear my
call?”
“I hear one speak from the grave!” returned the husky tones of Esther,
as the wagon passed the spot where the criminal stood. “It is the voice
of my firstborn, calling aloud for justice! God have mercy, God have
mercy, on your soul!”
The team slowly pursued its route, and the deserted Abiram now found
himself deprived of the smallest vestige of hope. Still he could not
summon fortitude to meet his death, and had not his limbs refused to
aid him, he would yet have attempted to fly. Then, by a sudden
revolution from hope to utter despair, he fell upon his knees, and
commenced a prayer, in which cries for mercy to God and to his kinsman
were wildly and blasphemously mingled. The sons of Ishmael turned away
in horror at the disgusting spectacle, and even the stern nature of the
squatter began to bend before so abject misery.
“May that, which you ask of Him, be granted,” he said; “but a father
can never forget a murdered child.”
He was answered by the most humble appeals for time. A week, a day, an
hour, were each implored, with an earnestness commensurate to the value
they receive, when a whole life is compressed into their short
duration. The squatter was troubled, and at length he yielded in part
to the petitions of the criminal. His final purpose was not altered,
though he changed the means. “Abner,” he said, “mount the rock, and
look on every side, that we may be sure none are nigh.”
While his nephew was obeying this order, gleams of reviving hope were
seen shooting across the quivering features of the kidnapper. The
report was favourable, nothing having life, the retiring teams
excepted, was to be seen. A messenger was, however, coming from the
latter, in great apparent haste. Ishmael awaited its arrival. He
received from the hands of one of his wondering and frighted girls a
fragment of that book, which Esther had preserved with so much care.
The squatter beckoned the child away, and placed the leaves in the
hands of the criminal.
“Eest’er has sent you this,” he said, “that, in your last moments, you
may remember God.”
“Bless her, bless her! a good and kind sister has she been to me. But
time must be given, that I may read; time, my brother, time!”
“Time shall not be wanting. You shall be your own executioner, and this
miserable office shall pass away from my hands.”
Ishmael proceeded to put his new resolution in force. The immediate
apprehensions of the kidnapper were quieted, by an assurance that he
might yet live for days, though his punishment was inevitable. A
reprieve, to one abject and wretched as Abiram, temporarily produced
the same effects as a pardon. He was even foremost in assisting in the
appalling arrangements, and of all the actors, in that solemn tragedy,
his voice alone was facetious and jocular.
A thin shelf of the rock projected beneath one of the ragged arms of
the willow. It was many feet from the ground, and admirably adapted to
the purpose which, in fact, its appearance had suggested. On this
little platform the criminal was placed, his arms bound at the elbows
behind his back, beyond the possibility of liberation, with a proper
cord leading from his neck to the limb of the tree. The latter was so
placed, that when suspended the body could find no foot-hold. The
fragment of the Bible was placed in his hands, and he was left to seek
his consolation as he might from its pages.
“And now, Abiram White,” said the squatter, when his sons had descended
from completing this arrangement, “I give you a last and solemn asking.
Death is before you in two shapes. With this rifle can your misery be
cut short, or by that cord, sooner or later, must you meet your end.”
“Let me yet live! Oh, Ishmael, you know not how sweet life is, when the
last moment draws so nigh!”
“’Tis done,” said the squatter, motioning for his assistants to follow
the herds and teams. “And now, miserable man, that it may prove a
consolation to your end, I forgive you my wrongs, and leave you to your
God.”
Ishmael turned and pursued his way across the plain, at his ordinary
sluggish and ponderous gait. Though his head was bent a little towards
the earth, his inactive mind did not prompt him to cast a look behind.
Once, indeed, he thought he heard his name called, in tones that were a
little smothered, but they failed to make him pause.
At the spot where he and Esther had conferred, he reached the boundary
of the visible horizon from the rock. Here he stopped, and ventured a
glance in the direction of the place he had just quitted. The sun was
near dipping into the plains beyond, and its last rays lighted the
naked branches of the willow. He saw the ragged outline of the whole
drawn against the glowing heavens, and he even traced the still upright
form of the being he had left to his misery. Turning the roll of the
swell, he proceeded with the feelings of one, who had been suddenly and
violently separated from a recent confederate, for ever.
Within a mile, the squatter overtook his teams. His sons had found a
place suited to the encampment for the night, and merely awaited his
approach to confirm their choice. Few words were necessary to express
his acquiescence. Every thing passed in a silence more general and
remarkable than ever. The chidings of Esther were not heard among her
young, or if heard, they were more in the tones of softened admonition,
than in her usual, upbraiding, key.
No questions nor explanations passed between the husband and his wife.
It was only as the latter was about to withdraw among her children, for
the night, that the former saw her taking a furtive look at the pan of
his rifle. Ishmael bade his sons seek their rest, announcing his
intention to look to the safety of the camp in person. When all was
still, he walked out upon the prairie, with a sort of sensation that he
found his breathing among the tents too straitened. The night was well
adapted to heighten the feelings, which had been created by the events
of the day.
The wind had risen with the moon, and it was occasionally sweeping over
the plain, in a manner that made it not difficult for the sentinel to
imagine strange and unearthly sounds were mingling in the blasts.
Yielding to the extraordinary impulses of which he was the subject, he
cast a glance around, to see that all were slumbering in security, and
then he strayed towards the swell of land already mentioned. Here the
squatter found himself at a point that commanded a view to the east and
to the west. Light fleecy clouds were driving before the moon, which
was cold and watery though there were moments, when its placid rays
were shed from clear blue fields, seeming to soften objects to its own
mild loveliness.
For the first time, in a life of so much wild adventure, Ishmael felt a
keen sense of solitude. The naked prairies began to assume the forms of
illimitable and dreary wastes and the rushing of the wind sounded like
the whisperings of the dead. It was not long before he thought a shriek
was borne past him on a blast. It did not sound like a call from earth
but it swept frightfully through the upper air mingled with the hoarse
accompaniment of the wind. The teeth of the squatter were compressed,
and his huge hand grasped the rifle, as if it would crush the metal.
Then came a lull, a fresher blast, and a cry of horror that seemed to
have been uttered at the very portals of his ears. A sort of echo burst
involuntarily from his own lips, as men shout under unnatural
excitement, and throwing his rifle across his shoulder he proceeded
towards the rock with the strides of a giant.
It was not often that the blood of Ishmael moved at the rate with which
the fluid circulates in the veins of ordinary men; but now he felt it
ready to gush from every pore in his body. The animal was aroused, in
his most latent energies. Ever as he advanced he heard those shrieks,
which sometimes seemed ringing among the clouds, and sometimes passed
so nigh, as to appear to brush the earth. At length there came a cry,
in which there could be no delusion, or to which the imagination could
lend no horror. It appeared to fill each cranny of the air, as the
visible horizon is often charged to fulness by one dazzling flash of
the electric fluid. The name of God was distinctly audible, but it was
awfully and blasphemously blended with sounds that may not be repeated.
The squatter stopped, and for a moment he covered his ears with his
hands. When he withdrew the latter, a low and husky voice at his elbow
asked in smothered tones—
“Ishmael, my man, heard ye nothing?”
“Hist,” returned the husband, laying a powerful arm on Esther, without
manifesting the smallest surprise at the unlooked-for presence of his
wife. “Hist, woman! if you have the fear of Heaven, be still!”
A profound silence succeeded. Though the wind rose and fell as before,
its rushing was no longer mingled with those fearful cries. The sounds
were imposing and solemn, but it was the solemnity and majesty of
nature.
“Let us go on,” said Esther; “all is hushed.”
“Woman, what has brought you here?” demanded her husband, whose blood
had returned into its former channels, and whose thoughts had already
lost a portion of their excitement.
“Ishmael, he murdered our first-born; but it is not meet that the son
of my mother should lie upon the ground, like the carrion of a dog!”
“Follow,” returned the squatter, again grasping his rifle, and striding
towards the rock. The distance was still considerable; and their
approach, as they drew nigh the place of execution, was moderated by
awe. Many minutes had passed, before they reached a spot where they
might distinguish the outlines of the dusky objects.
“Where have you put the body?” whispered Esther. “See, here are pick
and spade, that a brother of mine may sleep in the bosom of the earth!”
The moon broke from behind a mass of clouds, and the eye of the woman
was enabled to follow the finger of Ishmael. It pointed to a human form
swinging in the wind, beneath the ragged and shining arm of the willow.
Esther bent her head and veiled her eyes from the sight. But Ishmael
drew nigher, and long contemplated his work in awe, though not in
compunction. The leaves of the sacred book were scattered on the
ground, and even a fragment of the shelf had been displaced by the
kidnapper in his agony. But all was now in the stillness of death. The
grim and convulsed countenance of the victim was at times brought full
into the light of the moon, and again as the wind lulled, the fatal
rope drew a dark line across its bright disk. The squatter raised his
rifle, with extreme care, and fired. The cord was cut and the body came
lumbering to the earth a heavy and insensible mass.
Until now Esther had not moved nor spoken. But her hand was not slow to
assist in the labour of the hour. The grave was soon dug. It was
instantly made to receive its miserable tenant. As the lifeless form
descended, Esther, who sustained the head, looked up into the face of
her husband with an expression of anguish, and said—
“Ishmael, my man, it is very terrible! I cannot kiss the corpse of my
father’s child!”
The squatter laid his broad hand on the bosom of the dead, and said—
“Abiram White, we all have need of mercy; from my soul do I forgive
you! May God in Heaven have pity on your sins!”
The woman bowed her face and imprinted her lips long and fervently on
the pallid forehead of her brother. After this came the falling clods
and all the solemn sounds of filling a grave. Esther lingered on her
knees, and Ishmael stood uncovered while the woman muttered a prayer.
All was then finished.
On the following morning the teams and herds of the squatter were seen
pursuing their course towards the settlements. As they approached the
confines of society the train was blended among a thousand others.
Though some of the numerous descendants of this peculiar pair were
reclaimed from their lawless and semi-barbarous lives, the principals
of the family, themselves, were never heard of more.