The Prairie (15 page)

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.